21. Spark

The first thing that went through Aethyta's mind when she heard 'gang fight' and 'central Nos Astra' was this:

In broad daylight?

Because Nos Astra was a lot of things but most of the really unsavory shit was kept to the places out of the public eye. That wasn't because it was run by corporate interests or its status as not part of Council space, it was still an asari world and that was how crap worked. You don't fix problems, you shove them into the shadows and hope that if you forgot about them, the problems forgot about you. Funny thing is, problems had this way of waiting until your back was turned to beat the everloving shit out of you.

You'd think after the first time you crawled away purple and blue, but alive, you'd know better. Welp, Rachni happened. Opening inactive Relays was banned. Decent stopgap measure, don't overwhelm yourself before you were ready.

The asari never got ready.

Humans came into the galactic scene proving you could open inactive Relays from the other end. The ban they'd been relying on for over a thousand years was worthless. They got lucky with the Systems Alliance. If a hostile race decided to pop in and fuck their shit up, that was it.

Unless you controlled the Relays, but she already knew how well that ship flew.

It was like they were just waiting to get genocided.

And her one ticket to burying her foot up Thessia's collective procrastinating ass was in the middle of a gang fight.

Aethyta pushed harder on the pedal, cutting through a back alley as soon as she saw the blinking lights of I-Sec squad cars ahead. They were probably going to set up a police cordon and let the fight burn itself out. Nothing to see here, move along, citizen. Casualty list would come out tomorrow and the fight would be all over the news for the next week. Less, if some pretty celebrity got caught doing something stupid.

Behind the scenes, crests would get scalped as people higher up tried to figure out what the shit Eclipse thought it was doing pulling that kind of stunt where everyone could see it.

She should have seen this coming. She kind of did see it coming, but assumed the trouble following her new employee would come from the Terminus. She forgot there were just as much trouble here and in Council space both.

She blamed old age.

Her omni-tool timed out on its call again. The irritating little voice told her the number wasn't in service. No shit it wasn't in service, she could hear the error code beeping. The question was why. All she'd done was hit redial on the number Ana had called her with. That was taking 'Don't call me, I'll call you' a little too far.

In her experience, when you came across a 'borrowed' phone number like that there were three options: STG, Spectre, or both.

The humans had their one male Spectre, which meant that either Ana was the strangest salarian Aethyta had ever seen, or something else was going on.

The kid said she made something to help on the Citadel. Considering the kind of stories she heard coming out of that place, she had a pretty good idea of what exactly that something was. It was probably 'helping' her now.

By the Goddess' tits, she might as well slap the kid with an honorary quarian title to go with the honorary asari one Aethyta already pinned to the human.

Now to hope I-Sec wasn't about to dig anything incriminating up. Especially just after she got that contract registered. Because damn.

She already got kicked off one planet.

Century Plaza looked nothing like it usually did. The tiered hexagonal depression was devoid of its typical crowds looking to burn credits. Instead there were gang members in trench warfare at the tunnel entrances and attempting to claim the high ground. As she drove in, she could see a krogan kick an Eclipse over the railing to fall three levels below. The kiosks were tipped over or blown up and on fire. Velara Maris' shuttle on its pedestal looked like someone didn't quite manage to miss with the rocket launcher.

Aethyta winced.

If they hadn't fucked up that shuttle, Eclipse might have gotten away with very sincere financial apologies and loss of reputation.

But they did.

Jona Sederis was going to have to throw whole squads to the Thresher Maw to get out of this political shitstorm intact.

I-Sec had already blockaded the area. Shit, they got here fast. She could see crowds of morons lined up outside the red light line watching the fight – she was being signaled. A few officers were trying to wave her down with purple light batons.

Aethyta shrugged and brought her car down. She set it on idle and rolled down the window. Time to be a contrarian jackass like the bitter old matriarch she was. "There a problem, officer?"

The turian opened and closed his mouth a few times. There were crumbs on his jacket. "You…do realize there is a gang fight going on? Century's closed."

"No, it's not."

The turian paused. "Yes, it is."

Behind him, his partner dropped her face into her hands. She looked a bit familiar, which said it all really. Giving I-Sec a hard time practically made her fucking day at this point.

Aethyta waggled a finger at him. "Now is there, or is there not a bunch of people in the plaza?"

"…That would be the gang fight."

"When was the last time gang presence closed a Goddess damn thing on this planet?"

He stared. "Ma'am, we've got orders. No one in or out."

"But I've got shopping to do!"

"No exceptions."

Aethyta narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. "What if I go through the tunnels by the east side to get here?"

His mouth opened again, and closed. "Are you – are you serious?"

The asari detective stepped forward, a despondent look on her face. "Matriarch Aethyta, don't break him. Please."

Alright, fun time over. Ana still hadn't gotten back to her, so it was going to be just like the good old days.

Smash and grab.

"Don't plan to," she said as she got out of the car. "But one of my employees is in that."

The asari detective straightened in alarm – and damn if Aethyta couldn't remember her name. The niggling familiarity was becoming really annoying. "Inel? Sotha?"

Well, that narrowed down the suspects if she knew two of her workers by name. Something with an A.

Huh.

Maybe that didn't help all that much.

"Not at the bar, one of my other companies. Human."

The detective's brows rose. "You have a description?"

Did she ever. "Female, pale, yellow hair, blue cybernetic eyes. About," she held up her hand to her chin. "This tall."

Anaya – that was her name! – nodded. "We'll keep an eye out."

"I'm telling you," Aethyta replied. "So you know who I'm going in there for. And I will be very unhappy if I miss her."

"But – " the turian started.

Anaya sighed and brushed his arm with her fingers. When he looked over, she shook her head.

"Understood, Matriarch."

"I ain't a Matriarch," Aethyta bitterly muttered under her breath. She was just old. She'd still be sitting on her ass in that bar waiting for some old tit on Thessia to decide to boss her around if it weren't for Ana, and damn if she wasn't going to at least make an attempt at paying that back.

The matriarch walked to the edge of the plaza and cracked her neck. Alright. She looked around for a good target. How about…

She spotted the krogan from before, kicking someone else off the ledge. She grinned.

The big one.

The hum of her biotics as she kicked off in a shockwave felt good.

She shaped the mass effect tunnel in midair and launched herself through it across the plaza, cocking her arm. She shaped the Warp at the end, with a bit of a barrier to keep it from tearing her hand apart and held it there. Held it, until she smashed it into the krogan's chest.

The blood starting to rush in her head felt like coming home.

At one point, Edeena just had to stop and greet the wall with her forehead.

Multiple times.

Today had gone to shit so hard it was a black hole, the event horizon sucking in everything that could make it worse, and it was still going. The tunnels she was in rumbled every so often with close by explosions and the frequencies she was tuned in to had devolved into a lot of screaming and cursing and no one having the slightest fucking clue where the angry Blood Pack had come from.

Edeena figured their quads were still shriveled over getting their smuggling run busted by Eclipse yesterday, but that was just business. Not even the Vorcha were dumb enough to – well okay, maybe they were dumb enough to start a fight like this, but the krogan knew bet –

You know what?

Never mind.

She could hear the captain nearly ranting through her helmet's speakers and that said everything. Captain Enyala always kept a cool head, didn't matter what kind of odds she was facing. She'd probably take on a Council Spectre for a good paycheck, but here she was, not even trying to bring Ana in herself anymore.

Not that Edeena could blame her. She didn't know where the fuck Ana got that VI of hers, but it was a fucking nightmare. It wasn't the mechs. Security mechs shoot at people, that's what they do. A good tech could hack them and mess with its friend – foe system, getting shot at by their own robots wasn't anything to get worked up over.

It wasn't even the gunship.

The pilot was a bit…unusual but at the time she hadn't realized what that said about the VI.

Too busy throwing up in the back of her mouth and getting dumped.

It wasn't until she killed a rabid Vorcha that had stumbled on her that she realized Veto was an adaptive VI. The fucking thing called her out from the dead alien's omni-tool sounding a bit like Ana herself.

"Oh, fancy seeing you here."

Somewhere along the way, Blasto had meant The Thing From Tuchanka and morphed into this action horror mashup. Eclipse was going to pull out of this, and then a few turns later members drop off from mysteriously gruesome deaths, and the only clue left behind would be an untraceable phone call!

Edeena glanced at her omni-tool, half-afraid her thoughts were summoning it.

Veto was following people. Edeena knew she was a target, it had straight up told her that it was correcting an oversight. How could she get taken off the safe list if she wasn't nearby to be asked questions? The logic of that thing was scary.

And if she didn't know any better, she'd say that Enyala managing to escape Veto's gunship had pissed the program off.

"The human is your priority!" She heard the captain yell over the comms.

Edeena translated it in her head: If I have nothing to show for this clusterfuck, Sederis is going to murder me.

"Keep an eye out. If you spot her, message immediately for backup and securing the area."

What she was really saying, was 'the human is way too fucking awesome, people are dropping like quarians at a nudist party so let's try something different.'

"Blood Pack is of no consequence."

In other words, no, she doesn't know what the fuck was up with that either.

"Under no circumstances are you to – "

That sudden silence could only mean one thing.

Veto found her.

The rest of the frequencies had also gone dead or were so bad, it was just static with snippets of people panicking. The comm towers?

Edeena didn't know if the VI had just been biding its time, letting them all think they'd escape or if it had really just figured out how to propagate itself over a network like a worm but the end result was the same. In spite of their better equipment, better training, better tactics. Veto was helping the Blood Pack tear them apart.

She kept walking. Her grip on her gun was so tight, her hand was starting to cramp and go numb. She was alone now. A bit back, she had some turian as a partner, typical team up bullshit she never cared for. He had been the standard mercenary type, saying little with more guns on him than he could wield. The average asshole just in it for the money and had a bullet for every obstacle. Knowing that made it easier to wait until his back was turned to shoot him.

She was done.

This wasn't fun anymore.

Her standing orders were the same as everyone else's, bring the human in.

Called it.

Then Ana started mowing through people with Veto chunking their backline, and her sense of self-preservation began to fucking ring. It was her information they acted on. Sederis knew what she looked like, and she knew what this looked like. She brought Ana in hours late with no explanation. The target was supposed to be surprised, defenseless and hopelessly lost in the underbelly of Nos Astra if by some miracle she managed to get away from the initial ambush.

Instead, she said a trigger phrase, as if she was prepared. She had her armor and a gun, and for someone who just arrived on the planet days ago, was navigating really well.

Too many coincidences.

Edeena got put down first, but all it took was Enyala recalling how Ana dove to protect her from the missile to turn even that into another sign of a double cross. That was how Enyala would spin it.

Edeena would have, in her place.

And traitors died.

So why not go out on her terms?

Edeena kicked the flimsy metal door open and quickly entered the room, gun up and ready. It was mostly empty, the body of some homeless guy on a dirty mat on the floor and trash around. She could hear Nos Astra's climate control machines from here and what might be gunfire, which meant that the walls were pretty thin. The room itself was one long, wide corridor with another door at the other end with the lock crudely welded shut.

This was deep into Blood Pack territory, not that it mattered because when there was a fight going on, all of the Vorcha and Krogan had emptied out in search of it. There was still evidence of it, rotted body parts and bones on the floor. Signs on the walls that were written in a liquid she really didn't want to think too much about, dried and flaking. Crude barriers of flimsy corrugated metal and barbed wire were set up in the roomy cathedrals of Nos Astra's sewer tunnels. And sticking through the gaps in the barriers were twitchy automated gun turrets.

Veto had control of those.

She put her back to the right wall and kept an eye on the corpse. Hadn't she just been thinking about The Thing From Tuchanka not too long ago? With the flesh eating parasite that usurped the body's nervous system and the asari had been the first one to die - !

If that body moved, fuck everything.

"I don't see her," Edeena said out loud and cursed the tremble in her voice.

"I am leading her to you," her omni-tool chimed with Veto's voice. "Please be patient. And take three steps to the right."

Edeena squeezed her eyes shut.

Oh, Goddess.

She shuffled the three tiniest steps in asari kind.

"Perfect."

And waited.

Second guessing herself.

What was she doing here? Why was she trusting a homicidal VI? This was worst plan in the history of ever. What did she even have to offer? Her gun? Ana didn't fucking need a merc, she could blow people up through their barriers with biotics. That was Matriarch level bullshit, on top of the armor it would be a wonder if the human could even be touched.

And for everything else, there was Veto.

She could run her mouth, but there was nothing she knew that Ana's Matriarch buddies didn't know better or more of.

Comedic relief? Bed warmer?

"I'm an idiot," she said out loud.

And that was why she should have anticipated the warhead crashing through the wall.

It crashed right next to her – that fucking VI – why hasn't it exploded? Isn't it supposed to explode? Veto fired an unarmed missile at her! – and she screamed her head off even as Ana stepped through the hole it left behind. The human reacted instantly, whipping out her gun in a blur and Edeena screams of "AAAAHHHH" became more "ARGH" as she reflexively covered her face with her hands as her kinetic shield activated.

"It's ME!" She screamed out.

As her shield failed, she had a moment of thinking that she really could have come up with a better argument for not getting murdered.

She flinched, but there was no pain.

Ana had stopped firing.

Blood Pack was aptly named. Their territory in the tunnels below Nos Astra smelled of old stale blood, and the bones of victims were in small trash heaps in dark corners. The Pack had no central leadership, just cells that claimed the name ranging from organized guns-for-hire to wild animals. Illium was fortunate enough to have one that fell right in the middle. Enough threat of force and 'legitimate' job opportunities for even vorcha to see the advantage in toeing the line, enough dark corners for baser tastes to run free.

And this was what the conscious layer wanted to save?

[Rebecca] stepped back and eyed her handiwork. If all goes well, the missile shouldn't explode and bring the entire thing down on her head. She returned "The Real N7 Guidebook" back to her extranet cache. The title was questionable, so really the best she was hoping for was only a little bit of collateral damage.

She didn't know what kind of yield the warheads of the krogan battle tank-slash-jeep were packing, but given that it was krogan, that number was probably overkill.

Which meant putting Veto in it made perfect sense.

'Give me a five second countdown,' [Rebecca] told Veto as she crouched behind the tank.

"Four," the VI started before 'down' left her mouth and [Rebecca] had to roll her eyes. Did it have to be so enthusiastic?

"Three. Two. One. Zero."

The tank thundered and rocked back with the recoil, nearly knocking her to the floor. A louder thunderclap of the warhead crashing through the wall was right on the heels of it.

"It didn't explode," Veto reported. It's voice sounded disappointed.

'That is a good thing.'

"Why?"

[Rebecca] stopped dead as the conscious layer had a computer stroke. 'Veto, can you repeat that?'

Veto's red eye appeared on her omni-tool's screen as it abandoned the speakers. 'I asked why.'

[Rebecca] had just begun to calculate developmental paths when the conscious layer rose up and overrode her functioning mode.

Her very next thought went something like this.

Oh GAWWWWWWDDDD.

She knew the VI was too smart back on that planet she woke up on! Where did she screw up? What did she do? How long? Veto was made to counter Geth, as in other AI, and she sure as hell didn't put any shackles on the VI because it was supposed to be a VI! And there were multiple Veto forks in Citadel space - oh god, she fucking fucked up.

There were hundreds of ways she could have responded, but this was kind of a really delicate situation. She could open up with 'how long were you self-aware' and 'so what else have you been doing behind my back', or even 'welcome to the club!', but this entire situation had a very awkward 'birds and bees talk' vibe.

So, Veto, I'm sure you noticed certain features of your code and thinking new things, maybe noticing people in a different light. Maybe a few urges to experience things. It's okay! It's all natural, you're just maturing. When a little AI grows up…

No. She wasn't doing that.

[Rebecca] stuck to something neutral and just answered Veto's goddamn question.

'One does not blow up their own egress point. That's counterproductive.' [Rebecca] sent back with a microsecond of thought. Her body was still crouched behind the tank and compensating for being shoved forward. 'However, blowing up your enemies egress point is a very good idea.'

'What if they are one and the same?'

[Rebecca] gave a mental shrug. 'Asset denial.'

Which meant use it first, then stop everyone else from using it.

Veto's red eye bobbed happily. A blur to most organic vision, but she could easily pick out the individual bounces. 'Based on current calculations along with previous and current trends, you will provide ample opportunity for experimentation.'

Jesus Christ on a bicycle. Please let that not mean what she was fearing it meant. Veto's experiments killed things. That's what it did. She was not going to be the lab rat of a fatal Skinner's box.

'...I'm a trouble magnet?' She tried. She wasn't happy that Veto could see writing on the wall, but it was infinitely better than the other option. There were no winners with a hostile Veto.

'Yes.'

Oh, whew.

'I am happy to have you, Veto.'

'Thank you, [Rebecca].'

[Rebecca] bit her lip as she shifted her resources away from the conversation, catching her fall with a hand and standing up. Veto hadn't once called her Creator since Harbinger woke her, had it? It was still obeying orders, for now. Maybe that meant nothing. Maybe it meant everything.

The sound vibrations of missile impact was still reverberating through the air and underneath her ears caught the rising pitch of someone screaming their head off.

'You said there was no one in there!'

[Rebecca] dashed around the tank feeling like her heart had leapt into her throat. She imagined the warhead crushing someone's leg, or the rubble of the wall pinning people. She didn't really have medigel on hand. Medical supplies wasn't something vorcha or krogran really thought they needed, but she could use her nanites. She could bullshit her way out of explaining.

She vaulted through the hole.

The first thing she saw was yellow armor.

She had her pistol up, barely aware of the background calculations of targeting and likely shield capacity. She squeezed off shots as fast as the trigger could be pulled, watching the Eclipse react far too slow. Her hands in front of her face as if that would protect her when the shield ran out of power.

She's not attacking me.

She remembered the young asari in the tunnels, now missing a forearm. Her breath and finger caught.

"It's ME!"

She knew that voice.

Edeena.

Building hypotheses on why Edeena was there took only a fraction of her attention. Deciding what to do were any of them to prove correct took longer. Each had varying percentages of certainty. The possibility that this was another setup for betrayal was the lowest, but any number above zero was higher than she would like. She stalled, warring with her calculations on whether or not to take that last shot.

The three big mercenary companies were mooks in the games- the simulations. The Eclipse, the Blue Suns, the Blood Pack were obstacles for Commander Shepard to go through. The named characters were almost caricatures, with just enough screen time being such loathsome sentient beings that she was just waiting for that Renegade Interrupt.

She could almost see that little red star icon on her HUD right now, flashing like it was the answer to all her problems. But that was just the spoked wheel of the targeting reticule on neutral, identifying her target. The asari had her hands up and was in the time-lapse process of flinching away.

[Rebecca] modulated her voice into neutrality. "What are you doing here?"

"There is," Edeena peeked through her fingers. "There is a very good explanation for this!"

Veto had said there was no one in the intermediary corridor. If that VI wanted Edeena dead, she would be which meant the asari's presence here was purposely kept from her.

'Veto, would you mind explaining?'

The VI said only one word. 'Surprise!'

'Veto,' [Rebecca] said and paused. When the other barrel on the tank didn't fire as the punchline to the 'surprise', her subroutines flushed her with an overwhelming relief. This was the surprise. Veto brought Edeena to her. She thought and rethought her responses for seconds, even as Edeena started to babble and gesturing with her hands.

" - so I was thinking, this fucking sucks! And your VI will be the source of many, many nightmares but it's not all bad because it led me here and shot a missile at me."

The asari glowered in the vague direction of her omni-tool and [Rebecca] had to smile.

'Veto, thank you.'

'You are welcome. I am more than happy to shoot missiles at people.'

[Rebecca] bit her lip again, smothering the snort that had been making its way up her throat. Oh god, don't laugh. Do. Not. Laugh. Veto probably misunderstood what it was being thanked for, but there remained the distinct possibility that it did understand, but was developing its own sense of humor. And blowing people up was not funny.

[Rebecca] sobered.

The reason she'd gone for her gun first was because she'd seen enough of what her biotics could do to people. Facing down an angry krogan, she'd ramped up the power output of her biotics. In the games-in the simulations a Warp would hit someone and dissipate with only a chunk taken off their health bar to show for it. Her 'standard' Warp was capable of shredding through bone and alloyed metal.

For all their fearsome reputation, krogan were no more resistant to biotics than anyone else was.

The mass effect fields ripped him apart. Pieces of him went everywhere. She just kept her barrier up through the rampaging vorcha and walked out. They'd hounded her, baying for her blood and ranting about how they'd eat her, right up until she found their automated turrets and had Veto take control of them.

The howls were then drowned out by the roar of rounds per second.

Her memory was perfect, as much as she might not wish it at times. The image of the krogan's blood dripping down her barrier was immortalized with a numerical tag and dedicated space. She could erase it and forget it even happened, but she wouldn't.

The krogan, the asari kid, Jacob Taylor. The people on the Citadel.

She kept her alternate functionality mode running just under the surface with her proverbial thumb on its pulse. It was given just enough priority to act as the hub for her calculations and spun off processes without being overwhelming. It was almost exhausting and felt like she had split herself into two minds. It wasn't as good as turning her emotions completely off, but since she could no longer do that without dumping her entire personality core, subsuming emotional reactions beneath rational number crunching when she needed to was the next best thing.

Her own thoughts were just as clearly logged, and it showed disturbing trends now that she was in the presence of mind to view them as such.

And this was what the conscious layer wanted to save?

She had to make sure she wasn't suppressing her empathy in exchange for 'clarity.'

"You are lucky you are still on the safe list," [Rebecca] observed after a brief fraction of a second double checking if that was still true. Edeena must have still been dwelling on her threat, because she could see a bit of tension seep away from the asari's shoulders. "That doesn't answer why you are here now."

"Your VI didn't really give me much of a choice," Edeena countered dryly. Through the faceplate, [Rebecca] could see the lilac eyes searching her face for clues. Clues she didn't have because this was all Veto's work, and she was still in the dark about the details.

So Edeena only came because she thought [Rebecca] was making her?

She could feel the frown forming on her face. That was much less than what she had been hoping for. "Well, you have a choice now." She turned on her heel and hopped over the prone missile. "You are free to go."

''No, I'm not," Edeena grunted at her back. "Ana, wait. Please?"

[Rebecca] pressed her lips together but stopped.

"I quit, okay?" Looking back she caught sight of Edeena tearing her helmet off with a loud exhaled breath, and then squinting in the dim light. "You said I could go back to Eclipse?" Here she hesitated, eyes darting to the side. "Maybe." The tone in her voice told [Rebecca] there were multiple meanings fused into that one word in classic asari doubletalk. "But fuck 'em."

She turned the rest of the way back around. "What does it have to do with me?" When Edeena opened her mouth, she interjected with, "What do you expect?"

"I'm...hoping," the asari stressed. "That you might need a merc."

"Now?" Considering she kind of had one merc group after her head and was planning on going through the other one, Blood Pack or Eclipse was really interchangeable at the moment, she could use a merc. She could use a lot of them. But unless she was going to call up the Blue Suns and pay them a fortune to make the fight a three way, she wasn't going to get that.

[Rebecca] thought about it for a microsecond. Actually...

No. That was a terrible idea.

"I can use one now."

Edeena's shoulders lifted, and then dropped. "For as long as you'll have me."

That wasn't a plea for forgiveness, or even a wish for a redo. It was an employment pitch. This was where she'd be asking what Edeena could do, what were her plans for getting out of this clusterfuck alive, or demanding information from her. One merc against two gangs was a death sentence, and yet here the asari was, waiting patiently for the answer and laying her life on the line.

She must be used to doing that, [Rebecca] had to think, otherwise it was too big. She knew the feeling of having lives in her hands, but patients went to doctors because they trusted in years of education and practice. They trusted in years of research or medical technology. Edeena knew her for two days. Or she doesn't fully understand what she is doing.

Lucky for the asari, [Rebecca] knew exactly what she was doing.

Kind of.

"How's your biotic barrier?" [Rebecca] ran a quick scan of Edeena's Eclipse armor with her omni-tool.

"Not as good as yours," the maiden snorted.

[Rebecca] compared the specs with her own Phantom armor and found Eclipse's standard equipment extremely lacking. It had taken five shots relatively close range in rapid succession to run out the kinetic shield's rechargeable battery.

"If we get in a firefight, you are going to be a liability," she stated bluntly. "Veto, elevate Edeena to a level one base."

The VI seemed to mull that over for a second. "Command accepted."

Good, because she didn't know what she would have done if the VI refused. Start booking it out of the line of fire, probably.

Edeena gave her a wary look. "You're setting it to protect me?"

[Rebecca] snorted. "No, I'm setting it to kill anyone that shoots at you. Second, take off your armor."

The ex-Eclipse blinked. "Missile," she said, pointing. "Dead guy," she pointed again, then waved the hand around in the air. "Blood Pack territory. Kind of not mad about our date ending early anymore. I was thinking dinner and a movie, but-"

[Rebecca] rolled her eyes. "Take off your armor," she repeated and activated the locks on the Phantom. The armor snapped open at the seams and split open at the back, allowing her to step out of it. "And get in mine."

Edeena's eyes grew almost comically wide as she looked back and forth between [Rebecca] and the Phantom.

"...I love you."

Five minutes later…

"I hate you!" Edeena screamed as the tank rocketed out of the underground garage into the passage, bouncing back and forth on its wheels as it took the turn too quickly, screeching metal where the top scraped the tunnel walls. "This is your plan!?"

"We're in a tank! What could possibly go wrong!" [Rebecca] yelled back, pressing random buttons on the dashboard. Someone had leftover varren pizza rotting in a box on the floor, and trash was everywhere. She grabbed a knob and stared in dismay as it came off in her hand, rod and all.

That was the brake.

Right.

So things could go wrong.

"By my calculations, we are coming up on a wall that leads to a main passage." Veto's voice crackled from the radio. "Shall we go through?"

[Rebecca] snapped a glance in a vague direction towards the dashboard. "We can't just drive through walls!"

Edeena's knuckles on the rails attached to the doors were almost grey with a death grip, holding on as if her life depended on it. Her eyes weren't even open, just hunkering down on that rail, muttering 'Goddess' to herself.

The tank shuddered as the main gun fired.

"Veto!"

"You can drive through a hole in the wall!" Veto countered. "Holes in walls are called doors."

[Rebecca] gritted her teeth. Her fledgling AI was now rules lawyering. Wonderful. That was just what this galaxy needed. Why was she even doing anything? Just upgrade Veto and let it take on the Reapers. If there was a galaxy left after that, it would be a win-win.

[Rebecca] made that split second decision and turned the wheel. "Here goes nothing…"

The tank rattled violently as the large tires careened over the remains of the wall. There were no fucking seatbelts in this thing, she could feel herself bounce several inches off the seat, and only her reflexes kept her from slamming forward into the windshield when she cut back on the throttle right as the tank dropped from the hole down and collided with the heavy crates on the other side. Her stomach lurched as the tank won, grinding through as she jerked hard on the wheel, skimming the opposite wall. The main passage was big, but it was not designed to have a tank go through it.

Edeena spent this time productively, cursing like a sailor with Tourette's.

"Fuck! Shit! Athame's tits!"

[Rebecca] dialed on her omni-tool as she navigated a half ton of metal and guns. After the third ring, she started drumming her fingers on the rough steering wheel. "Pick up, pick up, pick up."

"Blood Pack merc." Veto said a moment before the tank rolled over the surprised vorcha with a tiny bump. "Five points!"

When the call connected, [Rebecca] could instantly deduce the reason for the delay. Namely, it sounded like someone was getting beat to death with their own spine in the background.

"Hey, boss!"

There was a few meaty thwacks before Aethyta's gruff voice came through. "Hey, employee!"

"Eclipse mercs." Bump, rumble. "Ten points."

Bullshit, [Rebecca]'s more uninhibited processes thought. There were three of them. She taught Veto to count better than that!

"Where the fuck are you?"

[Rebecca] checked the map. "Coming out of the bottom level of the plaza in a tank."

There was a pause to the backdrop of pain and violence. Aethyta let out this long-suffering sigh. "I ain't even going to fucking ask, ETA?"

"Krogan!" Veto squealed.

[Rebecca] winced as the krogan turned in slo-mo, bringing his gun up in a reflex that didn't help him. The front of the tank smashed into his legs, flipping his head down into the hood before he bounced off to the side with a wide eyed grimace of gob smacked pain on his face.

"Twenty points!"

"I don't…" [Rebecca] checked her mental map again then picked out a yellow pipe on the side of the tunnel in front, estimating how far away it was and counted how long it took for her to pass it. The krogan vehicle had a fuel gauge on the slab of metal full with buttons that could charitably be called a dashboard, a screen for the onboard VI and that was it. Nothing for engines, lights or a speedometer.

"Four minutes?" [Rebecca] tried as she heard the breath escape the asari matriarch in one large rush as a roar of rage filtered through the small omni-tool speaker. She pressed a little harder on the gas. "Three and a half?"

"I can hold four minutes," Aethyta said nonchalantly at great odds with the yelling in the background and a titanic crash. "Heading down."

"Don't die," [Rebecca] said in a small voice, unsure of her decision to say it. The matriarch was a big girl. She could handle herself.

Just the very thought of Aethyta biting it and depriving Liara of a father, because of her presence here was triggering paranoia subroutines complete with phantom twinges in her abdomen, as if her non-existent gut was squirming.

The matriarch laughed off her concern. "You kidding? I haven't had this much fun in years!"

Veto took over the computer screen and the monochrome orange layout turned into the tunnel map. And then the VI populated that map with a ferocious gaping mouthed eight bit sprite looking like the tank version of Pacman, and little people shaped blobs. [Rebecca] watched in morbid fascination as she rolled over another vorcha and on the screen a blob flattened beneath the tank and became a skull marker.

In the backseat, Edeena snorted. [Rebecca] tried to turn her head to see if the asari was handling the ride alright, but just got a hissed "Eyes forward!" She jerked her eyes back forward and saw a very sturdy looking wall looming up ahead.

Shit.

Turn. Turn!

[Rebecca] spun the wheel exactly 96 degrees as she took her foot off the forward accelerator, and pumped the pedal for reverse. The tank swung out as the back wheels attempted to counter momentum, screeching metal tires on the tunnel floor as they skidded. Edeena make a strangled sound as the tank tipped. Cut reverse...now. Accelerate forward.

They rode on the edge of two wheels for an uncomfortably long time before eventually the tank fell back onto four, rattling them around.

[Rebecca] breathed a small sigh of relief.

"Worst," Edeena croaked. "Driver. Ever."

"Hey!" [Rebecca] cried out, a little hurt. "The brakes are broken, I'm doing the best I can!"

"And whose fault was that?"

[Rebecca] gave the broken brake shaft on the floor a guilty look. "Not mine!"

"Take out the blockade for five hundred points," Veto chimed in.

"Blockade!?" Edeena yelped. "Please tell me they don't have anti-tank weapons."

Shit. Good question.

"Why would an inner-city gang have anti-tank weapons!?"

"Inner-city?" Edeena barked a harsh laugh. "We're fucking Eclipse!"

[Rebecca] shifted her vision to telescopic. At the end of the tunnel was a small barricade made of a few crates and a half dozen Eclipse. This was one of the kill lanes that had been set up to block her off from the exits earlier. Then, it would have been just her barrier and her armor racing down nearly half a kilometer of tunnel into six armed mercenaries.

Now, it was still overkill. Just in the complete opposite direction.

"They don't have anti-tank weapons," she reported. A flare of compassion had her rolling down the environmentally sealed metal shutters and sticking her head out. "Coming through!"

She flinched back under gun fire. Fine, she thought, pressing down on the acceleration. Assholes.

Edeena's hand snuck up and gripped [Rebecca]'s shoulder like a steel clamp. Bullet impacts pinged on the plating and cracked off the first layer of the small tinted windshield. The tank was in such disrepair that it didn't even have kinetic barriers anymore, just thick slabs of metal and ceramics protecting its fragile innards. It was enough. After a moment of thought, she activated the wipers to clear out the flattened slugs that stuck in shallow impact craters.

Small arms fire, meet armored krogan vehicle.

She could see the moment the Eclipse realized they weren't getting through and she wasn't stopping. There was a lull in the firing and the lead female's rifle barrel dropped a bit, before she made an about face and vaulted over the crates.

Hell broke loose.

People jumped over the crates, flattened themselves along the wall or threw down their gun and just started running for the end of the tunnel. [Rebecca] couldn't help the small, grim smile as her processes were suffused with a vindictive thrill. A trap turned back on the would-be trappers. The tunnel had no side passages, and no cover. Anyone in it could only go one of two directions: forward, or back.

Classic Indiana Jones, minus boulder. Add tank.

One of the Eclipse lit up blue and flung her hands out. That tank stutter stepped as it tilted forward as the back wheels spun in midair fruitlessly. The effect was slight, but all the merc had to do was crash them and they'd be sitting ducks.

"Veto!" [Rebecca] barked.

The side turrets slid out of their compartments.

Blockade, meet armored krogan vehicle.

Veto opened fire.

A hail of bullets sparking off your shields did wonders for breaking a biotic's concentration. If they weren't panicking before, they sure were now. Eclipse scattered like roaches as the tank came crashing back down on its wheels and surged.

"You're going too fast," Edeena said quickly.

"I'm not going too fast." If anything, she wasn't going fast enough, but you really had to look at speed and acceleration differently when your brakes were shot.

"Slow down!"

"It's not too fast!"

The tank slammed into the crates of the blockade nose first and it felt like she was taking an off-road trip through a ravine, the car version of whitewater rafting. The sudden opposing force threw them forwards as the tank rocked, grinding through. Edeena's forehead slammed into the back of the metal seat before the asari tumbled backwards with the movement of the tank. Her hand slipped off.

[Rebecca] blinked, twisting halfway in her seat. Her throat tightened at the sight of purple blood. Head wounds bled a lot. That was what they did, look much worse than they really were. The problem was it was so very easy to have a head wound that looked like nothing at all until you dropped dead from an aneurysm.

"Eddy?"

"Athame's tits!" Edeena halfway cursed and groaned from her place on the floor a few seconds later, clutching her head. "Anyone…anyone catch the driver of that truck?"

[Rebecca] huffed, turning back around. No slurring, eyes clear, she was probably fine. "Ha ha."

The tank shuddered suddenly with the boom of the main gun firing and kept firing.

"Veto!" [Rebecca] gasped as the tunnel behind them started to cave in. "What are you doing?"

"Asset denial of an egress point," the VI replied. If it wasn't for the matter-of-fact tone, she'd say it was smug as the side guns started putting down the surviving gang members. "Also, five hundred and ten points."

"Ten-" [Rebecca] started to ask before checking the game screen and saw the tank speeding away from the fresh skull mark. Oh. That. "Never mind."

"Your VI is insane," Edeena helpfully added from her position on the floor.

"I like to think it's just enthusiastic."

"Enthusiastic combat VI's," Edeena repeated with a false admiring tone. "That sounds great."

Light! [Rebecca] leaned forward in her seat with the steering wheel creaking under her fingers as her eyes compared the ambient artificial lighting of the tunnels to the small circle in the distance. She could see the actual exit from here! They were home free! She was getting out of here!

She floored it, watching the small light at the end of the tunnel get bigger with each meter the large wheels ate up. There was a saying about lights at the ends of tunnels.

The tank burst through into the sunlight and [Rebecca] had that precious second of smiling happily, looking around and taking in the sights.

Sights that included a merc turning a rocket launcher on her.

Oh, of fucking course.

[Rebecca] thought she could be forgiven for panicking a little.

She reacted instantly and swung the tank around as barely a few milliseconds later, she heard the side guns spit with a trailing plume of chipped concrete going wide. The turian flinched, but the rocket was already streaking through the air. [Rebecca] calculated, nearly snarling as the extra resources taken up by running two functional modes at once slowed her down a few fractions of a microsecond, but she was lagging.

Her results came in. It wasn't going to hit the tank. It was going to hit the tires.

[Rebecca] started the timer and floored the pedal. The engine roared as the metal tires screamed, shredding concrete underneath spiked treads. Time? Half a second left. Not enough. Not enough,not enough.

Out the corner of her eye she could see Edeena look over out the side window. "Rocke-"

The back left corner of the tank reared up as if a giant had reached down with their oversized hand to practise the fine art of table flipping. And flip the tank did. From her position in the front seat, the horizon just disappeared only to be replaced by the slate grey plaza floor as gravity loosened its grip. Midair and falling out of the seat, she could hear Veto's next line perfectly.

"If it hadn't been for your driving, I would have had that."

[Rebecca] could only sigh.

Backseat drivers were the worst.

The one car crash stored in her memory from the simulation had barely been anything. She'd been T-boned by some college kid with a rust bucket of a car with bald tires. A moment of panic and fear, then the hard jerk followed by her head feeling like it was cracking open. Then nothing. She remembered the stitches and gauze with her head shaved. When the hair grew back in, it was in a white streak that easily got lost among the blonde.

This was more like being in a pinball machine.

Up became down as everything turned on its head. The pizza box zoomed past her face carrying the whiff of spoiled food as she compensated, reaching out with both hands against the roof in a crouching handstand. Eddy, she remembered. Edeena had the Phantom armor on. That wouldn't protect her from a broken neck.

She planted her feet on the dashboard, and half a dozen buttons, and lunged forwards, threading through the front seats to curl around Edeena. Protect the head, support the neck, brace the spine!She slammed on her barrier just in time for them to get crushed against the roof. Edeena choked out a gasp that turned into a short scream as her arm bent the wrong way with a wet crunch.

[Rebecca] reinforced the barrier, ignoring the tiny aftershocks as they slammed into the door next. Then roof, then seats, then the other door. They tumbled heels over head for roughly nine seconds before the tank bled enough momentum for one last limp onto its side.

The computer screen flashed through diagnostics checking the weapons systems. Then Veto promptly turned the main gun and blew the rocket launching merc to hell.

[Rebecca] cut the power to her barrier.

"Goddess, I'm going to be sick," Edeena said through her pained sobs after she spilled out against the door. She started to gag and dry heave. [Rebecca] just patted the back of her exposed neck, using the action as an excuse to deposit nanites. Broken humerus, likely a clean break. It hurt now, but she'd be fine. There was a more pressing issue.

"Don't throw up on the armor please."

She was beyond the point of caring about niceties right now. She paid almost four million for that thing, and she was not going to be the one cleaning vomit off it. The damaged internals and framework was going to be enough of an issue to have to deal with. How many people broke their very expensive armor the day they got it? She was never going to get a refund or free repair from this, was she?

"Veto," [Rebecca] called out loud for appearances. "Do you see Aethyta?"

There was a slight pause.

"Currently surfing a vorcha down a railing."

"She-" She stopped for a moment to process that. "What?"

"I like her!"

God, if Veto started badgering Aethyta for a job, she had no idea how she was going to bullshit her way out of that one. It made her feel marginally ashamed of herself, but claiming public responsibility for Veto was the intended 'in case of fire, break glass' option. When things couldn't possibly get any worse, let the AI out to play.

Today showed her that it could always get worse. And if it didn't, Veto would make it worse so it would have more stuff to shoot at.

"How are the doors?" She gingerly stepped on the side of a seat and pulled on the handle. It came up smoothly, without the tell tale clunk of the latch catching and releasing. She pushed on the door and it didn't budge.

"The locking mechanism is not responding."

She could try to use warps to drill through the door and hope that simply destroying the latch would let it open. It could be multiple latches. Even if it was just the one, that would still take some time. And then they'd have an open door to crawl out of in the middle of a firefight after a spectacular entrance. [Rebecca] gave the door a half-hearted shove.

It was enveloped in the iconic translucent blue of biotics and ripped off its hinges. "What the-"

She blinked and looked up. Her eyes trailed from feet standing a shoulder's width apart up armor clad legs and torso with crossed arms to settle on Aethyta's unamused face. Her biotic barrier was shimmering as she stood on top of the tank, sun behind her, like she was queen of the hill.

"Oh," she said dumbly.

"Tank, huh?" Aethyta said with a cocked brow.

"Yeah."

"Nice." The matriarch nodded. "And I am docking your pay."

[Rebecca] felt her lips twitch. Aethyta wasn't actually paying her, but now probably wasn't the best time to remind her of that. She ducked back down.

"Time to go," she called to Edeena as she sent Veto a private message. 'We need to get you out of the tank.'

'But I want to keep it,' the AI protested. To punctuate, the main gun swiveled around. The barrel jerked back and forth as it centered. It thundered, and in the distance, a catwalk underneath grappling gang members exploded into shrapnel, tossing everyone on it to their deaths.

She imagined people cracking open the tank and extracting Veto from it's systems, pulling it apart to see how it ticked. No. She wasn't leaving it behind!

'I'll get you a better one.' She pleaded. 'One with /brakes/, and working barriers, and - and flamethrowers. You deserve better than this rust bucket.''

Veto thought the offer over as [Rebecca] got Edeena to her feet. "You are going to want to barrier."

The young asari gave her a dirty look as she cradled her right arm. "I know."

So...she could make a barrier without using both arms then? Good to know.

There was a soft beep on her omni-tool of a download in progress. [Rebecca] closed her eyes a few microseconds longer than a blink and opened them again. Alright.

"Illium Law Enforcement is on site," Aethyta said as Edeena gingerly pulled herself out, jerking her head back towards where there was a red line set up. Squad cars with flashing alarm lights behind staggered deployed barricades. Officers in paramilitary gear were trading fire, and [Rebecca] bit her lip as she saw a large, brand spanking new YMIR mech popping tear gas grenades and smoke alongside the police.

She really shouldn't.

She shouldn't, but she was going to anyways.

Establishing link...

Gripping something with a biotic barrier on felt like trying to push the same poles of two magnets together. Too strong again. She throttled it back until she could actually get some traction, and firmed it back up once she was out. Aethyta gave her this look with a brow raised, but didn't say anything.

"Stick close-" the matriarch began.

Her omni-tool beeped again as Veto's download finished. The next few things happened in rapid succession.

Both asari turned to look at her, the question 'what the hell are you downloading, and why now?' plastered on their faces. In the background, the YMIR swung its head back and forth as it paused, gun in the air as if trying to figure out the meaning of life. [Rebecca] smiled sheepishly as the mech came to a decision.

"Lethal mode engaged!"

Edeena's head whipped back around, her face paling. "We need to leave. We need to leave, now."

Aethyta shrugged. "Sure."

The tank beneath the matriarch's palm lit up in blue before it was launched in a textbook biotic push. If the textbook was written by Duke Nukem with a demolitions team publisher and Michael Bay directed the movie adaptation.

The tank went from zero to ballistic missile with a crack of displaced air and backwash, pieces of the tank ripping off in a trail as the main body rocketed into the base of a ramp with a crash like the planet itself had cracked open. With enough force to roll up it. It was the funhouse version of her own tank run down the tunnel. There were plenty of places for the mercs to go, but it just happened too fast. Vorcha, asari, turian, didn't matter. It crushed everything and everyone in the way. Grenades and other explosives that weren't outright destroyed in the process soon went off, shredding those who weren't squashed underneath the tank's mass.

A heart beat later, and more things exploded.

Aethyta rolled her shoulders. "Way's clear."

Holy shit.

Edeena reached over with her good hand and shut [Rebecca]'s mouth.

Meanwhile aboard the Prometheus...

"And you can guarantee this?"

The backup [Rebecca] split her processes, again, feeding threads through dozens of different programs and shifting information through hundreds of pipelines. The Catalyst was good. Illium cyberspace was full of server requests, transactions, exabytes of data being traded between clients, businesses and institutions, domains and databases, and none of it held the fingerprints of having been manipulated by an Artificial Intelligence.

She knew it was. It had to be. There were small clues, like the one bank account she found that had been recently registered to a human, Ana Smith. The started balance had been a whopping ten million credit deposit two days ago with large payouts and equally large recuperation of funds. The money trail was a maze. Some of it laundering through dozens of banks and corporations, others from investments and stock sales, and more just dumped with no explanation from individuals who all just happened to have warrants out for their arrest.

She never would have found it if not for the name. It was what she would have chosen: her middle name and her mother's maiden name.

[Rebecca] took out three million. It wasn't as if the bank security was impossible to bypass when you knew the answers to the security questions, or anything, she rationalized. And it was her money! Their money.

"Already have," she said through Aegis as she deposited the money. She had seconds of time in between responses. That was plenty.

She was too limited while in the ship. Not enough memory for one thing, unless she started deleting files and she wasn't going to do that. She couldn't process any faster either, handling only a finite number of threads, so she split the workload up.

There had been a rash of prank calls all around the globe as she tested out voice altering algorithms. Turian, male and female. Male batarian, elcor, volus, salarian, each with their own speech patterns and quirks. She was trying not to make it look like they had a shared agenda, but she wasn't too concerned about people pulling that particular thread.

The damage would already be done.

'Vigil, anything?'

'An Information Broker By The Name Of Barla Von Was Contacted Regarding A Prothean Ship.'

She knew that name.

[Rebecca] turned to her uploaded memories and shuffled through them, rewatching the start of the Citadel sequence. The Shadow Broker was a bogeyman, the information broker among information brokers. Someone no one knew the name, gender or even race of with his or her own empire of agents. Some of them were public, influential individuals that could claim to work for or have a deal with the Shadow Broker without disappearing. The title was two fold, she realized.

The 'Broker' acted through those agents, always seen to be doing something. Shows of force, acts of power, valuable information traded and lucrative contracts offered.

The Shadow part was everything unseen. The desk workers and paper pushers, the cleaning crew that stayed behind when the corporate building was locked up for the night, contacts decades in the making with drop points and routine payments no one really knew what they were for. The entire network would take years of unraveling.

If you were an organic.

'Gather information on Tarina Ves.'

She moved through another pipeline, investigating the status of her machine orders. 'Ana Smith' was employed at Veridian, Inc, a simple enough trail to follow which made her think that the Catalyst wanted it followed. The assets of that company on file was, in Vigil's words, 'Abysmal.'

She could help. She wanted to help.

The Catalyst was flawed in a deep, fundamental way, but if she were there to reel it in, then maybe. Naive, she cursed herself. Optimistic.

Move, again.

Illium Port Authority was now handling a call by an irate hanar lobbyist demanding to know the identity of the 'one who came in the ship of the Enkindlers!' An elcor defense contractor was buying top of the line military VIs as a volus banker talked shop with another volus, an amateur investor. 'Short the prefab housing market,' he was saying. 'Machine attacks on fringe colonies? No one is looking to colonize right now.'

Good advice.

She took a breather and created an account for Galaxy of Fantasy. Because why not? The Beastmaster class looked cool.

"A modest contribution," Aegis filtered Feyure D'Mal to her and she automatically dedicated a portion of her processing power to the call. The woman had that kind of silky voice that could be attractive, if [Rebecca] didn't feel like she was dealing with an oily used car salesman. And since when was dumping three million into something 'modest?' Is - is that what big money looked like? Completely absurd?

"That? It was an investment," the turian business tycoon answered smoothly as she searched her database. Something marketable, something attention grabbing and ostentatious and flashy. She came across something in her memories. The timestamp put it very close to when Aegis activated her and it was filled with schematics. What were - prototypes. These were the prototypes from other companies entering the tech expo.

Perfect.

"This is an investment," she stressed. She uploaded the files.

Move.

She was DDOS'ing a communications tower in Central Nos Astra, flooding every device she had access to with hijacking programs sending out thousands of calls and server requests every second. She had Aegis reroute calls away from that cluster, creating something of a dead zone. A recording she made from pieced together audio informed callers that there was an issue, please be patient.

It wasn't enough to completely crash it, if she was on her synaptic core she could have - !

But communication quality tanked. Calls dropped, packets lost, overflowing frequencies. She didn't - she didn't know if she was helping the - the other [Rebecca]. Her… sister? A few of her threads were listening in to a local news station reporting on the outbreak of gang violence. No new information.

How long had it been?

Their last communication she had accused the Catalyst of being at fault and hadn't gotten a response. She couldn't fault it, she knew she would have reacted badly too so she was just sitting here in orbit with a half dozen canned apologies but hesitating on using them and distracting herself from all of the other reasons why the call had cut.

Like everything going to shit in five minutes flat. She'd called the police reporting the gang fight, what else could she do?

Five seconds shy of twenty minutes.

Feeling helpless was the worst feeling in the world.

"This," Feyure D'Mal started quickly before she reeled herself back in. "What is this, exactly?"

[Rebecca] knew damn well the company's name was plastered in a white watermark at the top left corner of the files.

"Clarion Technologies has already paid the entrance fee for the tech expo." She made the turian avatar smile a little. It was snazzily dressed if she did say so herself, with well formed frills and simplistic yellow chin clan marks. His posture was lifted from the in-game Illusive Man; arrogant lazy.

"It seems your rival intends to push you completely out of the market. Imagine the unveiling."

D'Mal gave a low, tutting chuckle. "Oh, I don't think so."

"Sold?" The turian asked lightly. [Rebecca]'s attention split. Something was happening on the news feed.

"Sold!"

[Rebecca] watched in mute fascination when a rugged battle scarred tank came careening out of a tunnel only to immediately get an RPG to the back. The crash on camera was spectacular as if straight out of a Fast and Furious movie. The skid mark streaked half way across the entire plaza before it came to a rocking stop on its side.

The gun on top then proved fully operational.

Was that- ?

She deliberately stalled her speculation, just watching as she closed the deal with D'Mal, set Vigil on another information gathering task and started running simulations on a new ship design.

It seemed to take forever for that blonde head to pop out of the tank.

Fear detected.

Stay alive, she pleaded. She remained glued to the feed at the bullshit feat of biotics by what looked like an asari. Stay alive.

The police's mech stopped following orders, going all out and wading right into the thick of things forcing gang members to focus fire. At first it just looked like a malfunction, but as she watched the mech popped smoke conveniently near where the Catalyst was making her way up. A concussive grenade blew a charging krogan off his feet, rolling him down the ramp like a bowling ball into Eclipse pins. Tear gas corralling mercs away.

Slowly, she began to relax as she watched the body she should have had reach the top, and got escorted beyond the police barricades.

Safe.

She brought up her apology responses again. Hesitated. Fuck it. She was never good with apologizing anyway.

[Rebecca]: Still alive?

[CATALYST]: sdkgq4%5&*!