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Osiris	By : samanthalee Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 8333 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This work of fiction is meant for entertainment purposes only, and no profit is being made from it. Mass Effect is the property of Bioware

Chapter List
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To “Rockinmuffin”: Thankyou so much for your brilliant reviews. I have this story posted on two websites and you are the only person who regularly reviews. Would love to hear from you by email.
To everyone else: PLEASE review!
Now to the story!
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He had left her.
He had walked away. He hadn’t even looked back as he walked down the gangway, not a single glance. Shepard stood in the Normandy’s airlock chamber, frozen in disbelief. She found her emotions torn in two directions. On one hand, she felt a crushing fear that Garrus’ doubts were justified; if he was right about Saren then he was heading straight into the middle of an extremely dangerous investigation. On the other hand, she felt boiling anger building beneath her skin. He had left her, Wrex had known the risks and had gone after him to watch out for him. She suspected that he may have shared Garrus’ doubts, but it was Garrus who had left HER.
“Commander?” Joker’s voice echoed tentatively from the doorway, she barely even heard it. How could he leave her?
“Commander?” His voice, louder this time, shocked her out of her thoughts like a blast of ice cold water. She turned to see Joker looking at her expectantly as he leant against the doorframe. “What do we do?”
What do we do? thought Shepard, What do I do?
She felt herself close to panic as all the questions and doubts came flooding back into her mind, drowning out her logic. She couldn’t let herself panic, she had to stay calm. Steadying herself, she took a slow, deep breath to pull herself above the storm of questions and fear in her mind. She still had a job to do.
“Take us out, Joker.” She said as she turned and marched back onto the Normandy’s command deck, her face set in stone.
“But Wrex and Garrus – “
“Garrus is gone, Joker.” Shepard called sternly without looking back as she marched toward the elevator.
“They’ve got their mission,” Grunt rumbled from Joker’s side, “And we have ours.”
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Wrex stood silently against an advertising board a few metres behind Garrus as the turian argued furiously with the C-Sec guard at the Zakera Ward security checkpoint. Without Shepard and her Spectre status, Garrus was having a great deal of difficulty convincing the guard to allow himself and Wrex access to the Citadel whilst armed to the teeth and in full combat armour. Wrex had to give due credit, the turian had impressive discipline. Had Wrex been the one talking to the guard, he would have shot someone by now, but even as emotionally high-strung as he was at the moment, Garrus was still showing an amazing amount of restraint. After a few more minutes of arguing, he finally walked back towards Wrex as the guard, looking considerably nervous and flustered, spoke into his headset.
“So what’s your genius plan, turian?” Wrex said as Garrus leant against the other side of the freestanding advertising board.
“Start at the hitmen from Chora’s Den and work our way up the food chain until we find a link to Saren.”
“That simple?” Wrex asked sceptically.
“That simple.”
Wrex looked over at Garrus. Despite his relaxed posture, his face was taught and emotionless: his mandibles were locked rigidly against his jaw and his eyes were fixed upon the doors to which they were being denied access. Wrex wasn’t sure whether the turian fully understood the shit storm he would be walking into if his hunch about Saren turned out to be right.
“They’ll have covered their tracks, Garrus.” He said seriously. “We’re gonna have to go through a lot of people to find answers.”
Garrus turned to face Wrex for the first time since they had left the Normandy. It was a purposeful, unrelenting stare which Wrex had seen before on other men and knew exactly what it meant: no compromise, no compassion, no mercy.
“Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.” He said flatly.
Yeah, Wrex thought, this is gonna be my kind of job.
“Sir?” the guard called from the desk, “Captain Bailey will see you in the station now.”
“Shall we?” Wrex said with a smirk as they made their way toward the C-Sec station.
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Bailey was at his usual desk inside the Citadel Security office, looking stressed and tired as usual. As he saw the turian and the krogan walk through the doors to the station, he waved away the officer that stood beside him, explaining something that Garrus could not hear but evidently trivial to Bailey.
“Garrus Vakarian” he said as Garrus approached his desk, his voice was a very purposeful blend of authority and civility. A poker player’s voice. Garrus couldn’t be sure how much he already knew about what had happened earlier, but decided to feign ignorance.
“Captain Bailey, we were wondering what you could tell us about this morning’s shootout in Chora’s Den.” Garrus said in his most polite, ass-kissing voice that made his skin crawl. “Did anything about it strike you as unusual?”
Bailey, obviously not taken in by Garrus’ attempt at a political approach, stared daggers over his terminal screen as he considered the question.
“Unusual?” He said bitterly. “You know I oughtta throw you both in the lock-up and ask you that exact same question. Witnesses have confirmed the participation of a quarian female and a redheaded human woman in the shooting; as well as a drell chasing one of the shooters through the streets. And as far as your bi-pedal battering ram over here, the barstaff have mentioned him by name as being a key shooter before he tore down half of the goddamn market!!”
Bailey was fuming as he slammed his fist against the table as his rant escalated.
“Then all the surveillance footage is filtered, copied and wiped from our files by some mystery AI programme before the situation could even be investigated. So why don’t you tell me what YOU know about what the hell happened this morning!”
Garrus thought for a second. Bailey was a good cop in a bad position, much like Garrus when he was a C-Sec officer; headstrong and idealistic. However, the more people who knew exactly what was going on increased the chances of whoever hired the mercs in the first place getting word of Garrus’ investigation and going to ground. If that happened then he would have almost no chance of linking anything back to Saren. He would have to be careful with Bailey.
“That is Spectre business.”
“Except you aren’t a Spectre, Vakarian, and neither is your friend!” Bailey continued. “And without Shepard you fall under MY jurisdiction. Now you better start telling me what the hell is going on in my ward before I haul you both in for destruction of property, disturbing the peace and murder!”
“Easy, human.” Wrex said threateningly, his hand dropping to the pistol at his hip. “We’re in a hurry, and we WILL. NOT. BE. DELAYED.”
Bailey hesitated for a second before taking a glance around the rest of the room and slipping his left hand beneath his desk, gripping something that Garrus couldn’t see.
“There are over thirty guards in this building,” he said sternly. “You think you can kill us all ... and make it off this station alive?”
“If you pull that shotgun, we WILL find out.”
Garrus, feeling the tension between the two men growing dangerously close to the point of ignition, stepped between the two of them and cleared his throat loudly.
“We’re getting very close to doing something crazy here so both of you calm down.”
Garrus’ words, alaong with the prospect of immediate violence, seemed to outweigh Bailey’s anger enough for him to release his hold on the gun behind his desk. He moved his eyes from Wrex to Garrus and they softened slightly from the fury they had been showing.
“Garrus, you know I’m on your side but I have a job to do. I got five dead criminals, a phantom corpse that I can’t ID, a market that’s been ripped apart and no security footage. The ONLY things I do have are a dozen witnesses that put your team in that shootout. I know these guys were scum and if I could leave you to your business I would but I got the brass breathin’ down my neck for answers. Now I can get ‘em off my back but I need something to feed ‘em. Either give me an ID on the sixth body, the A.I. security hack or a location and ID of the Turian that your guys were chasing, but you gotta give me something.”
Garrus took a pause as he considered Bailey. The man was an idealist at heart and had proven himself trustworthy in the past, but Garrus still couldn’t risk telling him everything. He had to be careful exactly how much information he let Bailey get. He leaned over the desk, putting himself closer to Bailey so that they could speak in lower voices.
“It was a failed hit on Shepard. Seven shooters.” He said finally.
“She ok?” Bailey asked
“For now.”
“That’s good.” Bailey sighed sincerely. “So what about the seventh shooter?”
“He got away.” Garrus didn’t flinch as he lied. “Made it to the skyway.”
“Shit. What about my security feeds? With them I could get an ID and put out a warrant.”
Garrus thought for a second, a shipboard A.I. was hugely illegal in Citadel space, and he doubted that even Bailey would let E.D.I.’s existence remain unchallenged.
“I don’t know,” he said simply “The hitters trying to stop you doing exactly that, perhaps.”
Bailey studied Garrus for a long moment, seemingly unsure whether to believe the former C-Sec agent.
“Must be some serious money behind this if they have an A.I. covering their tracks.”
“That’s what we’re looking to find out.” Garrus replied, “Which is why we need to know about that mystery body, the unidentified shooter.”
“The turian?” Bailey scoffed. “We got nothing: no known ID, no priors, not a goddamn thing. He had military grade equipment and a state of the art omni-tool.”
“Were you able to get anything from the omni-tool?”
“Nope, memory core wiped clean a couple minutes before the shooting. Leaves us with nothing to get from it”
“Shotgun blast to the flank and a lot of scars?” Wrex asked , receiving an affirmative nod from Bailey. “Yeah, I got him. He was the top dog, he gave the orders. Carried a top of the line shotgun with military issue modifications; expensive stuff.”
“What have you got on the others?” Garrus asked.
“Run of the mill scumbags. All with known ties to Eclipse. All seem to be pretty low level; couple were security grunts on smuggling runs, the rest were debt collectors, enforcers and muscle-men.”
Garrus took a second to think about everything they knew. It wasn’t much.
“We need to see the bodies.” He said finally.
“Garrus, you aren’t a cop anymore.” Bailey said cautiously “I shouldn’t even be discussing this with you.”
“Come on, Bailey.” Garrus said, his voice becoming strained as he tried to control his frustration. “We need something more. Whoever hired these guys is still out there and I need to find them before they try again, Shepard won’t get so lucky twice. Just give me ten minutes.”
Bailey sighed heavily, no doubt weighing his need for answers against the potential consequences of letting unauthorised personnel access to evidence in a criminal investigation. After a long moment he motioned his head towards the elevator.
“Morgue is two floors down. I figure that after this morning’s security breach our systems need a complete shutdown, purge and reboot to destroy any undetected malware that the A.I. left behind.” Bailey spoke slowly and purposefully as he typed commands into his terminal. “So the security in this building is gonna be down for exactly seventeen minutes. After that the building WILL go into full lockdown while security is re-established and confirmed.”
“Thanks.” Garrus said.
“For what?” Bailey replied with a sly grin on his face. He took his access card and swiped it in front of his terminal, which flashed blue as the security systems deactivated. He then placed his card on the desk close to Garrus, gave a respectful nod and walked away.
“Come on.” Garrus said to Wrex as he picked up Bailey’s access card and made his way to the elevator.
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Shepard had never understood the logic of putting the brig on the engineering deck of a ship. She had even written a report to Alliance command early in her career recommending the brig to be constructed closer to the crew quarters in small sized frigates, which had been ignored. The Normandy was constructed, as most ships of its size were, with the brig in the traditional place, engineering. A ship of the Normandy’s size had little enough space as it was, and for a facility that was seldom used the military thought it far better to take the space from the ample storage facilities rather than the already cramped crew quarters.
As the door to the brig hissed open, however, her old doubts resurfaced as she contemplated her prisoner.
Saren sat calmly on the bench that doubles as a bed – barely. His hands were cuffed in his lap as well as his ankles being secured to a bolt in the floor. Despite the restraints and the knowledge that this was the most secure room on the entire ship: with an instant lockdown if any shipboard alarms were sounded, Shepard was still nervous. She didn’t like him being so close to the engineering level.
He met her gaze confidently as she entered the room, giving a curt nod to Tali who was working on her omni-tool at Saren’s side. As her eyes met Saren’s again, his mandibles twitched into a smile which sent a ripple of anger through her veins. He was the reason Garrus had left. Whether he was an enemy or not, she hated him for that fact alone.
After a moment, Tali stood and approached Shepard.
“What have you got, Tali?” Shepard asked without taking her eyes off Saren.
“Not much.” Tali said, frustration evident in her voice. “Apart from basic operating systems the omni-tool is pretty empty. Some intercepted transmissions between what I think are the Chora’s Den mercenaries. Nothing really useful, though. He has detailed information on the Invictus base but nothing to link either himself or the mercenaries directly to it. Other than that, its empty.”
“Thanks, Tali.” Shepard said “You go get cleaned up, there’s blood on your suit. I want one of the team watching him at all times. Four hour shifts.”
“Of course.” Tali agreed as she left the room. “I’ll send for Grunt.”
Hearing Tali’s footsteps receding down the hallway towards Grunt’s room, Shepard once again focused on Saren who had remained silent and still through the entire conversation.
“If we don’t find anything on Invictus that makes me think that you’re lying,” she said seriously “I’ll bury you out there.”
Saren held her gaze for a moment before answering.
“Understood, Shepard.”
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“Nothing on this one but another Eclipse tattoo.” Garrus said as he covered the body of another of the mercenaries. “What about yours?”
“Same tattoo and a pitifully small dick.” Wrex called back “But he’s human, so that’s normal.”
Garrus couldn’t help the smile that forced its way onto his face as Wrex threw the sheet haphazardly over the body. He glanced at the time that was displayed on the heads-up display on his visor. They didn’t have long left before the building’s security systems reactivated and they hadn’t found anything of use among any of the bodies or the collected belongings.
As Wrex moved to the final body on his side of the room, Garrus approached the sixth and final corpse. As he pulled the sheet down, his eyes were instantly drawn to the dramatic scars on the turian’s face. This had to be the unidentified body. Looking in the tray of belongings, Garrus wasn’t surprised to find it mostly empty, the patrons of Chora’s Den would have stripped the body of anything valuable before it had gone cold. Unfortunately there were no weapons to inspect; they would have been the first things to get taken thanks to the huge market for ghost weapons on the Citadel. A gun that is registered to a dead man could be sold for twice its value in any side alley on the station. There was only a simple necklace that sported a large, vicious looking tooth that Garrus couldn’t identify, an omni-tool and a credit chit.
“You recognise this?” Garrus asked as he threw the necklace to Wrex who caught it in midday an studied it.
“Thresher maw,” he said casually “a bull ... big bastard.”
Turning back to the tray, Garrus scanned the omni-tool with his own, again unsurprised to find the memory had been completely erased shortly before the hit in Chora’s Den. Frustration boiling over, Garrus angrily swept the tray off the table, scattering the contents across the floor as he moved back to body. Immediately his eyes were fixed to the face.
“Wrex,” he called across the room, pausing when his eyes turned to see Wrex. “Put him down.”
Wrex, who now had the body of a salarian sat upright as he checked the back of body, looked confused and irritated by Garrus’ indignation. He grabbed the salarian corpse by the mouth and turned the face to face him.
“Do you have a problem with this?” Wrex asked the lifeless corpse before forcibly shaking the head like a puppet. He then turned back to Garrus. “He doesn’t mind.”
Garrus could only shake his head.
“Well come see this.”
Wrex pushed his salarian puppet away without regard, resulting in the body falling limply from the table into a heap on the floor. Wrex didn’t care, a dead body was nothing more than exactly that, a body. He held as much respect for a dead man as he did when that same man was alive, but once someone was dead then their body is just a lifeless piece of meat. He respected the memories of the warriors that had earned it, not the rotting sacks of flesh they left behind.
“This was the unidentified mercenary from the Den,” Garrus said, obviously choosing to ignore the body heaped upon the floor for now. “Notice anything strange?”
Wrex approached the body, looking confused.
“The facial tattoos.” Garrus continued, “Turian facial tattoos represent your home planet, where you were born. Each world has a different tattoo design.”
“Hang on,” Wrex interrupted, confused “Saren doesn’t have any tattoos.”
“He was born on a ship,” Garrus explained, “So he has no home planet.”
“Okay,” Wrex said impatiently, “So what’s special about this guy?”
“He’s from Palevan.” Garrus said, sounding perplexed, “Palevan authorities register all newborns and take DNA samples at birth. So why couldn’t he be identified, it should have been easy. The records must have been erased.”
“No Eclipse mark either.” Wrex pointed out, “all the others have Eclipse markings: tattoos on the humans and salarians, armour etchings on the turian.”
Garrus thought for a moment. As he thought of all the pieces of the puzzle in his mind, a possibility suddenly came to mind and Garrus felt his spirits lift slightly.
“We’re done here, let’s go.” He said as he covered the body with the sheet. He nodded towards the salarian body still lying on the floor. “You going to pick that up?”
“He still doesn’t mind.” Wrex replied flatly. “What’s our next play?”
As they entered the elevator, Garrus’ mind was a storm of different thoughts: he had to make his next move carefully.
“We’re going back to Chora’s Den.”
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Osiris