One year before the attack on Eden Prime.
Liara was cold. She glanced at Mother, and Mother glanced back as if to say, stop fidgeting already. But Liara’s toes were freezing and she was trying to wriggle them inside her inappropriately light boots. The effort must have made her face look funny, for Mother shot her another scolding look.
Two years before the attack on Eden Prime.
If you were to ask, Nihlus would probably tell you that he loved his job. On any other day, that is. Right now, he imagined that being anything, anything at all, from a mercenary looking for easy credits among the arms dealers in the Verge to a lap dancer in Afterlife on Omega, would be better than being a Spectre. Because, most days, being a Spectre meant eliminating the scum of the Galaxy. It was as simple as that, and it was something Nihlus was extremely good at, although to say he enjoyed it would be taking it a bit too far. But there were days, the never-ending, dreary days, when the Council expected their top military operatives to don fancy civilian suits and act as diplomats, negotiators, or, like today, arbiters.
Continue reading ArbiterWhat if Nihlus didn’t die on Eden Prime? This is an AU retelling of Mass Effect where the fateful meeting with Saren plays out differently, changing everything.
Garrus was leading a drunken krogan by the cuffed hands to an extra-padded cell when a familiar smiling face showed up on the news-holo in the main hall of the C-Sec compound. He smiled back at it; no time to listen to the news report now, but he made a mental note to look it up on the extranet later.
Nihlus stared at the mirror in the bathroom of his prefab for the longest time. He felt like years had passed since yesterday and he wanted to see if he looked any older. But he only looked tired. Tired, spent, hungover. The colors on his face were fading. He had some scratch marks on his neck, a little souvenir from Vakarian. It was good for what it was. Not quite good enough to replace the painful memory with a pleasant one, but he was grateful anyway.
Garrus jumped. He’d fallen asleep at his desk, cradling the nearly empty bottle of tequila like a lifeline. Somebody was knocking… no, more like trying to bust the door with their head.