Drew Karpyshyn - Retribution

From their location, Anderson couldn’t see Kahlee, though he had a line of sight to the warehouse’s front door. He was staring right at it when Grayson came through.

Anderson was shocked by his appearance. Kahlee had mentioned he had been altered by the Reaper technology, but Anderson had never imagined anything like this. He could clearly no longer be called human; he had become some kind of nameless abomination.

His skin was stretched and discolored. Beneath it Anderson could see that the cybernetics had merged with his body, as if he was being devoured from the inside by machines.

It reminded him of the colonists who had been repurposed into husks on Eden Prime. There had been no way to reverse the effects of their transformation. He feared the same could be said of Grayson.

He heard Kahlee say his name, and then Orgun stepped into view behind Grayson, blocking his retreat.

“Surrender,” the big krogan growled, raising his assault rifle so it was pointed directly at Grayson’s back, “or we’ll kill you where you stand.”

Grayson responded by dropping into a crouch, spinning around, and charging the krogan, doubled over so low he almost seemed to be crawling on all fours. It happened in the blink of an eye; Orgun was moving so fast he seemed to be nothing but a blur.

Orgun fired a burst from his assault rifle, but the unexpected speed and uniqueness of Grayson’s reaction caught him off guard. Trained to aim for the chest and upper torso, his shots sailed too high as Grayson scuttled toward him.

Some of his troops around the warehouse — the ones with quick reflexes — squeezed off a few quick shots of their own, but in their haste they aimed wildly and the rounds deflected harmlessly off the spot on the floor where Grayson had been standing an instant before.

He slammed into Orgun, a 160-pound man versus a nearly 500-pound krogan. Amazingly, it was

Orgun who was sent flying by the impact, his assault rifle spinning free of his hands.

The warehouse erupted with the thunder of gunfire as Orgun’s troops got over the initial shock of the unexpected attack. Grayson responded by throwing up a biotic barrier, the air around him shimmering with the sudden release of energy. The bullets were devoured by the powerful gravitational field, losing their momentum instantly and dropping harmlessly to the ground.

Anderson glanced over at Sanak from the corner of his eye. The batarian had been as surprised as anyone by Grayson’s outburst; he was only just now recovering. His attention was focused entirely on the carnage before him, the prisoner beside him utterly forgotten.

As the batarian took his first running step toward the battle, Anderson delivered a back round-kick to the side of the head. It sent Sanak reeling, the assault rifle falling from his grasp to skitter across the floor as he pinwheeled his arms.

Anderson followed up his initial attack with a flying tackle, knocking them both to the ground. They wrestled briefly, trying to get possession of the gun clipped to Sanak’s thigh.

They grappled at close quarters, grunting and cursing as they each fought to gain leverage. But Anderson was on top, giving him the advantage. He wrapped his hand around the butt end of the pistol, but the batarian managed to get him in an elbow lock, pinning his arm in place so he couldn’t raise the weapon.

Anderson squeezed the trigger anyway. The round ripped a hole in the batarian’s thigh, causing him to scream in pain and release his grip. Anderson quickly brought the pistol up and shoved the muzzle into the batarian’s gut, then fired three more times.

All four of Sanak’s eyes went wide in disbelief as his body went limp. Anderson rolled off him and stood up, still clasping the pistol. The batarian opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a wet gurgle. He coughed, and a dark trickle of blood seeped from between his lips.

Anderson fired one more time, aiming for the heart. Sanak shuddered once. Then his head lolled to the side, his eyes glazed and unfocused as his life ebbed away.

The entire encounter had taken less than thirty seconds, but in that time the shooting at the other end of the warehouse had stopped. Looking up, Anderson noticed several of Aria’s troops — including Orgun — lying dead on the floor. Some were bent and twisted, limbs protruding at awkward angles in the unmistakable pose of those killed by powerful biotic attacks. Others appeared to have been beaten to death, their heads staved in as if someone had smashed them with a sledgehammer.

But he couldn’t see Grayson anywhere in the carnage … or Kahlee.

Running toward the center of the room to get a better view, he realized he was the only one still alive inside the building. He had no idea what had happened to Kahlee, but a thousand scenarios were playing through his head, none of them reassuring.

Fearing the worst, he raced across the room and out the door, only to find her standing in the dimly lit street, alone and unharmed. She was staring off into the distance, her back to him.

“Are you okay?” he asked, panting slightly from his recent exertion as he ran up to her.

She turned in response to his voice.

“I’m all right,” she assured him. “When the shooting started I just tried to stay low. Luckily nobody was aiming for me.”

“What about Grayson?”

“He’s gone,” she said. “He broke through the circle of Aria’s people and escaped out the door. They all ran off after him.”

Anderson realized this was their chance. For the next little while it would be chaos as Aria’s people tried to stop Grayson from escaping Omega. With everyone focused on him, they might be able to slip away unnoticed.

“Come on,” he said to Kahlee. “We’re getting off this station.”

“How?” she asked.

“We just have to find someone with a ship who doesn’t answer to Aria,” he explained, knowing it wouldn’t be nearly as easy as he’d made it sound.

A man he didn’t recognize stepped out from the shadow of a nearby building.

“Maybe I can help with that,” he said by way of introduction.

Kai Leng heard the sound of gunfire from inside the warehouse; the trap had been sprung. A few moments later, however, he realized Aria’s people had failed as Grayson emerged from the building still alive. As before, Kai Leng pressed himself into the shadows rather than confront him. As loyal as he was to Cerberus, he wasn’t suicidal.

Grayson broke into a run, and seconds later three armed krogan burst from the warehouse in pursuit.

Despite their massive bulk they could run much faster than humans, their muscular legs powering them along. Grayson, however, was no longer human. The cybernetic enhancements of the Reapers gave him incredible speed, and he had already opened up a gap of at least thirty meters before the krogan even appeared on the scene.

They opened fire with their assault rifles as they chased after him, their accuracy compromised by the poor illumination of the street and their desperate efforts to keep up with their target. Grayson moved in an erratic, zigzagging pattern to make it even harder for them to line up a clear shot. But it was impossible to dodge the hail of gunfire completely, and a few stray rounds found their mark.

The impacts caused Grayson to stumble, momentarily knocking him off stride. In response he wheeled around and thrust his palm out toward his pursuers. The air seemed to ripple and distort with the power of his biotic push.

Kai Leng had no doubt that if the krogan had been closer the energy wave would have pulverized them, breaking bones and liquefying even their redundant internal organs. As it was, Grayson’s flight had already left them so far behind that the force of the attack had dissipated considerably by the time it reached them. Instead of crushing them, it had only enough strength to knock them off their feet.