Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A/N: This takes place before the events of Mass Effect 1, right before the batarian Hegemony leaves Council Space.

Even without a daylight cycle, the docking bays of the Citadel Wards had their lulls in starship traffic. And for one hour each day the shadowed, soft blue glow of Tayseri Ward's lowest bay held very few ships or people. It wasn't quiet, because the Wards never truly were, but it could have passed for calm.

And morning had always seemed the best label for that hour to salarian C-Sec constable Vel Selar, who was watching a hanar sell cheap merchandise at the far end of the bay. Selar had never experienced a real morning before, not in the eternal dusk of the Wards where he had grown up, but he had watched them, with rain and sunshine and clouds, on orange tinted vids.

The hanar's shop was separate from the rest of the cheaply constructed market counters designed to greet tourists with dim orange lamps and the smell of food before they braved customs. A yawning asari walked by it, with her black skirt tilted precariously on her thighs, and a salarian businessman was playing a game on his omni-tool while he waited for a transport on a nearby bench. Everyone ignored the hanar, but it illuminated itself to them as charmingly as it could. 

"Find out what the Enkindlers have in store for you," it kept calling out, "on the station that is their masterwork. One hundred credits for a prayer! Two hundred for a blessing endorsed by the Primacy itself!"

And unlike the other aliens working the market, the hanar lacked a slender stem of red flowers on its counter. There were postcards and vids, trinkets and religious texts that only a hanar could read. There were cups full of spiced candy. Above everything, a shop sign glowed purple and displayed its name proudly.

Opel's Citadel Greetings! Souvenirs for friends and sweetie-hearts! Authentic Enkindler Memorabilia!

But there were no flowers.

"That's the second day without them," Selar said, leaning against a metal bulkhead and watching the display with his turian partner. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Maybe it just doesn't like red."

The turian, a C-Sec investigator named Beran, took a swig of steaming dextro coffee from a paper cup. His face plates were dusted with a copper rust of old colony markings and his left mandible hung too low, fully inert after an injury during his required stint in the Hierarchy's military.

"It might know something," Beran grated out. He flicked his right mandible out a single time, tossed the cup. "Let's go."

The hanar perked up as they approached, then shifted a veil of green electric light over its pink skin. "Esteemed Officers," it said slowly, "this one believes a charm from the ruins of Mount Vassia would suit you. Or perhaps an engraved seashell from the depths of Kajhe itself?"

Selar said, "Not today, Opel," with a quiet voice. He tilted his dark turquoise horns forward in a friendly way, tugged on his jacket. "How's business?"

"The Enkindlers bless this one even when they withhold," Opel replied. "Business is as they intend it."

Beran pulled a stack of photos out of his cowl and they landed on the counter. "You know anything about this?"

Opel stared down at pictures of red flowers and illegally modified weapons, as much as Selar suspected a hanar could truly stare at anything. The illumination on its body swelled, faded, and then swelled again. With a flourish, it lifted its tentacle and pushed a small button on the counter. The shop sign above it dimmed and then renewed itself with a flash of blue light and scrolling yellow text.

Famous Information Broker! Finance stocks adrift? Bondmate following a stray tide? Consult today!

"It will cost a fee," the hanar informed them.

Selar asked, "How much?"

"Five thousand credits," it replied.

Selar let out a long, slow exhale. "The Enkindlers must be withholding a lot, Opel."

Beran scoffed and narrowed his eyes. "Do you even have a license for brokering information?" he asked, reaching up to tap a knuckle on the sign. "More importantly, do I look like a tourist from the Traverse itching to get fleeced?"

Opel wiggled, shifted from side to side. "This one is dismayed that the Esteemed Officer would insinuate such a thing. This one's information license is endorsed by every province on Rhakana."

"That's great. Rhakana's a wasteland and you know it."

"Rhakana is eternal in the eyes of the Illuminated Primate."

Selar's mouth settled into a frown and he exchanged a glance with Beran, who snorted with a sub-harmonic hum. There might actually be something to the flowers if Opel badgering them for credits was any indication. And it was a better lead than anything else they had encountered so far.

Citadel Security had been finding itself on the less armed side of criminal altercations in Tayseri's foundations, and Madam Sergeant T'Ven was in a rage whenever an employee from her precinct landed in the morgue because of it. The latest victim, an asari named T'elis, had been mauled by a pit nathak during a sand bust. And so Beran and Selar had been assigned to search the edges of the lower Ward for any information about the surge of strange weapons and contraband being smuggled in.

But there were no clues or evidence to find. To pass the time, Beran had begun resorting to his favorite conspiracy theories along with enough dextro coffee to power a small sun. His latest theory was that the flowers were some sort of signal for the perpetrators.

Selar wasn't sure if he believed it, but he picked up a holo-vid from one of Opel's displays. "How about this," he began, and set it in front of the hanar. "What I'm going to do is buy this vid from you for five hundred credits and fail to notice that you're selling kitchen swill labeled as shrine water. What you're going to do is help my friend here with his pictures."

And then Selar waited. His finger remained on the vid.

Opel glowed with waves of luminescence while it contemplated the twenty-third installment of Flotilla of My Yearning Heart. The Illuminated Primacy had set strict rules for the Enkindler shrine located on the Citadel, and one of them was that no one could take water from its pools without an endorsement from the hanar embassy. So there was a high chance that Opel was selling water from a sink in a nearby restroom because it couldn't afford to buy the endorsement.

And that was intensely embarrassing for a religious hanar, on top of being a more common occurrence than its highest Illuminated Primate liked to admit.

"That is a fair trade," Opel said after a long moment.

Selar nodded and pulled his hand back. He didn't press about the glittering vials sitting next to a rack of greeting cards.

Opel's tentacles sifted through the stack of photos, setting each one down with a soft slap of noise. "The others place the flowers under the direction of an old batarian woman," it said. "She began appearing two weeks ago."

"That's right when it started to get pretty violent down here," Beran said, glancing at Selar. He moved his attention back to Opel, gestured to a photo of a modified shotgun. "Do you know anything about this?"

"This one does not."

Selar asked, "Why don't you have any flowers?"

"...This one may have insisted on more credits than she offered for the display," Opel replied glumly.

Selar shook his head and reached into his pocket. He placed a credit chit on the counter, slid it across the distance. "Thanks, Opel," he said as he turned away. "See you around."

Beran was already relaying the piece of information to C-Sec using his omni-tool. He was headed toward a coffee kiosk, humming roughly as he typed, and Selar followed after him.

"Esteemed Officer," Opel called out suddenly. "You have paid without taking change." Its voice rose when Selar didn't stop or slow down. "The same thing happens on the Presidium near the cafes," it said more quickly.

Selar blinked in surprise, almost ran into an elcor with a luggage case atop its head when he stopped. People from lower Tayseri didn't go up to the Presidium. "What were you doing up on the ring?" he said as he turned back.

Opel was shimmering again. "The zocalo approaches us."

Selar's translator fumbled over the word, which was unusual. But before he could ask what it meant, the hanar busied itself changing its sign back and rearranging souvenirs as if it hadn't said a thing. It called out to a pair of humans who walked by in expensive suits and had their white hair tied up into elaborate shapes. They gawked at everything with open mouths, including Selar.

Selar met their eyes, staring impassively at them, and turned away. There wasn't anything unusual about that part.

The Council's sprawling station called the Citadel had five city-sized Wards and a ring called the Presidium joining them all at its center. It was an average temperature, one that was equally uncomfortable for every race within it. The air was like the elevator music and it was like the nutrient paste in the vats. But the humans, who were the newest race accepted into Council space, hadn't had an embassy long enough to find the Citadel anything but novel.

So there were a lot of broke ones pouring in to eat free nutrient paste, and a lot of wealthy ones with their mouths stuck open while they stared at everything.

And they'd get tired of it, Selar thought. Sooner or later.

He followed after Beran again, pulling his C-Sec jacket tight against his shoulders. Whatever the hanar had meant by zocalo, it sounded vaguely ominous.

When Selar caught up at the coffee kiosk Beran gestured with his cup. "You forgot your vid," he said.

"I've already seen that one," Selar replied. He pushed a few buttons, slid a card he kept in his pocket through the kiosk's credit reader. A white paper cup dropped down with a pop of noise and levo coffee poured into it.

"Spirits," Beran muttered. "Of course you have. You're a marshmallow for that gooey schlock." He shook his head, pulling his photos out of his cowl to glance over them again. "I bet you've seen the entire heartwarming, romantic series."

Selar took a drink of the coffee and didn't answer.

Beran grated out a small laugh, but he didn't look surprised and he didn't say anything else about it. Citadel Security had taken to pairing enforcement officers with investigative officers on the daily beat to prevent cliques from forming between departments and precincts. And the first time the turian investigator from the middle Ward had met his salarian partner from the lower Ward was off hours in a cop bar, two years ago, when Selar had been on a date with a very affectionate drell named Teelah.

And there had been an ocean of little green stars, all falling from nowhere and ringing like bells around her. Less experienced than he was now, Selar had believed that meant he was in love. 

It didn't, as it turned out. It was the bufotenin excreted by her skin.

Beran had ribbed him about it for weeks, particularly after Selar's doped up smile had worn off and Teelah had dumped him. But Selar entertained Beran's wilder conspiracy theories about the Wards, of which there were many, some of which were true, and Beran kept quiet at the precinct about Selar's penchant for romance and alien women.

They got along.

Beran crumpled the cup, tossed it in a wastebasket that was being emptied by a green keeper. "How's the thing with Amalthea going?" he asked. "You watch all that gooey stuff with her while you snuggle on the couch or something?"

Selar glanced away uneasily, watched the keeper click and wander on six legs with its trash bag. "She moved out," he said.

Beran choked a little in surprise. "What? When?"

"A few months ago."

"And I'm just finding out now?"

The keeper emptied another trash can at the edge of the walkway, very methodically, and headed toward yet another. Selar said, "I didn't really feel like talking about it."

He still didn't. The last time he had seen Amalthea was when she had been a silhouette in his doorway, dark against the yellow lights of the hallway and speaking to him with low subharmonics and a smooth voice that pierced through him. His apartment was still missing half its furniture because of it. He couldn't bring himself to replace anything she had taken away, and it wasn't because he missed her.

It was because of what she had said to him.

Beran got another cup of coffee. "You find someone else yet?"

"No." Selar leaned against the kiosk. "I'm done with it for a while."

Beran sighed. "Maybe it's for the best," he said. "Look, I know you're really into love for the sake of love or whatever, but not a lot of women want to live a domestic, settled life with a guy who's got twenty-five years left at best and might get knifed on the job. This serial monogamy thing you do is weird considering the circumstances."

Selar said, "I like having someone around after a shift."

"Then get a roommate," Beran said. "Hell, get a friendly VI. It'd be sweeter to you than Amalthea ever was. The woman was a menace."

Selar looked down at his coffee. Caffeine had never done much for him, but he took another sip to give it a chance. He swished it around in his mouth, swallowed, and when he felt nothing at all he said, "Are you trying to give me a pep talk?"

"Yeah. I'm no good at it." Beran swigged his own drink down and crumpled the cup, got a new one and filled it up again.

Selar gave up on his own coffee. "Do you know what zocalo means?"

Beran swung his mandible out in surprise. "No idea. The jelly say that to you?" When Selar nodded he said, "Hell. Maybe someone else knows."

They dropped their cups into the trash can, where Selar's landed with a wet splash, and then they split up. Starships began to crowd the bay as they questioned workers and tourists, then long lines of travelers formed at the customs kiosks. The Ward swelled to life once again, but no one seemed to know what zocalo meant.

A group of volus lumbered by with their spouses and small children in stretchy enviro-suits, obviously on a family vacation, and they queued at the end of a line. As Selar moved aside to slip past them all, he bumped into a human woman. She let out a small cry of surprise and dropped her suitcase. The volus family all sucked in a unified breath, frightened. They stepped away from her with tiny feet.

He picked up the suitcase and handed it to her, made sure she was all right. "My apologies," he said. 

She clutched it and looked up at him, her eyes wide when they met his. She was younger than the pair with white hair, who were still gawking at everything near the shop counters. "Oh," she said softly, staring at Selar. "I suppose I'll forgive you since you're so cute."

Selar tipped his horns and then he smiled at her, as he had seen humans do quite often. He moved on in the crowd.

Cute wasn't something people ever called him. 

Beran was questioning a trio of quarian pilgrims when Selar found him again, and they teamed up to question an executive from Illium who was taking advantage of the cheap travel fees in Tayseri. No one knew anything about the flowers or what the strange word meant. An asari matriarch carrying a giftbox that smelled like fruit and cloves told them that the flowers looked surprised to be in such a worn out place, but that was the extent of the new information.

And Opel called out to everyone, praising the Enkindlers while its voice was smothered by the noise of starships. The day wore on and the flowers were a dead end, for the moment. A conspiracy theory to be put on the backburner. But just as Selar and Beran were about to head back to the precinct to check in and make their report, Selar's omni-tool lit up with a call.

Madam Sergeant T'Ven's voice was cloudy with static and irritation when he answered. "Are you two still at the docks?" she asked. "We've got a call about an incident over in customs with a diplomat. I need you to take care of it."

Selar glanced at Beran, who shrugged. Selar said, "We can get there in a few minutes. Why aren't they leaving it to a customs officer?"

"There's already one there," T'Ven replied. "Beran," she continued, assuming he was nearby, "do you have a problem with humans?"

Beran said, "Not as much as that officer does if you're calling us about it. Turian or batarian?"

T'Ven's voice grew even more irritated. "Turian," she said. "Look, get over there and take care of the chip on his shoulder. There's a political hearing starting soon and I don't want the suits on the ring throwing a fit over an empty chair."

She immediately cut the connection.

Selar tapped his omni-tool's screen, read quickly as the report from the call scrolled by. It was brief, probably anonymous. And it wasn't as surprising as it should have been. The rapid, almost frantic colonization of the Skyllian Verge that the human Alliance was engaging in had taken an unwanted spotlight on the galactic stage now that the batarian Hegemony was verbally sparring with them about it. There were many diplomats and political lobbyists congregating from all over the galaxy to deal with it.

On top of that, the Relay Three Fourteen Incident, in which the Alliance had skirted far too close to starting a war with the turian Hierarchy for anyone's comfort during their first contact, was receiving an encore of attention. The tensions were high and spilling out from the embassies into the evening news. Anti-human sentiments were common.

"What's your take on it?" Beran asked Selar. Beran always asked him that.

Selar closed his omni-tool, thought it over. "It's going to be a career guy who wouldn't set foot in the Verge if his life depended on it," he predicted. He didn't particularly care who it was. "They confiscated his hallex and he wants it back."

"That's so negative," Beran replied with a low hum. He tipped his mandible forward and countered, "It's gonna be a beautiful woman wrongly accused of a crime and you're gonna fall head over toes for her."

"I see you actually watch Flotilla of My Yearning Heart," Selar replied with a glance.

"Like hell I do," Beran said. "But I'm a genius about this kind of stuff."

When they reached the employee entrance beyond the kiosks and lines, they scanned their identification cards and headed inside.

Chapter Text

The customs department was a crescent against the docking bay, with alcoves and offices running along its dimly lit silver hallway. A crowded office overflowed with opera from a vid-screen when Selar and Beran entered it, but none of the employees inside were aware of the situation with the diplomat. They were too busy drowning in mountains of paperwork.

So Selar and Beran searched, guided by nothing more than the spotty information T'Ven had sent them. They passed tariff offices and then a private post office, moving toward the less populated end of the hallway until the only sound was their steps echoing through recycled air. And it was a screech of metal against metal that stopped them. 

They approached the last office where the sound had come from, and where they found the human diplomat sitting at a desk beneath old, trembling blue lights.

A turian in uniform stood leaning over the other side of the desk while his hands gripped the edge. His chair had fallen when he stood up, it seemed, and his teeth were clenched as he glared at her. The human was motionless except for the steady rise and fall of her chest, with her fists clenched in her lap. A pair of omni-cuffs glowed at her wrists.

"I have the right to contact my ambassador under council statute three sixteen, section four," she said with burning eyes.

"You have the right to be treated like everyone else on this station," the turian bit out in response. "This isn't the Presidium."

The human stole a glance at Selar as he entered with Beran, and Selar recognized her immediately. It was the woman he had bumped into at the customs kiosk. 

And now that he had a chance to notice, he realized that she was wearing the usual Presidium attire of a high collared, long-sleeved dress in two colors. Strands of black hair fell past her shoulders, with shorter strands cut just above her eyebrows. She must have arrived expecting to be whisked straight into negotiations. High heeled shoes, perfectly new, matched and peeked out from the rose and ivory fabric of her dress.

But any recognition in her eyes was overwhelmed by caution at the sight of the C-Sec uniforms that matched the turian customs officer. She looked away, clearly expecting nothing from anyone around her. She closed her eyes, took a breath.

When she opened her eyes she lifted her chin defiantly. "Statute three sixteen, section five," she continued, "states that I have the right to a neutral witness and an advocate. Section six states that if an embassy and Citadel Security have an unresolved dispute the embassy's judgment will take immediate precedence. Section seven..."

She was perfectly reciting every archaic Council statute that was about to cost the customs officer his position in Citadel Security. It was unusual to see an alien detailing them all off the cuff like that. And it was impressive to see just how much panic had settled into the officer's eyes because of it.

"It's about time," the officer said, glancing at Beran and Selar, but the relief in his voice didn't match his expression. He straightened and removed his hands from the desk edge, picked up a holo-pad and set it down again. "I don't recognize you two. You here to pick her up?"

"Statute three seventeen states that during a detainment..."

"Yes," Selar answered. "Can you tell us what happened?"

The turian hesitated, then gestured at the diplomat. His subharmonics lilted a sting of panic at the sound of her voice continuing. "She thinks she can bypass regulations and bring in luggage that exceeds the weight limits. I confiscated it and then caught her sneaking into the evidence room to steal it back."

Beran made a deep, humming noise as he suppressed a laugh. "I was right," he murmured.

Selar glanced evenly at Beran, then back to the officer. "Are you aware that she's an Alliance diplomat?" he asked. He opened his omni-tool's haptic to register a skycar escort through an emergency lane with traffic control.

The officer's voice lost its harsh edge, but the panic in his eyes sharpened. "Ah," he said. He smiled at Selar as if they were old friends, moved his mandibles widely. "Look, I didn't notice. You two are from the ring, aren't you? You don't know how it gets down here."

Selar nodded a little, played along for the moment as he worked the haptic. "Of course. No harm done."

Tayseri's lower Ward was indeed short on staff and high on hours. Things were more frantic than they should have been. Quotas were high.

But it was more likely that the turian was being an obstructionist just as T'Ven had implied. He had to have noticed her identification. And it wouldn't have been far-fetched for someone to meddle because they sympathized with the anti-human side of the political climate.

In either case, they needed to get her to the Presidium before the human embassy started accusing C-Sec of obstructionism. And before they were right, considering the circumstances. 

"Yeah, these things happen," Beran said lightly. There was no point in causing a scene if they didn't have to.

"You didn't listen to me," the diplomat said. She looked up at Selar. "No one here is listening to me. He took everything from me right away when I arrived. I was trying to get my multipass back."

"You're a thief, human," the turian remarked. "No one cares what you have to say."

 But he looked agitated at the word multipass. He smoothed his hands along his uniform.

Selar hesitated with his fingers on the omni's haptic. He raised his brow and glanced at Beran, who had sobered immediately with a dark look. Multipasses weren't confiscated except under the direst of circumstances. They were recognized across Council Space as official travel documents and there were very few situations in which confiscating one was warranted.

"What was your name, again?" Selar asked the turian, his hands still lingering over the haptic. "I didn't catch it."

The officer tightened his mandibles with a snap. "Vantius," he said. "Look, like I said, I didn't know she was a diplomat. She was breaking regulation and I took her in."

"I don't care if she's a duct rat," Beran said. "Where the hell is her pass?"

"In the quartermaster's office," Vantius answered.

Selar put his omni-tool on standby. Vantius' white colony markings were etched into a tattoo across his eyes and it was a far more expensive method than the synth-crylic paint recommended by the Hierarchy. Other than that there was nothing suspicious about him. But the situation began to take on a darker hue and Selar's lingering thoughts about obstructionism and embassy politics fell away.

In batarian space, where slavery was legal and a defended tradition, the novelty of the latest Council race translated into an avalanche of credits. And there was a lot of traffic from batarian space doing business in Tayseri. There were a lot of things you could do on the side to afford a permanent Hierarchy tattoo.

"How much was this weight limit exceeded, exactly?" Selar asked.

Any camaraderie between one C-Sec employee and another completely evaporated. Vantius' subharmonics grew hard. "Four hundred grams," he answered, shifting his glare from Beran to Selar. "What about it?"

Selar said, "That's not even a can of tupari."

Vantius bristled further. "If the Council wants to give humans special protections and coddle them up on the ring, fine. But there are regulations down here and she broke them. I don't play favorites."

"And who was it that you were expecting to come and take her away over it?" Selar asked. "It seems it wasn't us."

"Why would I expect constables from the ring?" Vantius said, and Selar still didn't correct him. "I thought it would be someone from the department here, that's all."

Beran let out a low, suspicious hum and headed back toward the quartermaster's office to search for the multipass. A dull, sinking feeling began to press in Selar's stomach.

"You can't go back there," Vantius snapped angrily. "You need a warrant or an investigator to even open the door."

Beran flashed his investigator badge over his shoulder. When Vantius tried to follow after him anyway, Selar stepped forward and blocked the entrance to the alcove. He could hear Beran's footsteps echoing away in the hallway behind him.

He leaned over a few inches to meet Vantius' eyes and said politely, "You and I will remain here for the moment."

Vantius snorted at that, looking up at Selar's horns as if they were a joke. "So this is how it's gonna be, then," he said. He righted his chair and sat down at the desk, glared at the ceiling. "You'd think there was an eezo core in that cesspool they call a homeworld."

Selar ignored the comment. He gestured to the diplomat in a way he hoped appeared friendly. "We'll take care of this at the C-Sec academy," he told her. "You'll be up on the ring soon with your people."

She watched him suspiciously. If there had been a council statute for mistrust Selar believed she probably would have recited it to him. Where there was one corrupt officer there were usually others, and he could see her weighing the risk of it.

Selar wondered how long she had been repeating statutes while Vantius tossed insults at her. He had probably planned to take her from the offices by citing a precinct transfer and hoping that she didn't understand the regulations and procedures. It was possible that the call to T'Ven had been a cleaner officer stating their own opinion. 

And Vantius would have been too busy counting credits in his head at the sight of her to even notice someone turning him in. 

The diplomat stood up cautiously. Selar gestured again and she walked toward him as calmly as she could with a deep breath. He didn't have a lot of experience with humans, particularly ones who weren't involved with C-Sec as employees, but he thought that she looked relieved as she came toward him. He also thought that she looked vividly angry.

Her heels clicked on the hard floor in the silence. Selar unlocked her omni-cuffs when she reached him, carefully didn't touch her. "Are you all right?" he asked her.

"Yes," she answered. "I wasn't going to let him take me anywhere."

Selar nodded at that, noting her optimism and approving of it even if he didn't share it.

"She's fine," Vantius grumbled. "I wasn't going to rough her up over it."

Selar glanced at him. "There's less credits for you if they're injured, correct?"

Vantius sneered and stood up, pushed his chair away until it crashed against the floor again. "What the hell are you implying?" he said. "You think there aren't a bunch of people around here who are as fed up as I am? Humans break rules all the damn time. And here you are to sweep it under the rug like a good little beat cop, just like everyone else on the ring."

"Spare me the theatrics," Beran said behind Selar. He was holding a brown suitcase over his shoulder and he held up a handful of multipasses without owners. "You don't give a shit about politics, so let me explain what's going to happen. I'm the nice, friendly half of this partnership and I'm the one who's going to rip your plates off if you try anything before T'Ven gets here to clean this up. Are we clear enough about that?"

The muscles in Vantius' neck tightened. "You guys work for T'Ven?"

And Vantius began to say something else, but his voice died away in his throat. He moved his gaze over each multipass, then to Selar, hesitant about the horns now that ripping someone's plates off made Beran the nice, friendly half of the pair. "No, I... We're clear enough," he answered after a moment.

"Then sit down," Selar said.

Vantius righted his chair once again, obediently sat down.

And when Selar contacted her, Madam Sergeant T'Ven's response sounded like a biotic car crash over his omni. Employees from the precinct were dispatched immediately. He sighed a little, listening to it all on the line as it approached and then overwhelmed the hallway like a tidal wave. He left as soon as the first constables arrived, passing T'Ven in the hallway. Her pale blue face was taut with anger as she directed everyone.

It was going to be a mess, Selar thought.

But it was someone else's mess for now. As quickly as they could, Selar and Beran led the diplomat outside. She had somewhere to be even if they would need to interview her later. Selar handed the suitcase to her after he had read the tag. "Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree," he recited. 

Beran handed her the multipass that matched. 

"Welcome to the Citadel," Selar continued. "I wish the introduction had been more pleasant for you."

"Thank you," Meiko said unsteadily. The color had begun to return to her face and she held the suitcase in front of her, clutching the handle tightly with both hands as they escorted her to a waiting, empty skycar. A tiny solar system of planets and stars hung on a keychain attached to the handle. It twinkled with light and noise as she walked.

"You could have punched that guy before we left," Beran said to her as they settled her in the back seat of the car. "Diplomatic immunity has its advantages."

Meiko studied him for a moment, as if she wasn't sure whether or not he was attempting humor with such a comment. "I didn't want to make things worse," she admitted. She placed her hands in her lap, and some of the anger slipped across her eyes again before she composed herself. "Now that I'm late for the hearing I suppose I should have. The ambassador will be angry."

Selar got into the skycar behind the wheel. He could see her watching him in the rear-view mirror. "If the Ambassador has any sense she'll just be relieved that you're safe," he said to her reflection.

"Yes, I hope you're right," she said.

And Selar started the skycar, with Beran in the front seat next to him. The car lifted through the air, moving with a soft, mechanical hum toward the traffic lanes. They would take her up to the Presidium and then head for the academy, where there would be reports waiting. An investigation would inevitably follow.

It would probably be on the news, Selar thought, and woven into the rest of the terrible stories pouring out of the embassies each day.

Beran and Selar made small talk with Meiko, keeping her mind occupied during the trip. She was a colonial arbitration lawyer from the Alliance's colonies, and she had been reassigned as a political appointee to the Citadel until further notice due to the growing crisis in the Skyllian Verge. She looked out the window while the lights reflected in her eyes, sat mostly still on the tan seat surrounded by smoke colored windows.

"I should have done something," she said after a while, mostly to herself. She looked as if the weight of the situation had begun to settle on her.

Beran said, "You did fine. You were scaring the fringe off him."

The skycar rumbled gently, and they rose beyond the lines of neon headlights into an emergency lane. The air in the cabin was warm after the colder drafts of the dock. Selar's thoughts wandered as he drove, listening to the car hum, and he tried not to think about the other multipasses that were probably back in those offices.

At least they saved someone, he thought. But there were a lot of people who fell through the cracks in the Citadel. It wasn't as unusual as it should have been, like everything else that happened in Tayseri.

"I get tired of it being dark all the time," Beran was saying. He looked tired, settling deeper into his seat. "I feel like I should be in a bar or something," he muttered to Selar. "Spirits, there's probably a group of them grabbing people for credits. I definitely need to be in a bar."

Selar said, distantly within his own thoughts, "You just need a hobby to combat stress. Something healthy."

Beran chuckled. "Don't even start with me. Remind me what you do on your downtime, again?"

Selar frowned, looked into the rear-view mirror again where his eyes met Meiko's. She must have been watching him. She smiled and looked away out the window.

He shook his head a little, wondered if he should take up a real hobby now that Amalthea was gone. Perhaps model ships like most of his brothers and uncles. Glue and decals, and shining bronze models of the Destiny Ascension with its turian cruiser escorts. 

And little silver stars, silently falling everywhere on clear wires that you could hardly see.

He pushed the thought out of his mind, focused on driving. He watched the neon lights marking the empty lane. And the ring of the Presidium loomed monolithic ahead of the skycar, outlined against the thick blue haze of the Widow system while turning slowly.

Chapter Text

Compact offices hidden behind blue windows stacked endlessly above a central grove of bright, sunshine yellow trees in the atrium of Citadel Security's academy. From the very first day he was handed a badge, Selar had never been able to decide if the design of the place was meant to be calming or intimidating. But he suspected that it was a mixture of both. Every noise rose and bounced off the glass, traveling upward through shadows and perfectly motionless, perfectly shaped boxwood leaves.

And Selar sat at a desk in one of the lower offices, his legs aching and stiff while the atrium echoed next to him beyond the window. He puffed out a cloud of smoke with a toneless expression and tried not to think of where he was going to be in a few hours.

He pulled the cigarette out of his mouth, looked down at it, then put it back in again. There was a pack of them tucked between his horns.

"That's great," Beran was saying, sitting at the other side of the desk with his legs propped up on it. "Real great. Go ahead and give yourself some sort of lizard breathing disease because your girl moved out, right?"

Selar took another experimental drag off the cigarette, carefully dropped the ash into an etched ivory seashell resting on the table. "I'm just trying it out," he said to Beran, watching the ash stutter with an orange glow. The embers made a soft, vague little crinkle of noise.

Beran said, "How is it?"

The ash cooled into a dull grey. Selar stubbed out the cigarette into the seashell and turned his attention back to the holo-console, typing again. "I don't really understand the appeal of it," he admitted. More smoke poured out of his mouth.

"Yeah, well. Give the pack here then," Beran said.

Selar continued typing with one hand and passed the bundle of cigarettes over with his other, now losing smoke from his nostrils. Beran tucked it into his cowl.

And through the useless nicotine veil rising into his eyes, a final report on Selar's console glowed darkly passive. There had been seventeen multipasses in Tayseri's quartermaster office, all registered to humans. But no one who had been apprehended over the matter still remained in a jail cell. On the contrary, the turian named Vantius had become an expert when it came to Council statutes thanks to Meiko's forceful lesson and had run off to the embassies with a few other suspects. 

And the batarian ambassador, Jath'Amon, was petitioning to give them all diplomatic immunity as guests of the Hegemony.

The thought made Selar's stomach curdle. The human embassy, headed by Anita Goyle, was a storm of outrage and accusations now that the suspects were no longer in custody. It was one step away from openly accusing Citadel Security of colluding with batarian smugglers due to anti-human sentiment on the station. Worse, Selar was losing confidence that it was going to be wrong. The whole thing in Tayseri smelled worse than the cigarettes.

Beran sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and pulled his feet off the desk. He grabbed a holo-pad and got back to work. "This is why people go rogue," he muttered, "or turn into vigilantes in the Terminus systems."

Selar said, with a cough in his voice as he looked up from the orange screen, "I was thinking of taking up model ships."

Beran grated out a sharp laugh. He put down the pad again. "You've gotta be stressed beyond capacity to build a model ship, Vel. Are you ever going to tell me what Amalthea said to you?"

Selar shook his head, fingers clicking on the haptic keys. "It wasn't anything."

"It was something all right."

Selar frowned, his hands pausing on the haptic interface. The noise of the atrium pounded against the windows. "I think she was right about me," he said.

Beran snorted, clearly unmoved. "That's garbage and you know it. She said whatever she thought would hurt you the most." He tapped the holo-pad on the desk, his eyes very cold. "Look," he continued, "I know you're a dope for those vids and books you're always grabbing at, but real people aren't like that. It isn't always clean and nice at the end."

Selar blinked and said, without ire, "Are you trying to give me a pep talk again?"

"Yeah, I'm trying to give you a damn pep-"

"Are you really smoking cigarettes in a C-Sec office, Investigator?" T'Ven called out smoothly as she walked in.

Beran froze with the bundle of cigarettes still in his cowl. "Nah, Madam Sergeant," he said after a moment.

T'Ven looked up at the thin clouds of smoke gathered at the ceiling, looked down again with hard eyes and a perfectly calm expression on her pale blue face. The fabric of her uniform had the quality of commando leathers despite the standard issue design, and anyone who was bold enough to ask her if she actually had any in her closet ended up finding out exactly how proficiently she had earned them back on Thessia.

She crossed her arms, leaned over a little. "Don't lie to me, Berantus," she said softly. "You know how much I hate losing the people I love the most."

Beran's right mandible twitched a single time, then dropped into half of a resigned, brittle smile. To his credit, he tried to be good. "Tell me that again," he still began, "when you haven't had four salarian bondma-"

Selar raised the seashell filled with cigarette stubs immediately. "Apologies for my indiscretion, Madam Sergeant," he interrupted, before Beran was reduced to a wet blue smudge on the floor. Beran had never gotten over the pictures in T'Ven's office of her deceased bondmates. And he didn't understand how dangerous it was to joke about it. 

Or maybe he did, and he just didn't care.

T'Ven drew and exhaled a long breath through her nose, uncrossed her arms and settled her hands on her hips. She gave Selar a look that could have withered a garden world. "You know that hanar you were talking to," she said after exactly ten seconds had passed, "the merchant on the dock? Someone knifed it with one of those new omni-blades we've been seeing."

Selar set the seashell down, stared at the ash dusted over the etchings. "Did it survive the attack?"

"It managed to get away, but it's in the intensive unit down at the hospital." T'Ven's gaze moved back to Beran. "I want you to get down there," she added. "Check in with the captain before you go."

Beran cocked his head to the side. "Just me?"

"Just you."

Beran stood up, pausing reluctantly between T'Ven and Selar for a moment. Selar merely tilted his horns forward, didn't argue or say anything. And Beran began to watch them both as if they were plotting against him. "You think about what I told you," he eventually said. He left in a gust of cleaner air pouring in from the doorway.

T'Ven watched him go, shook her head when the door clicked shut. She said, "He thinks I'm going to try to kill you."

"You reassigned me to the Presidium," Selar said, as if that wasn't much better. He closed the holo-console and leaned back in his chair.

"I see you've had time to read the summons while you were stinking up the offices," she said, glancing at him. "Technically, Captain Lariad reassigned you. You should remember that."

Selar didn't respond. Everyone knew that T'Ven ran the precinct in lower Tayseri, more out of necessity than any lust for power. Captain Lariad was an ancient batarian man who spent his days telling stories at the various outposts and picking his teeth. Selar hardly ever saw him.

T'Ven asked, "Did you tell Berantus yet?"

Selar raised a brow, looked up at her. "Of course I didn't tell him," he said. "I'm never going to live it down. Everyone's going to be laughing about it at my retirement party twenty years from now."

And Selar hoped that she didn't see the exasperation in his eyes, knew that she probably did. The line of his mouth, already thin with a frown, grew dour. But T'Ven had a short temper for arguing and insubordination, even shorter than her temper for everything else, and she demanded obedience from her employees at all times. He knew better than to challenge the reassignment to the ring.

Just as important, he had really stunk up that office.

He still didn't like it. It was unheard of to send a senior constable from a lower Ward back to the ring. Selar let out a slow, reluctant exhale, coughed a little as he thought about it. Rookies worked up on the Presidium learning the ropes until they were cleared for duty in the Wards. And nothing ever happened up there other than a bureaucrat complaining that his Mount Milgnon wasn't cold enough in its solid gold ice bucket.

Selar asked, "Do I have enough goodwill left to ask you for a reason?"

T'Ven glanced up again at the smoke still lingering on the ceiling. "Barely," she said as she seated herself across from him. She crossed her legs, grabbed Beran's abandoned holo-pad and stylus, and began writing something.

She didn't say anything further.

"Why, Madam Sergeant?" Selar asked politely.

"We offered the Alliance diplomats an escort between the Presidium's apartments and the embassies as a sign of goodwill," she explained, "but Meiko Ogawa is refusing to allow anyone from C-Sec who isn't you or Beran anywhere near her." She sighed as she thought about it. "And after what happened," she added, "I'm not that eager to argue with her about it. Ambassador Goyle is insisting she needs an escort."

"Ah," was all that Selar said.

Neither of them said anything else for a while. Selar stayed very still as the clouds drifted above him, watched the window while T'Ven wrote on her pad with a soft scratching noise. He thought about escorting a diplomat to cafes that smelled like freshly pulled espresso shots and embassies full of expensive suits, with their endless hearings and negotiations, and he drowned the urge to get up and board a starship headed straight for the galactic core.

Even worse, he thought about that smile in the rear view mirror, and his rule about never mixing personal feelings with his professional life. It was a simple rule that he had never broken. It was an easy one to keep when he was working knee-deep in violent crime and emergency calls, and far away from anyone who called him cute like Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree had.

And so Selar said, to his own peril, "Get someone else."

T'Ven stopped writing, blinked as if she hadn't quite heard him properly. She looked up and gave him a heavy stare. Selar held it grimly, leaning back further in the gwaskin leather chair that squeaked in the silence between them.

The noise of the atrium pounded at the window again.

T'Ven's eyes narrowed. "If you have such a problem with an assignment like this," she said, "then maybe you should have accepted the promotion to Special Response that the Executor tried to give you last year. I need Berantus on the contraband investigation."

Selar nodded, looked out the window again. He wasn't going to push his luck twice.

"The other reason I'm accommodating Miss Ogawa," T'Ven continued, writing again, "is because the batarians are threatening to close their embassy and secede if those negotiations fall through."

Selar blinked at that, turned to her again and leaned forward in the chair. No race had ever voluntarily closed an embassy before in the history of Council space. "That's absurd," he said. "They already have Camala and half the Verge. Why would they secede now?"

"I don't know." T'Ven set the holo-pad in her lap and continued, "I've never seen anything like it. And I don't want a rookie with something to prove getting in over their head while we try to figure out what's going on between the secession and our problems down here."

He narrowed his eyes a little. "You think the embassy's threat to secede is related to the contraband and abductions?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I do. So go up there for me and don't make a scene about it. Just put on a nice show for the Alliance and see if you can find any connections. You've been on the beat long enough to know exactly what you and everyone else should be doing up there. "

And then she handed him the holo-pad and the stylus.

Selar immediately signed it, scratching his entire name along the bottom in two lines. "Thank you, Madam Sergeant," he said to her as he did so, because that was what you said to T'Ven even when she wrote you up for smoking and sent you to the ring.

T'Ven stood up, huffing a little when she took the pad back. But before she left the office Selar remembered something and asked, "Did forensics figure out what zocalo means?"

She ran her hand over her crest, hesitated in the doorway. "Not yet," she admitted to him. " And it garbles my translator every time someone tries to say it. Does that happen to you?"

"I thought it was a problem with the hanar's speech patterns at first," he said. "Drell have a similar issue."

She nodded, turned away. "It's probably a batarian word. You know how it is."

Selar was unsettled by the implication as she left. The Hegemony was notoriously rigid with its own citizens and enforced a caste system that required an excess of credits to stay within its upper echelons. Only the higher castes were allowed to work on the Citadel, and the linguistic glossaries that the Hegemony provided to the Council each year were openly censored.

And if zocalo was indeed a batarian word or phrase of some sort, it would be difficult to find someone on the station willing to divulge what it meant. The batarians working in C-Sec would feign ignorance for the sake of their own safety and continued presence on the station.

No one would help them, not willingly.

Worse, Selar had already repeated the word with Beran on the docks to an excess of people. They had revealed their hand right away. He stayed at the desk for a while, mulled over it before leaving. When he stood up to leave he did so very carefully, and the chair didn't make any sound at all.

Later he stepped into an empty elevator in the atrium, wearing a flat expression on his face as he waited for the door to close. He had taken a shower until he no longer reeked of smoke, wore a fresh jacket and uniform. There were papers tucked under his arm for the C-Sec outpost in the embassies detailing that he would be working there until further notice.

And it would be morning when Selar arrived on the Presidium. It would be afternoon and then night in a way he didn't usually experience in the multi-colored twilight of the Wards. But it was just an illusion. Like most things on the Citadel, the atmosphere on the ring was conjured up by old tech no one quite understood.

The elevator door slid closed with a hiss of air, then started upward. Through the clear door Selar could still see the sweeping crowd of C-Sec officers that were going about their business in blue and black uniforms. Unlike Tayseri's keel docking bays, the academy was never calm. There were too many officers and never enough, all churning about beneath the trees. The time of day meant very little in such a place.

And among them all, there was an asari in the crowd who was waiting at the requisitions desk. She was wearing a yellow pinstripe dress that matched the trees and she stood in complete silence, graceful even when motionless. A turian in blue plainclothes was heading toward her, pushing past every officer and civilian between them.

The metal of the elevator shaft dropped over everything just as he reached her.

Selar blinked, remained otherwise completely still.

The elevator vibrated beneath his toes. Only ten galactic minutes away, buried within the Presidium's bulkheads, an ocean of sunshine faker than a pop song was waiting for him. It would pour itself over clean, glittering silver lines of open architecture, serene in every way. And Meiko Ogawa of Tiptree would be there somewhere with her rose-colored dress that matched her smile, and with her little shoes that clicked when she walked. 

Selar let out a long exhale as he thought about it. 

A swear fell from his mouth, repeated itself again. He read the papers once more, moved them under his other arm, and casted about in his mind for anything else to think about. But it was difficult to picture anything else except for the silhouette of Amalthea lingering in the doorway, and the deep silence of the apartment at his back while he had tried to convince her to stay. He could remember it perfectly over flavorless, tinny elevator music.

You don't feel a thing, Vel, she had said to him very softly. Her subharmonics had been mournful as they drifted with the with the dust in the brighter lights of the hallway. You use women like other guys use hallex.

And you're not in love with me or anybody else. 

Chapter Text

Selar stood at the only window in his apartment, where the soft green glow of Tayseri poured in and trembled over sparse furniture in stripes of light. He held two hundred grams of tupari in a clear glass, drank it without tasting it except for a hint of sugar burning against his throat. There was a vid screen displaying the Mannovai News in orange on the wall behind him.

"The Alliance is forcing our hand further each day," Ambassador Jath'Amon was insisting to a salarian reporter. "Do you think they will stop with the Verge? If the Council won't stand against this reprehensible hunger for expansion, the Hegemony will."

The apartment around Selar was a modest size for the Wards. It was missing two end tables and every kitchen utensil. The bookcase was half full. And on Selar's coffee table, next to a houseplant topped with pink oval flowers, a model ship of the Tecunis sat untouched in its shrink-wrap. It was covered in holofoil stars while an excited exclamation of galactic common curled around it.

Official Union Memorabilia! Accurate, Exciting! Relive First Contact with friends and first circle!

Selar glanced at it, filled the glass again. He looked away out the window and watched the buildings until they were nothing more than neon lines and colors. Then he shrugged his jacket back on and went back to work.

And the Presidium was a wonder when he arrived there for his afternoon shift, yet it was somehow less than he remembered from his own time as a rookie. The trees were impossibly tall above him, with green leaves that never stopped moving in a computer-orchestrated breeze. Everything else was sky and metal and sparkling water. 

His eyes narrowed as the sunshine began to overwhelm him. It was a relief to finally enter the softer lights of the embassy. 

He had been working on the ring for a week, but there was nothing to report to T'Ven. Any concrete answers about Tayseri were behind doors that only Special Tactics and Reconnaissance could hope to open, and the markets that the hanar called Opel had spoken of held no flowers, only an elcor who tried to feed Selar a cake dusted with moss and sugar when he stopped there. The batarians were too spooked to reveal anything at all.

In fact, the batarians on the ring had all adopted an expression that usually involved a knife pointed right at their eyes. It didn't suit the wealth that they flaunted, nor the servants and mistresses that trailed behind them in heavy silks. 

More importantly, it didn't match their ambassador's confidence.

Selar waited at the embassy lobby until Meiko appeared at the top of a flight of stairs. She was surrounded on all sides by humans wearing colorful formal attire that complimented her own. But despite the luxury of their surroundings, the human procession had the quality of a funeral to it, one where the deceased had been revealed to be a con man and a cheat during the eulogy. Ambassador Goyle wore an expression that was mournful and betrayed at the same time. 

"This is an outrage," a man was seething through clenched teeth as they descended. "The batarians think they can threaten us and the Council does nothing. Nothing! Why aren't they helping us?"

"They don't want us here, Udina," another man with gray hair said. "You know they don't."

The line of Goyle's mouth grew very thin. She stopped moving and the other humans halted in one united, obedient movement. The man called Udina shrank beneath the combined gaze of the group, then gathered his courage and continued, "Ambassador, we have to start contacting the colonial investors. This isn't only about the Verge. Beckenstein--"

"You will keep your composure no matter what this is about," Goyle interrupted before he could utter another word. She began moving again, and the others followed suit. They reached the bottom of the stairs and dispersed into the greater crowd of the lobby.

And Selar felt like he was the audience of a strange alien play. He leaned against a metal pillar as Meiko wove through the crowd toward him, crossed his arms and didn't smile back at her when she smiled at him. He had anticipated this moment for hours, dreaded it now that it had arrived. He wished he was anywhere else.

She was beautiful.

And what Selar wanted, secretly, was a line for her. Something cute like here's looking at you, kid, and a big clear umbrella. He wanted the fake sunshine outside to burst into a drizzle just long enough for him to open that umbrella for her while the vid credits rolled over both of them. But the only thing he had was a C-Sec issued pistol that he had been taking apart and putting back together to cope with the boredom of the ring.

There was also a message on his omni from Beran that another officer was in the hospital courtesy of an unlicensed and untraced assault mech.

"I'm sorry I've kept you waiting so often, Constable," Meiko said as he escorted her home along the walkways. "The negotiations have been difficult for both sides."

He dipped his head politely and didn't mention her understatement. "It's not a problem, Miss Ogawa."

And Meiko set her bag down on the counter when they reached her apartment, tapped her finger against her lips. She asked, "Would you like to stay? I want to make you a cup of tea to thank you for your trouble."

"I have to be going," he answered. He leaned over his omni-tool, scanning the room. He hoped he looked busy and knew that he probably didn't. No one wearing a badge on the ring ever did.

And then she asked, "Do you dislike me, Constable? Is it because I'm human?"

Her voice sounded like glass.

Selar blinked in surprise, looked up from the omni. "No, I just don't mix my personal and professional lives," he said. He added, tugging his jacket with his free hand for emphasis, "Tea seems personal."

Meiko considered that for a moment. She then went to a white porcelain teapot on a shelf and turned to him, holding it up by its wooden handle. "This is a professional kitchen teapot," she informed him quite seriously. She wiggled it. "It can withstand a thousand galactic standard degrees and it makes very professional tea for very professional Constables like yourself."

Then she smiled at him, waiting.

Selar raised his brow at her, but after a moment he closed his omni-tool with a tap against his wrist.

And Meiko placed the pot in the center of her round dining table. A matching set of cups followed, then she dropped tea leaves into the pot and poured steaming hot water from a carafe. The steam curled around her wrists and pale hands as she worked, trailed along her sleeves. 

On that afternoon her dress was still white, but also light blue. The secondary color of the dress changed every day, still pressed and high collared with Meiko Ogawa hiding somewhere beneath it. The fabric had gathered along her waist and she smoothed it with her hands, then turned to retrieve a pair of napkins from the counter.

And he should get up and leave immediately, Selar thought as he sat down. He knew he wasn't going to. Instead, he shifted in the chair and his knees knocked the underside of the human-sized table. The cups rattled on the table violently. One of them fell over with a small clink.

Selar reached out, frowning, and carefully set it upright again.

Meiko glanced over her shoulder. She set a napkin down for him and poured them both cups full of bright green tea. She said, "You're not very good at being tall, are you, Constable?"

"It's not usually a problem," he replied unsteadily, and carefully stretched his legs.

She sat down with him, smiled faintly. She acted as if they were playing a game together while she watched him bring the cup to his mouth. "See?" she said, almost in a whisper. "It even tastes professional."

Selar let out a dry noise that might have been a laugh if he was someone else. 

He drank with her for a while, didn't taste the tea much. Meiko smiled at him like a cat that had gotten into the cream. And hers was the same as every other apartment on the Presidium with its open terrace instead of windows. It made a Ward unit look like a shoe box. She had hung a decoration on the terrace, one covered in planets and stars like her keychain. 

He looked over at it and said, "You haven't been to the Citadel before, have you?"

"No," she admitted, holding her cup, "but it's more familiar than I expected it to be. The people here seem the same as anywhere else." She looked out at the trees and her smile faded. "It's been very disappointing so far."

"Most people expect it to be different," he said. "You should go see the sights. You haven't gone anywhere but here and your meetings."

"I should tell you something, actually," she said. The expression on her face when she looked at him imbued the situation with a far murkier hue than the teapot or his mixed feelings about sitting down with her. Selar waited for her to continue. "The batarian embassy is going to close when these negotiations end," she said. "They plan to secede from Council space."

He said, "I'd heard they were threatening that."

Meiko looked surprised that he knew. "They aren't threatening it at all," she corrected. "Ambassador Goyle believes the Council has been planning to let them secede without protest from the very beginning. Without the authority of Council treaties, the batarians will be able to overwhelm our colonial defenses in the Verge. The Alliance will be too busy defending its new colonies to advance its own political position here." She placed her hands in her lap, looked down at them. "I've been brought in with a few others to make sure the details on our side are tied up correctly, to defend against the accusations that will follow afterward when we're forced into conflict."

His eyes narrowed a little. "What kind of accusations?"

She looked down, didn't say anything else. The trees outside sounded like a cascade of whispers as the wind rose.

It wasn't possible to hide the concern in his voice. Selar set his cup down and said, "You need to be careful who you talk to about things like this. It's a breach of confidentiality to even tell me what you're doing in there. Salarian C-Sec employees are expected to report to a Special Tasks liaison when they hear anything suspicious and I doubt it's different for any of the other races."

Meiko studied him calmly. "Are you going to turn me in?"

He let out a small exhale. "No, of course not. I've decided you're the least suspicious person I've ever met."

And Selar didn't talk to spooks. He had his own reasons for that.

Meiko smiled. "I'm glad. I thought you didn't like me at all. You seem so serious."

Selar had heard that a lot over the years. He said, "I don't mean to be."

An OSD appeared between Meiko's fingers in response to his words, like a magic trick. She placed it next to his cup. "Well, then I suppose I can tell you that Ambassador Jath'Amon has a group of diplomats who aren't happy with the current situation. They've been arguing in the hallways about several things you and your partner might be interested in. They mentioned Tayseri."

She had Selar's full attention with that statement. "What did they say?"

Meiko simply gestured to the OSD. It was a dull shade brown on the table and it seemed almost innocuous next to the brighter color of the tea. But she didn't know about the contraband investigation or T'elis in the morgue, so he decided not to press for more information. 

Instead, he said, "You've been following the batarians because of Vantius, haven't you? That's why you're giving this to me."

"Yes," she replied. "I've promised myself that I'll do whatever I can about it."

"They've already closed the investigation, " he told her. "I don't know how much I'll be able to do for you."

The intensity in her eyes was startling. "Please do whatever you can. It's been difficult knowing that he's nearby while I'm in the embassy."

It was understandable, he thought. "So Goyle didn't insist on an escort at all, did she?" he said. "You asked and she went along with it so you could pass the information."

"Yes. I'm sorry for the subterfuge, Constable. You and your partner are the only ones who've listened to me about anything." Her composure faltered a little, and she added guiltily, "I've taken up your time, but if you need to go anywhere during your shift let me know and I'll have business there. I'd like to help you."

Selar shook his head. "The last person who talked to me about Tayseri ended up in the hospital. It's not just people disappearing down there, it's more complicated than that."

"All the more reason my offer to help should stand."

He leaned over, slipped the OSD into his pocket. "All the more reason I want you to stay away from it. I'll look into this for you, but only if you promise to be more careful."

She was clearly undaunted by his caution. But she said, "I promise," and picked up the teapot again.

Selar wordlessly handed her his cup when she offered him more tea and he tried not to knock his knees against her table while he drank it. He didn't know what could be on the OSD that was so damning that she had risked recording it. Not even diplomatic immunity would save her from what was essentially espionage against another embassy.

And he felt a little grim about that. He didn't want anything to happen to her.

When he went to leave sometime later Meiko reached up and began straightening the black fabric of his jacket, as if he was about to return to work after a quick lunch and she wanted him to look his best. "You're still cute," she told him. "Your partner made it sound like you were mean, but you don't seem that way at all."

Selar remembered Beran threatening Vantius in the offices. "That's just something he says to confuse people when we're working," he explained. "He usually tells me I'm a marshmallow."

She smiled. "Do you know what a marshmallow is?"

"I think it means I'm a sap."

"It just means you're sweet," she said softly, smoothing his collar. "Will you kiss me before you leave?"

Selar looked down at her, surprised at how casually she had asked. A warm sensation ran through him, one that started exactly where her fingers had brushed against his neck. But if he kissed her once he would end up kissing her a few more times until he wasn't thinking much about building model ships later.

"I've made you uncomfortable, haven't I?" she said to his silence.

He said, "Have you ever met a salarian before?"

"You're the first one I've spoken to at length." She hesitated as if it wasn't something she believed would make a difference until that moment. "My experience is mostly with batarian and turian cultures."

That explained a lot, he thought. "Salarians don't really do that kind of thing," he told her. He hadn't said the words in years and they felt novel in his mouth. "There's a spring season for breeding contracts and a lot of negotiating about who goes off with who while clout and credits get tossed around, but other than that it's not something most of us think about."

"What about affection?"

Selar glanced at her hands all over his jacket. "It's different."

Meiko's eyes widened in embarrassment and she pulled back from him. "I see," she said. She took a breath as she composed herself. "Then I've created a terribly awkward situation for you. You have my apologies."

"Don't apologize," he said. He wondered if he was a cloaca for thinking that she looked pretty while she was fretting about it. "Look, the truth is that I've done the whole song and dance a few times but I'm still trying to figure out if I'm bad news about it. And you're a dream, Miss Ogawa. I don't want you anywhere near me if it turns out I am."

"You're not bad news," she said, looking up at him.

Selar smiled a little, turned toward the door. "That means more to me than you think. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

The carpeted hallway muffled his steps as he left. Tomorrow morning Meiko would remain thirty galactic standard centimeters away from him, where his personal space was supposed to begin and where any amorous intentions were supposed to end. He wouldn't think about her making a pass at him. Maybe he'd buy some end tables.

And he would unwrap the Tecunis with its little holofoil stars.

The warmth in Selar's body chilled into pinpricks at the thought. He halted in the center of the hallway, looked down at his gloved hands and fingers, his jacket and then his shoes. A group of turian diplomats grumbled and pushed past him. He turned around and headed back down the empty hallway.

He pulled off his jacket like it was stinging him.

Meiko was holding her teapot when she opened the door again. She looked up at him with dark eyes and a questioning expression, didn't say anything at all. The trees moved beyond the open terrace behind her.

Selar said, with his perfectly arranged jacket collar crumpled under his arm, "That's a completely average teapot, isn't it?"

Meiko's voice was still tinged with embarrassment. "It's just something I bought on discount before I came here," she admitted. Her expression grew defiant suddenly and she lifted her chin. "This is really quite awkward, isn't it, Constable? If you've come back to mock-"

Selar dipped his head down and kissed her in the doorway. The teapot fell from her hands and broke into a thousand pieces on the floor.

Chapter Text

Tayseri's last C-Sec precinct was located at the very edge of the Ward, where the skyscrapers began to blur and wash away in the haze of the Widow system like it was a coastal tide. And there were no yellow trees or glass atriums in the building where Madam Sergeant T'Ven ran shifts with Captain Lariad's signature. Only the dust from the recycling systems creeping in and staff shortages. Citadel Security's budget was stretched thin enough that it didn't often reach the edges of the station. 

T'Ven sat at her desk with her legs gracefully crossed, surrounded by shadows that trembled against the bulkheads. She was drinking from a clear water glass. Selar could hear the ice cubes tinkling softly whenever she put it down. 

"The operation in Tayseri will continue," a voice from Meiko's OSD was saying. It was clouded with anger. "We don't have enough time left to argue about this. If you wanted out you should have said something earlier."

Selar leaned against a shadow on the bulkhead. He'd returned to the Ward as soon as he bought Meiko a teapot made of something sturdier than porcelain. And the conversation on her OSD was cryptic and vague, like fragments of a conversation you caught walking by an alley. He'd heard it already, so his attention drifted to a corner shelf where T'Ven kept holo-photos of her bondmates. 

There were four, all of them salarians. They each had one picture except for the first guy. His name had been Chier and he had two pictures. 

And T'Ven was smiling with Chier in the first picture like the world must have been good to her back then. Better than the present, anyway. T'Ven didn't smile much in the present. Her mouth was severe while she listened to Meiko's OSD play its recording. She had already heard it once, like Selar, and she wasn't the type of person who entertained the notion of audial redundancy.

"You're going to get all of us executed, Abronak," another batarian voice on the OSD hissed. "He's going to find out where all those credits went."

"His credits are going to be worthless soon. It won't matter how we lost them."

"It still matters who you bartered with!"

"It doesn't! I'll barter with the devil itself if it comes to it. We must move them all as quickly as we can."

"What about the turian?"

"The imbecile cowering behind Jath's skirts? Send him with the rest, for all I care."

The condensation from T'Ven's water glass sparkled and bled onto the table. The OSD's recording fell silent again with a flick of her finger against a haptic.

There was more to it, but it didn't matter. Captain Lariad was snoring out the soft wheeze of an old man in the chair across from her, and she had been repeating the audio for his benefit. He was settled deep into the seat, dozing like he considered himself to be retired long ago.

"Do you have any insight, Captain?" she said loudly.

He opened four eyes, one right after the other, and stared at her. "Should I, my dear?" he rasped out through pointed teeth. He kept his hands folded over his stomach. "The caste members living on the ring spend more credits in one year than you or I make in a lifetime. Remaining that prestigious isn't possible without getting their hands dirty, so nothing about the conversation is noteworthy except for the location involved and the fact that it was recorded." Two of his eyes moved over to Selar. "Where did you acquire this, Constable?"

Selar shook his head a little. "If it's not noteworthy, it doesn't matter."

"I don't enjoy it when subordinates avoid my questions."

"My apologies, Captain. I found it on a tree branch."

Lariad was amused by that. "Not all of those plants are real, I'll have you know. I used to believe they were when I was young and impressionable. But then I tripped and fell right through a bush and into the lake. The ring lost its luster after that."

T'Ven looked like she was already done with the conversation. But she still asked, "Can you tell us anything about the batarians who were speaking?"

"Of course not," he murmured, tired again. "And I couldn't help you even if I wanted to."

"I'm getting the feeling that you don't want to," Beran said from outside the office.

T'Ven looked up as he walked in. "Where have you been? I called for you an hour ago."

"Checking on the jelly at the hospital, that's all," Beran said. He glanced at Selar, looked away again.

Lariad was unperturbed by Beran's comment. "You're from the middle Ward, Investigator. You don't understand anything about what happens up there on the ring or down here." He stood up, smiled with his lips pressed together. "And what happens down here," he continued, "is that things resolve themselves if you let them. That's been my motto for thirty years and it's never failed me. This OSD is useless."

Selar didn't agree; the batarians were obviously up to something. But there was no arguing with the Captain to reconsider when he came to a conclusion.

And Beran gave Lariad a hard stare, his eyes colder than the ice in T'Ven's glass. He didn't accuse with words but his expression said everything about it. He was real sore about something, but it wasn't just the Captain's indifference to the audio. He glanced around at everyone like they were conspiring against him.

"Thank you, Captain," T'Ven said softly. 

It was a dismissal, one Lariad was happy to take. He strolled out into the main area of the precinct where he stopped at the first desk jockey he found and started a conversation. The hapless jockey's eyes glazed over, almost obediently, and Selar could see Lariad beginning to pick his teeth as he spoke. He wondered if he'd ever see that again. If the Hegemony seceded a different face would fill the empty space Lariad inhabited. Someone else would wear his uniform.

And there would be a different signature on the same paperwork.

T'Ven motioned to Beran and he closed the door. "Well, that was pointless," she said. She laced her fingers together on the table. "So the batarian embassy is doing business in Tayseri." She spoke like it was a personal insult. "Why?"

"Dumping merchandise before their markets collapse, probably," Beran said. "The Council's gonna make sure they lose their trade agreements and it's going to be an ugly split all the way down. They're stuck with the business they can drum up in the Terminus systems after that."

"It would explain the stranger things we've encountered," Selar agreed. "They'll need to get rid of everything they can't take back to their system. And if they're moving merchandise through the foundations there's room for people to be included. They're probably shipping them off to Camala with implants in their skulls."

T'Ven nodded. "So their main problem," she said, "is getting everything on and off the Citadel without being noticed by C-Sec. There isn't any evidence that they're using the docking bay on the keel. They might have been before, but the port's on good behavior after the incident with customs."

"So we spooked them into hiding?" Beran asked. When T'Ven nodded he swore and said, "Great. That's just real great. We'll be lucky to find anything now."

T'Ven asked Selar, "Did you find out who they're doing business with?"

Selar shook his head. "It might be one of the sand groups. They'd know about navigating the relays and they have connections to the black markets in the foundations."

"Maybe," Beran muttered, unconvinced. He scowled. "T'Ven, why didn't you know about any of this?"

She tilted her head. "Do you think I'm clairvoyant?"

"I just think you know about anything big that goes on down here," he said. "You've been around for a while."

"Are you calling me old?"

"Don't take it personally."

She didn't, even smiled a little, but Selar got the feeling that she was humoring Beran more than anything, like a cat letting a mouse take a few optimistic steps before it was punished for thinking it was going anywhere. And Selar did what he usually did when someone started to get cheeky with T'Ven, which was to hope he was out of the blast radius. He thought about Meiko staring up at him in her doorway with her black hair and her eyelashes. He thought about the trees floating like a dream behind her.

Mostly, he thought he was an idiot. He had one of her Presidium keycards in his left pocket and the weight of it was very slight against his hip.

"After so many years you start to see the same things over and over," T'Ven was saying to Beran. "The same people with the same faces and problems. The ugliness repeats itself and it disappoints me. But I've never seen anything like what's happening with the batarians. This is new and I'm still catching up."

Beran thought about that, moved his gaze around the office. He wasn't satisfied by her answer. He gestured to her pictures and he said, "You ever meet your lizards again? Seems like they were all hundreds of years ago."

Selar blinked at that. Genuine surprise slipped over T'Ven's eyes before they frosted over. "You've called me old twice now," she said. 

"Like I said, don't take it personally." Beran ignored any sense of self-preservation and tapped his talons on the desk. "You ever meld with them or was it just a platonic feel-good thing?"

Selar's eyelids dropped in surprise and he forgot about the keycard for the moment. When an asari melded with someone they became the same person for a while, sharing thoughts and memories. Sometimes it was sex and sometimes it wasn't. Either way, it wasn't something you ever asked your boss about if you wanted to stay employed.

T'Ven's eyes darkened. "Is this an intimate conversation, Investigator? I've been meaning to ask how your wife and daughter are doing. I hear they've been very happy since the move."

"Yeah, they're better now that they're not living with a drunk like me," Beran said. He swung his mandible out. "Now answer my question."

The door blasted open with a biotic shimmer and a slam that sounded like a thunderclap. "Get out before I actually get angry with you," she said to him. She glanced at Selar. "Both of you. Come back when you know where the embassy has moved their business."

Beran snapped his mandible inward. "Of course."

And Selar let out a long exhale. He nodded at T'Ven before he left because you always acknowledged T'Ven even when she hit your partner upside the head with something ugly like his divorce, but she didn't respond. She was staring at her water while she slipped her fingers against the glass.

Chier was watching her from the shelf, smiling in the second picture where he was an old man.

 Selar followed Beran down into the main floor of the precinct, where employees were running around and losing their minds over whatever seemed urgent that day. A red krogan was waiting at a desk while a nervous salarian asked him what his visit to the Citadel was about in a trembling, pathetic voice. And a volus in a miniature C-Sec uniform was shuffling around with impressive importance to his steps while a pair of asari officers glared at Beran, whispering to each other.

An elcor, a real big one named Borri with a blue carpet on his back, said to Selar, "Humorously, the rookie has returned to us."

The batarian constable next to Borri looked up from his paperwork, smirked, and tilted his head to the right. "They teach you to fire your gun yet?"

Selar waved him off. "I'm still trying to figure out this omni-thing they slapped on me."

Borri swayed from side to side and slammed his fist on the ground. Selar felt the metal beneath his feet shudder in response. "With sarcastic glee, perhaps when you are less green we will show you how to use the emergency lights on a patrol car. "

Selar almost smiled and said, "Yeah, yeah, that's real nice. We'd have to order an extra-wide model to even fit you inside a patrol car."

"Proudly, you are correct, rookie."

Selar knew he wouldn't be living that nickname down anytime soon, not after the stint on the ring. He glanced at Beran, waiting for a smart comment, but Beran kept his hard expression intact. Selar had expected to be ribbed mercilessly by his partner, but he hadn't said a thing about it. He always had something to say about things like that.

"What's gotten into you?" Selar asked him.

"I'm just getting real tired of this place, that's all," Beran answered, grousing with a subharmonic noise. "There's something going on and it doesn't have anything to do with batarians in fancy suits. Come on. I need to show you something at the hospital."

"Did Opel finally have something to say?"

"The jelly doesn't know a damn thing about anything," Beran muttered. "It's something else."

Beran led him straight to the hospital a few blocks away on Rigel street. As they walked down the steps toward the morgue Beran asked, "Did you see T'elis after she was mauled in that sand bust?"

T'elis had been the reason they were sent to investigate the docking bay. "I looked over the report about it," Selar said. "It sounded ugly."

Beran let out a dry laugh that didn't suit the topic. "Yeah, real violent stuff," he said. "A nathak's about as friendly as a yahg and its claws are twice as sharp." He pushed the door to the morgue open, ignored an orderly who squawked in protest at them. "After T'elis was ripped to shreds we were sent to figure things out. We're the good guys and all that crap, right? At least until you pranced off to the ring."

Selar said, watching the orderly run off,  "Do you think I liked sitting around up there with my thumb between my horns?"

Beran replied, "I think you didn't mind the scenery, if you get my drift."

Selar frowned, adjusted his jacket collar.

The air in the morgue was cold and stale and it reeked of chemical preservatives. Instruments were stacked up on silver racks, and a quarian in his suit lay dead on a table. A salarian autopsy tech was working methodically at peeling the suit off, didn't look up or notice anything around him. He had a long face with longer wrinkles running down the sides of his neck.

 And when Beran reached the back wall full of stacked cabinet cases he pulled one out without fanfare. It was a dull black square labeled forty-two in orange digital light. It slid open with a cloud of blue vapor and came to a stop with a jolt that shook the body inside. Selar's mouth went a little dry as he stared down at it.

The dead asari lying in the cabinet case was a dark shade of purple and she had her hands folded over her stomach. Her toes and crest and fingers were all turning black from the cold storage. It was Constable T'elis, or used to be. But there wasn't a scratch on her.

Selar was too surprised to have anything smart to say about it. He said, "That doesn't match C-Sec's report at all."

"Yeah, she's in good condition other than how damn dead she is," Beran agreed darkly. "A nathak wasn't anywhere near this stiff."

Selar blinked once as he peered down at T'elis, who just stared up at the morgue's circular ceiling lights without a care. The view didn't exactly matter when you were dead, he supposed. Staring at stars or fluorescent lights was all the same. T'elis was sleeping the big sleep. But there was something about the expression still etched onto her face that was more unsettling than the lack of injuries. Selar had never seen his coworker look like that when she was alive. T'elis had been a harried, nervous person who didn't like other people. Everything had stressed her out.

"Her face looks euphoric," Selar said quietly.

Beran's mandible clicked. "Her brain looks like a bowl of nutrient paste from the vats. You should see the thing."

Selar glanced over at him. "You're kidding."

"Nope."

 "That's one of your conspiracy theories," Selar said. "I remember you talking about it."

"It's my favorite conspiracy theory," Beran corrected. "An asari sex killer who burns their partner up when they meld. Fries their brain right out of their head."

"You actually think that's what happened to her?"

"You're damn right I do."

Selar opened his mouth to say something to that, closed it again because Beran's conspiracy theories weren't always wrong or born of fantasy. He hooked his thumbs into his pockets and considered the possibility for a long time. The morgue was so quiet that he could almost hear the mechanical hum of the Citadel's interior, right below the sound of the autopsy tech cutting at the quarian's suit and breathing harshly through his nostrils. 

And T'elis' eyes were clouded and yellow in death, but she looked like she had seen the face of a deity before she died. She had an upward slant to her lips and her muscles were relaxed like she hadn't struggled at all.

Selar opened his omni-tool, set it to a biological scan. Beran didn't move, didn't say anything else about it. When it was done T'elis' brain looked like an insubstantial cloud of black steam on the screen.

"That doesn't happen," Selar said, frowning down at his omni. A chill slipped down his spine as he thought about it. "Even if it did, why would someone lie about it?"

"You tell me," Beran said. "All I know is that someone covered this up real nice by blaming it on the case we were assigned to. I looked into it and her death report was written by a drell in vice who's hiding from an avalanche of quasar debts he racked up in Kithoi. You know him?"

Selar nodded. The drell's name was Denive. "So you think we were sent out as window dressing? We look busy and someone else looks clean?"

"Maybe. The big question is who," Beran said. "I thought maybe it was T'Ven or Lariad, but it's not exactly a secret that people come to lower Tayseri when they're on the outs. And the more I look into it, the more I'm starting to think this entire precinct is stuffed with people who wouldn't mind sweeping something like this under the rug."

It wasn't news. Everyone in C-Sec knew that the edge of the Ward was full of employees who had a good reason to stay down there. They made a deal and they put up with the hours and the dust, hidden away at the Citadel's end. 

Selar put his hand on the cabinet and gently slid it back into place until the orange number lit up again. The euphoric yellow eyes disappeared into the darkness and he had the distinct urge to wash his hands for a few hours. T'elis' expression had made him feel as if he was witnessing a private moment, one that lingered far beyond her death.

Beran added, "You're included on that list of people, Vel."

Selar frowned at the flickering forty-two. He said, "I wouldn't be in on something like this. You know that."

"I know you turn down promotions that would require a transfer out of here, just like the rest of them," Beran said. "And I know you're from upper Shalta, you've told me yourself. So start talking. I can't get anything out of anyone else that I've talked to."

"Is this why the asari employees all look like they want to strangle you?"

"There are some things you just can't ask politely."

Selar was glad he hadn't been present for their reactions. "There isn't an asari sex killer secretly working for C-Sec," he said. It sounded crazy to even say it out loud. "T'Ven wouldn't stand for something like that and if she did Lariad would find out and immediately use it as leverage against her. He isn't as passive as he looks. The other asari employees are here over small stuff like debt or possession charges."

Beran asked, "Are you sure Lariad and T'Ven aren't both in on it for someone higher up?"

"I don't know," Selar said honestly. "I doubt either of them would be asking us to keep working on the contraband case if they were. It'd be under the rug."

Beran looked him up and down. His eyes were sharp and lacked friendliness. He was interrogating a suspect now, not asking his partner of two years. "What drove you down here, Vel? I couldn't find a thing about it."

Selar looked away from the wall with so many numbers. "It was complicated. It doesn't matter down here."

"The xenophilia is weird for a lizard but it isn't illegal," Beran continued, crossing his arms. "You're not running from the casinos and you're not drowning in hallex or sand." His subharmonics dropped real low, in a way that was usually reserved for suspects he didn't like. "I know you're a quiet sort of guy, but you're going to need to start being completely honest with me if you think you're getting out of here without a problem."

Selar had seen Beran bluff too many times to be cowed by it. He said, "You're talking like you're going to put me in a cabinet next to T'elis. Save the act for someone who believes it."

"Are you being blackmailed to keep quiet about this? Paid off?"

"No, of course not."

"Then keep talking."

"Only if you ask me a different question," Selar said. There was a toneless, empty note to his voice that he didn't like much, but he was starting to get sore about the accusation. "Look, I hate the way the air feels down here. We're going back upstairs."

"Like hell we are."

"We're going back upstairs," Selar said again. "Things aren't always above water around here, but that has more to do with the budget than anything else. You've been around long enough to know that."

"I know there's a dead asari in that cabinet that shouldn't be there."

Selar shook his head a little. "We won't find out what happened to her if we sit around arguing about it."

Selar turned his omni on to make a call and moved to head upstairs again. Beran let out a subharmonic noise of frustration and grabbed Selar by his jacket, ripping the fabric, and dragged him back until he was against the wall. One of the cabinet handles jammed hard into his back and the impact sent a jolt of pain through his ribs. 

The autopsy tech stopped working, looked up. His scalpel hovered uncertainly above the quarian, reflecting the light. He didn't move except for his chest beneath his white lab coat, rising and falling steadily.

Selar sucked in a breath and ignored the pain.

"You want to know what really matters down here right now?" Beran grated out. "I've been getting tailed ever since you left. Someone's got it out for me and I want to know who it is."

Selar narrowed his eyes. He said, "Why didn't you send me a message about it?"

"I didn't want anyone intercepting it, or you sending it off to them. You know there was a goddamn bug in my apartment?" Beran shoved him against the wall again. "You're the only person who comes by, Vel. You want to tell me how the hell it got there?"

"If you put me down," Selar said through his teeth as pain blasted through him again, "we'll figure it out."

"Like hell I'll put you down," Beran said. "They pay you a lot to step aside while they come after me?"

There was a cart next to Selar, one of the metal racks with disinfectants scattered around. He grabbed it when Beran slammed him against the wall again. Sometimes a guy boiled over and you had to calm him down. Sometimes it was your partner.

But before he could knock him over the head with it, before Beran even realized what was about to happen and before Selar had a firm grip on the cart, the door to the morgue burst open. The orderly came in, followed by four C-Sec employees with their rifles pointed at the both of them.

Upstairs, Opel was dead.

Chapter Text

According to the employees who arrested Selar, Opel had died right in its convalescent tank. The shine on their shoes suggested that they weren't from the lower Ward and the tone of their voices betrayed that they didn't care to answer questions about a broke hanar that sold religious trinkets on the docks. 

And Selar's mouth was a grim line on his face while he held Meiko's keycard. He turned it, felt the grainy texture of the code strip through the fabric covering the tips of his fingers. He had his elbows on his knees and he was parked on a bench in one of the academy's basement prison cells.

He'd been booked on suspicion of murder.

As far as he knew, Beran was somewhere nearby booked on the same thing. There was a bruise on Selar's back that was spreading into the shape of a cabinet handle, but Beran was still his partner. Selar wasn't going to hold a grudge about it. He was more concerned about the possibility of Opel's brain being steam like T'elis'. He suspected it was.

But he didn't know why T'elis' death had been covered up, or if a meld had even killed her. He didn't know why C-Sec believed two of their own employees had killed Opel. What he did know was that T'Ven ran things cleanly when she could, discreetly when the budget ran dry, and that he had never seen his partner act like that before. Beran was the sort of guy who could walk into hell without flinching. 

Waves of red electricity flickered over the kinetic barrier of the cell's entrance, staining Selar and everything else inside the same color. He wasn't going anywhere for a while. He was a statistic for the moment, part of a long row of cells with more stacked above and below him like the morgue's cabinets full of stiffs. It started to wear on his patience. 

And after twenty-nine galactic hours, when his patience was thinner than a klixen wing, a pencil pusher finally came for him, a real fresh recruit of a volus. Selar turned the keycard over one more time and then slipped it back into his pocket. 

The recruit led him to the highest floor in the academy, where the echoes against the blue glass windows were hardly more than whispers drifting. It was where Middle Ward Commissioner Tesik oversaw operations for Tayseri's middle districts, and he worked in the closest equivalent to an ivory tower you could find at the academy. Tesik was the sort of salarian an alien expected when they saw a pair of horns in a crowd, with his thoughts rattling around and his eyes blinking like someone had thrown sand in his face. Beran was convinced that he had been placed by the Salarian Union's Special Tasks Group to keep tabs on C-Sec. 

A spook, Beran had said.

There were salarian C-Sec guards outside the door when the volus left Selar there. Inside, Tesik stood rigidly at a window. Potted Sur'Kesh jungle palms were lined up along the walls and a full spectrum lamp was holding a vigil at his desk, glowing like an island of sunshine in the dim light of the academy. An asari assistant worked at a console nearby and her green dress matched the palms. The Commissioner was watching her reflection in the window while he listened to the glass whisper.

He pulled his gaze away when Selar approached, blinked back to reality. He recited, "Citadel Shalta Ward District One Resna Selar Velenn," like the name was a dead pyjack that someone had stuffed in his sock drawer. "A station man."

Blink blink blink

Selar ignored the tone of his voice, simply nodded. It was difficult to get along with salarians who had been raised on a planet, spook or not. When they found out you had never set foot on solid ground they never let it go. They were always marveling at how the lack of sunlight and the noise pollution of the station might be affecting you, in a way that made it clear they thought it was definitely affecting you.

And it made Selar's horns burn up.

"I assume you've been acquainted with the situation," Tesik said. He had a thin tan stripe running down the middle of his dusty purple face. "I've brought you here because I'm very interested in the murder that occurred in the hospital on Rigel street."

"That makes two of us," Selar said carefully, still wondering why he wasn't being questioned by an investigator or even Commissioner Rehokan who oversaw the lower districts where Selar's papers and the hospital both were.

"Indeed, the nature of the crime is unsettling," Tesik murmured. He stole a final glance at his assistant, then went to his desk with a gesture that made it clear Selar should follow him. "We're keeping it quiet for the moment to avoid the Illuminated Primacy. This is the kind of atrocity we don't like to see on the Council's station and they'll be publicly denouncing us for our involvement. I don't blame them." 

Selar didn't move. He said, "I'm not clear on what you mean, Commissioner. No one will tell me what happened to Opel."

"Investigator Berantus Aventius murdered it," Tesik stated, sitting down. He obviously felt that he was repeating himself, gave Selar a sour drop of his eyelids. He added, "Possibly with your help."

Selar blinked once, set his eyelids firmly in place. "So that's how it is."

"Indeed. That's how it is."

The accusation was ridiculous, but it explained why the middle Ward was stepping in. Beran was on loan to the lower Ward, but the middle Ward still held his papers and paid his salary. And Tesik looked as if he believed the whole thing was true.

"That's a sham and you know it. Beran wouldn't murder anybody," Selar told him. "Opel was the only informant in his contraband case."

"Berantus is one of the middle Ward's most notorious investigators," Tesik pointed out. "There's a reason I jettisoned him to the lowest precinct for that exchange program two years ago. He's a crude alcoholic with a paranoid demeanor who, I will remind you, just assaulted you in a morgue. He might have killed you if C-Sec hadn't intervened."

Selar wasn't exactly going to thank anyone for arresting him. He said, "We were just working some things out." 

"Incorrect. But you would certainly view it that way, wouldn't you?" Tesik scoffed faintly, leaned a knobby elbow on his chair. "I've heard about you. While you might have removed the clan tattoo, which I assume was quite painful, if you shine a proper light," and here Tesik pointed the full spectrum lamp into Selar's face, moved it down his neck, and pointed it away again, "the thinner tissue where it used to be reveals that you're from the salarian enclave in upper Shalta."

Selar gave Tesik a heavy stare, didn't say anything in response to that. 

Tesik pressed on with a measure of satisfaction creeping into his voice. "The circles there pretend to have legitimate companies, but trouble is their only business. It tells me almost everything I need to know about you. Your file tells me the rest." Tesik pointed the lamp at himself, closed his eyes. "You're a brute, easily led into assisting a murder."

This was routine; you cuffed a suspect in a sore spot hoping he got angry and did something he shouldn't, or accidentally told you something you needed to know. It kept people off balance. Selar knew this, inwardly reminded himself that he knew this, and still felt the words itching under his skin.

Selar held back the insult he wanted to spit out. He said, "That's a nice trick with the light, Commissioner, but it doesn't have anything to do with Opel."

"Doesn't it?" Tesik said, opening his eyes. "This hanar, it was killed with an alkaline hydrolysis accelerator placed in its convalescent tank."

Selar didn't move a muscle. He didn't blink, kept his lids steady. He tried not to picture what that would have looked like. And if he felt any relief that Opel hadn't died like T'elis, it was overpowered by the sick feeling in his stomach over what had actually happened.

Alkaline hydrolysis was a bad way to go.

"It's one of many methods used by the Citadel's clans when diplomacy breaks down," Tesik continued on, unabated by Selar's darkening expression. "It's also something you might have access to, considering your origins." He pointed the lamp in Selar's face again, held it there steadily. "So I want to know exactly where you were yesterday at eighteen galactic standard time when the murder occurred."

Selar said in the bright light, "I was buying tableware on the ring. I broke a teapot."

Tesik shook his horns. "Very incorrect," he said. He seemed to enjoy saying it. "I doubt you could afford a tea leaf on the ring, let alone a container to put it in. You were scheduled for an escort twice a day and each day you returned to the embassy outpost at the same time, except for yesterday when the hanar was murdered. You were quite late. So let's try the question again, shall we?"

Selar frowned. He approached the desk, pushed the light back into Tesik's face, and said, "I bought a teapot made of stainless inert iridium. It took a while. Look, doesn't the timing of this seem suspicious to you? Why would Beran kill someone who tried to help us? Why would either of us go back to the hospital afterward?"

"I have those same questions myself," Tesik replied, "but the facts say he did. They also say you had enough time to assist with the murder before returning to the outpost. You could supply the method. Berantus is crazy enough to use it. More importantly, I have a security vid of the hallway at the hospital. Several witnesses have positively identified him as the same turian observed in that vid."

Selar's brow dropped low. "What?"

Tesik smiled faintly. "I just told you. Do you need me to repeat it? They picked him out of a line-up."

At nineteen hundred T'Ven had been showing Lariad Meiko's OSD at the precinct. And Beran had stated that he was at the hospital when T'Ven asked him why he was late. But if Opel was murdered at eighteen hundred, he couldn't have been checking on it.

So where had Beran actually been? 

Selar didn't know, but he wasn't going to say so. Commissioner Tesik seemed to believe that the security vid was an ace in the hole and that Beran had indeed been there dissolving Opel into goop while Selar provided the chemicals. And Tesik waited, presumably for Selar to spill his guts now that the evidence had been laid down on the table.

Selar asked, "Can you see his face on that vid?"

Tesik was amused by that. "So you admit you knew he was there."

Selar didn't let up. "No, I was on the ring buying a teapot like I said. Were there any chemical traces on him? What did he say about it when you asked?"

"Nothing polite. He lacks mental stability," Tesik said dismissively. He flicked the lamp off, pushed it aside. "Now, I'm the one asking the questions here. I want to get the details settled so we can compare your statements. It will help things move faster if Berantus decides to act smart for once and take a plea bargain. And if you provide information that is useful to me, I will do my best to make your life very easy." Tesik spread his hands, blinked twice. "Or, if you'd prefer to be stubborn, I can make your life very difficult. I can charge you as an accessory."

Selar said, "You want me to help put Beran away to save my own skin?"

"I simply want you to think carefully about your own prospects," Tesik replied. His mouth lifted into a smile, but the rest of his face was wooden. "I can help you, Constable. You should let me."

"I've never used an alkaline hydrolysis accelerator on anyone," Selar said, crossing his arms. "You'd need records that don't exist to charge me."

Tesik added, "I can also make your first circle's life very difficult by scrutinizing their activities in Shalta."

It wasn't much of a threat if it wasn't a bluff, but Selar wasn't going to let Tesik know that. He said, "There's nothing to scrutinize. They export cyanobacteria to the Verge for terraforming."

"Incorrect," Tesik said again. "But you already know that."

Selar pushed down the urge to cuff him for saying incorrect yet again, glanced at the asari. He'd thought she was a part of Tesik's preferred decor with the way he'd been soaking up her reflection but reconsidered. He said, "Are you here to throw me around if I get angry at him?"

The asari didn't look up from her console. "Yep. Be nice."

"You're talking to me," Tesik said. "Not her."

"You," Selar said, glancing back at him, "don't have a thing on me. If you did you wouldn't be trying to rile me up to hit you so you can keep me beyond the standard hold with an assault charge. Does she keep you safe while you needle your target?" 

Tesik's eye membranes tightened. "I've simply dealt with enclave trash in the past. Call it useful caution."

Selar shook his head a little, didn't have anything polite to say. He was done with it.

He'd also heard enclave trash before. The clans from Sur'Kesh and its planetary colonies were always sneering at the clans living on the Citadel. It didn't matter what planet they came from, although it was worse when they were from the home-world and brought jungle flora with them. None of them could break into the credit accounts of the enclaves. They got sore about it. 

Upper Shalta in particular was notoriously impenetrable, a glittering sprawl of old clans and circles that refused to prioritize business or even breeding contracts from Sur'Kesh. And it was the sort of place that would drown you and then send a bill for the water to your closest relative without a second thought.

Trouble was indeed the real business there. Tesik wasn't wrong.

But Tesik himself was notorious for cranking out plea bargains and confessions on an industrial scale, upping the middle Ward's processing numbers however he could. He wouldn't lose any sleep if Selar and Beran were two of those numbers. He would be far more worried about getting himself clocked out in time for a round or three at the sim tables and some quasar.

Selar's horns started to burn up over the whole thing.

Tesik tapped a haptic and conjured up an empty statement form on his holo-screen, looking pleased with himself as he began typing with fingers drenched in orange light. "Now then," he said, eyeing the screen. "I'm ready for your statement. Speak quickly."

Selar gestured to the tattoo on Tesik's face. "I want to see Commissioner Rehokan and my lawful contact--"

"We'll get to it. If you assist me." 

"--and I think it's a shame you let a turian take a leak on your face like that."

Tesik's eyes snapped up from the screen. When the comment sank down past his general satisfaction with himself, his lips pulled back against his teeth. He lifted his fingers to the tip of his chin, where the mark ended with a splash of ink. 

Tesik seethed. "That's completely inappro--"

Selar's horns were burning hotter than a sun. He said quietly, "Go to hell, Commissioner. Someone's trying to frame my partner and you're so pleased about it you're going to send them a thank-you present." He leaned over the desk until their eyes met. He knew what was going to happen next but didn't care when he added, "You think I'm going to cry like a hatchling and help you string him up just because you shoved me in the basement? You're a kepta and you can--"

With a blue flash, Selar was sent flying across the room. The asari assistant's biotic energy tingled painfully against his skin and he gritted his teeth when he crashed into one of the palms in the corner. He was taken back down to the basement after that, rubbing his shoulder and covered in green mossy dirt. 

The assistant locked him up this time and she said, "I told you to be nice to him."

Selar didn't think that was possible. He asked her through the red barrier, "Is my partner all right?"

She hesitated, shook her head. "When the case landed on the Commissioner's desk he did a dance around the room. The Investigator doesn't have an alibi and he called the Commissioner every awful name in the book when he was questioned about it. He's not making any friends, like you."

Selar sighed a little, sat down on the bench again. He believed it. "Thanks."

But the asari didn't leave. "You know, you look like you could have really hurt the Commissioner if I wasn't there, if you wanted to," she said. She looked him over like she approved of it. "Are you bad news like he said?"

Selar glanced at her, had a feeling the right answer to that question was yes. The meaner the better, if the way she was smiling at him was any indication. He'd seen that vid before and he didn't like it much.

Selar asked her, "Are you going to help me make a call?" 

She shook her head. "No."

"Then go on," he said, irritated by both her and her question. She flounced off.

He rubbed his hands over his forehead and his horns, let out a long exhale. Every time he tried to lean against the wall the bruise on his back reminded him that he should be leaning forward again. He pulled the keycard out of his pocket and resumed staring a hole into it.

And he felt like he was slowly sinking into deep water.

They weren't going to let him call anyone. Tesik was too pleased with the idea of ousting Beran to question a convenient case dropped into his lap like a party favor. It didn't matter that the whole thing was a frame-up, not when the guy stuck in the frame had a reputation and liked to call his district Commissioner a corrupt spook right to his face. 

Another conspiracy theory, Selar thought. Maybe.

And T'Ven had told them not to come back until they had more information about the batarian embassy. She wouldn't be looking for him. Meiko might, but she wasn't a defense lawyer. She was an alibi for Selar that the Commissioner obviously didn't want. 

More importantly, Meiko was where she belonged, safely ensconced in the never ending diplomatic crises of the Alliance on the ring. He wanted her to stay up there in the circular nature of human politics and dubious greenery. He didn't want her anywhere near the edge of the Ward, where it was easy to stumble onto the end of the world. You didn't even notice you were there until you started to fall right off the side.

And Selar thought about that for a long time, staring down at the little keycard.

Chapter Text

Hour after hour passed. Occasionally, Commissioner Tesik would have Selar dragged upstairs to reconsider his statement. Selar wasn't budging except to add insults, but Tesik seemed willing to keep up the charade until he got what he wanted. And it was three galactic standard days before anything else happened.

Selar had his jacket folded under his head like a pillow and he was laying on his side on the bench, because the only thing you can do when you're booked in the basement is wait. So he waited and he slept, and when he awoke he looked at the barrier. The asari assistant was there again, stained red. He started to tell her to get lost but stopped when he realized she wasn't smiling.

Relief flooded through him. He said, "Madam Sergeant."

T'Ven didn't reply at first, just watched him like she was inwardly debating on whether or not to leave him there. Then she held up a vid-disc. "I found you an alibi," she told him. "You're very lucky that shop on the ring had a security camera." She put the disc away and began working at the control haptic. "How did you manage to break a teapot on duty, anyway?"

"I'm not very good at being tall," he said, getting up. Potting soil from Tesik's jungle palms fell to the ground like ashes around him.

"I'll remember to add that to your personnel files," she said. "Are you doing anything on the ring that I should be concerned about?"

Selar hesitated, understood what she meant. She must have checked the camera feed herself before coming in for him. And while Meiko hadn't exactly been all over him while she picked out new drinkware in that shop, her concept of personal space had evaporated. His own thirty galactic standard centimeters of personal space had been mostly discarded. 

He said quietly, "No, Madam."

T'Ven kept working at the haptic until the barrier disintegrated with a pop of noise. Her skin returned to a pale blue. "Sometimes when you help a person they think you're a hero," she said. "They start to think that you act like a hero all the time. And, maybe up on the ring, things can be like that. But the world is more complicated down here for people like us."

Selar nodded silently.

Upstairs in the atrium, Lower Ward Commissioner Rehokan was standing with Tesik beneath the yellow boxwood trees at the entrance. Tesik kept pressing his finger to his chin where his tattoo ended as if touching it might change its shape into something else.

And Commissioner Rehokan was one of T'Ven's only allies at the C-Sec academy. He was a middle-aged batarian who was realistic about the nature of running Tayseri's lowest district. He was strong and sturdy, but soft around his waist with blue sleeves rolled up to his elbows against regulatory standards. There was a brown box under his arm and the end of a cigarette tucked in his mouth, with clouds of smoke floating all around him. 

But writing him up for smoking would have been pointless. He was heading back to the Hegemony's home system of Harsa when the embassies were done arguing. 

He greeted T'Ven like he knew it by pulling another thin white cigarette out of his shirt pocket. "My beleaguered Madam Sergeant," he boomed out through the clouds. "A little bird sang to me this morning and told me you needed my assistance."

"This is a safety hazard," Tesik muttered. He blinked angrily in Rehokan's direction and he saved a little of that emotion for Selar when he noticed the salarian-shape beyond the smoke.

"The only hazard is holding one of my subordinates without evidence," T'Ven told Tesik. "Did you think I wouldn't find out?"

"I had the signatures of several witnesses and a Ward judge who agreed that the arrest was justified," he insisted to her, coughing faintly. "We didn't bring either of them in lightly. The Investigator is still guilty of murder and I plan to follow protocol and prosecute him. He's under my jurisdiction."

T'Ven said, "For now."

Selar frowned, looked over at her. Their eyes met and hers were dark with barely restrained violence. T'Ven had been encountering obstructionists for most of her career and her blackest moods happened after a trip to the academy. The foundations and lower districts weren't often acknowledged by the bureaucrats that populated the offices there. But she didn't try to read Tesik the riot act over his plan to prosecute. That unsettled Selar.

She couldn't get Beran out, he realized. The frame had stuck.

Rehokan took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, "I'll keep you informed if the middle Ward discovers anything new. It's the best I can do right now."

"Berantus was my last investigator," T'Ven said. "What am I supposed to do with an understaffed precinct?"

"You'll think of something. That's why you're still around." Rehokan then tilted his head to the left and added, "It's also why I'm going to recommend you for Captain before I leave. Does that cheer you up enough to let us part on good terms?"

"I don't need a promotion," she replied, "I need an investigator." Her gaze shifted to Tesik and she added, "This is a frame-up and I don't have time for it."

"It's open and shut," Tesik said dismissively.

There wasn't anything either Commissioner could do, and they both told her so. Just locating another investigator willing to work in the lowest precinct of the Ward would take months. Paperwork and interviews would then follow, eating up more time. And while she was fuming about it Tesik blinked, thoughtful suddenly. The smoke clouds were clearing up and he waved them away with his hand.

"You know, T'Ven, if you were in my district you would already be a Captain," he noted as he looked down at her. "I would make sure of it, unlike Rehokan here. You wouldn't have to worry about staffing issues or running grafting on the side to keep up with payroll."

Rehokan crossed his arms and grated out roughly, "There aren't any grafts being run by C-Sec in the Wards."

Tesik tutted, smirked faintly. "Of course not," he said. "My mistake." He pressed on at T'Ven, "But I think you should still consider it. I'm sure I could negotiate a position for you that would be mutually beneficial. Something that suits a woman of your prestige more than that dusty slum at the edge of the station."

T'Ven stared up at him like he was a fly in a fresh glass of elasa. "Given a choice between you or a slum, Commissioner," she said, "I think I'd take the slum."

"Suit yourself. My office is open if you reconsider," Tesik said, unperturbed by her ire. On the contrary, he seemed to be enjoying it. His assistant was waiting for him near the elevator and he stole a quick look at her before he said to Rehokan, "I suppose our business is concluded for the moment."

"Get out of here," Rehokan muttered. He flicked the cigarette away onto the floor when Tesik walked off.

And he sighed, shifting the box in his arms. He glanced at Selar.

Selar said, "You're a sight, Commissioner."

"Aren't I?" Rehokan replied. He waved Selar off when Selar tried to thank him. "This will be my last good deed on the Citadel," he said. "Maybe it was my only one. We don't have enough to charge you, so you're off the hook for now."

"Just like that?" Selar asked.

"Just like that," Rehokan said, looking less friendly suddenly. "But you're suspended for public brawling and making a damn poor show of it. Did you think the corpses down there were going to cheer you on? You've been placed on unpaid leave per policy while the suits work out the details of the final reprimand."

Selar took the hit, nodded his horns. They were still burning up, but it was better than being covered in potting soil while Tesik needled him. 

And Rehokan wasn't interested in any further details about what had happened in the hospital on Rigel street, just held out the box. Selar's pistol, omni-tool, and badge had already been confiscated and were gathering dust at the bottom. He was forced to add his jacket to the pile. Long tears were running through the fabric where Beran's talons had ripped into it.

Selar tried not to stare at the torn threads. He asked, "Can I take the personal stuff?'

"Hurry it up," Rehokan said. He shook the box.

Selar grabbed the keycard along with the etched seashell, and secretly slipped his omni-tool wristlet into the curve of the shell. As he headed outside with T'Ven he was grateful to be out of the basement but knew it wasn't a victory. The seashell weighed too heavily in his pocket and his partner was still stuck in a cell.

"Beran thought we were in on whatever this is," Selar said to T'Ven as they stood outside of the academy's entrance. The walkway was crowded with aliens and flickering advertisements that hovered against the bulkheads. 
 
"He might as well have been right with the way it ended up," she replied. "I don't have anyone left to give his investigation to." She placed her hands on her hips and scowled out into the crowd.  "But they're just using the frame-up to buy time, if you ask me. I don't think Tesik's witnesses will be around to testify against Beran once the secession happens."

Selar asked, "Why? Are they all batarians?"

T'Ven spared him a brief glance. "What do you think?"

Selar exhaled a breath. "I think," he said, "that when the frame against Beran falls apart there won't be a case left for him to investigate."

T'Ven nodded. Two officers from their district were waiting nearby with a C-Sec skycar for her. It was the elcor named Borri and the volus who had the important little walk and a name Selar couldn't hope to pronounce. Lariad was in the back seat, snoring away. But his face glistened with sweat and his eyes, briefly opening to ponder the skycar's ceiling, resembled bruises.

Before Selar could ask what was going on T'Ven asked, "What were you two doing down in the morgue?"

Selar watched the volus unsuccessfully try to reach the skycar's door handles, then turned his full attention to her. "We were having a transparency problem concerning T'elis," he answered. "I have a feeling you already know something about it."

T'Ven swore under her breath, looked away.

"He thought the precinct was part of a conspiracy to cover up her death," Selar said.

And Selar waited, leaned his shoulder against the corner of the building. It was always rush hour near the academy, but the crowd spread to give T'Ven a cautious berth while she stood there glaring a crater into the walkway. And he thought she might walk off and leave him standing there, maybe with a pink slip in his file as an afterthought, but after ten galactic seconds had passed she pulled a cylinder out of her pocket instead. 

It was an implant that batarians used on their slaves when things weren't so friendly. Any C-Sec employee who had worked in the foundations recognized the hardware; sand and hallex rings liked to stick them in addicts who couldn't pay their debts. They shipped them off to the Terminus Systems to make credits.

"You usually need surgical tools to implant one of these," T'Ven explained, "but we've been seeing more of this new prototype. It has a burrowing mechanism and someone stuck it into T'elis' crest during the sand bust."

Selar frowned. "They aren't usually bold enough to pull a stunt like that against C-Sec."

T'Ven handed him the implant. He rolled it around in his hand, held it up to the light between his thumb and forefinger. It reminded him of a stylus for a holo-pad, smooth and thin and silver, but it had a sharp edge. And it was heavy for how small it was, just as implants always were. 

When he tried to give it back to T'Ven she wouldn't take it. "I shouldn't even have it," she told him. "It's evidence, except it never happened according to the Executor. The hardware inside isn't finished yet, like the new omni-tools we've been seeing, so it doesn't even work. It just causes hemorrhaging."

Another bad way to go, Selar thought. He said, "That's why her brain was paste."

T'Ven nodded. "A lot of people who are higher up than me are making sure it doesn't get out and picked up as an evening story on the news somewhere. I suppose they're expecting the problem to disappear after the Hegemony secedes, like everything else. And there's nothing I can do about it, so I made sure she went down with an honorable report instead of whatever the Captain was going to cook up about her."

"So we weren't in on it," Selar said with a measure of relief, because with the way Beran had been acting he was beginning to think they might be. 

Perhaps it was just useless paranoia. Beran's outlook on life could be rubbing off on him, he supposed. And T'elis' expression had been unsettling. He had never seen a body look like that. On the contrary, implant victims usually looked drawn and exhausted from excessive adrenal fatigue.

But, now that he had gained distance from the tense atmosphere of the morgue, a mind-meld killer sounded like the plot of a cheesy late-night vid.

"No, of course we weren't," T'Ven was saying. "But Berantus decided that everyone was part of a cover-up when he looked into it. He was right, in a way, but he didn't talk to me to clear the story up." 

"That sounds like him," Selar admitted. He could tell she was losing her patience, so he decided to let the matter rest for the moment. "It's going to be difficult to get him out if those witnesses decide to stick around."

"He won't even talk to me," she said. "If Beran actually has an alibi, he doesn't want anyone to know about it."

"I want to know about it," Selar said, his frown deepening. "Could we get one of the embassies to take him in?"

T'Ven let out the faintest, most cynical laugh that he had ever heard. "Do you think I haven't tried that?" she asked. "While you were down in that cell I've been burning bridges trying to get help, but I don't have much influence when the other districts decide to get involved. You know how it is."

Selar knew how it was.

He looked out into the crowd, crossed his arms with the implant between his fingers, and didn't say anything else for a while. There wasn't much to say about it. There were a lot of batarians in C-Sec and they didn't have anything to lose, not with deportation to their home system looming over them. And they'd go further than just smoking on the job like Rehokan if they had a reason to. Whoever had dropped that frame-up on Commissioner Tesik's desk was committed to using their final days on the Citadel to stop Beran's investigation.

But why? Selling junk contraband and abducting aliens in the foundations was small-time stuff for someone connected to the embassies.

Selar weighed the different possibilities in his mind, none of which made sense. "Maybe I can get Beran to tell me what he knows. I'll pick up where he left off."

"Try it if you want," T'Ven said, glancing at him. "You can't come back to work, but I can't exactly tell you where to go or what to do in your new spare time. Like Rehokan said, you're free to move about." 

"I'll be taking him up on that."

She said, "I'll keep your credentials active in the system where I can. I still want to know where the embassy has moved their business."

Selar hadn't expected that kind of support. He said, meaning it, "Thank you, Madam Sergeant."

"Don't thank me. You're just going to get yourself killed," she replied as she walked off. The volus bounced on its heels and Borri came close to ripping the door off the skycar when he opened it for her.

And Selar took a breath of recycled station air that was fresher than the stale atmosphere of the cell. He slipped the implant into his pocket.
 
Despite its reputation at its farthest edges, Tayseri Ward didn't look much different from the other Wards. Massive digital blue eyes were blinking on an electronic billboard nearby, offering companion appointments and sim-tables calibrated to personal tastes. Against the walls of a nearby cafe, the salarian government was advertising a new colony called Olor that was printing immigration papers to aliens at a discount. And Shin-Akiba had just opened up in Zakera Ward with a Citadel-wide advertising campaign selling freshly minted Fornax vids. 

Everything on the Citadel was for sale if you looked up long enough. Everyone was busy, with ads and bulkheads and neon lights replacing any hope of a starscape. And a holographic salarian began cheerily, projected next to the blue eyes, "I didn't believe in love, not until I tried Tupari's latest super-berry flavor! Now I'm head over toes!"

Pixelated hearts and cans of tupari rained down, optimistic against glass and steel.

"What a feeling!"

Selar turned away, went back inside the C-Sec academy, and told the officer at the front desk who he wanted to see. Liquid lines of light appeared on the walkway and led to a cell and a red shadow that was shaped like Beran. It was leaning against the wall chewing a ration bar while its mandible hung low. 

The shadow shifted, moved closer to the barrier until Selar could see Beran's face plates in the light.

Beran spat out the bar. "Get out of here, Vel," he said. "I'm waiting for my lawyer."

"They're framing you up," Selar said to him, speaking close to the barrier. "They cooked up evidence against both of us."

"You think I don't know it?" Beran muttered. "I know a damn frame when I see one. But you're walking around outside a cell just fine."

"I had an alibi on the ring," Selar told him. "Look, T'Ven thinks the batarian embassy is behind this whole thing and I'm inclined to believe her after what I've seen so far. The witnesses probably won't stick around to testify against you, but we could use an alibi for you just in case they do."

"The embassy isn't behind this," Beran insisted. "We both know I'm stuck down here because I started looking into the lower Ward's dirty laundry. There's a mind-meld killer on the loose and someone is covering it up. The batarians, this whole damn thing, is just a distraction."

"I just need to know where you were," Selar continued, as calmly as he could despite what Beran was saying. "I need to prove you were there somehow. I'm going to get you out of here"

Beran said forcefully, "Listen to me, Vel. They call them ardat yakshi in Thessian."

Selar knew he needed to be patient, but couldn't help the hard stare growing on his face. "Where did you even come up with this?" he asked. "Did you see it in a vid somewhere?"

"No," Beran said, hesitating suddenly. "A friend told me. She knew what she was talking about"

"Who?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm right about it."

Beran was always stubborn about his wilder conspiracy theories once he got them in his head. Selar sighed with frustration, looked down the hallway at the other cells and the people milling about listlessly inside them. He hated seeing his partner like this; falsely accused and more paranoid than usual. Beran was one of the few people in the precinct that didn't deserve to be down here. Selar pulled the implant out of his pocket, showed it to Beran. 

Selar kept his voice steady. "There isn't a conspiracy against you, at least not from lower Tayseri," he said. "T'elis was killed by one of these during the bust and the suits swept it under the rug. T'Ven forged the report to keep the whole mess quiet."

Beran's subharmonics dropped low. "An implant killed her?"

Selar tapped the edge of it with his finger. "It doesn't work, just scrambles people. They're probably being sold to easy marks to make credits."

Beran's working mandible twitched a single time, then trembled against his jaw. And Selar thought he'd finally gotten through to him, but then Beran's eyes grew distant and he shook his head. 

"Vel," he said, sounding tired, "that's great. Real damn great. You're a fool if you think I'd believe it. So try a different story, maybe the one where you're getting paid to drag information out of me. They sent T'Ven and Rehokan earlier without much luck. Tesik has slithered down here more times than I can count." Beran hummed and added gravely, "And now here you are, too."

"That's the story," Selar insisted quietly. "I didn't know anything about it until today. We're partners, Beran. I didn't help anyone put you down here."

Beran said, "Being partners doesn't mean a damn thing and you know it. Not in lower Tayseri." 

Selar could feel himself losing his patience. "Beran--"

"Why'd you run from Shalta?"

Selar closed his eyes, let out a breath to keep his jaw from clenching. He didn't answer.

Beran snorted and sank back against the wall until he was a shadow again. "Partners, huh? Get the hell out of here."

Silence stretched between them after that. 

Selar tried to tug on his jacket but his fingers caught empty air. He turned away and went back to his apartment. He threw his clothes off, stood under a shower that hit him like a sandblaster while he waited for the soil and grime of the academy to wash off. It never did, just remained a muddy residue coating all of his thoughts, so he soaped up. He scrubbed until his skin was irritated and the suds wore out.

And whenever he closed his eyes he saw the afterimage of Beran's cell against his eyelids, and when he opened them he couldn't stop picturing Opel with its cups of candy and the prayers it sold for friends and sweetie-hearts. Neither deserved what had happened to them.

When he was done he wiped away steam from the old mirror and inspected his neck and his face, then his arms and back. He grasped at bare blue-green skin, searching for the remains of Shalta's clan markings that Tesik had seen there. But it was impossible to notice them in the dim artificial light.

Why'd you run from Shalta?

Selar looked away and ignored his reflection. The bathroom only had one drawer, the other had been pulled out months ago. He ignored that, too. Amalthea had taken half of everything she could and then he hadn't seen her again. He never saw any of the women again after they broke it off, even when he went looking for them. They disappeared like smoke in a breeze.

What a feeling, he thought grimly.

And when his horns had cooled off he went back to the academy's basement, walking once again on lines of light. He said to Beran in the shadows, "I left Shalta because of a lizard problem. It's hard to explain, but that's all you would have thought it was. I'll tell you all about it after I get you out of here."

Beran looked over at him.

"And I am getting you out," Selar reaffirmed. It didn't matter if Beran argued with him or not. "I'm going to find out exactly what's going on here and I'm going to bring it all above water." 

Beran said, "If you go looking into things, you're not going to like what you find."

Selar's words felt like sandpaper in his mouth as he turned away and said, "Do I ever?"

"Hey," Beran called out after him. "Vel, don't do anything weird like eat my breakfast cereal if you stop by my place down there."

Selar blinked at that, turned back. He said, "I've never actually understood the appeal of sugary food. It doesn't do much for me."

"Yeah, I know," Beran replied, "but it's dextro and it'll pack an ugly punch. Take the advice for what it is, will you?"

Selar hesitated, nodded his horns silently.

After that, he headed back upstairs. He needed to find the batarians who had been arguing on Meiko's OSD and make contact with them, drag out any information he could about Tayseri and the murder in the hospital. But he wouldn't be able to just walk into the embassies and say hello, at least not more than once. So he'd need to catch them off guard somewhere else. And, with a heavy stone lodging itself in his stomach, he knew exactly who could help him with that. 

As much as he didn't want to get her involved, Meiko was his best, and possibly only, connection to the embassies and the information inside.

So he headed to the Presidium.

Chapter Text

Without his C-Sec uniform, anyone on the Presidium who looked at Selar would have seen a tourist. He was wearing the style of business suit that most salarians from the Wards wore, with a dark blue collar tight against his neck and a silver metal clasp that wasn't really silver. He adjusted it occasionally with his fingers. He was a stereotype of a personality, with no real right to be there outside of buying souvenirs and taking holo-pictures.

And when he met Meiko again she was waiting for him on the ring's silver walkways. The world around her was so bright that it was almost shining. 

Approaching her while a breeze brushed against his horns, Selar reminded himself that this wasn't what a garden world actually felt like. The sunshine could never be as warm as the real stuff, not that he knew the difference, and the clouds were essentially painted on the bulkheads. The flowers were probably just holograms like Lariad had said. And when Meiko finally saw him, and their eyes met, even she felt like a daydream that was simply renewing itself for a moment.

But it was easy to forget.

When he reached her she said, "I thought I wasn't going to see you again." She lifted her hand, pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. "A turian came by to take me to the embassy when you disappeared. I thought it was your partner at first, then I sent him away."

Selar didn't know anyone working on the ring who looked like Beran. "Why did you think it was him?"

"He looked like your partner's twin, but he didn't have any paint on his face," she said, tapping her cheek.

Selar didn't like what he was hearing. Turians working for C-Sec always kept their colony marks, even if was just a hint of old paint like Beran's rusted face. He asked, "Did the guy tell you what his name was?"

"No," she replied with a small frown. "And I didn't care what it was. I was waiting for you." She turned and looked out across the water, disinterested suddenly. "It was just a kiss, Constable," she added quietly. "It doesn't have to mean anything if you don't want it to."

She thought he'd run off on her. Selar watched while she clouded over completely; seeing a human pout was a novel experience. "I'm sorry, Miss Ogawa," he said as he tried not to marvel at it. "There was a bureaucratic dispute between districts. I was booked in the academy for a few days."

That drew her attention back to him right away. "You were in jail?"

"Wrong side of the barrier and everything." He tipped his horns at her. "I would have broken out if I'd known you were going to be sore about it."

She smiled at that, despite herself. But the relief in her eyes was palpable as she turned back to him. Being locked up was unexpectedly more acceptable than standing her up. And after Selar explained the situation to her she asked, "Is there any way I can help?"

"Maybe," Selar said. He hesitated, remembering Beran ranting about ardat yakshi, then pushed the thought away. "I wouldn't usually want you involved in this, but I need to find the two voices on your recording. I have a feeling they know exactly what's going on and I need to get to them before the Hegemony secedes and they disappear."

"I've only seen them during negotiations," she admitted. "The angry voice was Ara'than, and the other was his sibling Abronak." She paused, placed two fingers against her lips as she thought about it. "But I'm just a bit player in all of this, not like Ambassador Goyle or Mr. Udina. I don't think they'd be willing to meet with either of us if we asked." 

The two voices were the only lead Selar had. He said, "I don't really plan to ask."

She nodded, her eyes determined. "Then come with me."

Meiko led him to a stack of open-air patios not far from the Council's tower. As they stopped on the walkway underneath a tall poplar tree she shifted her body toward him and Selar placed his hand against the small of her back, leaned over because she had started speaking very quietly. She gestured up to the largest patio tucked into the slopes.

She said, "The batarians spend all of their time here at the Archos. It's the only private dinner club on the presidium. Even their Ambassador goes there in the evenings."

Selar had seen the batarian Ambassador before on the news. He followed Meiko's gaze, saw people milling around the entrance. It was an impressive amount of real estate to own privately on the ring. And someone obviously wanted the prestige of the view without the risk of a public display if the recessed seating was any indication. It was impossible to see the patrons or any personal business they might be conducting once they went inside.

"I'm guessing it's not easy to grab a lunch there," Selar said.

"Presidium reservations only," Meiko affirmed. "You have to make them at the embassies with a concierge. It's the most exclusive place here outside of the consort's chambers, so that's where they all go. Half of them don't even want to, I suppose, but the others would report them to a caste officer for investigation if they began isolating themselves."

Selar said, "You seem to know a lot about them."

"More than I do about salarians," she replied, glancing up at him with a smile that disappeared when she continued, "I've worked with batarians before. I'm not a fan of their cultural practices if you don't mind me saying so."

He would have been more surprised if she was. Humans and batarians were notoriously antagonistic with one another on the Citadel, and everywhere else. "Do you think you could get us a reservation?"

"I don't think it would be any trouble at all," she said. "You've been telling me to go see the sights, after all."

"I have," he agreed, watching the entrance to the club. "I'll take you to dinner. You can teach me how to dance."

Meiko sidled up to him closer, suppressing a laugh. "I can't even imagine you dancing," she said. "Will you take it as seriously as you take everything else?"

Selar considered it, very seriously. Her hair was moving pleasantly in the breeze and he said, "If it's with you, Miss Ogawa, I just might lighten up."

"Then why do I have a feeling that you already know how to dance and don't need my help at all?"

"Because I do know how." He was caught and there was no point in denying it. "But I like the idea of you teaching me how to do something." 

And it was a nice little daydream just like everything else on the ring. It would be just like a vid, just like Softer Than Blue with a little bit of Your Romance Will Be Yesterday's volus-arranged soundtrack drifting around them. Her shoes tapping on the tile and his hand resting on her waist. He'd pretend to stumble around the dance floor and she'd be more patient with him than she should be. She'd laugh and maybe he would, too.

Dreams could be like that, he thought. He knew they wouldn't be dancing at the Archos.

"I'll go along with it," she said as she looked up at him, "but only if you promise to smile more. I'll teach you how to do all sorts of things."

Selar had to admit that he liked the idea of that just fine. They stood there watching the crowd entering the Archos for a while, with his hand staying at the small of her back while she violated his personal space quite cheerfully. Her perfume had a clean, floral scent and beyond it he could actually smell the water behind them. It was completely different from the stuff that came out of the pipes in the Wards.

He had never paid much attention before. With her, however, small things stood out.

And there was an elcor sorting and checking the guests at the Archos, openly enjoying the power of deciding which overdressed suit was able to go inside and who had to wait outside. But what interested Selar the most as he watched it was its podium; it had a single stem of red flowers in a small crystal vase.
 
Any lightness in Selar's expression faded. He gave the flowers a hard stare while they trembled in the breeze.

In the growing silence between them, Meiko asked, "You're still going to do something about Vantius, aren't you?"

 He glanced down at her and said, "When the embassy closes he won't have anyone left to protect him, but the precinct will have to force the case back open before he tries to jump systems. If I had a badge on I'd tell you I was going to meet him at the mass relay myself, but I'm stuck in plainclothes for the moment." 

"Please," Meiko said. "If you see him, please don't let him get away. I don't think I could bear it."

And she let go of him, looked away toward the water.

The sunlight around them lost whatever warmth it had been programmed to have. He crossed his arms with his fingers curled around his elbows. He wasn't exactly sure what Meiko expected him to do about Vantius, but as she stared down at the stillness of the lake, her eyes moving anywhere but back to him, it was clear that she expected a lot now that she had given him the OSD, and now that he had kissed her. The case being closed didn't seem to matter to her.

He tapped a finger on his elbow, felt the cheap fabric against his fingertip. Maybe he had fallen right into deep water without thinking about it. Maybe people from the Presidium didn't go around with people from the Wards unless something else was on the table, metaphorically speaking. 

Maybe he was a sap.

There was no point in avoiding it. A white mulwich landed on the railing nearby, wobbled unsteadily, and Selar asked, "Is that the price of the dinner reservation?" 

Meiko's expression was subdued, her eyes downcast on the edge of the water. "I don't understand what you mean."

Selar watched her steadily, waiting. Sometimes you had to let a person simmer with a question. An asari tossed a piece of bread into the bushes nearby and the mulwich went after it with a flutter.

And Meiko flushed suddenly, angry at the unsaid accusation, but the emotion drained away into nothing. She closed her eyes, very still while she retreated inside of herself for a moment. She was holding onto the railing very tightly when she said, with her eyes still closed, "Would you do it, if I asked you?"

"Have you ever cleaned someone up before?" he asked her instead of answering.

"I haven't," she answered. She opened her eyes as her brows pinched together, and let go of the railing. "But I can't say that I'd be sorry if you did, or that I haven't thought about doing it myself. It goes against everything my profession stands for, but slavers are becoming more common in the Traverse. Nothing ever happens to them out there. Too many credits are involved."

"So you want something to happen to them here," he said. "Even if it's just one guy out of a thousand."

"Yes," she said softly. "What the Alliance labels colonial work is complicated. I've spent part of my career working with indentured humans on Camala, trying to advocate for them and return them to their homes in our territories. Do you know of Camala, Constable?"

Selar said, "Everyone knows about it."

"Then you know why."

Camala was the wealthiest batarian colony in the Traverse. The port cities were amusement parks for the wealthy, reflecting the expectation in batarian caste culture to display success. More importantly, if raiders ended up with a prize after attacking a freighter, whether it was weapons or people, Camala was where they went to sell it under the table. Omega would be their next stop if they didn't like the prices or if Camala didn't like the merchandise. But Camala always liked the merchandise if it was sentient. The mining facilities out in the wastes and the pleasure gardens at the ports were where the people went, and where they didn't last long. Camala always needed more people for places like that.

And Selar wasn't surprised by the admission from Meiko. There had been never been a doubt in his mind that she would have shot at Vantius until her hands were scorched if Selar had handed her a pistol with a fresh heatsink and pointed her in the right direction. A lot of people in the same situation would have.

He could understand it. He exhaled and said, "You still can't ask me to do something like that."

She watched him guiltily through her lashes. "Are you angry with me?"

He really was a sap, he thought.

"No," he told her. "Look, it's not an unreasonable way to feel. But we both know I've got you on a pedestal taller than that tower over there." He nodded his horns to the Council's chrome pillar in the distance and the clouds surrounding the top. "So I want you to take that into account before you ask me to clean someone up off the books for you."

"That's a very complimentary way of saying you're disappointed in me," Meiko said, and smiled at him a little sadly. "You're not bad news, Constable, even if I wish you were sometimes."

"I like hearing you say that," he said, as gently as he could. T'Ven's rebuke at the academy echoed in his mind.  "But you don't know me well enough to decide. I'm just a guy with a shine on his horns because he helped you out of a tough spot."

Meiko's eyes widened a little. She opened her mouth to argue, closed it without saying anything, and looked away with a frown.

What was there to say?

He was right, but he felt like a cloaca as soon as he said it. And situations like this were exactly why mixing his personal life with his professional life had always been a bad idea. He looked over his shoulder at the Archos. The red flowers were still waiting for him. 

His hands drifted toward his torso out of habit, so he smoothed the fabric of his suit down. He wished he was still wearing his C-Sec jacket. "Try to stay out of trouble, Miss Ogawa," he said. "Let me know if you get that reservation."

When he turned away she gently grabbed his sleeve. She said, "I have an awful feeling that something terrible is going to happen to you if you go back to the Wards."

"You're not the only one to think so lately," Selar told her. "I'll be all right."

"Please," she said, looking up at him. "I know you're upset with me, but let me go with you. I'll help."

"I'm not upset with you," he stated evenly. "I'm trying to protect you. Tayseri isn't scenic like the ring and if something happens to you down there I won't handle it well."

Meiko hesitated, understanding what he meant, and finally let go of his sleeve. Selar tapped a knuckle lightly on her shoulder and smiled down at her. She smiled back, but the black strands of her hair were starkly ominous against how pale her skin had become. Selar walked off into the crowd toward the dinner club. When he looked back over his shoulder, she was watching him like a cat that had been spooked.

He probably wasn't going to see her again, he thought. She wasn't going to make that reservation and, truthfully, he didn't want her anywhere near the mess with the embassy.

That's how it was sometimes.

Selar walked up a few stairs to the entrance of the dinner club. As he waited at the podium, with his hands laced against the back of his neck, he wished Beran was around to rib him about the whole ordeal so he'd feel a little better. And he wondered what he could hope to accomplish by cornering two batarian diplomats and demanding answers from them. Batarians weren't often friendly with other races unless they had to be, not on the ring. There was too much at stake for them.

It was a desperate play, he knew, but it was all he had for now. 

As he thought about it, the crystal vase next to the register sparkled at him in the sunlight. It was about the size of a shot glass and the flowers in it looked fresh, as if they had been picked just hours ago. 

The elcor host reluctantly approached, regarded the contrast between Selar's clothing and the other patrons' attire with a wiggle of its mouth. "Somewhat condescendingly, this is a private establishment. I do not believe you are in the right place."

Selar adopted a light air, blinked several times. "Don't I know it," he agreed. "But that's a nice little bouquet." He hooked his thumbs into his pockets, leaned over and scrutinized each bloom like he was just an interested tourist. "Is that from around here? I want to get a souvenir while I'm sightseeing."

"Conversationally, a customer brought it to me," the elcor responded. It greeted a pair of well-dressed asari with a polite bow of its head, ushered them in, and returned its attention to Selar. "It was a display for her son who passed away. I do not know the source of it."

Selar asked, "Was she batarian?"

"Curiously, yes."

A single bouquet for a single person. That made sense. But there had been an ocean of red flowers blanketing the market of Tayseri's keel docking port. Selar said, less lightly, "Did she say what happened to her son? How he died?"

"Politely but reserved, no, and it was not my place to ask."

"Can I come in and grab a drink? Looks like a nice place in there."

"Pointedly, no."

It had been worth a shot. Selar would have been shocked if the elcor let him in.

And there was no point in pressing the issue further, not without a badge and a uniform. He thanked the elcor and headed back to the walkways. Meiko had disappeared, wasn't anywhere in the crowd that he could see. He was surprised by the intensity of his disappointment, surrounded by people who weren't her and distinctly feeling the lack. He never knew what to say to her. With other women, it had been easy, maybe because it hadn't mattered as much at the time. When they left him they were like the coffee and the cigarettes and the tupari with ice; he didn't feel much, knew that he probably should.

But with a human he had only met a few times, Selar felt something. It was acutely strange after all the nothing. He wasn't sure if he liked it.

Just as important, he wasn't sure if he could trust her.

He mulled it over while people walked past him. He told himself he wasn't lingering, hoping to spot her again in the crowd.

Afterward, he headed back to the lower Ward in a taxicab that raced through the skyways until the cloudy blue haze of the keel overtook traffic like a fog and slowed everything down to a crawl. The lower district appeared in the haze through the windshield, with its lights shrouded like an underworld compared to the ring.

Beran's residence was going to be Selar's first stop, with the small hope that some clue or proof of an alibi still remained. Truthfully, he would be lucky to find anything more than weights and empty cartons of alcohol along with the usual torn-up couches and scattered papers that came with a frame-up. He could already see the building in the distance. It was a jagged dusty skyscraper right at the very end of the Ward and he went straight to the manager's office.

A krogan was watching a celebrity gossip talk show on an old, flickering holo-screen inside. His name was Grau and he kept lurkers and duct rats out of the hallways. "We're paid up for the month," he said with a snort when Selar entered. "Tell her the emergency response time needs to be better if she wants more credits."

Selar said, "I'm just here for a key to Beran's unit."

Grau got up and grabbed a keycard from a shelf, but looked Selar over thoughtfully. "You're canned, aren't you?" He smiled. It started on one side of his mouth and ended on the other, like a zipper opening up to reveal big white teeth. He put the keycard back on the shelf and sat down again.  "I don't have to give you anything, not in those clothes. You're canned and I can damn well tell."

Selar crossed his arms, leaned against the door frame. His C-Sec codes would open the lock, but only if T'Ven had been able to keep him in the system despite the suspension. If she hadn't, he was going to have to climb through the building's ducts and he braced himself for the possibility that he would get stuck in them. He said, "If you don't give me a key I'm going to have to break in. That's time wasted for both of us."

"I'll call C-Sec on you."

"You just said yourself the response time is terrible."

Selar wasn't sure if Grau was bluffing about that or not, but the krogan's easy confidence wavered. "Well," Grau said, "then have at it. That door is triple-plated steel. You aren't the first idiot to try to break it down this week and if I'm lucky you'll be the last."

"The last?"

"Some people came by a couple of days ago and tried to pry the damn thing open. I tossed them on their asses." He grunted out a laugh and then added, because he'd dealt with Selar before, "And no, I don't know who they were. Duct trash, probably. I thought it'd be his girl but she hasn't been by in a while."

"Beran isn't seeing anyone," Selar pointed out. "He isn't over his ex-wife."

Grau shrugged. "He had an asari. I figured she would run out on him after he was arrested." Grau smirked. "I was right."

Selar didn't believe that at all, but he still asked, "What was she like?"

"Blue," Grau answered simply. He glanced at Selar. "She wasn't much fun if you ask me. She looked miserable even though she was always coming by. Maybe he was paying her."

Selar frowned, believing that even less than Grau's earlier claims. Beran was a drunk in the evenings but he wasn't a pest with women. So on nothing more than a hunch, Selar pulled up a picture of Constable T'elis on his omni-tool, showed it to Grau. His voice was harder than he meant for it to be when he asked, "Is this her?"

Grau grinned, lazily eyeing the picture. "Yeah, that's the face. Uptight as hell. Don't know what he saw in her, other than the usual I guess."

Selar closed his omni, swearing faintly under his breath. "I really need to get into that apartment."

"Canned and triple-plated, lizard," Grau said. He turned back to the gossip show. 

Selar headed upstairs.

Chapter Text

Selar walked up the stairs of the skyscraper, its shape and occupants ignored by the Ward outside of their nameless contribution to the crowds and the skyline, like so many other buildings and people on the Citadel. It was a worn and dusty place where people made do with what they had and what they could get. Beran lived on the third floor. 

And when Selar reached the door of the apartment, a keeper working a few yards away glanced curiously at him. The keepers did more work at the edges of the Wards, but Selar didn't know why. Despite its seemingly helpless pair of arms, this one had still been able to access the wiring in the walls for maintenance. It clicked to itself, almost thoughtfully, as it picked through circuits.

Selar ignored it in favor of the door, which was triple-plated just as Grau had said.

Using his C-Sec omni-tool, the one he had secretly kept, Selar synced his credentials to the door's interface. He sucked in stale air and dust motes as the lock connected to C-Sec's emergency system. It flashed red for what felt like an eternity, beeped, and then finally lit bright green. He was still in the system, thanks to T'Ven, and the door slid open with a whisper.

And Selar exhaled in relief. He knew he would have gotten stuck in the ducts. "Thank you, Madam Sergeant," he said quietly, because that was what you said to T'Ven even when she wasn't around to hear it.

"Thank you," a voice echoed.

Selar looked up from the lock and the keeper hissed once, then a second time. A pair of mercenaries had pushed it aside in the narrow hallway as they approached. Selar recognized the asari who had spoken immediately. She had been feeding bread to the mulwiches earlier on the Presidium. Now, a turian was with her.

They were both wearing the basic light armor that mercenary companies provided to their new employees. That didn't alarm Selar as much as the turian's face. He looked shockingly like Beran. This turian's face was bare, however, and that was an important difference. Beran's markings were worn and forgotten most of the time, but he was still loyal to the Hierarchy and their civil codes of conduct. This turian had no such ideals.

Selar kept his omni-tool open. He said to the asari, as unpleasantly as he could, "You're a long way from the ring, sweetie-heart."

She tilted her head and studied his dark blue suit, looked up at him and said, "So are you."

Cold steel pressed against the back of his neck before he had the chance to light his omni-blade. A salarian voice behind him said, "Don't try anything."

Selar ignored that and swung around immediately, shoving the pistol aside as he grabbed the salarian, but the other two piled onto him, fighting him to the ground. The mercenaries dragged Selar into Beran's apartment, where he was thrown into a chair at the rickety old dining table. The asari took the pistol, firmly pointed it against the base of his horns while the turian tied his hands -- with actual rope, Selar noted with disbelief -- then his omni-tool was taken and his pockets were emptied. The contents were dumped on the table.

"You came here to look for something," the turian said, finishing the knot. "What was it?"

"Just something to sell," Selar lied evenly and tonelessly.

"There's nothing in here worth more than a bottle of ryncol and you know it," the turian grated out, in a startling imitation of Beran's serrated sub-harmonics.

Selar stared at him. He said, less evenly, "You're not as good at that as you think."

"Good enough to get rid of the guy," the turian muttered, dropping Selar's bound hands.

Selar studied him with a hard expression. So this was the turian from the hospital's security vid who had killed Opel. And this must be Meiko's false escort, he thought, the one who had appeared while Selar was in the academy's basement.

At the table, the salarian tossed the keycard and the implant aside. He peered down at the prayers written on Selar's small seashell with disgust, picked it up and held it in the light. "This guy's one of those Enkindler cultists, isn't he?" He glanced derisively at Selar. "Prothean ruins are just old tech, you idiot. Magic isn't real."

The asari laughed faintly, passed the pistol from one hand to the other. "Don't you believe a wheel reincarnates you as someone else when you die? How is that not magic?"

The salarian threw her an exasperated look. "It's science. It's about energy."

"Uh-huh."

Her pistol was heavily modified, much like the weapons C-Sec had been running into in the foundations. A picture, once in confusing pieces, began to cement itself together in Selar's mind.

And he tested the bindings on his wrists, keeping his hands mostly still in his lap while he gauged his chances. Three would be too many with a gun involved. As he looked around for anything he could use to escape, the turian went to Beran's kitchenette, rooting around the cabinets until he found a box of dextro-edition Blast-O cereal. Without hesitation, he dumped it out on the counter and pulled something out of the pile. When he handed it to the salarian, Selar could see that it was an omni-tool wristlet that was sealed in a clear bag to protect it. Beran was probably using its memory drive to store files.

Beran had been right: someone was listening when Selar questioned him in the basement. "Who hired you to follow me?" Selar asked them. "It's someone working at the academy who's pulling your strings, isn't it?"

"Be quiet," the asari said.

Selar glared at her modded pistol. "The attacks in the foundations aren't random, are they? You've been orchestrating them using your C-Sec contact. That's why there's no trail or evidence for us to follow. There's no black market or contraband involved, just you doing their dirty work with weapons from the rim."

The asari didn't answer at first, but her faint look of satisfaction was unmistakable. "You were always on our list to sweep up, sweetie-heart," she finally said. "If you were smart, you would have stayed locked up where we put you."

"Why are you attacking people down here?"

She didn't bother responding. And his expression grew dour as the salarian removed the omni-tool from its sugar-dusted bag and started it up.

Just as Grau had said, Beran's apartment hadn't been searched. C-Sec hadn't even bothered to come in for the sake of the frame-up. Now, Selar had rolled out the red carpet by leading the mercenaries straight to what must be Beran's investigation files. They could extract anything useful and then simply delete the memory drive.

While the salarian worked, the turian mercenary picked through each corner and hidden nook in the small, one-bedroom apartment. Wearing Beran's face, he tore photos of Beran's wife and daughter off the wall, dumped the contents of every closet and cabinet, then finally began tipping over furniture and tearing open anything that might hold a secret compartment.

Watching it all, Selar had to admit that the guy was thorough. The salarian was probably thorough, too, but it wouldn't be easy to access an omni-tool that belonged to someone as paranoid as Beran. He was going to be working on the encryption for a while. And the asari waited with the pistol pointed.

But Selar wasn't dead yet, which either meant they were inexperienced or still needed something from him.

That something revealed itself soon enough. "Passcode," the salarian called out when the omni finally lit up with a login screen.

The asari glanced questioningly at Selar, who said, "Hell if I know."

"We don't have time for you to be coy," she told him. "I can do a meld to confirm the passcode, but if you don't like the idea we'll have to use a more archaic approach. You tell me the code. You lose a piece of yourself here and there every time it doesn't work." She added with a tilt of the pistol, "We'll send you to the recycling vats in pieces if we have to."

Selar looked at her steadily and said, "I don't know it. Tearing my horns off won't make much of a difference."

The salarian said, "It might."

Selar glanced at him. "People in pain will say whatever you want to hear to make the pain stop. Their confessions are useless for anything except manipulating other targets. Is this your first day?"

"Of course not."

"Then you should already know that there are more effective ways to extract information," Selar continued with a frown. "You look like you've got the strength of a paste noodle so you're better off using strategies that won't put you on the wrong end of a fist or a sidearm if things go south."

The salarian glared. "Hey, cloaca. I'm not the one tied up here like a chump."

The asari laughed, probably had enough experience to take the exchange lightly, but the salarian's horns were burning up. Selar couldn't find any satisfaction in it. The real threat had already been made by dumping Beran in the basement and pretending to be Meiko's new escort on the ring. Once they were done with Selar, they could go right back to finishing off the people he cared about.

"Just rip the code out of his head with a meld," the turian demanded suddenly, running his hand along a groove in the wall. "We don't have time for this."

"He's C-Sec," the asari pointed out. "They're trained against it. Besides, I don't exactly trust Seket here to hold him down while I do it."

The salarian made a rude gesture at her and went back to work. He wasn't getting beyond the login screen. And from what Selar could make out, it wasn't like any omni-tool screen he had ever seen before.

"He's just bigger than the other lizards, that's all," the turian said. He wiped the grime and dust off his arms. Beran wouldn't be winning any awards for housekeeping. "There's a krogan downstairs and I don't feel like getting friendly with him if this guy's a screamer. Get the passcode out of him and let's get out of here."

"You don't run things," the asari replied. But she said to the salarian, "Go watch the stairs."

The salarian gave her an uneasy look but set the omni-tool down and headed out the door. Selar heard him go, counted the fading steps in the hallway. 

Twenty-four steps.

The asari sighed, tossed the pistol to the turian. She retrieved a cord from her belt, looped it, and pulled it tight against Selar's neck before he even realized what she was doing.

The asari didn't hesitate; she was going to cut off the blood supply to his brain until she could force a meld. Neither did Selar; he twined his foot around her leg and immediately heaved himself sideways, chair and all, throwing them both against the old table. It wasn't a calculated move, but it was probably his only chance, and the table collapsed when they both fell into it with a crash. The chair broke. The omni-tool and the implant and the seashell all scattered across the floor.

The cord loosened. Just a little, not enough. 

Selar would last longer than other races without air, but he only had about a minute before she cut off the blood supply to his brain and he passed out completely. And the asari was on him again, straddling his stomach while her cord tightened like a noose. Whatever she wanted, she would get while he was unconscious. And she'd kill him once she realized he didn't know the passcode.

Blood pounded uselessly in his head as he struggled with her on the floor. He felt the turian grab his legs, holding them down. The world dulled to gray-green at its edges and the meld threatened beyond, like an ice-pick digging behind his eyes. 

Thrashing sideways, he grabbed onto what he hoped was a broken piece of the chair or his omni-tool on the floor. But it was neither; Selar's tied hands wrapped around the implant. He stabbed blindly upward, as hard as he could, piercing the sharp edge into what he hoped was the asari's neck or something vital like an artery. From the shriek that erupted through the gray fog, he hadn't missed.

The cord slackened completely. 

The shriek lengthened into a scream that didn't stop, just grew higher pitched. Selar sucked air into his lungs, pushed her off through the rush of oxygen racing back into his brain and dove forward. The turian grabbed the pistol but Selar swung his tied fists as hard as he could. The turian fell back with a screech and the gun went off uselessly, blasting an energy slug at the ceiling. 

Before the turian could get his bearings, Selar grabbed the guy's head and slammed it against the floor, hard enough to knock him out. And then he pounded it down again, and again, until he heard the plates crack with a wet crunch.

Five steps left, he thought. The countdown had begun when the asari started screaming.

There wasn't enough time to find his omni-tool and free his wrists with the blade. So Selar grabbed the pistol, shot the salarian through his chest just as the guy darted back into the apartment. And the salarian stared, wide-eyed with shock, before he fell to the ground with a thump.

Selar took a breath, ripping the cord off his neck in the fresh silence of the room. It landed like a dead snake in a pool of blue blood.

He knew he needed to get his hands free. But as he set aside the pistol and groped around the floor for his omni, his fingers smeared chalky marks on the floor. There was powder all over his palms, and it was also floating atop the turian's blood like an oil slick.

Unsettled, Selar turned the turian's body over and peered down at the broken face. Each plate was dusted with stage make-up, painting Beran's likeness over the turian's own. In the dim shadows of the Ward it was difficult to see the illusion for what it was. But Beran was already framed up, so why keep the disguise?

Selar frowned and rubbed his thumb over a painted mandible. 

There wasn't enough time to think it over. Steps echoed outside in the hallway once again, this time heavy and brisk. But it wasn't Grau who appeared in the doorway grumbling about the mess. Instead, it was Commissioner Rehokan, who crossed the threshold wearing a long tan coat with the sleeves rolled up. The end of his cigarette was an angry spot of red.

"You would think," Rehokan grunted out, passing by the bodies with disgust, "that three would have been plenty. Not enough eyes between them, if you ask me."

Selar inwardly berated himself for not cutting his hands free yet. He said, "I'd be dead if they were paying more attention, Commissioner." He took a chance and added, "I hope you didn't pay them much."

It paid off as Rehokan tossed the cigarette. "I would have picked a different group if I had been given the choice."

Selar didn't have time to feel betrayed. He dove for the pistol.

Rehokan had expected that, kicking it aside with ease and then lunging. And the Commissioner was barrel-chested, all muscle and brute force. Selar was no match for him up close, not with his hands tied. Rehokan had him back down in an instant. Selar landed hard against a pile of magazines.

Rehokan cracked a fist and took the pistol. He sifted through the mess that used to be the table.

Selar coughed up blood and dust as he tried to sit up. "Why even get me out of the basement if you were just going to come after me like this?"

"You're about as smart as the damn mercs," Rehokan muttered. He picked up Beran's omni-tool. "The frame against you was weak so I helped get you out and waited to see where you would go." He tilted his head to the left, bluntly added, "I knew you'd do your Madam's bidding instead of running. And now here you are like a loyal varren, just like I thought you'd be."

Selar watched Rehokan with hard eyes. "I'm here because I'm trying to help my partner."

"We both know who holds your leash," Rehokan replied gruffly, looking at him with all four eyes suddenly. "It isn't the old turian."

Selar clenched his jaw, didn't respond to that. He'd made a dire mistake and he was about to pay for it. He'd been too relieved to get out of the frame-up and too distracted by Tesik to question the situation like he should have. It would be easy for Rehokan to finish off Selar in a place like this, far away from prying eyes. 

Worse, Rehokan had Beran's omni-tool and whatever was on it. Selar almost laughed even though nothing was funny. He'd done the Commissioner one last favor, it seemed.

Rehokan tucked the omni-tool into a fold in his sleeve.

Selar said, "You've been helping this area for years. Why go after C-Sec employees down here all of a sudden?"

"C-Sec employees," Rehokan echoed, as if that was laughable. His quartet of eyes were unyielding in the shadows. "Only T'Ven's contacts have been targeted in the foundations. She's crossed a powerful group of people and even I won't take her side against them."

Selar said, "The embassy."

Rehokan's top two eyes narrowed. "What do you know about it?"

"Nothing useful," Selar answered. He was trying to get the cord around his wrists loosened, but it was tight enough to cut into his skin. A few feet away, the salarian mercenary was laying face down in a pool of green blood. The asari was slumped against the wall with the silver implant sticking out of her crest like an antenna. She didn't look euphoric, not like T'elis had in the morgue. Instead, she had seen the gates of hell open at the end, with her mouth twisted into a startled, foaming grimace.

Rehokan grunted out, "You're lying."

Selar looked away from the asari. "Am I? I know they're offering immunity to a slaver so they were probably making credits at the docks. I know they've been using you and your stiffs here to attack people." He added, "And I know I'm going to introduce myself to them if I get out of this. That's not real useful right now."

Rehokan bared his teeth. He picked up the seashell from the floor, scowled at it. "The embassy isn't making credits down here," he spit out. He threw the shell, watched it clatter across the floor. "Their accounts are empty thanks to T'Ven and they're in a bigger mess than they're willing to admit."

Selar pushed himself up into a sitting position with a grimace. "Thanks to T'Ven?"

"Out of the loop, varren?"

"I don't get paid enough to keep up on the scuttlebutt, Commissioner."

Rehokan snorted faintly, but didn't elaborate further. Instead, he said, "I warned them about this place, but anyone below their caste only exists to serve their whims. And unlike everyone else on this boat, I actually want to go back home to Kar'Shan. I'm damn well going to once I'm done running their errands."

"You conspired to murder C-Sec employees and dropped a frame on Tesik's desk. They're not letting you go anywhere." Selar's voice hardened. "They're going to kill you when they're done. You're a loose end."

Rehokan wasn't swayed by the argument, but his anger dimmed and his shoulders lost their tight posture. "Maybe they will," he admitted. "It's what any of us down here would do, isn't it? But you and I are both on leashes in this place, make no mistake." He checked the heat sink on the pistol, seemed pleased with it. "And we both know T'Ven won't save a varren twice, not even a useful one."

Selar said, "She wouldn't still be running a place like this if she was soft, Commissioner."

Rehokan acknowledged that with a nod. He said, "If you could leave this place, would you? Or do you enjoy being chained to this crumbling excuse for a Ward district?"

Selar didn't answer right away. He hadn't expected the question. And then he said, "Everyone would leave lower Tayseri if they could. Even me."

Rehokan's face was expressionless as he pointed the pistol. "Then I'm doing you a favor."

Selar was already off the floor. The first shot grazed his shoulder. He was able to land a hit on Rehokan's side despite his hands being tied, but Rehokan slammed a fist onto Selar's already painful ribs, another against his stomach. Then another. The blows kept coming until Selar was on the floor again. Rehokan roared.

Selar knew he was done for, felt the next flash and bang of the pistol more than he heard or saw it.

Every muscle in his body tensed. But as the sound faded away Selar could still see, could still move even though every inch of his body felt like he'd been run over by a freighter. And Rehokan was laying in the dust and blood next to him, very still and very heavy with his rolled-up coat sleeves askew. 

They stared at each other. Rehokan's eyes were empty.

 And Selar lay there, breathing hard. 

He was in too much pain to be shocked. But Rehokan had been right: T'Ven would never save anyone twice. And in the doorway a hooded figure was holding a gun, and the gun was trembling like a tree leaf in a cold breeze. He knew who it was immediately, listened with disbelief to the heels of her little shoes clicking as she walked in and froze at the sight of Rehokan's shattered skull. She made a distressed noise that sounded soft and frightened.

"That was a good shot, Ogawa," Selar managed to cough out. It must have sounded like garbled dry heaving through her translator.

"Constable Selar," Meiko said, looking up from the mess with wide eyes. She stepped around the body and pulled the hood of her coat down. She knelt and began working at the cord on his wrists. "Constable," she said again, cutting it with her omni-tool, "I was so afraid that I might hit you by mistake." She reached out, almost touching his bleeding shoulder.

"That wasn't you," Selar told her, rubbing his wrists. "Can you help me up? Beran has some supplies in his bathroom." 

In the bathroom, Beran kept bottles of omni-gel and some medical supplies for dextro and levo. Selar used everything he could, poured the gel on his neck and his wrists and his shoulder until he reeked of antiseptic. He was going to be in a world of pain again when it wore off, but it would keep him on his feet for a few more hours. He smoothed a bandage over his shoulder while the shower nearby dripped water. 

He placed a hand on each side of the sink basin, took stock of his condition. His left side burned with pain, but he didn't double over. His shoulder ached, but no major blood vessels had been torn. Both horns were intact. And, as he considered the things Rehokan had said, one comment interested him the most.

Their accounts are empty.

That explained the conversation on the OSD, Selar thought. They were broke and skimming credits from their Ambassador. But what had they bought, and what had caused them to retaliate against T'Ven? How much was she keeping from him?

Meiko watched him from the doorway. "I followed you," she was explaining, clutching the doorframe. "I... I lost you for a while. I'm sorry."

He glanced over his shoulder at her. "If you'd found me any earlier we'd both be dead right now," he said. She wasn't supposed to be down here at all, but he was glad she was. He wasn't going to get on her case about it. "Thank you for coming after me," he said, letting go of the sink and turning to her. "You've got good timing."

She said quietly, "I suppose we're even now," and pulled the coat tighter around herself, clutching her waist. She glanced back to the main room. "Can I confess something to you?"

She looked like she was about to be sick. Selar said, "If you need to."

"I thought it would be easier to kill someone," she said, her mouth twisting faintly. "I'm glad you're all right, but I didn't realize how awful it would be."

So much for her life of violent justice against slavers like Vantius, Selar thought. Her face was turning an unexpected shade of green. But at least she felt something about it. He told her that she had done well and he told her that she would be all right. He also told her that he was glad to see her, and then he took her to Beran's bedroom. 

She sat down on the bed, hugging herself too tightly and gazing out the window. He left her there, safe for now, for his own sake as well as hers. 

Selar returned to the main room and searched the bodies, knowing he didn't have much time. He found a small tattoo on the salarian's back depicting the Blue Suns logo. It was a new company, one rumored to be working out in the Traverse. They'd probably taken the job to establish a presence on the Citadel. It would explain why C-Sec hadn't seen the weapons before. 

He took their gear and Rehokan's identification, obscuring any evidence that he and Meiko had been there. No one paid much attention to dead mercenaries, there were simply too many of them. And when he was done he knelt and dragged his hand through green blood, then blue, then ochre yellow. 

The keeper was still in the hallway and Selar went out to it. He flicked the liquid right onto its face.

It hissed at him, just as it had with the asari. Paying a keeper any attention was a gamble; if it perceived a threat it would defensively melt into a puddle and somewhere, deep in the Citadel's foundations, another would appear to replace it. But this one didn't melt, just moved its mandibles. 

Selar kept his hand out as he walked it back into the apartment. It grew agitated at the scene and the new readings on its little device. He washed his hands in the kitchenette. 

Meiko peeked out from Beran's bedroom. Her expression was uneasy. "What's it going to do?"

Selar said over his shoulder, "Nothing pleasant."

Keepers picked up trash and anything that looked like trash, bodies included. They put everything into the recycling vats where it was separated into useful molecules like water or dissolved into the dust that clouded the star system where the Citadel floated. They moved furniture when no one was looking and maintained systems no one quite understood. And evidence was useless if they came upon it first. It was a matter of intense frustration for C-Sec to find their crime scenes neatly cleaned up.

But it was useful, sometimes. Selar's circle in the enclaves of Shalta had taught him that.

And a second keeper filed into the apartment, whispering to the first. Then a third followed, and a fourth. Selar scanned the dead asari with his omni-tool while they dragged the salarian feet-first beyond a panel in the wall, pushing the body into a duct.

As he watched the omni, a map of haphazard lightning strikes built itself on the screen. Selar swore under his breath, then ran it again to make sure. When a keeper came for the body, Selar pushed it away. The brain scan looked nothing like what had happened to T'elis.

It was Meiko that finally beckoned him back to reality. She placed her hands on the crook of his arm.

Selar looked at her, his hand already raised to push the keeper away again, then his expression softened. He pulled her hood up over her head and tucked her hair inside so no one would notice her as they left the building.

But no one opened their doors or looked outside to see what had happened. Judging from the low snore of a sleeping krogan in the management office, no one had called Grau for help. Tayseri's edge wasn't as dangerous as the Terminus systems near the rim, but when people were one misfortune away from being evicted into the misery of the foundations they couldn't afford to stick their necks out or poke their horns into other people's business.

And as the pair disappeared into the crowd of the Ward, Selar wondered what was on Beran's mysterious omni-tool, and why its login screen had been written in thessian script.