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The sky was a relentless grey, hanging low over the moon’s surface like a shroud. Vrokk scrambled over the rusted debris of the fuel depot, his breath rasping in his throat, burning with the metallic taste of fear.
He wasn’t running like a soldier anymore. He was running like prey.
Fifty meters ahead, his salvation waited. His private shuttle sat idling on the launch pad, its engines whining. If he could reach the dock, he could be in orbit in three minutes. He could disappear into the Terminus Systems in a matter of hours.
The batarian forced his four eyes to focus, ignoring the burning in his lungs. Forty meters. Thirty.
CRACK.
The sound was a thunderclap. A high-velocity round slammed into the shuttle’s starboard engine. There was no fire, just the instant, violent disintegration of the turbine. The kinetic energy of the chaotically-rotating mass tore the nacelle from the fuselage, reducing the luxury vessel to scrap metal in a heartbeat.
It was an anti-materiel rifle. The kind of weapon used to disable light armor, not hunt people.
He turned and bolted toward the heavy machinery graveyard to his right. He needed cover. He needed to break the line of sight.
"This is Vrokk!" he screamed into his comms. "I need extraction! Now!"
Static hissed back at him. Dead air. The elite mercenaries he’d paid a fortune for were gone. Silence was the only thing following him now.
He dove behind a stack of shipping crates, checking his heavy pistol. The refinery yard was a maze of steel and fog. He spotted a maintenance tunnel entrance about a hundred meters east. If he could get underground, into the dark, he stood a chance.
He broke cover, sprinting for the tunnel.
THWACK.
The concrete wall mere centimeters from his head exploded, showering him in pulverized rock. Vrokk flinched, stumbled, but continued forward.
THWACK.
A second round tore a crater into the concrete directly in his path.
Vrokk froze, his boots sliding on the wet grit. The shots weren't missing. He was being herded.
He looked at the only path left open. It led away from the tunnels. Away from the shadows. It led up a ramp toward an old ventilation platform—an exposed, rusted walkway jutting out over the canyon. A dead end.
Panic flared, hot and bright. He wouldn't go where he was being pushed. "You think you can shepherd me like livestock?" he snarled into the void, pushing off the wall to sprint in the opposite direction.
The response was immediate.
Pain, absolute and blinding, shattered his world.
It felt like his leg had been put in a hydraulic press. Vrokk screamed, his right knee buckling as the heavy round grazed his thigh. It was a surgical strike, tearing through the ceramic armor and the muscle beneath.
He hit the ground hard, gasping, clutching his leg. He looked at the smoking trench in his armor. The round could have taken his leg off. It could have been put through his chest.
His hunter wanted him alive. Or at least, awake.
He crawled, dragging his useless leg behind him, his hand scrabbling over the grating until he found his dropped weapon. He leveled the heavy pistol in the direction of the approaching footsteps.
Suddenly, the pistol whined, the thermal clip glowing white-hot. Sabotage. The weapon scorched through his glove. Vrokk shrieked, hurling the gun away where it sizzled against the wet metal deck.
CLANG.
Something heavy landed on the metal grating right in front of him, shaking the entire walkway. Vrokk froze. He slowly looked up.
The air above him shimmered, bending the grey light like a heat haze. Then, with a crackle of static, the optical cloak disengaged.
A human female towered over him. Her armor was battered, scarred from a thousand battles, bearing the distinct red and white logo of the N7 program. The Alliance’s grim reapers.
Vrokk rolled onto his back, pushing himself away until he hit the railing of the platform.
The figure reached up and unsealed her helmet. It hissed, revealing a woman with pale skin and angry red hair. She didn't look like any soldier he'd ever seen. She looked like a natural disaster that was crammed into flesh and blood and still looking for something to destroy.
Vrokk’s breath hitched. He knew the face. Every slaver, pirate, and warlord in the Terminus Systems knew the face.
Commander Shepard. The first human Spectre. The hero of the Citadel.
“I am a ci-citizen of the H-Hegemony,” he stammered. “You have no jurisdiction here. This is an act of war!”
She didn't speak. She didn't even blink. Her eyes were hard chips of emerald that seemed to look right through him.
"I can pay you," he tried again, desperation making his voice crack. "I have caches of platinum. I have Element Zero. Name your price, Shepard! I can make you richer than the Council!"
She took a step closer. Her heavy boot hit the metal with a dull thud.
"Mindoir," she said.
Vrokk blinked, confused. "What?"
"Mindoir," she repeated. Her voice was calm. Terrifyingly calm. It wasn't the voice of an officer arresting a criminal, but rather the voice of a judge reading a sentence. "Do you remember it?"
Vrokk’s mind raced, searching his memories through the haze of pain. Mindoir. A human colony in the Attican Traverse. Years ago. A harvest. One of his most lucrative.
"Who... who can say? I conduct business on many worlds," Vrokk stammered. "That’s what I am. A businessman. There’s nothing personal."
"Business," Shepard echoed softly. "I lived on a farm," she said, her eyes never leaving his face. "My father grew grapes. My mother was a teacher."
Vrokk felt a chill run down his spine. He stared at the woman, and suddenly, he didn't see a soldier anymore. He saw a ghost.
"I was sixteen," Shepard continued, stepping into his personal space. "I was in the cellar when your squads breached the door. I watched through the slats in the floorboards." She looked down at his feet, then back up to his eyes. "I heard them laugh."
Vrokk pressed his back against the railing, wishing the rusted metal would give way and swallow him.
"They laughed when my father begged them to take him and just leave us," she said, her voice dropping an octave. "They laughed again when they shot him. They laughed harder when my mother screamed."
"Please," Vrokk whispered.
"My brother tried to run," she said. "Your men put a round in his back from fifty meters."
She shifted her rifle. The massive bore of the barrel looked like a tunnel into the abyss.
“W–wait!” Vrokk begged, snot and tears mixing on his face. "You don’t run a successful business without connections, right? I have intel! I can give you smuggling routes! I know names!"
"You sold children!" she roared.
Vrokk flinched, raising his hands as if flesh and bone could stop a round from the massive rifle. "That wasn't me! That was Kharon! Kharon ran the ground teams! He handled the... the processing! I just financed the ships, I swear it! He's the one you want!"
Shepard’s expression didn't shift. Her eyes remained glacial.
"Funny," she said, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "Kharon said the exact same thing about you."
Vrokk’s breath caught in his throat. Kharon had vanished in the Terminus Systems three months ago. Everyone assumed a rival cartel had swallowed him up. Now, looking at the fierce green of her eyes, Vrokk knew exactly what had happened to his partner.
The last of his defiance crumbled. "Please," he choked out, scrambling backward against the unyielding railing. "Look at me, I'm an old man! Mindoir is ancient history! It was a lifetime ago!"
"You're right," Shepard said. "It was a lifetime ago."
She cocked her head to the side, studying him like a broken mechanism. "And I've spent every day of that lifetime hunting monsters like you."
Vrokk looked into those green eyes, searching for mercy. He searched for the Alliance officer who followed the rules, for the paragon who stood on podiums and shook hands with diplomats.
He didn't find her.
"Shepard, please," he whimpered. "The law..."
She stood over him, the grey sky framing her like a vengeful angel. The wind whipped her red hair across her face.
"No," she whispered, “just me."