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The pungent smell infiltrated his nostrils, and Bray struggled to identify the substance. On Aria’s private balcony, a distinctly human shadow leaned against the railing, the liquid responsible for his indignation cupped in both her hands. Bray didn’t count many people as actual threats to his employer or to Omega, but Commander Shepard was one of them. Even with her weight balanced on her arms, and hot liquid in her hands, Bray scanned for potential threat opportunities.
“You’re up early, Bray,” Shepard’s stated, softly. He was well aware Shepard knew about batarian senses.
“Coffee,” Bray replied, finally identifying the liquid. “You got any more?”
“At your foot,” Shepard, still not turning around, suggested.
There, a sealed cup, just where his left foot had come to rest. Shit like that was why Aria, the Illuminated Primacy, the Citadel Council, and even Shepard’s own Alliance, feared the woman. Groaning as he bent down, he picked up the cup, lifting the lid. The liquid inside was still hot, and he could smell the salt that had been added. She knew. Fuck.
“What’re you doing, Shepard?” Bray asked, sipping the scorching drink. Of course, it warmed him and perked him up immediately.
“Can’t a girl just visit?” Shepard asked, still not turning to face him.
“No,” Bray answered, straightforward. “Not you. Even if you were coming onto me, Commander Shepard wouldn’t just show up during my rounds, not this late into the night.”
“You don’t know, Bray,” Shepard answered, and finally turned to face him. “This isn’t on your rounds.”
Shepard’s face was more scar tissue than face, and Bray, who’d mostly been around Asari, knew it’d never be described as ‘pretty.’ One eye glowed in the dark, a furrow of torn flesh traveling from hair line to her chin, all of it alight with cybernetic tissue. Reports indicated her body was covered with the stuff, close to a third of her epidermis now comprised of synthetic weave and cybernetics. Time with Aria had taught Bray how to read the expressions of humans and Asari, but Shepard was particularly hard to interpret. Aria felt both a perverse fascination and complete dread of the human. Bray felt something different.
“On the job?” Bray asked. It would be better to know sooner.
“No,” Shepard replied, no expression in her voice. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Bray.”
“Didn’t think it was you,” Bray finally admitted, stepping up next to her and looking at Aria’s view. “You know, two eyes and all.”
Bray’d already left the esteemed service of the Hegemony when word came about the failed attempt on Elysium. They didn’t spread it around, but Batarians held warriors like Shepard in high esteem. Maybe, the highest. Her description had made it through even those removed from the Hegemony. A specific feature, the fact that she only had one eye was predominant. Probably, like thousands of Batarians, he’d idolized and craved to meet her.
“It’s taken some getting used to,” Shepard acknowledged. “Your boss helped.”
Bray sipped his coffee. He hated how much he liked the foul, earth drink. The Hegemony had been making their way into the Council’s grace just before the upstart Earthers showed up, beating the Turians to a standstill and utterly overshadowing all the Hegemony’s careful maneuvering. The Hegemony, fucking idiots that they were, didn’t take kindly and decided on a dirty war to teach the mud-dwellers a lesson in humility. The planet was designated ‘Mindoir’ on the Galaxy Map.
Shepard up-ended her cup, and wiped her soft mouth with the back of her hand. When she stepped into his space, Bray didn’t know whether to be fearful or joyful. She looked up at him from the strange hairs that grew above her eyes, one glowing, one a dark blue.
“I need your help, Bray,” Shepard said, as softly as before. “I’ve got an Asari problem.”
Working for Aria often brought as much trouble as it did credits. People frequently tried to cut side-deals with him rather than facing her wrath. Shepard’s hands stayed firmly behind her back. Aria had expressed interesting in sex with the human?
“You have an issue with Aria, talk to Aria,” Bray stated, clearly.
“My issue is Aria,” Shepard clarified. “Aria wants something from me that’s never going to happen.”
She stepped back and turned toward the view. She almost seemed… embarrassed. Aria did want the human, but, in Bray’s experience, humans seemed eager to have sex with an Asari. What was Shepard’s problem?
“You don’t want Aria,” Bray suggested.
“You and I are soldiers,” Shepard replied, avoiding the issue. “I’m an infiltrator. Get in, do the job, get out. Specific, targeted. I’m not about the power play.”
Aria had sent Bray to the hanger to talk with the ex-Spectre, explain the rules of Omega to her. He’d found a dark-haired fertility symbol and a human who’s skin was the same colour as the woman’s hair. No Council Spectre. The bulbous woman did not fit his imagination’s image of Shepard, but clearly they’d been wrong. In the next moment, silent alarms struggled to draw his attention. Shepard had already appeared on Aria’s box-seat in Afterlife.
“Sure about that?” Bray asked.
He watched Shepard’s lip twitch. It might have been a smile, but it was there and gone. She shifted her shoulders. The new eye might mean other new parts, too.
“That’s the problem,” Shepard explained. “I don’t understand Asari. Aria’s easier than most, but I still don’t understand them. I don’t know what she puts in my head, what’s already there, and what she’s deliberately misleading me about,” she turned to Bray. “You, I understand. Batarians, as a whole, make sense. We should have been allies before we joined with the other Council species, but it didn’t go that way.”
“You want me to betray Aria?” Bray stated.
“No,” Shepard snorted. “Of course not. I want you to help me understand Aria. If you can understand her, I have a chance of learning from you.”
“You do know I can hear everything your saying,” Aria announced, as the doors to her bedroom opened. Bray knew she would interrupt them. “I have scanners everywhere, Shepard.”
“Don’t be stupid, Aria,” Shepard suggested, and tapped the lid of her coffee cup.
Immediately, glowing dots appeared all over the balcony and even on the wall of the building above and below. Bray knew the configuration. They were the hidden scanners guarding Aria’s living space. They should have been invisible to eyesight. Looking closer, he saw a tiny human figure on a board of some kind.
“Sticker?” Aria was incredulous. “You put stickers on my sensors?”
“Glow-in-the-dark stickers,” Shepard said, easing herself up and stepping through the door, one hand on Aria’s arm. “They’re extra special,” she looked back to Bray. “You ever want to join the big leagues, Bray, let me know. In the meantime, help me out with this one.”
Aria’s angry aura filled the balcony. Bray, dutifully ignoring his current boss’s disposition, drank his coffee. Batarians and Humans, working together. That was a scary thought.
“You know she was only talking to you to get to me,” Aria commented. “I’ll want the recordings of how she got here.”
“Of course,” Bray said, stepping through to the hallway. “You know the recordings will be blank. She’ll have seen to that.”
He could get used to having coffee.