MEHR Chapter 52, Snippet 3 (Patreon)

"What an interesting bunch," said Tenma.

"Indeed," agreed Yang. They had just spoken to Jensen's roommates, a group that included two Krogans, four humans, four quarians, a volus, and a pookah. One might think that would be too many people to share an apartment, but this one was quite spacious. Terra Branford — a rather fine specimen of a human being — was the only actual roommate, legally speaking. Apparently, Adam had invited all these people to live with him, and had not consulted here at all, much to her supposed chagrin. Yang had not believed a word she said, and strongly suspected that Tenma found a bill for that Indian restaurant because she wanted him to.

Yang tucked the plush toy the Pookah had sold him in his avatar's storage compartment. "Well, we have a lead. I'm surprised the Citadel even has an Indian restaurant... real meat is hard to come by, and I doubt the spices are grown locally."

"Apparently this Bhatia managed to come up with a pretty good menu, regardless. I've been meaning to sample his..."

From her accommodations aboard the Agamemnon, Spectre Mia Thárros sat comfortably in front of a fairly large terminal, monitoring all that Yang's mechanical avatar saw and heard while retying the bandanna that kept her wild crest under control.

Technically, she was supposed to have her boots on the ground along with the robot, but Yang had insisted on having her close by, just in case. 'Close by' meant the rather large control room not 10 meters away sealed behind a huge metal vault door — marked 'TOP SECRET RESTRICTED' in both Cyrillic and Hanz— from which Yang was apparently controlling that one robot.

Mia had her own theories about that room, the most fantastic one was that Yang was actually the AI controlling the Agamemnon, using androids to pretend to be a real person, and secretly the ruler of the entire Coalition. She thought she should perhaps share this suspicion with her superiors... but then thought better of it. The Turians have been itching for a rematch with the Coalition for a while now, and 'possibly ruled by an AI' would have been a good enough reason for the Hierarchy to declare Total War on all of humanity... and with the Asari Republic's backing, no less.

Mia didn't like starting wars. It kept her up at night.

"Am I troubling you?" Yang's young voice came out laced with static from the console. Mia checked her screens: apparently the robot was still discussing the finer points of hong kong cuisine with Tenma... who seemed to be quite good at cooking meat, from what she could hear.

"No, not at all," she replied, then: "So, who am I talking to?" she asked, her tone accusing.

There was a pause, as if Yang didn't understand the question, and then... "Just a moment, Mr. Tenma," said the robot. "I need to speak to my Spectre."

Another of Yang's voices came from another speaker. "I apologize for that... I did not mean to be impolite."

"So," said Mia, as she adjusted her blue hard-suit. "You can hold multiple conversations at once?"

"I'm a very good multi-tasker... a necessary trait for the commander of a four kilometre long dreadnought. In any case... something's been bothering me."

"And that thing is?"

"Why does Tarkus want Adam Jensen imprisoned?"

Mia sighed tiredly. "A lot of Spectres want Adam Jensen detained. This has been an issue with the Office ever since he took down the Seven."

"Hold a moment... Ah, a small group of terrorists made up augmented teenage Drells. You would think that you would look favourably on him for their capture."

"Well, I certainly did... but most of the other Faces criticized him for some of property damage he caused catching the big one, while some of Shades were not happy that he neutralized some of their 'assets' along the way."

"...What are Faces and Shades?"

"Oh, right... you'll probably have to deal with this sooner or later - basically, Faces are Spectres that operate in the public eye, while Shades are... well, they're the Spectres you'll almost never hear about on the news. Bau and Tarkus are Shades, Tigris, Mabuk and I are Faces. Saren was one too, so you can imagine our embarrassment."

"I see, thank you. Back to Jensen..."

"Of course. Months the incident with the Seven, Adam Jensen and Garrus Vakarian started acting the part of Spectres in all but name all over the Citadel. The reaction within the actual Spectres was embodied in two Turians: Nihlus Kryik and Taars Tarkus. Kryik was very vocal about making Jensen a Shade, and Tarkus argued that Adam Jensen was far, far too dangerous to be free."

"...That can't be all there is to it. Tarkus seemed to hate Jensen."

"Well, Taars had an elaborate plan to catch the Seven." Mia smiled. "It didn't work out as intended, obviously. It was built around making the Hanar happy. Jensen, on the other hand, didn't give a damn."

"And where did you stand, between Kryik and Tarkus?"

"Kryik. I thought he had a good idea: Adam would have made an excellent Shade... as for the others, Bau was on the fence, Tigris..." Mia snorted, her opinion on the dry-blood very low. "...didn't really care. Don't know about Mabuk."

"And Saren?"

"Saren was on some deep-cover mission, so he missed out on the controversy."

"...Were Adam's augmentations an issue as well?"

"You bet," Mia biotically assembled and disassembled one of her pistols — of which she had many — as she spoke. "Tarkus argued that he'd be nothing without them. That also got some of us thinking about augmenting ourselves to give us the edge we need — extra eezo nodes, more powerful muscles, Krogan level regeneration... after all, if augs can turn a nobody into a nightmare, what's it going to do a Spectre?"

"The Rejection Valley poses a problem..."

Mia nodded. "We'd have to do it a little or go all in. Don't know about you, but none of us wants to go full Omar, or go nuts like the Seven did."

"I see. Thank you for answering my questions."

"Any time, Yang."

"By the way, I've arranged for another of my mechs to pick up that plushie you wanted. It will be delivered to you shortly."

Mia blushed, embarrassed. "Err... thanks."

~[h+]~

Yang and Tenma were greeted with the all familiar flicker of red and blue lights and the bright blue beams of a C-Sec cordon.

"Oh, dear. I smell blood in the air."

"...There was a murder here, wasn't there?" asked Yang, but he already could tell it was so.

"That doesn't bode well for Jensen," said Tenma. "That bill places him at the scene of the crime."