[Illium] Without Empathy

Tell her a story, keep her occupied. Which ones would take the most time to explain? Cerastes dipped his chin into his chest and stared down the length of his torso, vibrant memories flaring behind his eyes as he flicked from one scar to the next. If he could find one she liked enough, maybe she'd pause, if only for a few precious moments.

Aha.

"The... the one under my right pectoral," he wheezed. "I was young, stupid, maybe like you a few years ago; you'll remember those times. Went - nngh -" blood throbbing threatening to burst "- went after a man who ran a butcher shop. Locals were concerned; few children had gone aghhhk - gone missing.

"It would have been better if they were processed," he paused to breathe, eyes set at half-mast as he tried to collect himself while invisible needles struck every nerve in his leg. "He kept them in the back - in the cold-" a hiss through his teeth "- and raped them for weeks, until they bled out or died from exhaustion, it didn't matter.

"I let it get to me, my wrist still shivering as the gun raised, too young, too filled with fury and uncontrolled unable..." The solipsism ended mercifully. After a few seconds, he resumed. "I missed. He took me down, started a mastectomy, said I'd always feel the air an inch from my heart, but he got too close when he had the knife burrowed in me.

"I tore out his eyes with my teeth and nails and left."

"Two more."

Chest heaving from the effort it took to breathe and tell the tale, Cerastes stared down at Suri. Keep her occupied keep her thinking, maybe it'd take more time if... "You pick the next one."

"Suri."

The unseen companion spoke for the first time. Suri looked up, the knife still poised below the drell's knee, ready to sink in. The scales indented with the pressure of the blade. The quarian looked up at the figure behind the drell. The voice of the companion promised that whatever it was she had to say, it was of significance.

"It's Smith. He's on Illium."

The quarian's smile strained. The knife slid away, leaving the kneecap undisturbed. The quarian stood. Looks like even her little fun with the drell was to be ruined this evening, cut short by more pressing demands.

"It seems we have found your employer without you," Suri said. She picked up the cloth from the table, wetted it, and washed off the blade before sheathing it. "Story-time will have to wait, until later."

They didn't bother to return the capelet the drell's head. They suited humanoid returned it to Suri as they departed. The door sealed behind them, leaving the drell alone in the dark.

For several long, pensive minutes, Cerastes thought he'd actually lost consciousness and had begun to hallucinate. He blinked blearily in the shadows of the room, watching as Suri'Neyvi rose and started off, deeper into the dark, away from his view.

This couldn't be happening.

Life wasn't this easy. The blood dripping from the incisions on his left kneecap spelled that out quite clearly. A bewildered wheeze escaped him as he dropped his head down, staring at the wound. What had she said to him about the room? His eidetic memory flickered back to him.

Cancer.

His eyes closed, voluntarily this time. Staving it off. He was staving it off; she'd leave him here alone with the toxins, each moment drawing death ever-closer to him. The drell sucked in a breath through his teeth and, limply, struggled in his chair, felt the bindings behind him.

If he was going to die, he was going to die trying.

'Ka-shunnnk' is the word for 'salvation' on the lips and hearts of every imprisoned information broker, because it was this sound that echoed across Cerastes' impromptu prison as a cover dropped off one of the maintenance shafts.

A second later, there was a familiar voice at his shoulder, modulated through a helmet's vox.

"Some things held me up. Would've been here sooner otherwise."

The bonds began to loosen around his wrists.

"Where is she?"

By the time the shadows stirred behind, Cerastes had rubbed several of the scales off of his wrists in a desperate attempt to free himself while Suri was still out. The red blood on his palms was bright, in stark contrast to the dark fluid that pooled around his feet. Tick tock.

Shit. Shit shit shit fuck she was back she was going to finish the job, out of time--

A sharp pang of nausea rose in his gut at the sound of Shirin's voice. Cerastes gagged quietly, then swallowed and cast a frantic look about the room.

"How the hell'd you get here?" he hissed, hands already twitching as he felt the cool metal of her gloves brush against him. "She's - she's gone. I think she's gone. Something about Smith, Smith."

His head jerked back, eyes seeking, trying to find Shirin. He was suddenly made aware again of just how pathetic he was: naked, strapped to a chair, bleeding slowly and steadily from his knee and his wrists, and all because of some little quarian girl. Whatever masculinity he might have had before was strangled. His thighs tensed, drew together slightly out of self-consciousness, but the movement sent a bolt of agony through the entire left half of his body. He snarled like a dog in a cage.

"Tracer went out somewhere around here. I went to the city, found some Eclipse, asked nicely." The Paladin was already in one hand as Shirin moved to approach the door, with some kind of blinking red object in the other...and then several things happened at once.

First of all, Cerastes had said 'gone'. Like, not 'in the other room'. 'Gone'. Secondly, as her gaze drifted down to his leg, it became readily evident that he wasn't going to be ambulating even now that she'd untied his arms. She might be able to catch up with Suri, but in the time it would take to do so, he would probably bleed out.

The Red Room taught control, control above (often 'in spite of') everything else, and for this reason, the only hint Cerastes got was in the way Shirin's fist clenched around the pistol, hard enough to quiver slightly. And then it was back to normal - not even a hint of the furious, bubbling anger of a second ago. Total calm.

"...All right. This is a loss."

She knelt by the chair, and there was a brief sensation of heat at Cerastes' ankles as she started lasering through the chain keeping him locked in place.

"I'm guessing you can't navigate the shafts with that leg. There's a breached point outside, near the engines. We'll go out that way. Stay with me."

Cerastes was thirty-six years old.

In all of those years, even amongst the countless homes, the madness of youth, the slow and desensitizing process of losing one's emotions to the business, he had never once felt so humiliated. The heat at his ankles scarcely registered; Shirin's words made it through, but they were distant to him. He'd lurched forward in the time she'd walked across the room, and remained in the same position as she freed him, arms folded protectively over his lap.

"Of all the times to not wear a cup."

It was a rare and limp attempt at humor. Cerastes glanced around the room, searching for his clothes. "They didn't burn my things, my... attire and omnitool, they should be here."

Warmth flushed in his ribbing. He closed his eyes halfway, refusing to look Shirin in the eye; the defiance he'd spent on Suri was gone.

"I can't walk."

The words cut him far deeper than Suri's knife could have ever hoped.

A glance at the knee had revealed as much. "Yeah, I figured. Don't try to; it'll do more damage."

Protecting Cerastes' delicate modesty aside, it wouldn't do to leave access to his data just lying around on the ship. With a quick 'stay put' motion, Shirin ducked out the door, pistol-first, and was gone just long enough for the other drell to start wondering what'd happened to her. When she returned, though, she had the skinlink for his omnitool, plus (blessedly) his clothing.

"Here." Throwing an arm over her shoulder, she hoisted Cerastes up onto his good leg and handed over the gear. "You're not getting anything around that knee; just wrap the shirt around your waist or something if you're that worried about it. Let me know when everything's secure, and then just drop your weight on that leg and I'll pick you up. Don't argue--" It was clear from her tone that she would brook no disagreement.

"--ah. There." Shirin had spotted the syringe next to them. "Morphine? Should be enough to put you under while I get out of here. That might actually work better."

She was dead.

Experience did nothing to remove the feelings of dread that followed such a traumatic ordeal. Cerastes had already started thinking, his mind traveling in every direction without guidance. Maybe he could crawl away. It would be agonizing, but --

Ah.

She wasn't dead. She was, in fact, coming back now, uninjured, with his things, and she was trying to pick him up - wait. Oh, fuck. No.

"Don't--" The word was choked off by a hoarse shout of pain. Cerastes' left leg hung limply at the knee, attached by two lone ligaments and the skin around them. Scant traces of muscle might have remained, but now that the limb hung loose, it was evident that something was seriously fucking wrong with it. White flashed in his eyes whenever she twitched; he wheezed and hissed, adjusting his weight several times.

"... do that," he muttered in epilogue. Furious at his own uselessness, he snagged the shirt and pants from her and started rapidly tying them about his waist. He looked like a rube. Before he could protest, she was moving again, and he with her, each hobbled step eliciting another one of those awful, pained wheezes from him. His nerves were on fire.

"YES, NOW," growled the broker, once Shirin's suggestion processed.

Yeah, that leg was as much of a waste as this whole Suri thing had turned out to be.

Shirin sighed, letting Cerastes rest against the table, and held the syrette up to the light. "Here it comes." A quick pull broke the syrette's seal, and then, mercifully, she emptied the entire thing into a vein in the other drell's arm. She braced herself against his side, waiting for him to pass out in the interest of being able to pick him up without causing any more screaming.

"Yeah, I gotta move past this. If it's worth anything, I'm sorry. It's my fault you're caught up in this bullshit."

He probably wouldn't remember that apology clearly enough to process it when he woke up, which was totally okay with her.

The table groaned lightly as Cerastes put his weight into it, all dense scales and sinewy muscles beneath. His throat was haggard, his head swimming. He'd gone through this before: the adrenaline was draining out of him, stripping away the protective barriers it had set up over the past few hours and leaving in its wake a tired mess of pain and exhaustion. Had he not been using both palms to support his weight, the broker might have pressed one to his forehead to steady himself.

"Do it."

This time, he was grateful when she followed through and stuck the needle into his arm. He didn't flinch - it was nothing compared to the sensation of the knife in his knee, slicing, shlk shlk kkkkhk tear - no. He wasn't going to do that, right now. He was...

Damn.

What was he? Where? He was dimly aware of the floor melting away beneath him, of a pair of arms reaching out to steady him.

Strangely, the last thing Cerastes said before passing out was, "Don't worry. You'll be alright, Shirin."

Cerastes was light - unarmored, and not that much bigger than her. It was simple enough to carry him out and get the transponder running. The Eidolon would be responding shortly, since Jil'Korah had locked it onto her signal at Shirin's request. (How, exactly, he had the ability to steer the Eidolon was beyond her. Perhaps he and Cerastes had been bonding.)

"Mm," she answered as he slipped into unconsciousness. A quick hoist and a few minutes of scrambling later, she was off into the night without a trace.

This was far from the first time Shirin Vedral had failed at something; it wasn't even the first time she'd looked completely incompetent in the process, and it probably wouldn't be the last. You win some, you lose some.

It was not, however, a mistake she would make twice.

end