A/N: Okay, i know i've been away for a while and this is overdue, but due to my current occupation, i may not be able to update more than once every two months, until summer at least. Sorry guys...

Anyway. For me, i'd consider this just half a chapter, since i originally planned to do a lot more, but hey, i had to release something ;)

And looking back, there are a lot of things i'm not satisfied with. The first two chapters are going waaay too fast. They could've been a lot more detailed than that...

Getting back to Snyder's position with my… "Captive" proved slightly difficult, since i couldn't rely on my stealth abilities for the moment. Not to mention the fact that they must have had noticed she had disappeared and where looking for her. I had to wait for some time hiding in a basement with the unconscious blue babe for an opening between their patrols, while Snyder kept bugging me on the radio for "status updates". This guy was really starting to get annoying.

Obviously he was not only here to relay intel on the aliens' capabilities and intentions to Alliance command, he was also reporting about my capabilities, although he never mentioned it to me directly. But come on. He thought he could fool me into believing that he was only observing the aliens? That suit has more sensors built in it than an entire fleet of fighter jets, along with a semi-sentient (or was it?) AI to sift through all the data gathered. As soon as he made passive scans on me after the first time I came back from combat, I knew that something was up, although I didn't mention it. After all, it was logical. I was their new toy on the field, it was only normal that they wanted to know just what they could do with it.

Anyway, I told him to shut the fuck up. And then I told him I was bringing someone home.

Hah.

I was only communicating with him via voice communications, but already I could tell he was dumbfounded about just who I had with me, eventhough I didn't go into great details as to how human my captive was. It would have been too much for him to comprehend after having already been told that on top of that she spoke English. After that I cut the communication. He already had enough to make a preliminary report to the higher-ups and his questions could wait until I got back.

While doing this and hiding, I took a moment to examine further the Smurfette lying on the ground of some basement. She was still unconscious, but breathing. Fortunately I didn't hit too hard, which, when you knew that with that suit I could punch through walls one-handed, was quite an achievement in itself. She had a sticky purple substance leaking from her nose. Purple blood? Cool. Saves me having to take it myself.

I took some on my fingers to let the suit do its thing. Interfacing. Analyzing. Computing. I looked at some of the results as they appeared on my HUD. Funny. Same DNA structure than us earthly creatures. And about half the amino-acids are comparable to a human's. Along with the general look of her, and what I scanned of her internal body structure, I nearly thought for a moment that I was standing in front of homo sapiens' lost cousin. But as far as I knew, she certainly didn't came from Earth, and the remaining differences were just too great for her to simply be some kind of genetic experiment. So I had to accept the fact that converging evolution was not only the dream of a lunatic, although I had to suspend my disbelief to do so. And believe me, doing so when half of your brain is occupied by room-temp superconducting material that is part of a synthetic neural network capable of treating information faster than any brain made of flesh is hard. And I'm just stating a fact.

Something else came up on the scan. Relatively large amounts of… Element zero? Wasn't this shit highly toxic? Then why the hell was she literally laced with the stuff? Or… Hah. Mass effect fields… The way she attacked me at first… The blue aura… Yeah. ANALYZIS COMPLETE indeed, SECOND. She could literally move stuff with her mind. Come to think of it, that also explained her getup. Partly. She didn't really need armor if she could just soak up projectiles by creating mass effect fields to complement her shields. But that still didn't explain why it was so… Leathery and form fitting. (A/N: think of the asari commandos of ME1. Hawt.) Anyway. That last information was definitely something that took my attention. I could already feel SECOND running scenarios about the probable fighting capabilities given by such an ability in the background of my mind. And the prospects were not good for me. Good thing I got lucky at our little first encounter.

Now Tleilax couldn't tell if he should be feeling scared or pissed off. In less than a standard day, he took control of an alien colony on behalf of the Hierarchy with little to no trouble, and THEN he lost more than ten percent of his troops and some of his armor to an enemy whose abilities seemed supernatural and to which they had caused no casualty so far. And to add insult to injury, all the reports spoke about ONE of them. There have never been more than that sighted at once, and yet the mayhem caused was beyond comprehension. This… Whatever… If only it only had its cloaking ability, it wouldn't be so much trouble. But it seemed that it always knew where all its foes were. That I could change position extremely fast. That despite having what seemed like a subpar shield, it could soak up bullets like a sponge and not go down. And that it had reaction times that were very short. Not to mention that it appeared as if some of his men had been literally crushed with bare hands. Not even krogans could do that to a turian.

And then, he learned that Vasira had disappeared without a trace after that last incident. His one and only chance to establish quickly a successful communication between them and these aliens vanishing without even having been helpful, despite successfully gaining their language.

Spirits.

And to top it all off, now his men were nervous, discussing orders about patrolling the area and not wanting to move in groups of anything less than thirty men. They were scared. Scared turians. It was the first time Tleilax had seen such a thing. But he couldn't really blame them, when it seemed that they reduced to the role of preys in some kind of hunting game.

He had to call reinforcements. It certainly signified the end of his rise in the Hierarchy, but at this moment he couldn't care less. Not to mention he owed it to his men, if only for the morale boost of knowing that someone was actually doing something about the situation.

He had to call in the cabals.

Finally I'm reaching Snyder's position with my captive, who still hadn't regained consciousness. I'm still a hundred meters from him when he calls me on the radio.

"Uh… Alcatraz, you spoke about an alien captive right?"

Hah. Ican feel him all confused already.

"Affirmative." He'll just have to see for himself.

I finally reach the hideout, and I lay her against a tree, still unconscious.

Even through his helmet, I can feel Snyder trying to get a good look at her in the obscurity. When he realizes the "alien-ness" of our friend, I can see the surprise in his body language. Obviously he cannot believe his eyes. I don't blame him. I had a hard time myself, and I see the full spectrum. He recovered from the shock after a few long seconds and looked at me.

"So… Uh… What do we do about that?"

"Easy enough. We're here to get intel, right? This is our intel source. Open a channel to Williams, I'm going to interrogate."

Soon after, general Williams had the shock of his life when he saw the images Snyder was transmitting back with his helmet's cam.

"Alcatraz, you are sure you can handle this? This is a High Value Target. We need to evacuate it… Her… whatever to a proper facility."

"And don't I know it, general. But if you send a ship now, I doubt it's cloaking systems will be useful during atmospheric reentry and it'll be detected. So unless you want to cut this mission short, we'll have to do it here."

"You're right. Proceed when ready, but please try to keep her intact. We can't afford to waste an occasion like this. Be rough if necessary, but not too much. Snyder will monitor the interrogation and we will remain in radio contact throughout. Over."

This was going to be interesting.

Vasira was slowly regaining her senses, but everything was still blurry. She could feel water trickling on her head. It must have been what had woken her up… How did she get into that situation? She couldn't remember… Ah yes. The call from Tleilax… The new alien species on some Goddess-forsaken colony…The forced meld… And then the attack. And the Thing in the alley.

That Thing. From what she was slowly remembering, she attacked it with her biotics successfully, but then it… Broke out of stasis? Was that even possible? Even krogans couldn't do that. There had to be an explanation.

She felt her hands tied in her back.

And her legs too.

Slowly she opened her eyes. It was still nightime and she couldn't make out much in the dark. But she still noticed the imposing figure standing in front of her.

It was the Thing.

For a moment, it didn't do anything. It just stood there, contemplating her getting back to her senses, and then it intoned in the human's language.

"Enough. She's awake."

Just then, she noticed the human that was standing beside her pouring water on her face, likely to wake her up. This one wore a more standard looking suit like those she saw at the colony, with the helmet and a sealed faceplate, so she couldn't see anything of her captor's faces.

But the Thing's voice got her startled. Not only because it was devoid of any emotion, but because it felt completely synthetic, like something coming out of a cheap speech synthesizer. And other than that, the Thing as a whole exuded menace. She couldn't put her finger on it. Perhaps it was a combination of the faceless mask with a red visor, and the fact that It looked like a skinned creature with all the bundles of muscles visible and the overall dark color, with what looked like a metallic skeleton poking here and there.

But no. Despite the alienness of this Thing, it wasn't really its appearance or the fact that she was helpless and at its mercy that was causing this feeling. It was a gut instinct. Something was very wrong about it.

It knelt in front of her, observing her silently, almost like it was scanning her. What was that Thing, for Goddess-sake?

It spoke in its emotionless voice.

"Now that I have your attention, we may start talking. There are obviously a lot of questions that need to be answered, but first things first. Let's start with the presentations, shall we? I take it you're already acquainted with humans, so let's add some reciprocity to that. Who and what are you?"

It would have sounded casual if it wasn't that emotionless.

She tried sarcasm.

"And you think I would answer your questions just like that? "

"Oh, I think you will, because you won't have much choice in the matter. I already know from our brief encounter back in the colony that, much like humans, you are sensitive to pain. I scanned you body. There are approximately 220 bones in it. If you are cooperative you will have as many when we are finished. You will yield eventually anyway, so why not skip the unpleasant part and get straight to the part where you answer my questions? This will benefit the both of us. Oh, and don't think you can rely on your telekinetic abilities to pull yourself out of your situation. I am currently monitoring you, and if I feel the slightest energy buildup, I will be forced to crush one of your limbs."

She considered her situation for a moment. The Thing was right. She was trapped. Even if she was a Spectre and a trained commando, she knew that noone was immune to torture, and that she was no exception. Besides, she didn't owe the turians anything in particular. She was here as a personal favor, not to help the Hierarchy bring another race under its "benevolent" domination. Finally she made her decision.

"Alright, I cooperate. And not just because of your threats, but because personally I don't approve what the turians are trying to do here. In fact, by helping you, I would just be doing my job."

It seemed to consider her answer for a moment, then said:

"…And that job would be?..."

"To protect galactic stability at any cost. And mind you, this whole thing is not in the definition of galactic stability."

"Galactic stability. Just that. Alright… We'll come back to this later. Right now, I'm more interested in knowing who and what you are, and just how in hell do you speak English. Because as far as I know, you arrived her only a few hours ago. One doesn't learn a language so fast."

"My name is Vasira Lallis, I'm an asari, that's the name of my species. And no, one CAN learn a language that fast. At least, for my species it's easy, when you can read minds."

"Read minds huh? And what am I thinking right now?"

"It doesn't work that way… It's a special ability my people can use to link minds with any sentient species. We evolved that way."

The Thing stopped talking for a moment as it processed this information. It seemed almost… Incredulous? Hard to tell with the mask.

"Alright, I'll accept that for now. Now if you could explain just who your pals are and why they decided to attack on sight a species they have just encountered."

"They're turians. One of the major species making up the galactic society. I don't know all the details, but as far as I know, they caught some of your ships doing something illegal according to council law and they attacked them. After that, I can only guess, but it seems to me that they are trying to take advantage of the situation. Noone else but the Turian Hierarchy knows what is happening in this sector of space."

"So they are here for conquest. Nice way to welcome the newcomers."

"Like I said, noone knows what they are up to here. If word of this came to the Council then…"

"Council?"

"Oh, right. The Council is the governing body of the galactic community, located on the Citadel. It's a multi-species government composed of representatives of the three major races: the turians, the asari, and the salarians."

"Just how many races are there in this galactic society of yours?"

"They are not all represented on the Citadel, but at least a dozen."

"Right. So if this Council knew what was happening here, what would they do?"

"Likely, they would mediate an end to hostilities and punish the turians for their recklessness. And then, they would probably invite your people on the galactic stage."

"How lovely." The Thing then faced the human that was standing here, likely transmitting the whole exchange with his helmet camera. "Did you receive all this general Williams?"

"Yes I did, Alcatraz", came an other voice. "We will review all this information. For now, consider your prisoner your highest priority. Likely, we will cut your mission short and evacuate you and your prisoner. She must be brought for proper interrogation at Alliance Command at all cost, Alcatraz, I trust you to handle this. Williams out." The radio cut off.

"Well", the Thing that she now knew was called Alcatraz turned to her, "it seems that I've been reassigned to babysit you."

"You WHAT?" Came the booming voice of general Avernus over the radio. "Let it be clear, centurion Tleilax. You were ordered to secure these aliens' colony and to do your possible to retrieve valuable intel as fast as possible so that the next phase of this operation can begin, and not only did you fail in securing the colony, but you lost more than ten percent of your men in the process?"

"That's not the entire…"

"And then", interrupted Avernus, "you thought that it was a good idea to call help from a council agent? Have you any idea of what OPSEC means? The council must NOT, I repeat NOT learn about this until the situation is resolved!"

"I'm aware of that sir but…"

"And to top it all, your asari spectre has been kidnapped by those aliens, so now you are calling for help. That's just brilliant. Really. You know, when this whole mess has been cleaned up, you may find yourself on permanent assignment on peacekeeping duties on Tuchanka. That is, if I feel merciful."

Tleilax winced. Tuchanka was certainly the worst assignment any turian could hope.

"Anyway, we still have a problem on our hands, don't we? I'll send a cabal, expect them within a standard day. You are to cooperate with them by any means possible."

"Understood general Arterius."

"Oh, and one more thing. It is of high priority for the hierarchy that your asari spectre must not get off this planet alive. Am I making myself clear, centurion?"

"…crystal clear, general."