Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

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.

“Names of agents inside the Alliance. Locations of key facilities and safe houses. Shell companies owned by the Illusive Man. Whatever information I could gather, no matter how small, is there.

“Some of the information might be out of date — locations move; new operatives are brought in. But in the right hands what I know could do real damage to Cerberus.”

A spark of hope flickered inside Kahlee. If Grayson was still alive, she might be able to use the files he’d sent her to figure out where Cerberus had taken him.

“Don’t try to rescue me,” the message continued, as if the recording could read her thoughts. “If you’re seeing this, then I’m as good as dead.”

Kahlee shook her head in an instinctive, unconscious refusal.

“You have to protect yourself. Get this information to someone in authority. Someone with the power to go after Cerberus. You have to destroy the Illusive Man; it’s the only way you’ll ever be safe.”

The message went silent for several seconds, and Grayson’s brow furrowed on the screen. Then he barked out a grim laugh.