Grains of Sand

Amber Penglass

Chapter One

There was pain, at first. A lot of it. As soon as she realized that's what it was, a mirthless sort of hysterical triumph followed- pain meant she was alive. Somehow.

Then the pain swallowed the triumph. Her eyes flew open, her chest burned as she inhaled sharply. The inhalation turned into gasps, then into wordless sounds of unspecific agonies.

Her eyes refused to focus, her ears were full of water, or cotton, or both, and every inch of her skin was being shredded and then reknit all at once. Above her, two faces loomed, male and female, angry and shouting, panicked. Over her. Over her waking.

She managed the strength to lift one arm, to plead or to strike she wasn't sure, but the sight of it arrested whatever half-formed intent she had. Raw flesh, peeks of muscle, glints of metal and the sheen of new, wet tissue.

With a jolt, Shepard woke. Her real surroundings, not those of the nightmare, assaulted her senses and hauled her firmly into the waking world. Hard metal pilot's seat, her numb ass, the glare of Omega's harsh red exterior lighting through the shuttle's open viewport, and the shrill shrieking of her comm system.

Without moving anything else, for a moment, Shepard closed her eyes again and inhaled slowly. Whatever was on the other end of that comm line, she told herself, she'd be mildly grateful that their interruption had prevented the full playout of that particular nightmare. That memory.

Then Shepard uncoiled from her uncomfortable perch on the hard-angled seat and hit the comm alert.

"Ticket 3458-beta, your berth is open."

The words were in garbled common, a heavy Tuchanka accent permeating the tones, but Shepard understood just fine and breathed a sigh. It was a sigh of neither relief nor aggravation, just an acknowledgment of the end of the day and half of waiting in line for one of the 'free' docking ports of Omega's underbelly to open up. Nothing was ever truly free, of course, especially when in the heart of what was arguably the Terminus' most corrupt cesspit, but it did not require any funds up front. Good, since she had none. Not a single goddamn credit.

Shepard hit the pre-set navigation command that would take her to the correct dock. She glanced to the co-pilot's seat, where her rucksack lay in a discouragingly limp. Two spare clips, a few day's worth of dehydrated rations, a medpack, two outdated stims, and a data recorder. All of it, except the stims, gleaned in the few spare moments she'd dare take while escaping...wherever she'd been.

Her green stare shifted from the sack to her arm. It wasn't raised, now, or skinless. She still tugged the cuff of her sleeve down, over the angry orange-red lines of scar tissue, illuminated faintly from beneath by the cybernetics. Her other hand went up to rub tiredly at her forehead, carefully avoiding letting her fingers go any higher than that. She'd never been vain, but the sight and feel of her bare scalp made her wince every time she was reminded of it. There wasn't even stubble.

When the shuttle was docked, she stood, stretched, and then unclipped a set of tools from her belt. Ignoring the ache in her bones and muscles, she got down and shimmied under the command console. In a few moments, she'd removed what she wanted, wires and cables and all, and had stowed the components in her rucksack. She replaced the access panel she'd removed; with luck, she'd be long gone and mired in the faceless crowds before her inevitable extortionists discovered the missing tech.

When the hatch went up and the ramp went down, Shepard gave the 'welcoming' party standing on the docks a wide grin.

"Thanks for the berth, boys," she said merrily, with cheer she did not feel. She took in their arrayed positions, their squared stances, the lazy proximity of their hands to their weapons. She kept her hands carefully clear of the M-3 at her right thigh. The Predator model was not her favorite, but hey, beggars and choosers and all that.

"Codes and signature," said the batarian at the head of the arch of extortionists. He held out a datapad, head tilted slightly to the side -she ignored the insult- a grin spreading his gnarly maw wider than she thought necessary. "For if there's an emergency. You know, in case we need to move it."

"Uh-huh," she said, not trying to pretend to be fooled. They knew, she knew, they knew she knew, time to get it over with and move on. She moved carefully, slowly forward, not advertising how she tracked all their movements with quick flicks of her eyes behind her eyelashes. She took the datapad, entered in the access codes to the shuttle's systems, and signed it away. Not that it had ever been hers in the first place. By the time an hour had gone, the Cerberus logo on the sides would be history, the craft would be gutted for parts more valuable as scrap resale, and the traceable hull would be chucked into a floating scrapyard around one of the asteroids to become a near-literal needle-in-a-haystack. In a way, they'd be doing her favor; now there was nothing for her pursuers to use to verify she'd ever arrived here.

A day out from the Cerberus base she'd awoken in and escaped from, her routes to any friendly territories had been thoroughly blocked by small fleets of ships bearing the black and orange emblem, or else mercenary groups known to work with the terrorist organization. Going around had not been an option, not on the shuttle's very finite fuel and even more finite supplies. There had even been a blockade around Omega, although a significantly smaller one, as if they'd predicted her reluctance to head somewhere so decidedly unhelpful. She'd been able to slip past them, coasting on fumes to get in line for this laughable deal of a docking agreement.

"Pleasure doing business with you, gentlemen," she said, handing back the datapad.

"Heh," the batarian sneered. "Need directions anywhere?"

She restrained the snort she felt building. Directions to a dark alleyway, or a friend's red sand den? Ha.

"Meeting a friend," she said. "Thanks."

"No problem." Then he was blatantly done with her, turning away and shouting orders to his companions.

Shepard had to work at not showing her reaction to being so summarily dismissed. She kept her hands still when they itched to reach up and finger the nonexistent N7 logo on her nonexistent hardsuit. She hadn't felt the need to prove she'd earned her stripes in a long, long time. She didn't like the feeling any more now than she had then. Walking away from the mercenaries, it was hard not to feel naked. Even with had she been fully suited up and armed to the teeth, she doubted she would have felt adequately prepared to enter the mire of Omega. She'd been here before, once, with half her platoon on a training exercise. For some strange reason, the half a dozen armored Alliance Marines, complete with rocket launchers, had been left alone.

She adopted the attitude of the other denizens she saw, that of alert disinterest. She kept her rucksack at her left side rather than slung onto her back, where it would be an easy target for pickpockets or a slash-and-grab. She kept her right arm and thigh clear for obvious reasons, letting the weapon be visible enough to be a deterrent, but her hand far enough from it to show she wasn't looking for trouble.

Of course, trouble found her. She was hardly surprised. If the universe could, and had, throw a wrench like Saren into a simple recon of a farming colony, then she had hardly expected a stroll through Omega's underbelly to be uneventful. Thankfully, the first to decide to test the obvious newcomer were on the lower end of the intelligence scale. The trio of vorcha didn't even try to sneak up on her, simply stepping clear of the stack of empty crates that seemed to make up half of Omega's structural material.

"Give sack now, or die," one hissed.

"You really don't want to do this," she said, in her most convincing tone. Part menace, part patience, and all foreboding. Harder to do without the butt of her rocket launcher sticking up over her shoulder, or at least a decent shotgun, but she made do with a squared stance and a steady glare. The vorcha peeled back its lips to expose more of its needle-like teeth, and the other two made some sort of choking sound she recognized as their form of laughter. She suppressed a sigh. In the back of her mind, some cruel twist in her own neural pathways thought it would be funny to provide an echo of an old squadmate's sardonic tone, formed around some snarky comment on their opponent's chances of surviving the next few minutes.

She wished she were as confident as that echo of a voice. She was good, but as she was? One sidearm and limited ammo, hospital-esq slacks and long-sleeved thermal, certainly no hardsuit, no omnitool, no teammates…

"Have it your way," she sighed, dropping the sack and kicking it towards them. One vorcha preened with triumph, another snickered wetly, and the third -the speaker- crouched to grab for it. When his head was where she wanted it, Shepard drew her M-3 and let off a trio of rapid shots, right into the bent crown of its head. It fell, dead too quick to regenerate, and the other two sprang back while hissing and snarling. Shepard followed suit, springing towards the one slower to get into cover and still exposed. Her elbow caught it in the throat, a shock of pain rocketing up her arm. She grunted, but didn't retreat, following her elbow with a strike from her other hand. She felt the vorcha equivalent of a windpipe crumple, and while it choked and sputtered, she grabbed for its head and twisted viciously, first a full one-eighty one direction, then back the other way to snap both redundant spinal cords, preventing one from regenerating the other.

Shepard dived behind the crate the dead second vorcha had been aiming for, just as the third recovered its nerve and let off a pair of wild, ill-aimed shots. One ricocheted off the metal crate, the other missed her head, close enough she felt a line of fire burned across her scalp. She checked her gun, scowled, and then pressed against the crate to wait. With only one shot left, she'd have to make it count. Doubtful she'd be able to get close enough to this one like she had with the other to take him out sans any mass accelerated superheated metal shavings.

She held her breath, and waited.

Her patience was rewarded only a few moments later, and she thanked whoever was listening for vorcha stupidity and impatience. She heard him snort and scuffle out from behind his own cover, heard the scrape of claws on metal flooring, and still she waited. She shifted into position, silent as she could be, and when the vorcha's head poked over the top of her crate, she surged upwards and grabbed him around his neck, hauling him down with her own body weight. Her armed hand went up behind him, and she pressed the muzzle into the place between his shoulder blades where his spine was least protected, and released her sole shot. The vorcha went limp almost before he'd truly begun to struggle, she'd been that quick.

Shepard sank back down to the grimy floor, heart pounding. Every inch of her ached, as if she'd been beaten with mallets before getting into a brawl with a krogan. Whatever Cerberus had been doing to her while she'd been unconscious, she wasn't done healing from it.

She couldn't afford to rest, not here. With a well-honed force of will, she stood and spent a few moments going through the possessions of the three new corpses before she went to collect her rucksack. She checked to make sure nothing inside was damaged, then added two more thermal clips to her collection before chucking the spent one and slapping a fresh one home. Then she shouldered her pack and moved on. Into her pocket went her other bit of loot; a credit chit, loaded with enough for a few meals and hopefully some information.

Of all the cheap foods Shepard expected to be able to splurge on, fish had not been among the items considered. Flavorless, oily, unseasoned fish, true, but still- fish. On an asteroid colony turned pirate's den of a space station.

The human who owned and operated the small stand in Omega's market district kept a close eye on the self-contained vat of water behind him. It was ingenious, really. All he'd had to do was acquire a few viable freeze dried eggs, hatch them, breed them, and he had a self-replenishing supply of protein, so long as he kept the water at the right levels of oxygen and pH and kept them fed. At some point, he must have figured out that with a little expansion, he could turn his own private guarantee of survival into a profitable venture, and that was what he had done.

Shepard doubted he'd remain on the lower levels for long, not someone as resourceful as him, but for the meantime she was happy to hand over the comparatively few credits for a hot meal made from something other than reconstituted nutrient pastes and powders.

"Any idea where I can find someone to buy some things?" She asked, handing back the plate and utensils she'd been given.

The fish-seller put the items in a the sanitizer without hardly looking, then gestured vaguely towards the rear of the market labyrinth.

"Harrot," he said. "Or Kenn." He turned away without another word to crack open the vat, spear a wriggling fish inside, and haul it out to be slapped on the butchering board.

"Thanks," she said anyway, and moved away into the throng of market-goers.

Her plan was a simple one. Sell the parts she'd cannibalized from the shuttle, buy passage off Omega to somewhere in Council-friendly space, and present herself to the first Alliance headquarters she could find and let them deal with the red tape of an MIA Marine turning up out of nowhere.

Of course, because it was her, her simple plan turned out to be not so simple the moment she dumped her parts on Harrot's counter. She knew elcor were slow, but after a long moment even she could tell he was stalling as he worked at examining the pieces.

"If there's a problem, I can go somewhere else," Shepard told the shopkeeper.

"Statement: There is no problem."

Then silence. Shepard drummed her fingers on the counter, debating on her next move. Before she had the chance to decide, a presence to her right made her glance out of the corner of her eye. She stiffened, her fingers halting their staccato. The batarian beside her grinned.

"Hello again, friend," he said. She nodded in acknowledgment of the greeting, but said nothing. He looked to the shopkeeper. "Harrot, I hear you found some things for me? That was quick, even for you."

"Offer: Here are the stolen goods, Karoon," said the elcor. "Clarification: I trust this settles our debt?"

"For awhile," said Karoon. He looked back to Shepard. "Did you think we wouldn't check the comm array for missing components? I sent out word to all the shops to be on the lookout for these very items."

"These parts were already separated from the shuttle before I signed it over to you," she told him calmly. "Check the shuttle's maintenance records, and compare them to the timestamp on the forfeiture I signed."

The batarian frowned. Timestamps were easy to forge, of course. That wasn't what had him frowning; it was her defiance, such as it was. She doubted he was used to anyone not simply skulking away.

"Look, let's make this simple," Shepard said. "How about I sell them to you, instead? At a loss, of course." She only need a fraction of what the parts were worth to get a ticket off this rock, anyway. "You still resell them for a profit, and I don't have to wash the filth off my fingers after I gouge out a set of your eyes for trying to cheat me twice in one day."

Karoon laughed. Then he made an offer, one of a non-monetary denomination.

Shepard punched him in the jaw.

In the end, she got away with all but one of the smaller parts that had been grabbed for by an unseen opportunist in the brawl following Shepard's initial blow. Her spare medpac had gone missing, and one of the stims had broken, but she got away with the important things.

She found an alcove -made of more crates- to duck into and wait out the chaos. She spent the time fuming, calculating how much time she would now lose to waiting out a reasonable period before she could try selling the parts again. If he really had sent word to every salvage dealer, then trying another shop would just be inviting another unwanted encounter.

Like a criminal waiting for the heat on a stolen item to cool before fencing, she'd have to bide her time. She did a few quick calculations and decided, if she was careful, she could make it on the funds she already had. She could, of course, use them to purchase a comm line to a nearby Alliance outpost, and have them pick her up, but then she'd have to pray that Cerberus wasn't watching all such communications and got to her first.

Shepard wasn't much for prayer.

After a few hours of deliberate aimless wandering to throw off any tails, Shepard found a run-down hostel and paid for a closet for the night. She called it that, rather than a room, because that was what it was. A closet. Had always been a closet. But, it had a door that locked, and -more importantly- an access port for the local news network, or what passed for a news network at any rate. If the closet had been cheap, then the fee to have that access port turned on had been outrageous.

Shepard deposited both herself and her sack on the cot that took up most of the small space, and pulled the orange screen on its swivel-arm over to her. She didn't let herself think of sleep. If she had to wait on acquiring funds and a way off Omega, then she'd move on to the next thing she needed; information.

The very first bit of information was the biggest, and it wasn't what she had expected. The date.

She blinked at the digits. Checked that the calendar was set right. Blinked again.

Then she cursed, and braced herself for the next thing she looked up; herself. Most people wouldn't be able to search their own name on any local network on any planet, colony, or station and expect a result unless they were a politician, entertainer, or some other famous archetype. Most people also weren't her.

The results of her search came back, and Shepard sighed. KIA was a hell of lot more paperwork and red tape than MIA. Someone in the Alliance was going to hate her when she showed back up again, very much alive. It wasn't like she could blame them for the upgrade -downgrade?- in status. It had been almost two years, after all.

She kept searching, in part to keep her thoughts moving. Shepard had a mind that had contemplated things that most humans would never dream of, but even she didn't think pondering her own supposed death and missing two years of her life would be an easy ride. The names of her shipmates mostly came back with no more information that what she either knew already or could have guessed for herself.

Jeff 'Joker' Moreau, resistant to the limelight of being the Savior of the Citadel's pilot, grounded after Alchera pending an investigation before he'd simply quit the Alliance. Pressley, deceased in the same attack that had supposedly killed her. Tali'zorah Nar Rayya, returned to the Fleet following a near-death adventure with a bacteria contracted through a suit breach, gained during the same attack that had killed Pressley. Garrus Vakarian, last heard to be resuming duties at C-Sec amid rumors of an application to the Spectres. Urdnot Wrex, arrested for drunk and disorderly on the Citadel, almost trespassed for life (she sensed Garrus' intervention there), then disappeared, reportedly to Tuchanka. Liara T'soni, gone home to Thessia to tend to her deceased mother's estates.

Of anyone else, there was hardly any information at all, if Shepard found their names to begin with. She shied away from any mention of her own name, though it was hard to filter out the information completely. By the time she was done, she was aware of a scholarship fund to the Alliance Academy in her name, founded by Anderson, a petition by the New Church of the Uni-Racial Graces to canonize her as a saint, and the record-breaking auction of her personal collection of antique shot glasses.

The last one made her wince. She'd been collecting those since she'd been a kid. Well, at least the lot of them had been kept together.

Shepard shut down the glowing orange screen, and pushed it away. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, head hanging low between her shoulders. She inhaled deeply, slowly, as she cracked her fingers one by one.

Two years.

Well.

Damn.

She stayed two nights in the hostel, not even leaving the closet. It should have driven her stir-crazy, but aside from the paranoia that came from listening at doors, it actually wasn't that bad. Mostly, she knew, because she needed the rest. The aches and pains in her joints and in her muscles didn't improve, but fully rested she was better able to deal with it.

On the third day, Shepard returned to the last place she'd seen the fish-seller. After living in a dark box surviving on dehydrated rations, one of those oily, flavorless fried fishes sounded divine.

She found what was left of his stand, cold and scorched. The vat in the back was broken open, the floor still damp. A few rotting fish added to the odor of the stale air. More than a few streaks of blood darkened the ground. They were thick and numerous enough that she doubted the man was still alive. Shepard clenched a fist, staring at those streaks and those dead fish, then moved on. There was nothing she could do, now.

She found the other salvage seller the fish-monger had recommended, feeling somehow obligated to visit him first. She avoided Harrot's, for obvious reasons, but the lanky quarian she found after following directions to 'Kenn's Salvage' was a surprise in and of itself. There were only two reasons a quarian would spend enough time away from the Fleet to set up their own business, and he didn't seem old enough to be an outcast. Pilgrimage, however, seemed equally unlikely- most were smart enough to head to places of relative safety, or a remote colony of some kind where crime was kept low by simple virtue of a low population count. Not Omega.

"I can swing six-fifty for the lot," the quarian told her, failing at sounding casual. She suppressed her amusement.

"They're worth more than triple that," she said. In truth, closer to quadruple, but a glance around at Kenn's open-air shop told her that the parts she'd placed on his counter equalled more than half of the rest of his inventory combined in terms of value.

The youth lifted his shoulders in a human shrug, hands raised placatingly. "I've got to make a profit," he replied.

"Twelve-hundred," she said. Enough for passage and then a bit, giving them both room to negotiate down.

Kenn shook his head. "Six-fifty," he repeated.

Shepard drummed her fingers on the counter. Harmless as the kid seemed, if his ineptitude at the concept of haggling kept her from getting off this rock…

As if sensing her frustration, Kenn shifted from foot to foot before saying, "Look, I do want them, and I'd give you more if I could, but business hasn't been great and just a few days ago one of the big extortion gangs sent out a memo looking for parts just like these. I won't even be able to put them out for sale for weeks, and I've been trying to save up to get off Omega and continue my pilgrimage."

That speech, in and of itself, told Shepard she was in trouble. The kid was just that, a kid, and in over his head. The fact that he'd survived this long was impressive, really. Shepard thought of the blood stains at the fish-seller's stand.

Quarians had red blood, too.

Shepard sighed.

This. This right here was how she got into trouble. This was going to bite her in the ass, she just knew it. Of course, that didn't stop her.

"I think I can help you," she said. "Help both of us, actually."

With a likely well-earned sense of wariness, Kenn said, "I'm listening."

"Your problems happen to be pretty much my problems," Shepard told him. "I need to get off Omega as soon as possible. Given how hard it must be to get ahold of dextro suit-compatible nutrient packs, I imagine you also need to get somewhere else, sooner rather than later."

"I've had nothing but nala flavor for weeks," Kenn lamented, shoulders slumping. "Do you have any idea what nala tastes like? Feet. It tastes like feet. Elcor feet."

Shepard snorted. "Ever try dehydrated potatoes? I feel your pain." Potatoes were one of the few levo-protein foods typically safe for dextro races to ingest, they simply provided no nutrition of any sort.

"How about I give you these parts," Shepard went on, noting Kenn's sudden stillness. "And in exchange you let me help you run this shop. I stay here, eat here, we pool our resources and watch each other's backs. Then, in a few weeks when it's safe, we sell the parts and escape this cesspit together, and go our separate ways."

The quarian hesitated visibly. She didn't blame him; if she was telling the truth, it was a great deal for both of them. If not, if she worked for a competitor, or one of the merc gangs, he was setting himself up to lose everything.

Theoretically, she was risking the same. The difference was, if he double-crossed her, she could take him out, and he knew it. The reverse could not be said.

Just as Shepard was about to tell him to take his time, she'd be back later, the quarian stuck out a three-fingered hand. Smiling at the human gesture, Shepard took it.

When your life depends on something, regularly, you get good at it. Shepard's life, and the lives of others, had often depended on her ability to judge a threat and how she would measure against it. Such a judgment, involving Kenn, had fueled her offer, believing that barring an unforeseen surprise he'd be no match for her, even as relatively unarmed as she was.

When Kenn showed her to the small living quarters tucked behind his small shop, she was forced to reevaluate her earlier assessment of the youth. Situated on high set shelves to either side of the door, a pair of three-legged automated turrets peered at her through polished lenses. There was a high-pitched whine that made her step back. Kenn brought up his omnitool, entered a command, and the turrets lost interest in her, the whine dying down.

Maybe it wasn't such a surprise the kid was still alive.

"I've set them to recognize you as friendly," he said. "For today. I'll have to reset it every day, so don't try to come back here without me."

Shepard grinned at him. He could very easily set them to recognize her permanently; he was letting her know he didn't fully trust her, yet. She was liking Kenn more and more.

"Fair enough," she acknowledged, then set to examining the small apartment, such as it was. Not much more than a single room with an alcove for cooking machinery, and that looked hardly used. Not surprising, given the race of its sole occupant. The bed that was pushed into the far corner was rumpled, but the blankets had been left in place. Again, not surprising; Kenn's suit would regulate his temperature better than any blankets, which would just get tangled with his suit at any rate.

"You can have the couch, and that locker is empty," Kenn told her, gesturing to where the long black piece of furniture was pushed against the wall opposite the bed. On the floor next to it, a dented footlocker gaped open. When she tried it, the biosignature lock on it seemed to still work. She stowed her rucksack, locked it, then looked back at Kenn expectantly. He gestured for her to follow him back out to the shop, which she did.

They spent the rest of the day with her new coworker and room-mate showing her how he ran his shop, where things were, and how his kiosk program worked. Shepard was briefly amused that now, at her age, at this point in her life, she essentially had procured what amounted to a retail job. If Kenn wondered at her sudden mirth, he didn't ask about it.

"So what do you do in between customers?" She asked. She glanced, discreetly, to where an unusually tall turian in full armor seemed to be heading for their shop, carrying an overflowing crate. Kenn didn't seem to notice. She suppressed a sigh- the kid's situational awareness needed work, turrets or no turrets.

"Repair stuff, mostly," he answered, gesturing to a work bench behind the counter. "That's actually where most of my money comes from, when Harrot isn't undercutting me. People bring me things to fix, or-"

"Or to make disappear," interrupted a new voice in a flanging drawl. The armored turian she'd been keeping tabs on, out of the corner of her eye, set his burden on the counter, and for the first time she got a good look at him.

Shepard froze.

"Archangel!" Kenn greeted excitedly, turning and taking note of the newcomer at last. "Keelah, what happened to you?"

Shepard wanted to know the same. The turian's left mandible was bandaged and there was bruising around his neck, some swelling making one fringe spine stand up awkwardly. He flicked his good mandible in the turian equivalent of a wry grin.

"Heard humans are into something called autoerotic asphyxiation, thought I'd give it a try," he answered flippantly.

Kenn snorted. "Meaning you let a human merc get his hands on you, literally."

"I didn't let him, exactly. He was just…very insistent." Then, the turian finally looked at her. Shepard felt her expectations soar...and plummet.

He blinked ice blue eyes at her, but other than that…

Nothing.

Garrus Vakarian was on Omega.

Garrus Vakarian was tangling with mercs.

Garrus Vakarian...didn't recognize Shepard.