Chapter 3: 1.3 Renegades All
Club Afterlife, Omega
Vince sat at the bar, basked in Afterlife's crimson radiance. They had waited out the weekend in the docks while Garrus healed up. The club had been up and running the next day as if nothing had happened. The whole mission to Omega had been a trip. The Illusive Man had given them two names located on the asteroid station, Doctor Mordin Solus and Archangel. Vince didn't know if he was surprised to find Garrus had gone vigilante. He was almost relieved.
When he'd first met Garrus, he thought the turian was an overzealous cop. His breaking free of C-Sec to help Vince in his hunt for the rogue spectre Saren, had earned him a spot on the original crew. When Shepard made spectre, Garrus seemed only too happy to operate outside of the law. Cops and cons weren't so different when it came down to it. Garrus had turned to crime fighting, on his own. Good for him.
He finished his cold blue turian hurricane with a gasp and a jitter. He clapped down the cup and eyed Miranda. She was sitting rather patiently on the stool next to him, legs crossed, hands on her lap. She was normally sharply present, but at the moment, the eyes behind her omni-visor were far off in thought.
When Shepard had first thrown up his feet in her office and started asking her probing questions about Cerberus, she had seemed only too happy to tell him how great Cerberus was. He had been more interested in the extent of their resources and how easily he could exploitaccess them.access them. She seemed to really believe in the Illusive Man's ideals, even defending their methods as pragmatically altruistic while admitting the tycoon simply dumps limitless resources into whatever motivates people most. And while she began going on about her superior genetics, he had been admiring those perfect curves and swells. He also seemed to remember her noticing and appreciating his admiring. Her suggestive smiles and seductive movements coupled with her icy tone and cold stare made him want to melt that frosty exterior.
"What are you smiling about?" Miranda asked, perturbed. "The rest of the crew are finishing up. I think we've spent enough time wallowing in the filth." She leapt off her stool lightly and padded away into the crowd.
Ever since they had gone to that prison to release the convict Jack, Miranda had been different. As Jacob had pointed out earlier, she had wanted to come to Omega straight off and Vince's willfull decision to go the opposite direction first, and to the last place she had wanted to go, had definitely worsened her mood. And because someone at Cerberus leaked information about Shepard and the Lazarus project, specifically how much it had cost, the warden got lofty enough to betray them. He thought he could ransom Shepard. Vince shook his head. What a dipshit. Did he think Cerberus wouldn't retaliate at some point, even if he succeeded?
At any rate, the convict Jack turned out to be a victim of Cerberus torture, so she wasn't too pleased to find she had escaped prison to be taken by Cerberus. Miranda had made the immediate mistake of trying to tell Jack how things worked. The biotic brawl almost unleashed in the Normandy's meeting room was only avoided by Shepard promising Jack all the Cerberus data she wanted. He probably should've jumped in and said something when she was in Miranda's face, but he had found it all too amusing. That, also, had pissed Miranda off. Since then, she and Jack had been dancing around another catfight everywhere they went. And for some reason, he kept bringing them both on the missions.
He rose from his stool, feeling the cold drink still tingling his veins and the drumming of the bass trembling in his skin. He exhaled as Jacob approached him through the smoky red haze.
"Commander," he muttered. "The doctor is set up in the lab. He's going over the collector data we got from the quarian. He thinks he'll be able to figure something out by the time the Illusive Man gets us the location of another possible collector strike."
"I hope so," Shepard scratched his platinum and silver hair. "If we can't stop those swarms from getting through our armor, we're going to be joining those missing colonists."
The arms master agreed. "He seems to know what he's doing. He was helping those people with a cure in the wards, so the salarian's got principles and stands by his word. He said he'd help and I believe him. And now that we have all the names on the roster but one. We've only got the krogan general left to find."
"How's Garrus?"
Jacob relaxed a bit. "He's doing well. His face is pretty messed up still, but the turian's a tough bastard." He put his back to the bar and looked out at the broad cylinder of golden light rising up in the center of the circular bar, threaded with platforms of asari dancers. The moving silhouettes shifted the rays of amber light around them. "I still can't believe the vigilante gang-hunter Archangel turned out to be one of your original crew. Goddamn, Shepard," he crossed his arms and chuckled. "They weren't kidding about you."
Vince smiled. "The doctor's a rebel, Archangel's a crime-fighter, you were a corsair, I was N7 Echo, and now we're all Cerberus. Go fucking figure."
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