Trigger warning marked in text for mention of past atrocities at the hands of slavers.

Torin - Torini plural. Male turian of the age of majority (15)

Tarin - Tarini plural. Female turian of the age of majority (15)

Stulti mendur - Literal: foolish lies. Vernacular: Bullshit. Short form: Stulti

Precor - Damned. Cursed.

Spurin - (plural: spurin) Equivalent of bastard, but in the sense of an unpleasant and despicable person rather than the sense of being of illegitimate birth.

Obluvis - One who is senile or absent-minded. Slang: Idiot

Tarc - Vulgar expletive equivalent to shit.

Rylamia - A hardy, ground hugging shrub with woody stalks, spiky leaves and tiny, white, star-shaped flowers. The flowers are harvested to make tea, a favourite beverage while available. Also grown to process into sugar.

Two hours later:

Garrus watched Sophie Hakansson through the two way mirror for over an hour before going into the interrogation room. The entire situation set his teeth grinding, and something about the girl just added to what his boss called 'the screaming willies'. She was hiding something from him, a rare enough occurrence to be noteworthy, and he needed a better read on her before going in. After what happened to her sister, cops would amount to nothing more than spurin trying to get in her way. In her world, killers played the hero roles.

Not that it mattered, but just maybe they did in his as well.

He crossed his arms and slouched in his chair, broadcasting a careless nonchalance despite her not being able to see him. Energy travelled and infected everyone around it, and he needed her calm and cooperative.

Within five minutes of arriving, when he heard her stomach growling through the recording equipment, he sent a patrolman out to bring the young woman some lunch. Fifteen minutes later, Nihlus set a burger and fries from the most popular restaurant on the Citadel in front of her. Garrus's partner smiled, nodded in answer to her thanks, then left the atmosphere in the room calm and grateful. Despite his drinking, Nihlus was the only one Garrus trusted to read the situation and not set everything back with random stulti conversation or questions.

Sophie tore into the food, shoving it in like she hadn't eaten in weeks. When the meal vanished in under two minutes, leaving her staring at the wrappers as though she wanted nothing more than to pick them up and lick them clean, he sent for another, making himself comfortable in the observation room.

"Turn on the vid screen for her," Garrus ordered, shooting a quick glance over his shoulder at the tech. "Let's see where Sophie Hakansson's mind is."

"Even the porn channels?" the torin asked without looking away from his screens.

Garrus twisted in his seat, laser stare drilling through the back of the tech's head until the torin squirmed in his chair. Sneaking a peek over his shoulder, the tech shrugged—slanted and pissed off—and looked back to his computer.

"Okay, fine, no porn channels," the tech whispered, muttering under his breath as he carried out his duties. "Precor SI's, all so fucking perfect, think they know every fucking thing."

"Really? You asked if you should open the porn channels for a barely grown teenager who was arrested while trying to find her sister at a slaughter-brothel, and I'm the spurin? Dear fucking spirits." After listening to a couple more grumbles, Garrus kicked the back of the fellow's chair. "Shut the fuck up. I'm sitting less than a metre away, I can hear the names you're muttering, obluvis."

The interrogation room door opening pulled him away from giving the chair another kick … and maybe aiming a bit higher. Garrus turned to watch Sophie's reaction. A crooked grin answered the girl's incredulity as Nihlus placed another meal, a chocolate milkshake, and the remote for the vid screen on the table.

"My partner will be a while longer, yet. He's still working on making sure the slaves we found there are taken care of." A tiny lie. Nihlus was seeing to the freed slaves, his skills and compassion of the most use there for the time being. As much as neither one of them could ever admit it—just never—Garrus needed Nihlus. The older torin formed the heart of their team. Sure, he had brains and instinct to spare, but he filled in the gap where Garrus lacked heart.

Nihlus gave the girl a casual, friendly wink. "Eat up, and make yourself comfortable. The vid screen is on." He spun on his heel and marched out before she could do anything more than sputter a couple of times. Garrus's grin tilted a little. No one could set the atmosphere of an interrogation faster than his partner.

Maybe it was time for Nihlus to get a PI license as well. They'd make a decent partnership, and maybe Nihlus might actually find reasons to stay sober if he didn't need to deal with horror on a daily basis.

Sophie looked up at the mirror. "I know you're in there, and you're not going to be able to bribe my cooperation with burgers and milkshakes." Still, she lifted the shake, toasting the window before taking a long pull on the straw. A soft moan purred from her throat, her eyes closing as she savoured the flavour. "But thanks. They're delicious."

"She's got your number," the tech said, his chuckle high and delighted.

Garrus opened his rage tank's valve a little, anger a smidge too molten for the situation trickling out. "Shut up or get out." Garrus kicked the tech's chair again, hard enough to throw the torin into the console. He slammed that valve shut.

The tech squawked. "Tarc! Do you have to be such spurin?"

"Yes." Garrus turned back to the show inside the room and reclined in his chair, lifting his feet onto the narrow desk under the mirror. Sophie's second lunch disappeared at a much more moderate pace than the first. "Stow the commentary or leave."

The door behind Garrus opened, the glaring light from the corridor silhouetting the large frame of his lieutenant, Joryn. "You're not in there yet?" the human asked. The man stepped up to the glass, standing with his feet braced apart and arms crossed. "She eats like she's been starved."

Garrus watched his boss, appreciating the air of calm competency that Joryn brought into the room with him. "I'm giving her time to settle in, get some ownership of the space," he replied. "She's going to be hostile and defensive, so the more control she feels she has, the better."

Joryn chuckled and reached up to rub the short, dark growth of hair that covered his cheeks and chin. "You're full of shit, Vakarian. Just get her to talk." He returned to the door, hesitating with his hand on the control. "The council's losing their shit over this massacre happening a stone's throw from the tower and with important diplomats staying in the hotel. We need to solve this one and fast."

The SI chuffed. "You can thank the council for their concern, but I've been a clown in this circus for a while now. I'll get the job done, but I won't be rushed into some half-assed investigation. It'll take as long as it takes." Garrus dropped his feet to the floor and shoved his ass to the back of the chair. "Maybe, if they're concerned about the safety of their diplomatic visitors, they should put them up in a hotel that doesn't boast a sex slave abattoir in the basement." He cut a sharp glance toward the door. "Thanks for stopping by."

"You're an asshole," Joryn grumbled as he stepped out the door. "Just catch these bastards."

Garrus gave the tech's chair a preemptive kick before the torin could say anything. His life came complete with the commentary: deluxe edition, he didn't need any extra. Leaning forward, he braced his forearms across his thighs and watched Sophie finish her lunch. She turned on the vid screen, fiddled with it for a bit, then settled on some family-based sitcom.

He narrowed his eyes. She kept her emotions well in hand: pulse and respiration slow and even, her face schooled into a passive mask. Had she been trained? If so, the landscape might be prove a lot more treacherous than he imagined. Of course, she'd been searching for a slave. That meant dealing with slave brokers and all sorts of scary people who took advantage of fear. Her skills may have come from self-preservation or been provided by the helpful people assisting her search.

He shifted, squinting further. Something about the girl set off his alarms despite his belief that she hadn't laid a finger on the dead slavers: something deeper than her control. Yes, he saw all the expected emotions, tiny hints of them coming across in the unconscious, contemptuous curl at the corner of her lip, fear showing in the way she swallowed, anxiousness in her jaw tension and restless hands. All of those emotions registered as appropriate to her situation.

What he didn't understand was the guilt and shame he saw layered over the rest. He guessed that the reasons for both lie in the secret that she kept trapping behind the steepled fingers pressed to her mouth: humans called it a shushing gesture. He pushed up onto his feet. Time to get in there while her full belly lulled her into a more relaxed frame of mind. Aware of his manipulation or not, some defenses couldn't help lowering: a fact true of all species in a variety of different situations. Turians, as Nihlus could bear witness, could be talked into giving up just about anything in the moments after orgasm.

Garrus cleared his throat and paused with his hand on the door control. He didn't want to go in there with that on his mind. He'd yet to betray himself to that level, and it made him uncomfortable enough to throw off his entire interview. After a couple of long breaths, he hit the control and walked through the door.

"Hello, Sophie," he said, carefully modulating his subvocals to weave in a fine thread of compassion and comfort. "May I call you Sophie?" He glanced toward the television. "My name is SI Garrus Vakarian. I trust you've been kept comfortable?"

She shrugged and slammed her arms across her chest, erecting a prickly wall of attitude between them. "Sure, as comfortable as someone can be locked in an interrogation room." Leaning back, she took a long draw on the milkshake, watching him from under heavy eyelids. "And, yeah, you can call me Sophie. It'll help in the bonding, really forge a connection between us."

He cleared his throat, allowing a strained chuckle loose as he focused on his omnitool. Glancing up, he jutted his chin out at the wrappers. "You eat like you're starving." Leaning back, he slid lower in the chair, opening his body toward the door. "My information says that you've got a job with Shepard Industrial." He narrowed his eyes to help disguise his regard, watching every muscle that moved under her skin, every twitch of her vitals. "They don't have a reputation for keeping their employees below the poverty level."

Sophie shrugged, pulling one ear to her shoulder, then slouched into her chair. "Shepard Industrial pays well and offers excellent benefits, but searching for a slave is expensive."

Garrus opened a file, pretending to look up information already known and filed in his memory. "Shepard Industrial runs a charitable foundation to help reunite families disrupted by the slave trade … the … uh … Melissa Foundation. Couldn't you have gone to them?"

"Sure, and I did. That call is the reason I'm working there." She let out a long sigh and set the remote down on the table. "Ms. Shepard even met with me herself." A faint, affectionate smile drifted across her face before a twitch of fear erased it, and she shushed herself again.

He relaxed his shoulders; they'd started climbing toward his ears. "She treat you well? She's got a reputation for being quite the philanthropist." He'd dug up and read every article he could find on the heir to the Shepard Industrial fortune. Born on Earth, parents dead before her thirteenth birthday ... her history painted quite the tragic tale.

Sophie nodded, relaxing enough to allay his concern that her reaction owed itself to being afraid of Shepard. "She's a great lady … helped me track where all the slaves taken from my colony ended up. Traced the dealer who sold Anna on Khar'shan."

"But, you still spend all your grocery money on the avenues Shepard can't walk down and maintain her organization's charitable status?" He angled his tone toward 'the law has its limits'. When she gulped and slapped her steepled fingers over her mouth again, he just sighed and shook his head. "That's the thing with the law. It's a set of shackles. For the most part the shackles just seem like supports, but then—"

"We hit a situation that falls outside those carefully drawn lines, and we're helpless to do anything about it?" She dropped her hands, her cocked eyebrow even more biting than her tone. "Right, like I'm going to fall for that line from a cop." A bladed chuckle cut across the table. "After the batarians hit our colony, the Alliance sent me to about three hundred shrinks and social workers." The brow dropped, betraying a fleeting moment of honest vulnerability and sorrow. "Trust me, I've seen every 'getting you to spill your guts' tactic out there." When she looked up, her brown eyes had closed off once more. "You're going to need to up your game, SI."

Garrus shrugged, catching his amused mandible flick before it happened. "If it was a game, sure." He challenged her with a raised brow of his own, his heart speeding up a little, a trickle of adrenaline worming its way through his veins. "It's the truth. I work within the law as much as I can, but sometimes … ." He chuffed. "Well, when I walk into a scene like that hotel, I feel the shackles. The dead people were all the worst sort of spurin. They steal the young, slaughter the old … breed people like drellak. They got exactly what they deserve."

She snorted. "Only if they suffered like hell before they bled out."

He sniffed and shifted a little, not sure if her slip was a trap, but walking into it nonetheless. "Our medical examiner says they were conscious and paralyzed. They watched the others killed before it was their turn."

A smile cracked the armour for a split second, confirming it. She hadn't been in the hotel when the slaughter went down. Still, at the very least, she suspected the identities of the perpetrators.

"So, you found some information through these other sources … or maybe through Shepard … that those bastards had your sister?" He let his head loll to the left a little. "Were you the one who took care of the slaves in the basement?" Squinting, he examined the shame and guilt as it showed itself. "Whoever pulled them down and gave them medigel is a hero in my book. I've never seen anything like the atrocities going on in those rooms."

Another piece fell into place: she'd been rummaging through cupboards when the officers responded to the call. Searching for more medical supplies.

"The hanar?" she whispered, glancing up, just a quick, soft opening before the wall slammed up again.

Rolling comfort through his subvocals, he shook his head. "I'm sorry, she was too badly injured." Ducking his head, trying to capture her gaze, he smiled, soft and sad. "But she died being taken care of and treated with kindness. She wasn't suffering any longer."

Moving with a sudden burst of violent speed, Sophie shoved away from the table, throwing her chair backwards. "What the fuck does that matter?" she demanded, striding to the mirror, then to the door. Pacing furiously, she kept tapping her fingertips against her lips: her secret trying hard to find its way out into the glaring industrial lighting.

Garrus signalled for the tech to lower the light level a little. "Nothing else matters more," he replied but then shrugged. "Of course, it won't seem like that. Not with your sister still out there." He brought up the report Sophie had filed with the trafficking division and sent it to the vid screen. "Anna Hakansson, ten years old when she was taken."

"She'll be thirteen now if she's still alive." Sophie stopped pacing at the vid screen, setting herself to face it head on, arms crossed, feet wide, legs braced. Her determination tugged at the old, bitter part of him that insisted on clinging to the worst case scenario for everything.

"Look, kid, I'm the last person in the galaxy to coat reality in a thick layer of rylamia, but your sister is alive, and she's not in a place like that." Sophie whirled to face him, her expression calling stulti, but he saw more there … recognition. He nodded, giving her a wry smile. "Oh, heard that before, have you?" Holding a hand out toward her chair, he waited for her to sit. "The Melissa Foundation tell you that?"

The metal chair legs creaked as she thumped down into the seat. "It's bullshit. How can either you or the foundation know she's not in a meat grinder like that." Very real pique drilled a hole straight through his brow plate, so heated that he almost reached up to scratch the spot.

"Because I cut my teeth coming up through trafficking. I know how those bastards work." He rolled his shoulders through a shrug. "Your sister is too young, too healthy, too strong, and too pretty to be dragged into a cutter's den."

"What about the hanar and the salarian?" she demanded, a slight, haughty edge poking at him with her evidence to the contrary. "What about all the rest of those people?"

He relaxed instead of meeting her aggression. "All of the people in that basement were useless in the standard sex trade. They're considered specialty buys." He winced a little at the baldness of that term. "Most of the time, the fact that hanar and salarians have no use in the sex trade is very good news for them." The long breath that preceded the bad news felt like a razor dragging up his throat. "Sometimes, it's very bad news."

"So what you're saying is that my sister is too useful as a regular whore or broodmare to end up somewhere like that?" When he responded with nothing more than the slightest mandible twitch, she leaned forward against the table, her face a mask of smartass layered over white hot fury. "Anyone ever told you that you suck at comforting people?"

Garrus nodded. "Yeah, that's usually my partner's department. I'm the brutal truth department." He gave her a moment to settle back into her chair. "How did you find out about the hotel?" Leaning forward, he crossed his arms on the tabletop. Time to stop coddling and press on her affection for Shepard. "You find out from Shepard? Did the Melissa Foundation let you go into that meat grinder?"

"No!" Genuine horror. Good. "I overheard someone say that they were talking to C-Sec about that hotel. I went early … wanted to sneak in, check for Anna before the cops screwed it up and the bad guys disappeared." She leaned in closer, her voice dropping into her chest, heavy with menace. "I wish I'd had the chance to slit some throat. Those bastards killed my parents and grandparents because they were considered too old to be useful. I'd stick my hands into their blood and paint my damned face with it, so if you're going to go after anyone, you come after me, cop."

Pushing off the table, Garrus nodded. "So you overheard someone planning to go to C-Sec? Or maybe you overheard someone planning to get there before C-Sec." He shrugged when her face full of fury turned to stone. "Hey, I understand. I'd pin medals on every one of the people who went into that place and took those bastards out."

She laughed and threw herself back hard enough that her chair rocked. She pressed a fist to her mouth, stifling a retch. The scent of digesting lunch wafted across the table, tweaking his gag reflex. Well, good to know it still worked for something. He turned to the mirror and gestured for a bucket. Nihlus would be watching. Time to bring in Team Compassion.

{TW}"You don't know anything, cop." She shook her head, the gesture filling the air with shrapnel: sorrow sharpened by three cycles of anger and desperate fear. "Until you've held your raped mother in your arms, your hands pressed to her throat, trying to keep her from bleeding out, crying so hard you vomit all over her corpse, you have no right to tell me you understand anything." {End TW}

"Fair enough." He glanced up at Nihlus who set the bucket down on the floor next to Sophie's chair before crouching next to her. Nihlus laid a hand on the girl's shoulder, Sophie surprising Garrus completely when she let it go unremarked. He swallowed a small boulder, envying his partner his ability to connect with other people on that ephemeral level where the spiritualists said they were all the same. Where Garrus observed, Nihlus felt.

"Are you in any danger from the people you followed there?" he asked, cocking his head to meet her anger with sincere concern. "They know we brought you in, and if you have even the slightest doubt that you're safe, tell me. We can put you up somewhere."

Sophie's fingers shushed herself yet again, that time, her fingers trembled. Definitely time to quit. He possessed enough to move on: most importantly the fact that she truly hadn't been involved until after the fact.

Garrus leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. "Is the address we have for you valid?" When she nodded, her spine snapping straight, chin tilting up, he returned it. "Good. I'll have someone take you home, and … like I said, if you're concerned, I can have someone keep an eye on your building."

The interrogation room door opened, a blistering wind swirling through. "That won't be necessary, Senior Investigator," the intruder said. "Miss Hakansson will be coming home with me, and I have the best security on the Citadel." A slender, gloved hand reached out to hover in front of his face.

Surprised into a sort of tasered, tingling numbness, he followed the hand to the arm. The well, muscled arm led to a bare shoulder and a cascade of long, dark copper hair that tumbled over it in glistening waves. He pushed himself up out of the chair, forcing his hands down onto the table top just in case they tried to accept that hair's invitation to run his talons over it, to feel the silken texture against bare hide.

Instead, he shoved his reactions aside and forced himself to meet the brilliant, keenly-sharp blue eyes that smiled at him above slightly pursed, bright red lips. His stare slid to the left side of her face. Her features on that side hid behind an elegantly painted, porcelain mask. "And you are?" he asked, his voice catching on the back of his suddenly sand-coated tongue.

The woman's smile widened as she offered her hand with a little more emphasis. "Jane Shepard, president of the Melissa Foundation. Pleased to meet you."