Mass Effect: Red Neon

The Omega 4 relay on the horizon was an electric storm glowing with the color of blood. It was one of those nights where the glow influenced the actions of every person who walked around the streets, like how moons can pull tides and influence plants' growth in different planets. This red neon glow looked like cracked knuckles, whores stepping onto shuttles, mercs hammering their rifles, and the meek everyman giving up their credits while staring at the end of the barrel of a gun.

The Afterlife is not close, but it's possible to see it from here. It makes me wonder what Aria's doing tonight. I don't exactly want to go there. Much to father's chagrin, I shouldn't be here. He wanted me to stay in Palaven, to keep my work as the turian Cabal of the family, but there's just so much energy a girl can have once she loses an eye to space pirates.

Safer to follow in his footsteps as a merc here in Omega; let my sisters remain in the military. The Elysium sure beats off what life in Palaven had become.

Of course, I'm the only moron who comes to the Elysium to look at the landscape of that big tuning fork floating in space. Most clients arrive here to look at soft blue and purple skin instead of a glowing red orb.

I finished my cigarette and went downstairs. It was another boring Tuesday night. Spirits forbid it turns into an interesting one.

MASS EFFECT: RED NEON

A neon-noir tale from Omega

I

So far, 2178 has been a quiet year. Only a few weeks for it to be over, and all I want is take a couple months vacation from this joint.

Tonight, in the Elysium: a beautiful barely dressed asari maiden spun on the main pole, and showed off more leg than I ever could in a million years. She wore a navel piercing that had a silver light which followed the beat to the music, and a neon pink tattoo shaped like a flower at the left side of her stomach. The drinks kept being poured as she danced... The music kept her heart beating to its rhythm, and she reflected it upon the pole...

It was just another night, where I had nothing else to do except enjoy the show.

"Tough night, Miss?"

Vaas breathed in. I turned around to see the little volus poured me two fingers of Palaven's finest whiskey, on the rocks.

"Boring night, Vaas," I corrected him. "And I would like it to keep it that way."

A few rowdy customers became a bit too touchy when the dancer leaned down and shook her ass. One managed to grip her by the ankles, and suddenly he had the mark of her heel upon his face. Two of his teeth flew away. An angry batarian grappled him and dragged him out of the Elysium shortly after. The only word I managed to hear from the customer was "girlfriend."

"And you think that's boring?!" Vaas laughed... and then he breathed in.

"I'll put it this way: if that guy had to be thrown to outer space just for touching her ankles, I'll probably be ready to pick up a few fights here and there," I said. "Don't take this the wrong way, but you volus aren't known for being the best fighters."

"No offense taken, Miss. However," he breathed in, "I'm know how to knock down a krogan with a cast iron skillet as well as executing them with the tiniest of pistols."

"And that's why I love it when you come to work, Vaas Icktomee," I smiled.

A dark-skinned human pranced upon the catwalk leading to the main pole, and pulled the asari with a wrestling move. I thought a cat fight would break out, but when I saw them nearly kissing I realized it was all a show. Their blue and chocolate skins together looked pretty under the red neon, enough for people to probably take their dicks out.

They danced more like lovers instead of partners looking to hoard as much credits as they can in a single night. The human helped the asari to exhibit the athletic figure of someone who danced for the past forty out of her near two hundred years of life. Hands grasped the pair of blue glutes that stared back at the audience, with the asari holding herself to the pole in which the human leaned her back upon.

The asari jumped up and wrapped her thighs around it as the human stepped forward. As soon as the lady came down, she pulled on a string, easily freeing up the ample chest of the human. Omni-tools lit up. Credits got transfered.

Vaas poured me another drink.

"May I abuse your trust and tell you what's your problem?" he breathed in.

I sneered at him, yet I was curious enough.

"Speak."

"Your problem is the same with all turians, Miss:" he breathed in, "you have a stick up your butt so far and so deep you're no longer able to get it out to beat people with it!" he breathed in again.

I finished the drink and propelled the glass to the opposite wall of the bar with a finger.

"Maybe..." I said. "Any recommendations?"

Vaas looked at the stage. Another client threatened to shove a hand between the asari's legs and got his hand bones rearranged by those same legs. I looked back at the volus.

"Spirits... you know damn well they are meant to be touched with eyes only!" I grunted, and then pointed at the visor on the left side of my head that covered my cybernetic eye. "And I suck at looking!"

"I'm not saying you should get either or both of them in bed," he breathed in. "I'm saying you should get in bed with someone, Miss," he breathed in. "Anyone!" another breath. "You need it more than the rest of us, and that includes your fellow turians."

I stared at Vaas and, for the first time in my life, I wondered what do volus look like without their suits. They're small, round, with short arms and legs... Even their suits carry those things hanging around their faces; appendages that look like human moustaches. I've always wondered if those are just part of their aesthetic, or like our mandibles, have a function.

I don't think I'll ever have the chance to see a volus under the suit. If the low pressure atmosphere doesn't blow them up into a billion little bits and pieces, the oxygen would poison them first.

"You're from Irune, Vaas, aren't you?"

I could tell he was confused by looking at him, even though his suit doesn't allow me to see his expressions.

"I hope," breathe, "you're not pretending to," breathe, "get me to bed, Miss," breathe.

"Are you flustered, bartender?"

"I..." breathe, "... prefer to not answer that," breathe.

A thud that was followed by a short scream made us look back at the entrance. Three humans pinned down a poor quarian girl in a red hood against the wall. Even at this distance I saw her eyes sparkling, calling those hairless monkeys all kinds of slurs she could think of in her language, while a tiny "help" managed to escape.

"What the fuck?" Vaas breathed in. "Where the fuck is Grob?"

"Losing his paycheck is where he's at," I sighed, and looked back at him. "The moment they touch me, shoot them."

He nodded.

I let out a whistle, and Rachael, the only human guard at the Elysium, showed up accompanied by two batarians. She adjusted her black fringe to the right and looked at me like a soldier awaiting orders.

"You two," I addressed the batarians, "make sure no one looks back at the show at the entrance, and, for Aria T'Loak's blood-stained panties, I need you to get Grob's sorry as back here immediately!"

They gulped, and immediately went to action.

"Miss?" asked Rachael.

"Cover me from the shadows," I told her. "Only intervene once a fight breaks out."

She nodded and cloaked herself after getting her gun ready.

I approached the mob on my own, hearing how the quarian kept sobbing and begging for those men to leave her alone. One of them tried to fiddle with a buckle from her suit, and she managed to score a hit upon him. He slapped her ass and held her by the helmet, staring straight into her sparkling eyes.

"You're quite a fiesty hottie," he bit his lips the moment I got three steps away.

"Leave her alone!"

The human trio turned to see me. My jaws twitched after I crossed my arms. I looked at their strong bodies on the lookout for any suspicious bulge or bump that could indicate a concealed cannon or a grip that sticks out. They looked slightly dusty, like they just came after a long day mining platinum from Bindur, and arrived to the Elysium for a burger and a beautiful girl to look at. A shame the quarian is not an employee, but even if she was, there's an unwritten rule in the Elysium.

The touchy one had a single eyebrow. He looked to lead the pack. Quite an ugly fuck, but perhaps good-looking for human standards, I suppose. It was his smell of foundry that annoyed me almost as bad as the way he behaved.

"How cute!" he licked his lips. "A dextro has a dextro girlfriend! I'm sorry babe, you're hot and all, but turian girls are not for me."

"Come on, Dom, are you really going to ruin the party?" one of his companions said. He looked at me; his orange hair somehow looked more rusty than the Omega street lights. "He's just mad at this whore playing hard to get," he said while coming in too close for my comfort.

I figured Vaas was pointing his gun at him.

"Please! Help me!" the quarian screamed.

"That's enough," I warned and took a step back, my biotic barrier coming up by instincts. At this point all I wanted is to trap these three into a singularity that would turn them inside out.

"Help!" the quarian kept begging as unibrow caressed her helmet's metallic chin.

"She's loud!" the third one said. He had a shaved head.

Dom, the unibrow, smacked her hard enough to break the visor.

"Shut up, bucket head!" he said.

"What did the lady do to you to be so rough on her?" I grunted.

"A lady?" Dom laughed. "Look at her! She's a beautiful alien, but she's not as innocent like she looks. By all means, she's spreading venereal diseases all over Omega! A plague, just like the rest of the quarians in their stupid Fleet!"

"Don't listen to them, I'm not-"

Another slap! This time, the helmet cracked as loud as a bone.

"Slap her again and you'll leave with more holes than a Batarian skull!" I yelled, my biotics coming as visible as my rage.

Grob finally took his place next to me after he fixed the crotch piece of his armor. He said nothing, and held his shotgun, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. A big mean krogan like him should make them think twice, but Dom grinned like an idiot.

"Do you even know who I am, you stupid slut?!"

"I assume your name is 'the reason we'll destroy your precious planet Earth and no one in the galaxy will miss you pieces of entitled shit of a species,' but why don't you introduce yourself so I know whether Grob should spend a fistful of slugs splitting your eyebrow, or toss you to outer space!"

"You'll regret those words, stuck up bitch!" he laughed. "Do you know who Valerian Arcturius is?"

"Never heard of him," I said.

"You must know him if you work here," he smiled. "He's a big friend, and owes me a great favor."

"Oh really? A human who calls a quarian a plague is friends with the same species they hold a grudge for the Relay 314 incident?"

"It's called the First Contact War, and I never said he's a turian!"

"Valerian Arcturius is a turian name," I argued.

"Whatever. The moment he finds about how his lap dogs treated me and my friends you'll wish for him to simply fire you!"

"What load of bullshit, Miss," Grob sighed, "I'm really hungry. Why don't I just shoot these three in the head and get this done with?"

"At ease, Grob."

"Sorry, Miss."

I took my deep breath and lowered my barriers. "Fine," I said, "you got us. Valerian is currently in Illium, doing time in a long-term mission for Aria. However, his daughter, Nyla, is in charge tonight. Why don't you follow us to the back and we'll solve this peacefully?"

"We don't have anything to talk about, slut!"

Rachael came out of her cloaking and put one gun and her omni-blade behind Dom's companion's back.

"Listen, you shithead, Elysium has one rule: DON'T touch the women, even if they're not employees. Either you come with us, or I'll risk being fired by your friend, and a man like him prioritizes this rule over friends."

He grunted something and told his friends to stand down. I had Grob and Rachael escort the three of them, while I walked behind the quarian to the back office.

I crossed gazes with Vaas. We nodded to each other.

Another night at the Elysium...

II

Flickers of rust neon lit up the dark office. Only the monitor standing at the desk remained on. I sat next to it, and typed a few words on the terminal with one hand. The music remained quiet enough for us to speak without screaming.

Rachael used her omni-tool on the quarian, splattering some omni-gel to seal the crack.

"Where is she?" demanded Dom.

"Where's who?" I crossed my legs.

"Valerian's daughter! Shouldn't she be here?"

I smiled. My mandibles twitched with it. "Here's some unsolicited advice: be like an asari and have some patience. It's very rude to rush the second in command, so why don't you tell me about yourselves while we wait?"

It wasn't anything dramatic. They just stated their identities. With the exception of Dominic Peyton stating his full name, the other two just gave me Ginger and Fang for street names. I typed those out in the terminal and let the VI do its magic. If we've dealt with them in the past, they must show up somewhere.

I was about to make more conversation when the VI shot up the results almost instantly. My mandibles twitched again. No results. Either the Shadow Broker is the only one who has that information, or these idiots are lying.

"May I ask how do you know Valerian?"

They all improvised a terrible story, one that had so many black holes it might just be the same rumors as the many hypotheses stating where the Omega 4 relay leads to. A lie hapharzardly built on top of a lie on top of a lie on top of a lie on top of a lie on top of a lie... so many lies daisy chained together I wouldn't know where to start!

"You know him for years?" I asked.

"What's with the twenty one questions?!" Dom scrunched his nose. "Where the fuck is that Nelly, or whatever her name is?!" he demanded.

The quarian gasped. Her helmet was almost back at one piece, yet she looked on the edge of a panic attack.

"Do you guys like baseball?" I asked.

"What?" the trio said in unison and looked at each other.

I stood up. "Quite rude to answer a question with another question!" I said and looked for a collapsible baton so thin it was more of a whip. Once it was fully extended, I pressed one button, and the soft hum of mass effect fields acting up joined the softened-up music, like tiny saws. "I'll ask again: do you like baseball?"

"What does that even have to-"

Crack!

It echoed like we were inside a rusty pipe. His scream of pain followed. The baton left a nasty burn on his cheek; bad enough to leave a scar no amount of surgery and medi-gel could fix.

"Say 'what' again, Dom," I grunted, "I dare you one million times over! Say 'what' again, you fuck!"

Grob held the other two by the shoulders the moment they stepped forward. The quarian gasped again.

"Do. You. Like. BASEBALL?!" I yelled, and this time, I made sure he felt the mass effect saw upon his skin.

"I guess?"

I readied myself and took aim to the other side, and stopped when Dom finally screamed "I do! I do! I like baseball!" like the coward he is.

"Good!" I pushed his cheek with my knuckles. "Now we're having a conversation! It's the polite thing to do!" I smiled, and let everyone take a couple of breathes. "So you know what happens when the batter gets three strikes, don't you?"

"They strike out?"

"Is that another question?"

He shook his head. "They get a strike out!" he said more sure of himself.

I walked to the quarian and looked at her from head to toe. Hard to say with her suit on, but Spirits, those suits are so tight and so form fitting... She ought to have one hell of a body underneath...

One with curves that rival those from an asari, where her large breasts and tall neck stand out with an elegance never seen on quarians. I took her chin and looked into her sparkling eyes. She didn't calm down, but her shaking settled just a bit.

"You know..." I started speaking with my eyes glued onto the quarian's, "... all of you earned your three strikes by coming here with no reason other than accosting this beautiful lady just for being a quarian."

I kissed the left metallic chin from her helmet and returned to the three humans. Grob prepared himself to take Fang and use him as a club against Ginger, and vice versa.

One nod later, I stomped on Dom's feet, aiming at the toenails. He screamed.

"That one's for free: you broke the one rule of the Elysium," I said.

Then I took my baton, and struck him on his left eye. Best case scenario, he loses it, like I lost mine.

"First strike: using my father's name when we don't even know who you are!" I yelled.

Grob made the other two feel dizzy after bashing their skulls against one another. Twice.

Next I struck Dom's jaw. Crack! The quarian's gasp went up by one sixth.

"Second strike: you lied about meeting my father coming up with an impossible story in Citadel Station of all places! Do you even know where he was during that year? Do you?!"

All he did was groan.

"I figured!" I scoffed. "He was in Palaven, attending to a wedding. How do I know it's a lie? Because I was there too!"

I threw the baton back at the chair and let my biotics speak for me. Rachael peeled her eyes and cleared a way out for me after leaving the office's door open. She took the quarian to the wall.

"Third strike: CALLING ME NAMES TO MY FACE!"

This time I kicked him in the balls and used my biotics upon my boots to throw him out at rocket speed. The steel wall bent to his shape, and Dom got knocked his air out and fell to the ground.

"Do with the two whatever you wand and toss them back to whatever shithole they crawled out of," I ordered Grob.

"Heh, heh..." he grinned and stared at Fang.

"No, please!" the human with shaved head begged. "I have a family! I have- AAAAHHHHH!"

The krogan threw him away and competed against his own throw to see if he was faster. Cute. A krogan using two humans to play baseball with himself as the runner, the fielder, and the pitcher, with the humans performing double duty as baseballs and bats?

Shame on Fang... He should've thought about his family before accosting a woman here if he truly has a family.

I looked at Rachael and noticed she finished fixing the quarian's helmet. The crack vanished completely.

"Guard the door, Rachael," I ordered her. "I want some privacy with her."

"Sure thing, Miss," she said and left us alone.

I returned to my desk and collapsed the baton. I sat on the chair and allowed for a sigh to leave my body, stretching to look up to see the black ceiling. Footsteps came close to me. The quarian looked around nervously like she was in a museum, holding her own left arm like she got shot on it.

"I... I owe you one," she said. "Thank you."

I never thought I'd be the type to surrender to such a voice.

III

The music tried to beat the silence in the office, yet the silence remained strong. The mere presence of the quarian had a way to make the silence even stronger.

We sat together on the couch. She had her long legs tucked to the side, and her sparkling eyes glued onto mine. There was this nostalgic glow to them, like we've met before, but I never saw her in my entire life. I couldn't deny the existence of an invisible barrier between us, one that felt impossible to shatter.

While she's not the first quarian I've met, seeing their like is a bit rare in my life. The Migrant Fleet shows up here in the Terminus Systems from time to time. However, her suit is different from the quarians I've met. She may have a red hood, but the rest of her suit looks very dull compared to the more brighter and coloful suits the other quarians I've met have.

I only had one question I needed to ask...

"Did your Pilgrimage lead you to Omega, my darling?"

"How"

There was only one question I had in mind...

"Did your Pilgrimage lead you to Omega, my love?" I asked.

"How did you know?" her distorted voice gave away her blush.

"Lucky guess," I shrugged. "You're not acting much like a germaphobe, compared to the others of your kind I've met."

She took a deep breath and stretched a little. I thought she was about to get up and leave.

"Hey, I didn't mean to offend!"

"You didn't..."

I kept quiet.

"It's just... It's been six years since I started my Pilgrimage," she sobbed. "I'm almost twenty five years old now, and I thought I'd never return like other quarians, but..."

"You sound like a salarian when you talk about age," I giggled.

"I might as well be one when I talk about my Pilgrimage," she said. Then, she let out a big sigh. "I didn't plan to return, you know... There's just so much more to live than just stay inside a sterile ship in the Fleet, but now I'm..."

She kept biting her tongue and tried to go around a subject that kept coming up, but no matter how much it twisted it, it always returned to that one thing she didn't want to say. I could tell she faced a dilemma, but what were her options she kept to herself.

Then, she said something out of left field that sounded like she wanted to change the subject: "I suppose you've heard about the epidemic that's happening on the Fleet, haven't you?"

"Just the rumors," I said.

"When I heard about it, I needed to make sure... but the moment people began treating me differently I realized it was likely true," she said. "Thing is I can't just ignore it. It pains me, but I have to return... What was your name, again?"

"Shit," I blushed, "I'm sorry. My name's Nyla Arcturius. What about you?"

Her eyes sparkled like the tiny little stars that appear when a saw cuts the steel. "Reyla," she said. "Reyla'Zoris... nar Pegasus... as long as I'm still welcomed back, at least."

"Pegasus? Isn't that a-"

"Human name?" she giggled. "During difficult times we've purchased pre-owned vessels, Nyla. We've also had difficulty altering the ship's registry information."

"Right," I nodded. "The bureocratic nightmare from Citadel space."

"As long as you don't bother the Qwib-Qwib's crew about it..."

She said that with such a sterile tone that I couldn't tell whether she was being sarcastic or she actually bullied them.

More silence followed. Reyla blinked once, looked at the terminal, then at her left arm, and finally she looked into my mouth before looking into my eyes.

"Come to think about it, my choice doesn't matter. I can't even travel back to Citadel space," she said like she lost a war.

"Did those knuckleheads have to do with that?"

Reyla looked at me like I said too much. "They... stole my secure way to return to the Fleet," she said, "aside of my dignity, of course..."

The red neon glow left me without words after that. It tried its best to force itself through, yet I felt its effect coming stronger out of her red hood.

It drew me in closer to her... my eyes glued upon her...

The way she talked... even if she's sad, angry, nostalgic, indignated, and undecided, her voice kept me interested.

Like all quarians, Reyla is so beautiful, even if I didn't see her without that beautiful suit... I could still tell she was one of the most gorgeous women I've had the chance to talk to. Her curves killed me. Curves deadly enough to crash a shuttle if those were roads that lead to the pillars that supported her entire weight, suit and all included.

Reyla took a deep breath. Her shivers stopped. She went closer to me, and placed a hand on my lap.

"But enough about me, Nyla," she said. "I'm getting the feeling that you're the loneliest person in a club packed with people..."

If her voice had a smell, it would be one of incense.

I wonder if she's seeing the same as Vaas did.

"I'm my father's oldest, but he didn't open the Elysium just for her gay daughter to play around," I said. "He says business and pleasure never mix..."

He also said business and family never mixed, but all turian families are part of the military, so...

"He sounds like a turian through and through!" she giggled.

"Ouch! Let me get this right: I'm the one who apologizes for calling you a germaphobe, and you say the stick up my butt runs in my family?"

Reyla tried to say something, but all that came out was a hearty laugh that grew on me, and I joined in the laughter. It's hard to see inside that beautiful bucket, but I can tell she blushed, even after we stopped. I can tell that by the way her eyes sparkled.

I could also tell she wanted to say something about father being unable to get off that stick up his butt. Only one business came to me where the business itself is the pleasure, and I didn't even want to play with that idea, else I'd be more curious than I already was.

"You know," Reyla started saying, "it's not often that I get to be in private with other women. or, rather, all the women I've been alone with are asari... A turian merc princess is something I didn't expect, much less one as cute as you." she squeezed my thigh.

"Don't call me a princess, please..."

Now I blushed again. I hated being called a princess, but from her, it didn't sound like an insult.

"Aren't you one though?"

"I don't want to," I sighed. "Aria nearly killed me after I fought her for calling me a spoiled brat. The only reason I'm still alive is because she realized that, like my father, I'm crazy enough to even fight her to death just because she insulted me instead of having a sudden lust for power... I know I'm following his footsteps, but Spirits know I'm trying to do my own thing!"

Reyla blinked slowly. Unlike others, she didn't insist on the naming. She just kept quiet.

The hand on my thigh went for my right mandible, and caressed me with a loving touch. Vaas' words echoed in my head. I lowered my defenses, and let her touch reach beyond the master of my heart. I let her caress my spirit wholeheartedly...

Something pulled me to pinch her hood. I could almost kiss her through the helmet...

Spirits! I got so close to her I could even feel her breathing on my skin, even with that stupid helmet on!

"Nyla," she whispered, "would it be too much to ask if I can crash here tonight?"

"I only have this couch," I said.

"It's fine. I don't know if you're staying, but..." she looked away, and suddely wrapped her arms around me. "Please, tell me you're staying," she suddenly sobbed. "I don't want to be alone tonight..."

"Hold on, you don't have a place to live?"

Reyla froze. She froze like someone who's just been caught doing something naughty. The red of her hood glowed brighter. Her silence felt more like I stabbed her without damaging her suit.

"The stereotype follows me," she giggled.

"How long have you been in Omega?"

She sighed. "Just one year, and it's long enough to just go home and also not want to go home. It's long enough to fuck anyone who can give me some credits so I can pamper myself in this forsaken place... But I need to return, Nyla. I'm back at zero, all because those knuckleheads stole something from me."

My eyes jumped around at that word salad trying to make sense of all the things she said... Did she admit to being a sex worker? A quarian selling her body? I mean, anything goes in the Terminus Systems, so it shouldn't surprise me, but, like... How?

Quarians have weak immune systems. And after being trapped in those suits since the Geth chased them off their worlds a few centuries ago, they haven't gotten any stronger! How did she even work with that?

Then I wonder if Aria ever met a quarian with such profession...

"What the fuck," I sighed. "I'll be here all night anyway! I don't feel like coming home."

She wrapped me even tighter. Her tits squished upon my chest. I took a deep breath and took in her smell of burning chestnut and rust.

"It's not a free stay though!"

"Like I said: I've never been with a turian woman," she giggled.

"No, Reyla, I'm flattered, but I don't want sex as payment," I held her hand. "I need to right the wrong those knuckleheads did."

"Oh... I... I don't know what to say!" she pouted, and also laughed.

I held her by the helmet.

"I'm doing it for you on one side, but it's also my responsability," I said. "We might not be her crew, but we're still loyal to Aria. There's one rule here that's never meant to be broken, unless you have a death wish."

She thought about it for a moment, and then sparked her omni-tool to life. She typed a few things and showed me vids and posts that jumped around the extranet. Community messages, blogs, crime columns, independent journalists investigating... whatever she found, she showed me, and it wasn't really much.

They all refered to a small gang of idiots who operated around a human neighborhood I recognized immediately, as it was far too close to Blood Pack territory. I don't really like stepping into other merc's turfs, but if the Blood Pack didn't clean them up, it was only a matter of time before Aria finds out about them, and clears that neighborhood without care about who's Blood Pack and who's a moron.

"They call themselves the Omega Boyz," said Reyla.

"Never heard of them."

"No one has," she scoffed. "A gang of humans only... Those idiots that accosted me earlier? They're part of them."

"Still, it sounds like all they do is noise, Reyla. You know, vandalism, extorting those who can't pay, dealing cheap narcotics, guns from two hundred years ago..."

I kept reading through the posts she showed me. Extranet denizens claimed these guys were slaves who escaped the eezo mines from the Nemean Abyss, though is not much of an escape if they're operating inside the domain of the pirate queen herself.

I turned on my omni-tool to fetch some of that information and let the VI compose a message for Aria about this.

"What gets me is that they're operating right under the nose of the Blood Pack," I commented. "They're not exactly comfortable with non-vorcha and non-krogans snooping around their place."

"As you call them, they're knuckleheads," she said, and rested onto me, rubbing herself against my skin.

I couldn't resist to kiss her on the top of her helmet.

"I didn't want this night to be interesting..." I confessed.

"My stuff can wait, Nyla. Can't you just stay?"

"I'm sorry, but this seems urgent enough to deal with it tonight," I sighed, and stood up.

I felt the quarian's eyes on my ass while I picked the baton back up. I looked at her with a smile, and extended the baton, and swung it a few times to hear the satisfying swooshes mixed in with the mass effect fields. I collapsed it and put it on my hip.

"I promise you'll be safe within this walls, Reyla," I said. "Make yourself at home. I'll be back soon."

I secured my systems through my omni-tool and let the staff know about my guest. Whatever she wants she'll get, whether that is food, drink, sleep, medicine, or even a lap dance.

I looked at her one last time before walking out the door. First thing I saw was Rachael's pixie cut. She turned around to see me; one rebellious strand from her fringe caressing her eyebrows.

"Miss!" she said. "You startled me. I was in the middle of a prayer."

"Can the Almighty of humans protect those who aren't humans?" I asked.

"He created the whole universe."

"Good. Great. I need you, and I need Him to protect the quarian," I said.

Rachael touched the gold cross around her neck and nodded.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I'll be looking for one big mean-looking fellow who'll join me on tonight's mission," I said. "He won't have another choice."

IV

I looked around the Elysium for one particular big, red-eye, mean-looking reptilian fellow with a large hump and a voice so deep it can give someone heart failure with just a murmur. While salarians and asari stick out like guns in a jewelry store, a krogan always stands out as one big pink diamond mounted in the cheapest piece of plastic. It was a big packed for a Tuesday, and krogans with red eyes are not precisely uncommon, but only one of them had the Omega 4 relay glow into them. And aside if his four testicles, he also ate like he had four stomachs instead of two.

I saw him mixed in with the people seated at the poles, splitting his lunch break to eat a pair of extra large burgers served by an asari who had her tits out in the air. He barely have huge bite to one of them and I scored a big punch to his hump. He began to have problems breathing.

"You've got some big quads to eat on my expenses without pay, Ravanor Grob!" I said while he coughed

Grob recovered his breathing and stood up. He was about to headbutt me when I froze him in place with my biotics.

"I don't like being interrupted when I'm eating either, but you better stop being a krogan for a second and let the two sole neurons you have dedicated for non-violent actions work out a solution on how to get your paycheck back!"

The words sounded like a suggestion, but I made sure the tone came from the end of the barrel of a gun.

"If you want to beat the people who actually took your paycheck, then I need you to come with me."

The stasis dissipated. Grob fell, and shook his head after sitting down.

"What's the job?" he asked.

"Your old buddies... Blood Pack."

He scoffed. "They won't exactly throw me a welcoming party if we show up, Miss."

"More like well crash to their party to warm them about a future debt with both Aria and me once they learn about a ragtag of humans fucking around their turf. Now come."

Grob didn't leave without his nighttime lunch and kept devouring them while we walked out of Elysium. He got out first, while I stopped at the bar for one second.

"Vaas, call the elcor."

"Miss, it's his..." he breathed in, "... night off." he breathed in again.

"Bribe him; I don't care! Grob's coming with me, so we need another big guy at the door. You're in charge of security now."

"Understood, Miss."

Vaas used his omni-tool, hopefully to convince him with a bonus equal to Grob's paycheck for the night before he fucked it up. Those asshats can't just play the slave escapee card and expect people to be fine with them doing whatever they want. Not even the Blood Pack are that kind of manipulative idiots.

A purple shuttle stood out around the neon rust and neon blood. Grob stood beside it, munching the last morsels of his second burger. He tossed the paper to the streets. Behind him, Omega looked like an abandoned innocent place, yet beneath its rust it's possible to smell the decay floating up around the horizon. Not even the red glow from the Omega 4 relay could cover it.

"You're driving," I told Grob after I unlocked the shuttle.

He let out a laugh that drools, like he just got a new toy.

V

It felt like a night with winds that would destroy glass windows, or the type of acid rain no one feels until boils begin to appear on their skin the next day. The Omega 4 relay glowed stronger: a red neon that displaces the rusty color of the station like the geth displaced the quarians off their worlds. The shuttle purred like a kitty while Grob kept driving us closer to Blood Pack territory.

Aria replied me on the way. Her message was loaded with the type of scolding a baking recipe would recommend after listing the process of scalding milk with a typo. She does have a point though: why am I telling her about this instead of bringing their heads on a silver platter? It all boiled down to giving her the biggest slice. I didn't care. I'm not in this for the spoils of war...

Grob maneuvered the shuttle like a vessel dodging asteroids and wreckage around a belt known for being a starship graveyard. He brought me into Blood Pack turf through alleys I didn't know. I never thought my shuttle could squeeze like this unscathed.

Once we reached to Reyla's address, I looked at him. He didn't look back. He just answered my question:

"You never asked me what was my role on the Blood Pack, Miss"

"Alright, I'll bite. What did you do?"

There was pride in his grin. "I was a getaway driver. I should be your personal chaffeur and bodyguard instead of your bouncer, Miss."

I laughed. "After your little fuck up tonight? Not a chance."

"All I need is a chance, Miss."

"Why do you think I brought you with me? Don't fuck this up!"

I pointed at a rooftop with enough space for us to land. Grob made his way to it. Half-way through, a slug bounced off the kinetic shields, showing off as a shadow in the middle of the shuttle's right light beam.

I used my visor to zoom in to a pack of five vorchas lead by a krogan in red armor. They readied themselves to shoot us with a rocket launcher.

"Fuck's sake!" I yelled. "Floor it, Grob!"

He barely dodged the rocket that exploded upon hitting a building at his side. The shockwave dropped the shields to five percent. The number kept dropping while slugs flew towards us.

I lowered the window, and managed to stop a slug that almost went for my head with a barrier big enough to cover the entire side of the shuttle. The vorchas kept firing their guns, while the krogan loaded another rocket. Once he was ready to take another shot, the vorchas moved over, and he almost wasted the rocket when Grob lowered the shuttle to use another building for cover.

I dropped the barrier and took one deep breath once I went back in. Grob kept making his way, as the streets spread out more and more, the red light feeling like blood spilling to our skin. The vorchas didn't keep with our pace, thank the Spirits! Yet the krogan is the one that worries me.

The moment the shuttle hit the roof, Grob got out without turning it off, and ran down to street level. By the time I secured it, I saw him making his way towards the vorchas. He charged against them like a javelin, pushing through them, stomping over them one by one, until he headbutted the other krogan, who shot the second rocket upwards and fell to the floor.

Most of the vorchas stood up. I jumped a couple of roofs and drew them to a singularity before they pulled their triggers against the wrestling krogans. Grob remained on the clinch, and struggled to punch him. They screamed insults to each other that I couldn't understand. It looked like they tried to compete on who's the first to break Newton's third law.

I slid down through a fire escape and landed next to the remaining vorchas on the floor. My barriers went up, and I struck one of them with the baton, first in the stomach, and then on the neck. It was quite easy to make breathing something difficult to do. The singularity pulled the other one to it after the recoil from the shot he took at me sent him backwards. The slugs bounced off and hit the ground.

The krogan merc got on top of Grob and hit Grob's face to the ground hard enough to bend it. My bouncer laughed it up and kicked him before taking his place on top. He punched the merc on the eye.

"We're not here for you, Kraxx!" he screamed.

"Why do krogans have such stupid names?" I sigued, and threw a ball of dark energy to explode the singularity, and have the vorchas fall dead to the ground like flies toasted by electrocution. Then I approached the krogans, but Grob stopped me with a sign.

"Do not intervene, Miss!" he shouted.

Kraxx saw his opening, and took the chance to escape his grip.

"Traitor!" he yelled, and headbutted Grob. "A real krogan would never have a turian as his krantt!"

"A krogan who leads a pack made up of five rats has no right to call me a turian!" Grob laughed. "I assure you, that turian princess is more krogan than the whole blood pack together."

"Oh, come on!" I yelled to zero ears.

Grob pushed Kraxx against the wall. Even though he used the word I hate, it still didn't feel like an insult. How was he a member of the Blood Pack is beyond my comprehenssion; he looked more like an actual warlord from Tuchanka and less like some bloodthirsty merc. He got into another clinch, and played dirty by hitting Kraxx on the places where it hurts the most. If the genophage wasn't enough to make him sterile, maybe those hits finished the salarian's job. I felt like asking what's the history between them, but there's no time for that.

Kraxx still remained up though, and managed to fight back with a few kicks and headbutts of his own. Grob got stunned for a few seconds after a very nasty hit. Then, as he opened up his filthy mouth, Grob squared him one last time in the head, knocking him down. He spat on his face, and turned back to me.

"I'm sorry for calling you princess, Miss," he said.

"Forget it. I know what you meant."

He looked down at the sleeping Kraxx.

"Is this going to put you in trouble, Grob?" I asked.

"Let my dramas be my worry only, Miss."

"They will be, so long they don't become my dramas! That's all!"

He looked down again. "You'll be fine. This was just... krogan business."

"Krogan business then," I nodded and moved forward.

Grob took the lead and got us through alleys where no Blood Pack eyes would ever look at. Leaving the shuttle so far worried enough to set up a fifteen-minute timer on my omni-tool. The quicker we finish, the better for us.

One more turn, and we noticed a blue symbol painted on the rusty walls. A pair of blue fists up in the air, holding a broken chain, surrounded by the symbol humans have for omega. This was Reyla's address. From this point on, it was the Omega Boyz's turf. The red neon made the blue look black.

Grob turned into my shield upon my sinister side as we walked through the threshold.

VI

I felt it on my skin...

Decay...

It expanded beyond this block, almost... almost like a gaping black hole that grew bigger with anything that goes in it. I could feel the pull tugging me, leading me to a path of darkness...

Strange to say that the presence of the relay's red neon saved my soul. The very same neon that's giving me this desire of burning it all to the ground.

There's nothing new about asari standing on corners with rags that can barely be considered lingerie, yet seeing humans with them made me look twice. Their beauty stained with the grime and the rot that comes with drug abuse... When I approached a pair, both girls didn't waste time on touching us with their skinny hands. They looked at us with inviting and compassive eyes, like priestesses dying of thirst and hunger in some desert, yet it was their voice that treated us like we were the dying wanderers instead.

"Aren't you a bad girl, coming to a place for humans only?" the asari whispered. Her breath smelled like ice, and a freshly-fired shotgun.

"Ladies..." Grob tried to say like he was the most polite of krogans to ever exist, "... we're here on business... Leave the miss alone!"

"So are we, big guy," the human smiled, walking two fingers onto his shoulder. "Don't you want something to show off to your business partners?"

"Or maybe you want to relax before business," the asari said. "We know a place."

"Ladies..."

"Business can wait, mister Ravanor," I looked at him and threw side eyes to the sex workers. Then, I looked back at the asari. "We're fine with a double date. Why don't you show us the way, sweethearts?"

The asari slithered her arm around mine, and locked it in place. She walked me further down the streets as they red brought out their rust more, and tainted them in blood. It felt like we were in a horror vid. It felt like something out of a horror vid would come out of Omega 4 at any moment, and swallow the entire asteroid where Omega stands whole.

Grob leaned back to me, the human still locked to his arm, and whispered me something so quiet no VI picked it up to translate it. He spoke in my language.

"Whatever you're thinking about, Miss, I must remind you: we'll stand out like the supernova that is a mass relay being destroyed."

"Trust me," I said.

They lead us to a metallic box surrounded by more women like them. Gorgeous, but their ribs stuck out as much as their tits, and they smelled like a thousand men packed in barracks meant for a tenth of that. I saw one of those humans put against the wall by an asari with large tits and freckles all over her shoulders. They kissed for two seconds before the asari pricked the human's arm with a syringe, pushing a glowing red liquid into her veins, whispering her words I couldn't hear. On a dark alley behind them, another human woman was on her knees, providing a very tender fellatio to a fellow human with glowing tattoos on his arm.

Our companions stopped, and told us to wait. We watched them skip until they reached to a human who compensated his small stature with muscles that made his head look as small as a pencil's eraser. I looked at Grob and saw blood-thirsty eyes on him. I felt it too.

The red neon. The red glow from the relay. Life in Omega is not for everybody. It's easy for people who aren't strong enough to live here lose themselves to vices in order to cope.

"When the fun begins, kill those who can only defend themselves," I ordered.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Miss, but killing all these addicts is more compassionate than letting them live," he argued.

"They can still be saved!"

"Oh, they already chose their salvation, Miss. It's just salvation comes quicker through a shotgun instead of a high that enslaves them while they rot from the inside out."

"Grob..."

He looked at me like now I was the one deserving to die.

"What I'm saying, Miss, is that I'm a krogan. I don't fight those who aren't able to die on their feet."

"It's an interesting way of saying it."

"I'm just giving a voice to my thoughts, Miss. They already chose their poison. I won't be the one to execute them."

"I'm counting on that."

Was he really part of the Blood Pack, I wondered for the millionth time...

Eraserhead approached us; the two hookers stayed behind. His quick strides stomped on the metal hard enough to leave deep footprints if the streets were made of mud. I was about to grip my baton when I felt the familiar push of a metallic cylinder behind my neck. Grob growled like a varren.

"Not another step, aliens!"

"I guess you don't welcome anyone who isn't human," I spat. "Why do you have asari working for you though?"

"All asari are hot, and they bring money. Now, shut up!" spoke a different voice.

Two guys. The third one was Eraserhead, who was barely taller than the regular volus. It didn't matter how many muscles he had, I know Grob could jump over him and squish him with his armored boots, even in low gravity! He's the one who looked at us from head to toe, more interested in the krogan shield upon my sinister than me.

"Did you check whether they're armed?"

"What a stupid assumption!" I laughed. "Only a fool would walk around Omega without an omni-blade!"

Eraserhead might look ridiculous, but he definitely hits like the back of an axe. He got me square in the left jaw hard enough to nearly dislocate it.

"Shut up, you turian whore!"

Grob's growls turned louder. I spat on the floor.

"It's funny humans always call everyone else 'aliens' when you guys are the new guys at school!" I smiled. "The only reason we didn't wipe you off the galaxy is because the Council intervened before we went nuclear on your precious Earth and your stupid colonies!" I grunted, and then looked at the girl giving the guy the fellatio. Her face covered in semen; the client probably in another plane of existence, beyond the Nemean Abyss, or maybe dark space. "The batarians are right: you are just a bunch of entitled brats spoiled by the Council!"

This time he punched me in the stomach.

"Why haven't you taken their weapons already?!" he yelled.

The moment someone gripped his shotgun, Grob screamed a very familiar scream. The red finally got into his veins, and he turned around to pull down both arms from the human who dared to take his shotgun hard enough to leave them dangling like wind chimes. Eraserhead pulled out his pistol, and I swiped his legs off while the krogan took his shotgun and started to beat both guys to death with it instead of just shooting them. My barriers went up again, and then I held the muscular man on a stasis before Grob's shotgun fired.

Panic.

Anyone who wasn't here packed up and bolted it as far as they could, half naked or not. Even the whores that led us here vanished among the stampede of civilians not willing to lose their lives by getting high or fucking in the middle of a shooting. They might look like they could barely walk, but fear has this thing of turning the most cowardly of volus into the meanest krogan killing machine once they're cornered.

One guy down. The shotgun overheated. Grob ditched it and charged against the other human like javelin right after I tossed him away with a ball of dark energy. He vanished with him in the horizon. The last I heard of him were his roars.

I took Grob's shotgun and saw that it cooled down. Then I kicked Eraserhead's pistol away before the stasis dropped. When it did, I put the shotgun on his head after he hit the floor.

"Is it me, or is the red storm from the relay making everyone unstable tonight?" I asked.

"The fuck you talking about?"

I giggled. "You have a rabid krogan on the loose because he saw red. If you want me to solve the problem, you better tell me where is the money you owe to the queen bitch herself!"

"Fuck you! Better yet, go to her so she can fuck you! I heard she loves them from Palaven!"

I hit him on the nose with the butt of the shotgun. Now the red was getting into my veins.

"Just save yourself the suffering and tell me where is the cash!" I grunted.

"You think I know, you damned harpy?!" he yelled. "I'm just a bouncer! And make no mistake, the Boyz will rule over Omega! Mark my words!"

I took as many shots as I could on him until the shotgun overheated. He's far more useful as a meat colander instead. A bouncer, my ass!

I stepped away from him and leaned against a wall. I closed my eyes, and let the neon buzz away while the shotgun cooled down. there was a faint smell of burning herbs of all kinds that came from afar. I followed it to the door where he came from, and used my omni-tool to hack it.

When I stepped inside I found myself within the walls of a warehouse repurposed to be a den that combines hospital, strip-club, and brothel, cleared in a rush after the gunshots appeared. I looked around to see many naked women trapped in cages. Humans; all of them. They all huddled around and stayed away from me in fear.

The music kept blasting. A beat so relaxing it wouldn't be out of place in a spa upon the Citadel's Presidium, or maybe some luxurious place around Nos Astra back in Illium.

I tried to get a better look at the women using my visor. They all had a mark on their arm. It looked like a serial number underneath a corporate logo, yet behind their left ears there was a blue mark... One that showed a pair of blue fists up in the air, holding a broken chain, surrounded by the symbols humans have for Omega.

"Spirits... It's okay! I'll get you out of here!"

I walked behind some crates to find a makeshift office with a terminal. I turned it on, but found myself at virtual locks impossible to break without omni-gel. I guess those knuckleheads had a moment of brilliance.

The humans grew more desperate while I combed the place around for at least one fucking unit of omni-gel. I flipped table after table, bed after bed, footlocker after footlocker, drawer after drawer... I even opened holes in the walls and found anything but omni-gel. The caged women grew more desperate; their cries impossible to distinguish.

"By the Spirits! I'm trying to help you!" I shouted.

They got quiet, so I could breathe in. Somewhere in the distance, a krogan screamed red, and a human screamed one last time.

I looked at Grob's shotgun and sighed. "I promise I'll make this up," I said.

With my omni-tool, I synthetized it into some omni-gel. It wasn't much, but I figured it could be enough to get through the jammed locks.

I went back to the terminal and slapped omni-gel on it until it was accessible. These guys weren't exactly tech savvy; they didn't wipe anything. Everything was here; every purchase, every sale, every file on every member, every acquaintance... Mercs, sex workers, drug lords, pirates, corporations, crooked politicians, people easy to blackmail... They dreamed big, yet stayed small. True underdogs starting with smuggling people and drugs.

According to the files, the women in the cages began their lives of slavery way back there, within the eezo mines upon the Nemean Abyss. The Boyz got them out with the promise of freedom, only to become their new owners, perhaps looking to turn them into the very same girls that we saw.

"You morons are no better," I grunted. The Shadow Broker might have a blast knowing the real identity behind the logo tattooed with their numbers.

As far as what I can do for them, I opened up the cages and let them go. They didn't even wait for my confirmation and got out of the cages like scared cats before bolting once they realized I wasn't going to hurt them. Those who stalled looked to cover up with whatever they could find. If there's something they've earned with that freedom is any bit of dignity they could get.

I paid no attention to them and started to follow the money, which confused me further. They had quite a substancial amount in their coffers; enough to expand beyond the confines of this block and the other four, possibly even taking some parts of the Blood Pack's turf! What a shame they didn't invest it, because now most of it is being syphooned into Aria's coffers, with our part being taken care of while we're at it.

I set up the VI to write a message, dictating my words while I browsed around the terminal. Then I noticed something around the security vids. There was one that came from a camera pointed at some docks a few streets away. In those docks, a vessel was stationed. I couldn't see her name well, but it looked like a turian spaceship, with more curves. And standing by the dock, three humans gathered.

I played the vid and recognized their voices immediately. Dominic Peyton, and his two boyfriends. Fang and Ginger dragged out someone out of the ship... a woman with a distorted voice, and a red hood.

"Looks like we've got ourselves a stowaway," said Ginger. "And would you look at it... She's quite gorgeous!"

Reyla moaned upon being forced to stand up and look into Dominic's unibrow up close. She tried to get off their grip, but they had her good. Dom held her by the helmet and forced his hand to make her look back at him.

"What were you doing in the wolf's cave, little red hood?" he asked with a very acid tone.

"It's none of your business!" she spat.

Dom looked at the ship, and then back at her. "The Boyz own the Praetor, quarian, so you better tell me what were you doing spreading your venereal diseases all over my ship!"

"Your ship?! Your ship?! You bosh'tet see a working medical ship and think it's yours?! I'm the one who piloted that ship to this... shithole! I've been living in there for the entire year that I've been here! You bosh'tets think you can steal it from me just like that?!"

I closed the vid and sent it to my omni-tool. I'm smart enough to know why she kept that from me, but her secrets are not what's making me angry.

It's how these humans are... On one hand they are the ones who are infecting Omega with their actions, making people like Rachael look so bad it's making me wish that we really wiped them off the galaxy back twenty one years ago.

On the other hand, that's the stick up my butt speaking. Vaas is right. Then again, business an pleasure don't mix well, but in this industry, happiness is always found at the end of a barrel instead of the arms of a loved one.

If I want answers, I'll take those from Reyla. Regardless, it's best to take the ship before Aria knows about its existence. My next objective was clear.

I went back to the streets only to be met by five humans pointing their guns at me.

"Not another step, alien!"

I didn't recognize them, but they did dress like Omega Boyz. My hands remained up, my mouth remained shut. The glow in the streets turned to a much deeper red; so rich it looked as if the Sahrabarik sun was closer to Omega.

It burned...

It burned worse than Palaven...

It did burn like the sun was actually close.

The men remained quiet. Only one was brave enough to step into my arm's range. I stared at his thin goatee and scoffed after realizing it was as thin as my baton.

"You snooped too deep, turian," he said. "Time for you to meet Mr. Reaper."

There was a scream in the distance that made it difficult to not smile.

"Oh, no, I think you'll be the one meeting him first."

Before he could even form a word, the loud roar of a krogan flew past behind him like a ship that jumped onto a mass relay and broke FTL speeds. Four out of the five humans got skewered by the rabid krogan. The moment he turned around was the moment I took my baton and put it around his neck. The mass effect fields cut my palm slightly, but it went through his neck, killing him after he bled out with the baton lodged into his neck.

I stared at his dead body until Grob calmed down. I looked at him. He drooled like a varren. He bathed in human blood. He had the marks of a proud tribal warrior, fresh from the killing fields, happy to have honored his clan by defending them from others looking to hurt them.

Grob wiped some of the blood out of his armor, and looted a shotgun from one of the dead men.

"What's next, Miss?" he asked while he checked the shotgun's state.

"Follow me," I told him. "We're stealing a ship."

We went further down the streets in silence. All we heard was the low hum from the station, accompanied by the electric buzz of the red neon that lit our path. We couldn't see the Omega 4 relay from here, but its influence always crept behind us...

VII

The timer went off. I wanted to break my omni-tool, but that wouldn't bring my shuttle back if it was taken or destroyed. But did it matter? Did that even matter when there was a ship in the distance, sticking out just like the Omega 4 relay sticks out in the sky?

I rushed towards it until I saw the words "THS PRAETOR" on the side of the hull, and started to inspect it once I got a closer look. It looked bigger than in the vid...

The Praetor had some pretty curves; one of those rare moments where aesthetics mattered just as much as function. The asymmetrical design is the most notable feature of this model; the left wing extends out and curves to the front of the ship's nose, providing an extra mount for a weapon. According to my omni-tool, this one had three automatic cannons, one mounted on each wing, and the third one right at the front.

I couldn't stop smiling. This model was only produced around the times of the Relay 314 incident, so it didn't serve much time before it was shrunk down to be a fighter instead of a frigate. Nevertheless, with a modern motor, it's actually better than the frigate that replaced it. It might not be as agile and fast, but it was built to resist like a tank, as well as hit like a tank.

"Well, what do you know, Grob?" I smiled. "This thing has the best of both a frigate and a fighter! One person alone can run this whole ship without any problem too!"

"You're loving this ship a bit too much, Miss," he said.

"What can I say? It makes me nostalgic. Father piloted one of these frigates, and I also flew a few fighters that were based off of this design..."

He didn't really care about it. But he was right. I was loving it a bit too much.

Looking around I noticed how difficult it is to get inside this ship without the proper keys. Hacking my way in was possible, but the encryption was built future-proof, and it would take me fifty thousand years at the minimum to crack its locks. We needed the owner. That could be either Reyla, or one of the three comedians that accosted her.

A red flash of neon caught Grob's eyes. I looked at it. Something hanged on a corner, something rusty, something that made me feel watched... The krogan looked at me.

"Why are you asking for my permission to shoot that camera, Grob?"

"Heh, heh, heh..." he said and fired his shotgun. I didn't expect a single slug to hit that device, let alone to see it spark from this distance, and crash to a bunch of bits and pieces after it kissed the floor.

Like clockwork, the human trio showed up after the shot. The three aimed their guns at us. Grob didn't even wait for them to speak. It took him just a single shot centered on Ginger to leave a gaping hole through his guts, with the remaining slugs going through Dom, until they finally stopped at Fang's body. The three fell, firing their guns to the ceiling.

Ginger died without knowing what happened. Dom bled out. Fang, however, looked like he could make it.

I looked at Grob. My mandibles twitched. "Couldn't you have waited for a bit until I asked questions?"

"Don't take this as an insult, Miss, but did you really think these guys were going to talk after all the bullshit we just went through?"

"... point taken."

Dom managed to give us the finger with the last remnants of his strength. Then, Grob pointed his gun at Fang.

"Don't shoot! Please!" he sobbed.

"Do you really have a family?" I squinted, my baton eager to feel his flesh.

He proved it with a picture on his omni-tool. Grob laughed like a maniac. I can tell he wanted to take his head as a trophy to show off at the other guards in Elysium. He really should be in Tuchanka.

"You know, I'm surprised you morons haven't asked me if it was worth to die for that stupid quarian whore," I sighed while I saw Grob's trigger finger twitch. "Maybe I should ask you if sacrificing yourself and your family just to hurt a quarian is really worth it!"

Grob smiled after he put the warm barrel on his right cheek. He screamed like a coward.

"Believe me! I didn't... I didn't know they did all of this! I swear!"

"Really? You think you can give me a sob story, Fang?" I stepped away from him and looked at the Praetor. After closing my eyes I breathed in and smelled the smoke from behind, a smoke from a fire that could only happen by changing the mass of element zero with electricity. It took me back to my days in the military.

"You've been with the Omega Boyz since the very beginning, Fang," I said. "Don't tell me you didn't know about this. All I want to know is if your life is worth accosting a quarian..."

Grob's trigger finger twitched again.

"She's also a slave!" he yelled.

I went back at him.

"She stole that ship from one of the corporations in Nos Astra," he said. "You can check the ship's files; it's all there! Look, all I thought about the Boyz is that we were just going to protect ourselves! It's already hard enough to be a human..."

"For crying out loud! Let's just kill him and be done with this!" Grob yelled.

"I did this to protect my family, I swear!"

"Don't you think there's a less dishonorable way to help your family, Fang?" I said.

"Look, we weren't supposed to take slaves! Fuck's sake, we were slaves! It's just that... It earned us money, you know... And we need money to grow... and..."

Grob blew his head off as he kept stammering. What followed was a silence so loud not even a shotgun blast could interrupt it. He looked like someone scratched the most annoying itching on his back he's ever had in his entire life. The red got to him at this point.

Indeed, the red neon got into all of us.

Efficiency at its best, as father would say. That's probably what got Grob in his current position. Then again, Fang's words regarding Reyla made me think a bit. I'm not sure if he's honest though. Just like it happens with torture, anyone is willing to say anything just so the cannon stops being aimed at them.

"We should leave, Miss," Grob suggested. "What's left of the gang might be on its way."

"You can take the shuttle back to the Elysium if you want to, Grob," I said, "but I won't leave without this ship."

He grunted, yet squeezed my shoulder goodbye before running back into the streets, shotgun in his hands, ready to blast anything that moves. The red darkness swallowed him back to Omega's rusted out guts.

I looked at the dead bodies at my feet and began to reach out for their pockets. There wasn't much in them, really. One vial of medi-gel, which would've been useful when I taught them a lesson about dropping names back at the office, followed by a pair of dice, a half-spent pack of... hanar cigarettes? Wait, are those jellyfishes able to smoke?! Whatever. I also found a deck of cards, and a blister of cinammon sugar free bubble gum made on Earth, with only two pieces left. There was also a pocket edition of the Book of Mormon inside Fang's pockets.

"I didn't figure you for a religious man," I said. I don't know much about all branches of the human religion, but Rachael told me once about this one. For the sake of curiosity, I pocketed the book.

Then I went through their omni-tools. I didn't find much beyond accounts to some extranet services I need, but I emptied their wallets out of their credits. It was enough to buy groceries for dinner, a large bag of potato chips, and the latest copy of Literotica Weekly Stories, maybe the Borrowed Plumes edition of this year, and I'd still have some change!

Their omni-tools though carried the key I needed to unlock the ship. It was a strange key too. The code didn't look like something a quarian would make, let alone a bunch of knuckleheads. It looked corporate.

I looked over to see a number of Omega Boyz striding their way towards me, weapons in hand. I bolted it back to the ship, and grew desperate while the seconds it took to open the door extended themselves to a crawl. The moment it opened wide enough for me to squeeze in, I jumped inside, and closed the airlock right before a slug hit my barrier, and instead bounced off the ship's kinetic shields.

More waiting, as the pressure with the ship equalized. I could feel it in my gut: them looking for alternate ways into the ship. When the way to the bridge opened up, I ran to the cockpit, sat on it, and turned everything on. I've never been so grateful to the Spirits in my entire life!

The Praetor disconnected from the docks and flew backwards. I turned the ship to face the Boyz, who kept shooting at me with guns that wouldn't make a dent into the kinetic shields without overheating a few hundred times!

"Stupid knuckleheads; can't you figure out you need bigger guns?!" I laughed and fired a torpedo to their position, leaving nothing but a hole that looked like a thresher maw bit off a piece of the platform. Then, I made my way out of here.

The VI operated the ship on autopilot and made its quick journey to my personal docks. Meanwhile, I took the time to browse through the files to see what Fang said about Reyla.

There was a lot of inventory around here. Lots and lots of medical supplies, like this ship was, at some point, repurposed to work as a medical lab of sorts. The ledgers made this look like a mobile surgical room that allowed for everything, from giving birth to transplanting krogan testicles in an attempt to bypass the effects of the genophage.

However, what I found the most is research papers, filled to the brim with medical lingo. Nevertheless, I recognized the logo. This ship was rescued from a scrapyard two years ago, and repurposed by some medical corporation headquartered in Illium to use as a research lab. Rumors about a virus around the quarian fleet began to emerge last year, and five quarian subjects volunteered themselves as test subjects through indentured servitude in order to commission the company for a cure to that virus.

My mandibles twitched again. I dug in further down the papers. Most of them mentioned a super virus that was immune to all treatments thanks to being adapted to an environment that was cleaned with every single cleaning product to exist. The medical lingo went too strong, but they seemed to be closing in to a cure. However, four out of their five slaves died. Their names aren't mentioned anywhere.

The only mention for the fifth one is that she refused to cooperate. A quarian female, twenty four years old. There's nothing else here.

"Reyla..." I muttered to myself. "What did you do?"

The VI told me we arrived at the docks.

VIII

"Is everything alright, Miss?"

Rachael shook her head to fix that rebellious strand from her short hair to the side. She stood on the docks, just a couple of steps off the airlock.

"I didn't expect you to find me here."

"Grob told me to look for you. The shuttle is ready."

I nodded, and followed her. She drove us back to the Elysium, now recently closed. On our way, Aria messaged me. She sent some of her human men to absorb the Omega Boyz into her crew, and cleaned up the mess. "See how nice I can be when you tell me you resolved the situation?" she wrote. She also tossed a little extra for me and Grob. "Give your krogan a day off to resolve his anger issues, and also buy yourself something pretty, Nyla." I don't think Grob will want to resolve those.

The red glow from the relay died down just a little when we reached the Elysium. The guards escorted a few of the girls back to their homes.

"With joy and pleasure: good evening, Miss Arcturius," said the elcor with a grin, or at least what I interpreted as a grin after his translator said "with joy and pleasure" in its most monotonous tone possible. "Politely: Vaas is waiting for you."

"Oh, this should be fun..."

I stepped in and saw Vaas talking to a quarian in a red hood, who drank a very sparkly cocktail from a straw. He breathed in very loudly upon seeing me.

"Miss!" he said. "We were just talking about you!" he breathed in.

Reyla crossed her legs and pretty much invited me to sit next to her. Before Vaas served me something, I showed him my hand.

"I tneed clear head for this one, Vaas," I said. "You're free to go. And you too, Rachael," I looked at the human.

"I'll finish closing up then," she said. "See you next evening, Miss. Nice meeting you, Reyla."

"I'll join you, Rachael," Vaas breathed in while looking at the quarian. "Remember my words, Miss," he breathed in.

Once the Elysium was emptied out of its people, it was just Reyla and I.

I looked into her helmet trying to figure out a face through the glass, yet the longer I tried to figure out her beauty, the harder it became to face what I found. No words would come out of me, so I showed her bits and pieces I put together from the intel aboard the Praetor, with a screenshot of that vid of her dealing with the Omega Boyz.

"You are a walking atom bomb baby about to explode," I said. "Do you realize what could happen here once Nos Astra learns about your little rebellion?"

She put her drink to the side. She only drank half of it.

"Thanks for rescuing me, my name is Reyla'Zoris nar Pegasus, I've been on my Pilgrimage for six years, and two years ago me, and four other quarians met up in Nos Astra by pure coincidence after we learned about a possible super virus in the Fleet, so we offered ourselves as guinea pigs instead of credits to look for a cure!" she said sarcastically. "What's that? Yeah, I escaped after I saw the other four die from medical experiments, so I refused and killed all the scientist and stole the ship!"

She stood up so fast the stool fell, and then she walked towards the entrance, but suddenly stopped.

"Can you blame me for being careful, Nyla?" she said while looking back. "Can you blame me for not trusting another thug after having to fuck so many of them just to buy food and fuel to get out of this place before Nos Astra fids out? Can you blame me for thinking about you as a slaver, just as the Omega Boyz are?"

"There was enough fuel in that ship for you to have returned to the Fleet and then jumped across every mass relay three times."

"Is that all you heard me say?!"

"No," I stood up and approached her. "I'm not judging you from witholding your past, Reyla."

"Then why are you bringing it up?! Why does it even matter?"

"It matters because people have noticed you. People may not know you, but they know who you are. Quite frankly, I'm impressed that you remained in hiding for a whole year!" I smiled. "But you don't want to return, do you? You told me earlier that was never in your plans..."

Reyla turned around and hugged me. She began tearing up all of the sudden. She broke off into a sea of tears while her arms remained wrapped around my waist.

"I have to return, Nyla, but I don't want to! I have to, or else..."

"I know."

Silence. The red neon buzzed. Elysiums was terrifying without its bass blasting through the walls. The only thing that sang with the silence was Reyla's crying about the tragedy that her life became. How could someone like her be free, when her body demands for her to stay inside a suit, her society demands her to return to fulfill a role among the Fleet, and her decisions demand her to remain a slave for faceless corporations due to a piece of paper? It's even making me think about my own freedom. Am I even truly free? By following my father's footsteps, am I carving my own path?

I don't know... but our roads crossed, yet Reyla wrapped around me made me feel like I shouldn't let go of her. I never meant to offend her.

"I'm just worried about you," I said.

"You're... you're probably the first one who does..."

I kept hugging her until she stopped crying.

"I'm sorry for hiding things up from you," she said. "Can I stay here?"

"Of course, but don't you want to know what happened to the Praetor?"

She looked away from me. "If I'm being honest, I'd rather for it to crash and burn... but ask me again later and I'll probably have a different answer."

"At least you should know I secured it somewhere no one is going to look for. Whatever you decide for it to happen, we'll make it happen."

If Reyla could've kiss me, she would have. She got on her tip toes and got close to my lips, but instead hugged me again and rested her head on my shoulder.

I can't hate her.

IX

I couldn't rest.

I sat on my desk and stared into the ceiling for so long my head decided to use the holographic keyboard for a pillow once it got tired. The right thing to do is escort Reyla to the Migrant Fleet before corporate mercs come from Illium to get to her, or they decide to pay either the Eclipse or the Blue Suns a nice bounty for her return. Worse: they offer up a bounty, and now everyone, including Aria, pit themselves against each other to see who gets the pot.

I looked back at her, crounched up on the couch in fetal position, sleeping like an angel...

"I can't protect you forever, Reyla," I whispered. "I can't protect you forever..."

She'll be safe with the Migrant Fleet. But... Spirits, am I having feelings for her? Am I really sad for not being able to protect her?

I took a sudden turn to the bathroom, and undressed while I made my way to it. The last piece dropped by the door, and I stretched out a bit just to see if whatever went on in my head could fly back into outer space. I hoped for the night to be uneventful, and yes, it was a quick job... but now I had a bomb, ticking quietly with each purr she let out while she slept. She's a dangerous bombshell. Each second she spends here makes me more anxious.

Usually cold water soothes me. Tonight, it made me tachycardic. I tried to meditate as I massaged my body while lathering soap... Funny that, out of all the things I faced so far in life, a beautiful quarian ends up as the most dangerous of all.

Suddenly, I rested my back on the wall. The water kept running, getting my legs wet. I looked at them and wondered again how does a quarian becomes a sex worker considering they live on a suit. There's no such thing as a quarian sex worker... I kept telling myself that. Then again, in Omega, anything goes.

What is it that draws people to this rusted out asteroid, even? All we have to offer is a live where you either go through the hardships of being an innocent civilian, or die young after joining a merc group, or even selling your soul to Aria. Why did father come here in the first place?

My heart stopped when I heard the door open. I looked through the curtain to see a shadow slowly take the shape of a guitar. The shadow made a move as if it was removing a hood, and what followed were a bunch of zippers and buckles. I gulped and waited for the worst. My barriers went up by instinct, and I was ready to hurl whoever this was back to the office.

"I hope you don't mind if I join, Nyla," said the figure. I recognized the voice by the accent. It sounded so much more beautiful without the distortion from the helmet.

I said nothing. Reyla slid the curtain to the side and shocked me with how she looks beneath the suit. Like humans, quarians have hair, and hers was dark blue, at neck-length, slicked back. She had two black lines that began on her eyebrows and vanished when they reached to her hair. Her eyes felt like they sparkled even more, but her plump lips demanded for a kiss.

"Reyla..."

"Keep saying my name, Nyla," she whispered as her hand caressed my chest and reached to my chin. "Hold me."

I never thought I'd kiss a quarian ever in my life. She guided my hands to her butt. The water fell on her back while she kissed me, pooling up onto a small dimple between her butt cheeks.

Her breasts rubbed against my chest. I tried to avoid her, but it was difficult to run away from her lips. Somehow, I managed to pull her off of me from her ass.

"Reyla, wouldn't you get sick by this?" I asked.

"I don't care. I'd rather die of sickness from fucking a hot turian babe than live like a bargaining chips," she said biting my lips. "Besides, we're both dextro-amino acid species!" she grinned. "I can eat you up without going into anaphylaxis!"

Vaas was right. If she came here like this, maybe I should take the stick out of my butt for once.

I let her do her thing. The water kept hitting us while she explored my neck with her lips.

"Are you okay, Nyla?" she whispered.

"Just anxious about you," I gasped.

Now I saw her blushing. She placed herself against me and kissed me. Her bowed leg rubbed against mine. One hand dragged very slowly, almost as if it hovered over my skin, until it reached between my legs. The moment her long finger touched me I flinched.

I gave up.

No other way to explain it.

I gave up to her...

To a purple-skinned siren with short hair, stunning bowed legs, and an ass I couldn't stop squeezing.

Reyla's lips caressed my body as she went down on her knees, and stayed between my legs. She kissed my eager hole before her tongue started to explore it, lapping my juices, making me feel relaxed in a way I could never do it on my own. She held onto my legs, and followed my moans with a lower voice, as my talons clawed into her scalp and didn't let go.

"Reyla..." her name came out of my mouth with a melody no other woman ever made me sing, whether it was someone I genuinely fell for, or just an adventure. "Reyla..." It just felt good to say. It tasted good. It was so easy...

Reyla...

I stopped clinching upon her scalp and looked down into her sparkling eyes.

She smiled.

She made me moan.

She made me feel...

Spirits, she made me feel...

Have I ever done a job just out of the purity of my heart? I didn't know who she was, yet I faced death upon a fistful of slugs just to have the red neon electrifying my blood to evaporate into the atmosphere, back into outer space, and make it go to the Omega 4 relay through solar winds, back to wherever that relay leads to.

"You taste good, Nyla," she said, rubbing a fang onto my inner thigh as her long finger slowly made its way into me. "How come you don't have anyone in your life?"

I didn't know what to say. All I had was my father, and my sisters, but women that I loved... they all go away in the end, whether it is by going to the other side of the galaxy, or leave in a box that holds their ashes. Is not exactly a long line Reyla is standing upon, but I don't hold any hopes anymore.

Nothing ever comes right to those who live this life. The red burns so much it eats through our days. It's only a miracle that father and I are still living, yet Omega is why he's stranded from my sisters, just as I am.

Reyla didn't pull that thread further. She closed her eyes and carried on pleasing me, eating me without fear. It's nice to have a partner that could eat me without hesitation for once. Spirits, I'm now wondering if she's ever been with another turian girl, aside from me!

Another finger went inside. Reyla kissed my thigh as she fucked me. She then stood up slowly, and faced me, her hand still fucking me as we kissed again. Her nipples felt hard on my skin, and eventually, the cold water was just annoying.

We stumbled out of the shower, in some sort of strange refusal to disengage from each other. We could barely dry ourselves with towels, and opted to risk a cold with the gentle rattling from the vents. I pulled her hair and kept her lips far from my face. All I wanted is to see her, to admire the beautiful woman who managed to pick the lock into my heart.

She gasped with the pull. Her thin nosetrils flared, her breathing shortened, her cheeks flustered into a deeper purple, her eyes sparkled even more... It was a look I don't always see in women. It's so easy to say "fuck me" with one gaze, but to actually mean it...

Only those who open their hearts mean it.

The way I lead her back to the couch was a clumsy and horny waltz where neither of us could resist touching the other. I wanted to feel her all over me in the same way I wanted to be all over her; damned be the laws of the Terminus Systems, regardless of their written status!

I pushed Reyla into the couch and immediately went over her. She moaned upon feeling my lips and mandibles exploring her neck, while I wrapped her narrow waist with one arm, and left the free hand to explore her body. I squeezed her large breasts first, dark nipples feeling hard on my palm.

One thing I never expected about her is the way she smelled. I thought quarians ought to smell like the most expensive operating room upon the Citadel's Presidium, yet she smelled like lillies, and sex. It got me high. It got me higher than any drug I could ever get,

My hand went down her belly, until I reached for her wetness. Her vertical lips opened up to me, while I swallowed her moans...

"Reyla..." I whispered between kisses...

"Nyla..."

Listening to my name on her voice got me wetter... It flushed me with a rush that got me more desperate....

The red exploded in me. I had no will to slow down my lust, and let it all go in the shape of using my biotics to leave a vibrator of dark energy between her legs before going at her tits with my teeth.

"Nyla!" she sang with quite an sforzato that would make people invade my office. Alas, no one's coming to save her from my desire. Every second that passed made her tastier, and tastier.

Reyla looked at me after I stopped sucking her tits. I pinned her for a moment to just kiss her before I wiggled my way in, legs open, and joined my sex with hers, even if my biotic vibrator remained an obstacle between our vertical kiss. My moans synchronized with hers, our voices melding into a song. I held her bowed leg and licked her calf while I closed my eyes and let it rip.

I never thought I'd live to see a quarian without her suit, let alone tribe with her. Her breathing shortened so much every exhale came with the tiniest of moans. Like electricity to neon and dark energy to element zero, I saw Reyla burn to cinders under this red neon storm that ate us all. We burned together with one supernova that was nothing like I ever experienced. A climax that we reached together in a desperate rush of overwhelming pleasure we painfully refused to submit to, else it ends.

We rode the red, until the biotics died out, and now she had a muscular turian woman turned into a blanket.

I felt like I fell unconscious, gasping and rubbing my lips upon soft cheeks. She put me to the side and kissed me before stepping out of the couch.

Reyla took her damned time to put her suit back on. She began with the lower part, the boots and the tights encasing her legs to make her figure stand out even more. Seeing her wide hips and her large butt wrapped by the suit was like seeing the best burgers Vaas can come up with when he wants to cook. Her buckles sounded like flashing sparks from gemstones reflecting millions of beams ought to sound. Even if her tits remained encased for the rest of her life, I could die knowing how quarian tits look like.

"I'm going to be so sick by the morning!" she sighed after fitting her helmet, and went back to my arms. "It's still worth it though."

I cuddled with her and enjoyed our silence. A couple of minutes later she stopped moving. I kissed her hood.

"I promise to keep you safe, Reyla," I whispered before joining her into the slumber.

X

The piercing beep from my omni-tool woke me up. Reyla looked to be in the bathroom, coughing off her lungs from our encounter. I got off the couch and looked at the notification that woke me up. It forced me to stand up with a jolt, wide awake.

The atom bomb baby detonated.

Someone from the Boyz leaked the footage, and now everyone in Omega, from the lowliest of vorchas all the way to the pirate queen herself now entered the battle royale for a priceless quarian, and the ship she stole. They want her alive, and anyone who brings her death will have to compensate her captors one way or another. This also means her indentured servitude period grew longer.

Reyla kept coughing in the bathroom while I paced, cursing in both batarian, turian, volus, and asari languages! Will my men betray me for a fistful of credits? Or should I bring her back to...

No.

I mean, I'm screwed anyway. All decisions lead nowhere, but there was only one thing to do. Only one thing. Whatever the mass effects from that choice are, I'll endure them once they try to take her from the Migrant Fleet instead!

I dressed up as fast as I could, and placed my baton onto my hip. Reyla limped out of the bathroom, her suit a bit dirty. She looks like she's had better days...

"Keelah..." she groaned and looked at me, "it feels like a pneumonia and a hangover combined..."

I took her by the arm. "We gotta go."

"What? What are you doing?!" Reyla tried to get rid of me, but I kept my grip strong.

"There's a bounty on your head, and everyone's coming here to collect!"

Can a person lose their color at the same time as they recover it? If a hangover, or whatever allergic reaction she had to me, can be cured with panic, then maybe the Fleet should be scared to the point whatever plague is decimating them just packs up its luggage and leaves with its tail between its legs.

"Don't tell me-"

"I should," I sighed, "but at this point Aria can go fuck herself. I didn't do all that shit just to hand you back to Illium in a silver platter. Now let's move before someone figures out the Praetor is at my docks."

I kept my baton extended, and Reyla stayed behind. I got out of the Elysium and made my careful way upwards, until we finally reached the shuttle. As soon as it opened, Reyla hid herself on the seats behind, and I took the driver's place. It's like the red never left this rusty place. It's just that now I felt like a fugitive. All for one piece of ass I couldn't resist.

My omni-tool beeped after I turned on the shuttle. A message froze me in place enough for Reyla to tap me on the shoulder.

"Nyla, what's wrong?"

Then, she gasped. The answer was right before her eyes.

"Take that quarian to Nos Astra. The money is enough for me to escape this prison the moment you get it instead of plotting the escape for another month. If Aria gets mad at us, don't worry. I'll deal with her."

I gulped. My hand froze. It's been a while since father made contact with the crew, and this time, he gave me a direct order. I looked back at Reyla, as if she has the answer to this dilemma.

"No, you're not considering it..." she cried.

"It has to be done."

"Nyla!"

I wrote him a message back:

"I won't take that order, and I don't care whether you're my father, or my boss. If you want to put a hit on me, so be it. Consider this my way of showing the crew I'm not a fucking mafia princess spoiled by her daddy. I'm carving my own path."

"Don't make me go at war with you, Nyla..." he replied almost immediately.

"You already declared it by asking me to bring someone I love to a thresher maw's pit."

I shut down my omni-tool and made our course to my personal docks. Reyla barely heard me say to keep hiding as I maneuvered the narrow passages, looking everywhere to see if no one was going to shoot us. The baton remained fully extended on the copilot's seat, wishing to be swung against someone. Every fiber of me didn't want to use it. There's been enough red for twelve hours, at least.

I let out a huge sigh of relief upon seeing the Praetor just a few streets away. A lot of traffic came to its way too. They haven't realized Reyla is with me, else shots would've been fired.

I tried to see into the shuttles, but it was impossible to identify them. Aria's crew? Blue Suns? Eclipse? Blood Pack? Omega Boyz? Arcturius? All I could do is keep a low profile, and pray that Reyla kept her head down.

I floored it to the docks, and nearly hit the floor when I reached out first to the gate. The hit triggered Reyla's coughing for a moment, so I had to help her get out. But as soon as I opened the door, two weapons pointed at us. The mercs that held them were a volus, and a krogan.

"Guys... Don't do anything drastic!"

Reyla gasped. We heard a series of eight rhythmical shots, while the krogan and the volus lowered their guns and helped us get up on our feet.

"We'll cover you, Nyla," said Grob.

Vaas breathed in, and ran to the docks, shooting his little submachine gun in front of him, while his holographic drone floated on another way, shocking anyone who pointed their guns at us. Meanwhile, Grob stood with us like a meatshield, shooting his shotgun over and over. I supported him with a few throws and a singularity, yet the mysterious rhytmical shots kept echoing, until we finally reached the airlock.

As the door opened, I heard a thud, followed by a figure that flickered like electricity, and rushed towards us while placing her sniper rifle in her back. The doors began closing, as Rachael jumped in, and fell on the ground right when a bullet hit her kinetic shield.

Vaas put his gun down, and checked to see if anybody got hurt. No medi-gel was needed.

"Spirits, don't you dare to scare me like that again!" I yelled.

"You're welcome, Nyla," Rachael said.

"Right," Vaas breathed in right when the pressure equalized, and the door to the bridge opened. "Valerian doesn't know what his daughter is capable of," he breathed in while we walked. "I knew you were going to help Reyla no matter what," he breathed in.

"I looked at Grob as I made my way to the cockpit."

"You're my krantt, Nyla, even if you make me angry from time to time," he grinned. "You're the only turian that I like. Your enemies are my enemies!"

Rachael sat to my left, while Reyla took my right. Once I took the pilot's seat, I took control of the ship, and started shooting its cannons, detonating all shuttles, including mine, on our way out of Omega's atmosphere.

Everyone held themselves as the journey got rowdy. I let go off another torpedo that entered in contact with a group of six shuttles that couldn't make it. Suddenly, the red neon lights from the station vanished, and I was closer to the Omega 4 relay. Its rings danced around the red glow like a portal to humanity's hell.

Rachael laughed, and gave me a high five. "This is what I expect from a turian who knows how to fly!" she yelled.

Reyla set up the coordinates towards the Migrant Fleet's location. The signal went to the Omega 2 relay once we were close, and a blue beam of element zero electrified the ship, shooting us into space as far away from the Sahrabarik system as it possibly could.

XI

Four hours later, we could finally relax.

I jumped around relays on a pattern that made the journey longer than it should have. We had no food aboard, and the furniture was a bunch of stretchers and chairs to sleep in. There was nothing we could get except our guns, and whatever clothes or armor we had on that moment. We had nothing, and yet, we were free.

Flying the Praetor in outer space was a breeze. It was more agile than I expected. I made a mental note to do more research into this model. Maybe seek out the serial numbers. I felt this ship in particular might have served during the Relay 314 incident...

Shit. Has it really been twenty one years since then? I turned thirty just last month...

"Nyla," the quarian called me from her seat.

"Yes, Reyla?"

"You're aware I'll take this ship to the Migrant Fleet, don't you?"

I nodded, and turned on my omni-tool. "I'm copying some of the information to trace back the chain of ownership," I said. "Worst case scenario, I'll find the history of the ship. Best case scenario, you might have an easier time changing its name."

"You are such a nerd, did you know that?"

"For starships? Always."

We laughed for a moment, but it was very short. Silence is truly the way we spoke better, but now the silence was painful. The closer we got to the Horsehead Nebula, the more I didn't want for her to stay in the Fleet.

"Thank you," she said.

"What for?"

"Everything."

XII

The Migrant Fleet floated at the edge of the Pax system within Horsehead Nebula. It faced the relay in such a way they could hit FTL speeds with a push, and immediately activate it to jump out of Pax in a snap, such the case for a runaway would rise. When we approached, a couple of flotillas made their way towards the Migrant Fleet. They were all human vessels; corporates from Noveria.

Reyla looked like someone tied her up to the chair.

"I was about to ask you about this, but I can see you know nothing," I said.

"Can we even afford this?" she asked.

"Maybe try asking your leaders about the reason behind their decisions. I doubt they'll explain it. If they do, they'll either lie, or conceal the truth like the tattoos on my face. Very ironic coming from barefaced quarians."

"Those wors aren't very turian from you, Nyla," Reyla chuckled. Her eyes burned me worse than Palaven's sun.

"Neither is betraying my father, but also it's the most turian thing I can do. I'm done with Omega calling me a princess anyway."

I sped up and cut into Noveria's flotilla. These corporate drones didn't have the time to take a violent action to my insult, but worse for them for attacking a ship that wasn't shooting in the first place. They tried to establish communications, but I ignored them.

More important to me were the four fighters that came from a quarian carrier and beelined to us. I was the first to establish communications with the carrier before the fighters did.

"Quarians, this is the Praetor speaking! We mean no harm!" I said. "My name is Nyla Arcturius; I'm a former soldier from the turian army. I have with me a member of your crew, Reyla'Zoris nar Pegasus, who is finally returning from her Pilgrimage with information that would aid you to find a cure for your epidemic."

The fighters surrounded us, and remained still. They were four, but felt like ten. Their silence made me feel like Grob was about to execute me.

"Captain Arcturius," said a very distorted and very dark voice, with a very similar accent to Reyla's, "how do we know you haven't kidnapped Reyla'Zoris and are asking for ransom?"

"I never made it to captain, sir," I sighed.

"As long as you're leading your ship, you're the captain, and I assume you're leading it, aren't you?"

"It's me, Raziel," Reyla spoke before I could say something to that quarian. "I talked to my captain. The Praetor is now part of the Fleet."

Silence again. The ships from Noveria appeared in my radar as we waited, increasing the number of guns. Then, Raziel's voice came back into our speakers.

"Praetor, you've been granted permission to dock, but make no mistake! It is very dangerous for you to come aboard. I'll personally take Reyla'Zoris with me."

"Understood, captain."

The fighters guided us to a secluded bay at the starboard quarter, very close to the stern. A bridge extended, and I flew towards it, connecting the airlock to it, meeting the speed of the cruiser.

I stood up and went back to the bridge. Grob was cleaning his shotgun with spit. Reyla stood next to me and looked at him. His focus didn't make him look like an enraged berserker, but rather a watchmaker who worked with a steady hand. He even hummed a nostalgic tune that sounded like the combination of a lullaby, and a song about two lovers breaking apart.

Reyla held my arm.

"I want to stay, Nyla, I want to stay..." she sobbed.

"I know, cutie," I whispered and held her by the chin. "I know..."

She looked at my chest, and then into my eyes. Spirits! I wished I could kiss her lips right now...

"Is it possible to fall in love with someone after one night?" she asked.

"Stranger things have happened."

I kissed her helmet at the same time as the airlock door opened. A quarian about Rachael's height stood in his gray suit, a purple hood over his head. He was accompanied by three other quarians.

He stepped forward, and I approached him in a rush.

"I take it you're the turian I spoke with over comms," he said, offering me his hand. "Captain Raziel'Gerrel vas Benzeith."

I shook his hand. The military handshake came to me like riding a bicycle.

"Nyla Arcturius," I said.

Raziel looked at Reyla as she approached us. "There's going to be some heavy decontamination we have-"

"I know, captain," she said. "I'm actually sick right now, but I... I had to return."

"What?"

"Something else was going to kill her faster than whatever plague it's going on in the fleet," I said for her. "I think she'll explain it better once you let her in."

"Alright, but there's another problem that we have. Can we speak somewhere else?"

I gave them the signal to follow me to a briefing room behind the command post, close to the elevator that connected all the ship's floors together. Once inside, there was absolute silence. Only the gentle hum of the engines purred. Raziel took a seat on the conference table, and I joined before him. Reyla stood by my side, like a queen!

Raziel looked at Reyla, and then looked at me. He sighed. "I'm afraid we can't take the Praetor as part of the fleet."

"Why?" Reyla yelled before I got to speak. It's like the red from Omega never left her. "I risked my life to get this ship!"

"I'm just the messenger, Reyla'Zoris," the captain's voice trembled a little, "but there's nothing we can do. The admirals obviously won't say no to another vessel, but seeing that we have our hands full with the epidemic, adding another vessel to care for is not going to help us now. That's why we're only taking you with all the knowledge you brought."

"Captain..."

"That's what I've been told, Reyla. But don't worry, you're back home."

He approached Reyla and placed an arm upon her shoulder. It sure feels like all that pain was for nothing. If only I could kiss her... If only she could stay...

"I guess I get to keep the ship, don't I?"

Reyla looked at me and just hugged me so hard I got out of air for a second. She sobbed.

"Take it," she said. "Under one condition though."

"Which is?"

"Don't forget about me, Nyla."

"I'll leave you two alone," said the captain as he stood up and left.

Reyla and I just kept together, hugging and crying, desperate to make this moment last forever. How is it possible? She lied to me. She made me risk my life. She made me betray my father. And after all of that, I fell for her, just like she did for me...

Am I dumb for this? Am I dumb for falling in love with a quarian, just as she fell in love with me?

I don't know...

Maybe we don't belong to each other. Maybe we were just meant to cross paths. Maybe my entire role in her life was just give her the freedom she fought for, and bring her back home. In return, I freed myself from father's expectations and the reputation I got in Omega.

All it takes is hurting each other for it.

"We'll meet again, Nyla," she said. "Treat my heart with care."

"I'll guard it with my life, Reyla," I said. "I love you."

"I love you too."

Such words felt like a waste. Reyla took her steps back very slowly, as she walked out of the briefing room. The door opened, and we looked at each other for so long before she finally turned around, and ran away. She didn't allow herself a moment to hesitate.

The door closed, and now I was alone in the briefing room of a ship that I never meant to keep. Like the rest of my crew, I'm homeless, doomed to wander around space... It would've been much easier if she stuck around, but her job was done. And so was mine.

After this I never saw Reyla ever again.

XIII

The red was gone, but it certainly looked great upon the snow.

Still, the red neon could return at any moment. Perhaps not from a strange mass relay, but the bars around Noveria did have some crazy glow at night. It reminded me of the filthiest places of the Citadel wards, except the mercs around here are more civilized than the usual thugs who live in those slums.

Noveria was a bit boring. At first, the humans didn't welcome us with open arms, but after a couple of jobs they realized we made pretty good bounty hunters. We stayed here for a while; Rachael being the bridge between Vaas, Grob, and I, and the human corporations working here. Our goal was to get some credits rolling so we could leave and find some crewmen to fill spots upon the Praetor. It's not like we need those, but a full ship works better than with just four people.

Working as a gun for hire in Noveria was never something I expected to do. Corporations are no different than mercs, really; it's just that their greed and corruption extends out further. Nevertheless, they hand out pretty good money. So long they exist, bounty hunters also will, whether it is in a rusty space station carved into an asteroid, or a snowy planet in the middle of nowhere; cold enough to give me frostbite the moment I take off my boots.

We stayed here for three months, until our credits and supplies were enough to allow for a journey to the Citadel to find people to work for us. The moment we arrived into Citadel space, I got a call from Palaven. Somehow, my sisters found out I was back from the Terminus Systems, and they learned father put a bounty on me. They wanted to speak, so I set an appointment with them at the Zakera ward. I don't know what will come from this, but whatever will be, I prayed it was the best outcome I could ever get.