(Read Chapter Two)

Chapter Three: Lights, Camera, Acción

Alice may not have had a pistol, but she didn’t need it. She would probably find herself wishing she had one later, if things were going down the way she anticipated – but in that moment, she just needed to stay hidden. Her biotics could, hopefully, keep her safe if the worst case scenario presented itself.

She followed Zersa back into the restaurant and watched as the turian woman gestured towards a back door, to which Alice moved quickly. Dropping her bag to the floor, she bent into it and searched. A small cosmetic mirror was pulled out before she kicked the duffle to the side, letting it settle just underneath a booth. As the Alliance soldier cracked open the restaurant’s back door and eyed the surroundings. It looked as though the coast, at least on this side of the building, was so far clear. As Alice stepped out into the relative darkness of the back alley, she heard Zersa speaking in what she assumed was calming undertones with words translated mostly by her Omni-tool.

The click of the door behind her as it latched made Alice’s shoulders hike to her ears, so hyper-focused was she on the rest of the space around her. She needed to make sure she was alone, at least. There were half a dozen feet between the two buildings and twice as much distance before she’d reach an open walkway in either direction.

Scanning from one end to the other with her body pressed into the well of the doorway, Alice kept her breathing as even as she could. Nothing to the right, slow shifting to scan up and then determine what was awaiting her on the left side.

Clear.

Blessedly, beautifully clear.

Careful to stick to the wall as best she good and pick her way quietly to the far end of the alley created by two restaurants of distinctly different cuisine, Alice made her way towards the left side – it was where less of the noise had been funneling from and she hoped that would mean she’d get a decent vantage point with less worry of being caught. It was possible that she could climb to the roof, or even propel herself up if she was incredibly careful but the risk of being seen was far greater with theatrics like that.

She made it unscathed to the corner of the building and cracked open the mirror, running her thumb over it to dull the shin with her skin’s oils. With her shoulder as close to the edge as she dared, she lifted the mirror in an attempt to see what she could.

The ships, now closer – landed in the middle of the square and surrounding large pathways, were clear. Even without her training in the Alliance, she would have recognized the lines of it.

Batarian.

If that wasn’t enough to betray the infiltrators, the forms of four-eyed pirates that were spilling out onto the streets were unmistakable even in the fuzzy mirror.

Alice hissed out a breath, pulling the mirror back and closing it over as quietly as she could.

As quickly as she had come, she moved back to the door she had exited and cracked it. The restaurant looked hastily deserted –good, she thought.

Shifting back into the restaurant, Alice crouched low to avoid being seen through any of the windows. Tucking the mirror into one of the oversized pockets on her leg, she managed to make her way to the kitchen without incident.

After nearly being hit over the head with a heavy-looking pan by Zersa, Alice spoke in quiet whispers.

“Batarians, and a lot of them. The kids are in the freezer, right?” the turian woman nodded so Alice continued. “I haven’t heard back from my commanding officer yet. Have you been able to contact anyone else?”

“I’ve send notice to everyone I could to hide and arm themselves.”

“We have to fortify our defenses and find weapons. Fortunately, it’s dark enough that I think I can get out and in without being seen. Do you have any protein bars?”

Zersa looked at her curiously before she moved, crouched as low as her height would allow her, to rummage in a drawer. She returned with what looked like freeze-dried meat.

“Is this okay?”

“Yes. Anything with protein.” Alice took what was offered and lined her pockets. “Any coffee or energy supplements?”

Zersa returned with pills made up of different nutrients with a fairly large amount of synthesized energy. “What is this all for?”

“I’m a biotic and, right now, that’s all we’ve got. I’ve pushed myself before but not as much as I think I’m going to have to. These will help, at least. Thank you.”

Alice moved to the small window that looked out from the kitchen to the main floor of the restaurant. She connected the mostly-imaginary dots around the host’s booth and could feel the static grow in the air around her, taste the metallic mint that seemed accompanied the use of her biotic abilities. As gently and quietly as she could manage, Alice shifted the heavy metal box to press it against the door. It would be of little use with all of the windows in the place.

When it was shifted, she surveyed from her vantage point. No batarians were moving their way. Yet.

Turning around, Alice found Zersa. “The back door, I noticed a heavy lock. We need to keep it shut unless we know they’re friendlies.” She paused and narrowed her eyes at the air beside Zersa’s head, a thought catching her. “Do you know the owners of the restaurant next door?”

“Yes, we’re quite friendly.”

“I have an idea. I noticed a back-alley door there. It’s small, but it could be hidden by the dumpster fairly easily. I’ll go with you. We need to see if we can get everyone here, over there.”

“Do we want everyone in the same place?”

“They won’t know,” Alice gestured with a hand alight in the blue glow of her biotics to the restaurant around her. “I’ll force the tables against the windows, make it look like we’ve fortified this place. The place next door is more solid, thicker walls and fewer points of entry. It’s safer there than here.”

“Why are we listening to a human?” someone, one of the patrons, grumbled as he Alice assumed leaned against a wall between a stove and a shelving unit.

“Because she’s the only one with ideas,” Zersa replied with narrowed eyes, a noise Alice didn’t understand emitting from somewhere near the turian’s chest.

“How do we know she isn’t just using us to protect her kind?” the reply was lower, a deep rumbling coming from a place similar to the noise Alice couldn’t identify from Zersa.

“Listen,” Alice cut in, squaring her shoulders and trying to bring herself to her full height – a grand total of five-foot three inches. “I get it. I do, I promise. But right now, my kind is everyone that isn’t coming from one of those batarian ships. My name is Alice Shepard, and I am just trying to help.”

The human extended her arm out, the same way she had to Zersa, before she turned her gaze up to the white-gray face marked with red lines. With mandibles tight to his face and pale gold eyes narrowed to nearly horizontal slits, he hesitated for a long moment. A chorus of sounds, low and rumbling, came from around them and his eyes flickered to the others in the room before returning to Alice. As if bullied into it and wanting nothing to do with it, he layered his arm over hers in the greeting gesture. When he pressed his talons against her bare flesh, he was not gentle. Alice didn’t wince as he drew blood with the tiny pricks he made, her blunted nails scraping into the hardened plate of flesh at his own arm’s juncture.

“Deccus,” he offered in a deadpan, pulling his arm back from her even as he watched her closely. Alice didn’t reach for her puncture arm, didn’t wipe the blood away as she straightened her elbow and let her hand hang at her side.

“Good.” Turning her head over her shoulder, Alice found Zersa. It appeared that the rest of those that had been forced into the kitchen – the restaurant hadn’t been wildly busy, which was either very good or very bad depending on one’s viewpoint.  “We need to run over there, ensure that we can get in, and then come back. I’ll stack the tables and whatever else I can lift against the windows, then come and keep a barrier up while you make your way over. Does that sound like a plan?”

“I’ll go with her,” Deccus offered, pushing off of the wall. He was taller than Alice by quite possibly more than a foot; if she remembered correctly, the officer at the Citadel (what was his name?) was nearly two feet taller than she was. “You stay here and push shit up against shit.”

It took a fair bit of self-restraint for Alice not to roll her eyes at his self-important tone but she looked to Zersa, who nodded her head once. Alice then turned back to look at Deccus and nodded before she moved again to the window out to the restaurant, preparing herself to do as she had said she would.

By the time Zersa and Deccus returned, Alice was collapsed into a ball in front of the stove while Rilak helped her choke down the food and pills. The restaurant’s main floor was all but in ruins, every conceivable entrance – either door or window – had been covered back tables, chairs, uprooted booths. Alice was breathing heavily, drenched in sweat. Her sweatshirt, which had been tied around her waist, had been shoved into her bag by another turian diner at the human’s behest.

“I just…need a minute,” Alice waved a hand to dismiss the concerned trilling from Zersa, which the human only guessed by the way her eyebrow plates shifted and she moved quickly to the redhead’s side.

“We could start-”

“It’s too dangerous,” Alice shook her head, speaking around a mouthful of dried meat bar. She grimaced at the flavor – it wasn’t even that it was turian, Rilak knew first-hand no one really liked the taste of those things. “They haven’t made their way here yet. I just need to shove some more of these down my throat and I’ll be right as rain.”

Zersa watched her for a long moment before she acquiesced with a nod of her head and did as they had planned, gathering everyone as close to the back of the building as she could. She explained to the children that they needed to continue to be as quiet as possible; they were going to go visit some of her friends because it was safer there. Turians, by nature or nurture or maybe both, were a very militaristic society. They pulled no punches, even with the young ones – apparently Zersa and the parents had explained exactly what was going on from the word ‘go’.

Alice appreciated how easy it made things but wondered a little at the way it affected them growing up. Then again, it wasn’t like she had had a childhood filled with ponies and rainbows either.

With two more protein bars scarfed and two of those pills washed down with copious amounts of water, the human biotic was beginning to feel more like herself. With the help if Rilak, Alice managed to make it to her feet. “Okay. So someone will run across first, get them to open the door, and then I’ll throw up a barrier. Someone is going to have to stay here long enough to keep the door open. When the door shuts on the other side, I’ll get the dumpster in front of it.”

“But then you’ll be stuck on the outside,” Zersa spoke and Alice studied the way her mandibles shifted, tight to her face but without the tension she had seen on Deccus. The human thought it might  be a frown but didn’t think that moment was the most prudent to inquire about the other race’s facial gestures.

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Varrenshit you’ll be fine, Alice. You looked ready to pass out just now.”

“Trust me, okay?” Alice smiled wide, downing the rest of the water all in one gulp. She set the glass down in the sink as if it were any normal day.

Zersa made a low noise from her chest and Alice remembered a phrase subharmonics. That must be what her translator wasn’t picking up, those noises. The turian woman moved over to another set of cupboards and emptied them of all the easy-to-carry bits of meals she could find. Alice thanked her and stuffed her pockets as much as she could, storing a few more in her duffle. With a few moments more of preparation including giving her Omni-tool contact information to Zersa for communication and shifting the away bag to something she could carry more easily on her back, Alice finally felt steady enough to start their next exercise.

Deccus was the first out, crossing the space between buildings in a flash on his much-longer legs. The distant door opened and Zersa had volunteered to keep the door to her building open. Alice stood in between both buildings and tasted the mint-and-metal on her tongue as she projected a barrier. It was much large than one she had worked with before and before half of the occupants had shifted from one building to the other, she could already feel the strain as sweat beaded on her brow.

Rilak, who had been heading up a group of children, ushered them on and stopped long enough to shove half a protein bar into her mouth. Alice smiled appreciatively around the food before she cocked her head hard in the direction of the other restaurant to pressure him forward.

When the turians had all crossed, Zersa pulled the door closed as quietly as she could. Alice moved closer to her, knowing that the energy needed to protect just the two of them would harm her less than keeping up the walkway.

Alice led her across, trying to keep her head down but her eyes open for assailants. They had gotten way too lucky and she knew from personal experience that luck ran out.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Zersa spoke as she moved into the doorway.

“Mother me later,” Alice smiled wide again, even as her eyes felt heavy with the exhaustion. “Stay safe. Keep me updated on the goings-on, and I’ll let you know when I know anything.”

Zersa seemed to hesitate a moment before she reached out and pulled the human a little closer with her talon-tipped hands on the woman’s shoulders. Leaning down from her height, she pressed her forehead gently to the redhead’s freckled one. “Don’t get dead, Alice.”

The redhead made a note to ask her what the gesture meant later, even if she could guess, before she moved back and closed the door over. Leaning with her back against it, she popped an energy and nutrient pill before mowing down on one of the snacks she had hidden on her person. Her whole body shook with the effort she had expended and the idea of moving the dumpster, even the few feet required to hide the human-sized door, made her feel a little green around the gills.

Taking in several big gulps of air, Alice checked both ends of the alley before pushing herself off of the door. She had heard several metallic clicks of the locks being secured on the other side and felt happy in the idea that at least these people might live.

They would, if she had anything to say about it.  

Gritting her teeth, Alice moved to the other side of the dumpster and with both her physical might and the supplement biotic push she was able to scrape the large metal container to hide the entrance to the thick-walled building. She slid down corner created by the wall building and the smelly container, making herself as small as she could while she caught her breath and refueled again. She needed just a few moments to gather herself and then she would search out any other Alliance on leave. She knew at least a few members of her class had been given leave, although most of them had left before she had. She knew that she had a decent chance they would be there.

While she waited for the food to catch up with her body and her body to catch up with her mind, Alice flicked open her Omni-tool. No word from the commanding officer.

She scrolled through her limited contacts, sending off quick messages to determine if anyone she knew was in Illyria or anywhere close enough to help. Alice received no responses by the time she closed the interface back to the stealth mode on her wrist after briefly studying a map of the surrounding area.

With a grunt, Alice lifted herself from the ground and listened long enough to determine which way seemed like the safer option. She was thankful for the cover of night, although she imagined the batarians had an advantage over her in the eyesight department.

Moving to the right side of the alley this time, Alice stopped at the edge of the building and withdrew her mirror from her pocket once more. Checking her surroundings without revealing her position, she determined that she could make it across the street at the very least. It was, to her benefit, the direction she had determined was her best bet.

With a silent prayer to whoever might be listening, she tucked the mirror back into her pocket and took out as fast as she could towards the distant side.

No bullets. No shouts.

Something is going to go wrong, she thought as she caught her breath across from the hiding place she had stowed Zersa and Rilak in, scanning what she could see of the building’s façade to ensure it was still intact.

For now, they were safe.

Alice scanned her surroundings and found a path to the roof of the nearest building. Slowly and quietly, she found her way to the roof and laid flat on her stomach until she could get her bearings. Utilizing a snail’s pace army crawl, she made her way to the front corner of the building that would give her the best view of the city square.

The lights in the square, both from streetlamps and the ships that had landed, illuminated far more batarians than she would have guessed.

And a few too many bodies for her liking.

Frowning deeply, Alice wracked her brain for a solution. What in the world could she do, one against easily over a hundred that she could see armed batarians?

With a sharp inhale as she pushed herself back from the corner to the far end of the building to find her foothold down again, she realized exactly what she could do.