Mass Effect: The Complete Novels 4-Book Bundle (56 page)

The pieces finally fell into place when he realized that Liselle, though unresponsive, was still breathing.

The almost invisible wound. The strange
twang
of their ammo. They’re using tranquilizer rounds. They want to take you alive
.

He didn’t know if that was better or worse. In either case, the realization did little to change the equation. He still had to warn Kahlee.

He could hear the intruders in the hall, just outside the bedroom door. It had no lock, but they were still being cautious—they knew their target wasn’t using tranq rounds. But he didn’t have long.

Leaving Liselle’s unconscious body on the bed, he raced over to the extranet terminal on the far side of the room. Tapping frantically at the haptic interface screens, he logged on to the extranet and sent Kahlee the files he’d assembled over the past two years.

The second the message was away he activated the
purge, deleting every file on his system, including all records of his incoming and outgoing messages.

An instant later the door slid open. Grayson turned and charged his attackers.

He had taken but one step when he felt the sting of two tranq rounds in his chest. By the third step he was already out.

Kai Leng stood motionless for several seconds after Grayson’s body slumped to the floor, the tranq pistol still pointed at the target in case he needed to fire another round. When it became clear that his adversary was unconscious, he lowered the weapon and began barking out orders.

“He was sending a message. Check the terminal—see if he was calling for backup.”

Shella, their tech expert, ran over to inspect the computer in the corner.

“The rest of you search the room. Grab any weapons you can find. We’ll need something more than these pop guns to take out those turians at the guard post.”

“What about her?” Shella asked, nodding in the direction of the unconscious asari on the bed even as her fingers tapped away at the terminal’s interface.

“Leave her to me.”

He went back out into the hall. Darrin’s body lay on the floor in a dark pool of his own blood. Jens was still crouched over him, injecting him with medi-gel, checking his vitals and hoping for a miracle. One glance at the body was enough for Kai Leng to know the medic was wasting his time.

Making his way into the kitchen, he began a quick
but thorough search; opening cupboards and pulling out drawers, he found a very large, very sharp carving knife. Picking it up, he hefted the weight. Satisfied, he went back into the bedroom.

“The terminal’s clean,” Shella informed him as he came in. “Must have wiped it before we came in.”

Kai Leng frowned. He had no idea what kind of info had been on Grayson’s system, but it had been important enough for him to spend time getting rid of it even while his apartment was under attack.

“Found this under the bed,” one of the others chimed in, holding up a cellophane-wrapped package about the size of a brick. “Four more here, too. Looks like red sand.”

They’d finally caught a break. He knew Aria was involved in a drug war with a rival gang; with any luck, she’d think they were behind Grayson’s disappearance.

“Take the sand with us. Any weapons?”

“Just the one they used to shoot Darrin.”

“How bad is he …?” Shella asked, her voice trailing off.

Kai Leng simply shook his head as he crossed the room toward the bed. A shadow passed over Shella’s face, but she didn’t show any other emotion.

Standing over the naked asari’s body, he drew the knife quickly across her throat. The cut was clean and deep. A river of blood ran down her neck and soaked into the sheets, the same dark color as the human blood pooling in the hall.

“Two of you grab Grayson, two more grab Darrin,” he said, reaching around to slide the knife into
the back of his pants, then untucking his shirt to hide the protruding handle. “Let’s go.”

The attack and search had taken less than ten minutes in total. Kai Leng was impressed with his team’s efficiency, though in this case it wasn’t really necessary.

Residents of the other apartments inside the building had probably heard the sounds of gunfire. But none of them were likely to get involved; people on Omega tended to mind their own business. Even if someone did want to report the incident, there was no one to contact. Omega had no police force, and the guards at the entrance gate a few blocks away wouldn’t leave their post; they were paid to keep unauthorized people out of the district, not maintain order inside. News of the battle would reach Aria’s ears eventually, probably even before morning. He hoped to be long gone by then.

Only one problem remained: getting Grayson’s unconscious form, Darrin’s still warm body, and eight kilos of red sand past the Omega First Security guards at the district gate.

He led the team through the winding streets, back the way they had come. They were fortunate enough not to run into anyone else. As they reached the last corner before the guard station, Kai Leng brought his crew to a halt. He extended his hand and Shella slipped Grayson’s pistol into his palm. He registered with some disgust the fact that it was a turian-designed Elanus model before tucking it away under his shirt beside the knife. He could feel the two handles—blade and gun—pressing against the small of his back.

“Wait here, but be ready to move.”

Taking a moment to focus his mind and body, he rounded the corner alone, moving with an easy but determined pace.

The turians noticed him as he drew near, but they didn’t draw their weapons or seem alarmed in any way.

“What’s the matter?” one of them taunted. “Get kicked out of the party?”

“Forgot something,” he muttered, still moving toward them.

He was ten meters away—easily close enough to deliver an accurate kill shot. But the guards were wearing combat suits; their kinetic barriers would easily deflect a round from this far. He had to get up close and personal for either of his weapons to be effective.

“If you leave the district, it’ll cost you to get back in,” the other warned.

He didn’t bother to answer. Five meters. Just a few more steps and it would all be over. He was close enough to read the expressions on their avian features; he recognized the exact moment they realized he was a threat.

Had either of them taken a few quick steps back while he reached for his weapon, he wouldn’t have stood a chance. Fortunately, they both held their ground.

Moving with blinding speed, Kai Leng lunged toward them, his left hand reaching back to grasp the knife in his belt as he closed the gap. He whipped the blade out and drove the tip into the throat of the nearest
guard. Twisting his wrist as it penetrated the leathery skin, he severed both the trachea and the turian equivalent of the carotid artery.

The second turian had his gun drawn, but as he extended his arm to shoot, Kai Leng slapped it down with his free hand, causing the weapon to discharge into the floor at their feet. He let go of the knife and went for his own pistol. In a blur of motion he yanked the gun from his belt, brought his hand back in front of his body, jammed the nozzle against the turian’s temple, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a wet pop as the back of the turian’s head exploded, spewing bits of skull and gray matter out the opposite side. Kai Leng was staring into his enemy’s eyes at the moment of death; he saw the pupils dilate as the synapses from what was left of the brain ceased firing and the turian slumped to the floor.

Kai Leng turned his attention back to the first guard. He was down but still twitching, his hands feebly pawing at the knife jutting out from his larynx. Kai Leng stepped forward and finished him off in the same way as he had his partner: one close-range shot through the head.

Looking back, he saw his team was already moving, doing their best to run while carrying Grayson and Darrin. He didn’t see anyone else; if there had been any witnesses, they were smart enough to make themselves scarce.

Moving at a quick jog and switching off the burden of the bodies every few blocks, the six of them made it to the spaceport in under ten minutes. Five minutes
after that, they were aboard the ship and safely off the station.

Only then did Kai Leng allow a satisfied smile to cross his face.

“Call the Illusive Man,” he said to Shella. “Tell him Grayson’s coming home.”

Kahlee tossed and turned all night, constantly glancing over at the glowing clock by the bed. Each time she was surprised to see that only a few minutes had passed since she’d last checked; it seemed as if morning would never come.

She never slept well after one of Grayson’s calls. She couldn’t help but think about where he was, and what he was doing. And thinking of Grayson inevitably made her think of Gillian and Hendel.

She cared about each and every one of the students she’d treated, but Gillian had always held a special place in her heart. She knew Hendel was watching over the girl, but it didn’t make her miss Gillian—or Hendel—any less.

The stoic security chief had been one of her closest friends on the station … one of the few close friends she’d had in her life. Despite her outgoing personality, she tended to keep others at a distance, a trait she’d probably inherited from her misanthropic father.

It was strange to think how much influence Jon Grissom had had over her life. She’d taken great pains to conceal the fact that the man the Academy was named after was in fact her biological father.
After her parents’ divorce he’d vanished from her life, so she’d taken her mother’s name. As she grew older, she tried her best to keep her relationship to one of Earth’s most honored—and misunderstood—heroes secret.

Despite these efforts, her father had been thrust back into her life some twenty-odd years ago, when she had been on the run after being framed for the massacre of her fellow scientists at the Sion research facility. He’d hidden her at his home on Elysium, then later helped her and David Anderson—an Alliance soldier and the only other person who had believed Kahlee was innocent—escape off world.

Nearly two decades later Anderson had helped Commander Shepard expose Saren, the rogue turian Spectre, as a traitor to the Council. Kahlee had become a leading researcher in the field of biotics and the head of the Ascension Project. Her father, on the other hand, had stayed on Elysium. He had lived a lonely, isolated existence, refusing all interviews and doing his best to hide from a legendary reputation he never learned to bear.

She’d kept in regular, if infrequent, contact with her father up until the day he died. He had passed away from natural causes six months ago, at seventy-five: shockingly young by modern standards. But then her father had always been a relic from a bygone era.

There were hundreds of dignitaries at the funeral, all coming to pay their respects to a man they idolized, but never really knew. Kahlee had attended not as Grissom’s daughter, but rather as a member of the Academy faculty: obviously she valued her privacy as much as he had.

The death of her mother when she was a teenager had shattered her world. Grissom’s passing had had a much smaller impact. She never did feel close to her father: the two or three clandestine visits each year to his estate on Elysium had always resulted in uncomfortable conversations filled with long stretches of bitter silence. And yet, now that the surly old bastard was gone, she actually missed him. She still felt a small lump in her throat whenever she passed the memorial plaque in the mess hall that bore his name and likeness.

In an effort to turn her churning thoughts away from the people from her past, she tried to think of a way to smooth things over with Nick. She didn’t want him to feel ashamed or embarrassed about what had happened, but talking to him directly might only make things worse.

If Hendel had still been here, she’d have asked him to handle it. But he was gone. Just like her father. And Grayson. And Anderson.

Why do all the men in my life tend to disappear?

That wasn’t a question she wanted to mull over in the middle of a long, sleepless night. Fortunately, at that moment her terminal chimed to indicate an incoming message, giving her an excuse to jump out of bed and check it out.

She couldn’t help but feel a twinge of apprehension as she flicked on the screen. At night the terminal was set to receive messages silently and store them until morning; it alerted her only when something tagged as
Urgent
came in. Seeing it was from Grayson made her even more anxious.

Unlike his call earlier in the day, this wasn’t a live
feed. She could see from the formatting that it was a prerecorded message and an encrypted data file. Her throat was too dry to swallow as she tapped the screen and watched it play.

The instant Grayson’s image appeared she knew the message had been recorded months or even years ago. His face wasn’t as lean; the bags under his eyes weren’t as pronounced.

“If you’re watching this, that means Cerberus has found me.”

He spoke the words with cool, almost clinical detachment, but that didn’t keep Kahlee’s heart from jumping into her throat.

“I don’t know if they’ll come for you, too. They might not; the Illusive Man is practical enough that he might decide you are inconsequential to his plans. But he can also be vindictive and petty. It’s a chance you can’t afford to take.”

She tried to focus on what Grayson was saying, but her mind was having trouble processing the words. She couldn’t disconnect the recording from the man behind it. Was Grayson dead? Had they taken him prisoner?

“There’s a file attached to this message,” the recording continued in the same calm voice. “Everything I know about Cerberus is in there.”

Grayson’s monotone delivery was a sharp contrast to the chaos crashing down on Kahlee. Her head was spinning, her stomach churning. The whole thing seemed surreal, a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake up.

“The Illusive Man is smart. He’s careful. He only
tells his operatives what they need to know. But I know far more than he suspects.

“Over the last several years working for Cerberus, I was gathering intel. Maybe some part of me knew even back then that I would turn on the Illusive Man. Or that he’d turn on me. Maybe I was just smart enough to want an insurance policy.