"Tela Vasir, come in."
Not five minutes had passed before the Asari Liara contacted answered the call.
"Listening."
"Your operation is canceled."
"Canceled?"
"New information has come in. At the moment, preserving Benezia's life is more useful to us than her assassination. Therefore, the assignment is canceled; you will be directed to another task."
"I don't have the luxury of running your errands."
Irritation was heard in Vasir's voice.
"We had a deal. I eliminate Benezia, and you destroy the incriminating evidence against me. If you cancel the assignment..."
"Don't worry, you won't have to run across different planets."
Liara interrupted the Spectre, who was on the hook of the previous Broker.
"The target is on Thessia, though the task has become more difficult."
"And what is this task?"
"Capture."
"Capture?"
Irritation was heard in the girl's voice.
"Yes, you need to capture one Asari and load her onto the specified Kodiak Shuttle, ensuring she is sufficiently and reliably sedated."
"Right... and who do I need to catch?"
"The Ardat-Yakshi known as Morinth."
"You've gone fucking mad!"
Panic was heard in Vasir's voice.
"You're asking me to cross the Justicars?!"
"Not at all. If they come to you with questions, you can contact me, and I will answer the Justicars' questions. Though, I doubt anyone will come to you. Believe me, everyone is deeply indifferent to what happens to this girl. Well, almost everyone."
"Fuck..."
Tela was very unhappy with what she had just been told to do. Yet the truth was that she could not disobey the Broker's order. All because the incriminating evidence Liara held against her was very, very unpleasant. If her actions came to light, her colleagues would start hunting her, and she herself would be dismissed, stripped of all privileges.
"Are you taking it?"
Liara asked the question not out of politeness, but to know exactly what to do with Vasir—whether to use her for the good of the galaxy or to leak her quietly, or perhaps loudly.
"Yes."
"Excellent, transmitting information on the target's location. As well as where she will need to be delivered."
The connection broke, and Liara sighed with relief.
"You don't mind, do you?"
She turned to me, and a slight nervousness could be seen in her eyes.
"That I decided to resolve the Morinth issue this way?"
"No."
I shook my head.
"I was even thinking of using your new capabilities once you got a bit more comfortable with them, and I didn't think you'd be able to do something like this in the very first two days."
"Well, I just got lucky."
Liara shrugged, and relief was heard in her voice.
"The data that Morinth had arrived on Thessia was among the last received by the previous Broker. By the way, from everything I've done now, I've been able to understand that the Yahg was not the Shadow Broker, but he didn't realize it. To him here..."
She pointed her hand at the consoles.
"...only relatively unimportant information arrived, or information already processed by the real Broker, who disguised himself as a VI, with recommendations on exactly how to act. As for who the real one was...."
Sighing, she spread her hands to the sides.
"...I haven't been able to discover that. Only that he was also on this ship."
"Greetings, Miss T'Soni."
A glowing orb suddenly appeared near us, at which Liara and I, without a word, fired biotic strikes. However, these strikes passed right through it.
"Oh... am I... not needed?"
"Who are you?"
I was the first to pull myself together, but only because I remembered that this ball of light followed Liara everywhere in the game.
"I am Glyph. A VI whose primary task is to assist you, Miss T'Soni, as well as to assist others you designate. What you attacked is merely a hologram intended to simplify communications."
"Tali."
Liara and I said this synchronously and looked at each other.
"Tali!"
Liara repeated, but this time she said it somewhat louder to indicate to our Quarian that it would be good for her to come over to us.
"Yes?"
Tali appeared next to us, emerging from some technical tunnel.
"Tali, could you please warn us if you turn on any functions."
"Oops?"
Despite her voice and the attempt to show how ashamed she was, we could clearly see that she was in a more than excellent mood, and the prank she had pulled was directly related to that excellent mood.
"Tali, you didn't just do this for no reason, did you?"
"No."
She shook her head.
"I just found the office of the real Shadow Broker. It was actually not hard to do, so..."
She was clearly smirking.
"...I can tell you exactly who it was. By the way, they weren't worried about maintaining secrecy at all. Apparently, they thought the ship's location and the fact that the Yahg considered himself the Shadow Broker were enough security measures."
"I wouldn't say they were wrong."
Liara shuddered.
"The Yahg can indeed be a terrifying opponent; we just got lucky that he was too conceited and didn't set a trap together with his subordinates. Because if he hadn't been alone and hadn't focused his attention so heavily on John, we wouldn't have been able to defeat him."
"I understand that."
It was clear from Tali's voice that she didn't intend to argue with that statement.
"I'm just stating the fact that, in my opinion, they were too careless about maintaining secrecy."
"Let's get to the point..."
Jane, who until then had just been sitting in one of the brought-over chairs, decided to hurry her friend along. After all, Tali can discuss various points for a very long time, and right now we need facts.
"It's the STG. Well, more precisely, those STG operatives who can no longer work in the field due to age. They were sent here to finish their lives being useful to the Salarian Union."
"Well... after the Salarians attacked us when we thought we wouldn't have any more problems after the Yahg—that was an expected answer from you."
"Yes, but before it was just assumptions, and now it's facts. Glyph, by the way, is the VI that helped them specifically in their work. I managed to check his program and change the binding, so now he will use all his processing power to help Liara."
"Confirmed. All my capacities are directed toward assisting Miss T'Soni. And right now, I recommend you go to sleep. Healthy sleep is beneficial to representatives of all species."
"Yes, yes..."
Liara waved off Glyph's words.
"...better give me explanations for this information."
She brought up information on one of the monitors that had previously raised questions for her, after which work began with renewed vigor. However, not just for her...
** One month later. **
"So, we've already loaded everything necessary onto our ship. Its power will be enough to maintain stable operation in flight, but later we'll still need to equip a full-fledged workspace."
"We'll do it..."
I nodded to Liara, who was now pacing around our yacht and checking the final preparations. Unfortunately, we won't be able to keep the Broker's ship, as it belonged to the STG, which means we won't be able to fool them for long that everything is fine here. So it's already rigged with explosives and is just waiting for the moment we leave it.
However, I've already given orders, and across the known galaxy, they will soon start scattering relays that should allow Liara to work freely without worrying about being discovered. For now, for about a month, we'll have to work on board our yacht.
"Alright, since everything's gathered, there's no point in waiting any longer."
I waved my hand, and the ship slowly rose and flew out of the hangar, and when we had flown far enough, I handed the detonator to Liara, and she pressed it with great pleasure.
"How wonderful..."
A happy smile appeared on her face.
** Some time ago. Unknown location. **
"I feel so like shit..."
Morinth felt very bad. She slowly got out of bed—a quite comfortable one, by the way—and looked around. The room was unfamiliar.
"And where the hell am I?"
The girl looked around again, and most of all, the place she was in resembled a prison cell, except for the luxurious bed and a very expensive massage chair, which didn't fit the idea of a cell. And then there was the TV she saw on the wall, and the tablet lying on the table.
"What is going on here?"
The way she lived had taught her not to believe even what she saw, and so for the next hour, she very meticulously studied everything she could find. She studied with the hope of understanding what kind of mess she had gotten into. And just as she was ready to go for a third round, the TV turned on by itself.
"Sister, hello."
At these words, Morinth flinched, and her soul felt disgusted. She was already used to her own mother hunting her, but the fact that her sisters—who should at least partially understand why she fled—would join this hunt... Her heart, whose existence she denied to herself, ached.
"It's me, Falere, and next to me, though off-camera, is Rila. And to answer your unasked question, no, it wasn't us who kidnapped you. Although... perhaps we should have, but we don't have enough resources for that yet."
"Resources? What resources could two fools in a Temple have?"
"Fools? Is that what you call us?"
Morinth flinched, as she thought it was a recording, but it was actually... a live link?
"Fa-lere?"
Her voice trembled betrayingly.
"Rila?"
"I'm here, sister, just working. I need to check a couple more documents, and then I'll join the conversation."
"This... what is happening here?"
"Well, we won't tell you everything, otherwise the surprise will be ruined, but some things..."
Morinth grimaced, as she didn't like surprises very much. In her life, in many cases, a surprise was an attempt to kill her.
"...for starters, I don't know if you're aware or not, but some of the Temples have been moved."
"Um... And what does that have to do with me?"
"Nothing... well, almost... it only concerns you indirectly. You see, there will be a very big war soon, and the Republic decided that spending on the maintenance of Temples is not productive, so they could find someone who wants to maintain a bunch of Asari with a gene defect at their own expense. And such a person was found. Now most of the Ardat-Yakshi live on the human colony of Bali."
"Bali?"
Morinth even rubbed her ears, as such a thing simply couldn't be.
"Yes, exactly on Bali. They allocated a five-star hotel for us; we have our own beach, a pool, lots of various service staff, and many of us were given jobs. No, it wasn't a condition for getting all this. It's more our desire to help the one who opened a somewhat different world for us than the one we were used to."
"I... am happy for you."
Her heart still ached. She wanted to believe that it wasn't her sisters who kidnapped her, but if they were talking to her now, it meant they were directly related to the person who arranged it. It remained to be seen how.
"Be happy for yourself too. You're on Bali too, and in the same hotel; they just converted a basement area for your maintenance."
"Huh?"
"And yes, you'll stay there for about two months."
"Two months?"
Horror was heard in Morinth's voice. After all, that meant two months without adding to her collection. Yes, not all the victims in that collection were priceless treasures, but even just precious stones...
"Exactly two months. The being who kidnapped you was able to find information—it's not very reliable, of course, but still—that Ardat-Yakshi begin to be dependent on killing to some extent. And a two-month break will show you yourself that you have a problem."
"A problem?"
Mockery was heard in Morinth's voice.
"Yes, exactly a problem that we, your sisters, as well as the kidnapper, will try to help you solve."
"Oh, sure..."
***
Read the story months before public release — early chapters are on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Granulan