He kept the pistol trained on them long enough to make it clear they would have been dead had he wished it, then slipped the weapon into the back of his belt.

"Cerberus is not your enemy," he told them. "We are defenders of the human race. We have no quarrel with you."

Kahlee cautiously got to her feet. Anderson was still having trouble catching his breath. She reached down and offered him a hand. He shook his head and waved her off, coughing and wheezing as he struggled up on his own.

"Don't pitch your propaganda to me," Kahlee spat, refusing to back down even after Kai Leng's display of physical superiority. "I know what you really are. I saw what you did to Grayson's daughter. I saw what you did to him."

"Sometimes individual sacrifices are necessary for the greater good."

"Bullshit," Anderson chimed in. "Justify your actions however you want. You're nothing but a bunch of terrorists."

"The Reapers are a threat unlike anything humanity has ever faced," Kai Leng reminded them. "You may think the Illusive Man went too far, but it was necessary to learn about our enemy. The survival of our species depends on it."

"You created a monster and set him loose on the galaxy!" Anderson shot back.

"That was as much your fault as ours. But blame gets us nowhere. We need to work together to bring Grayson back in."

"I'm not going to help you kill him," Kahlee declared. "So either shoot us, or leave us the hell alone."

"You saw what Grayson has become," Kai Leng pressed. "You can imagine what he's capable of. He has to be stopped."

"Clean up your own damn mess," Anderson answered, siding with his companion.

"We can help him," Kai Leng said, knowing there was still a way to get Kahlee to listen to him.

"We have the knowledge and resources to reverse the transformation," he lied. "But soon it will be too late. Everything Grayson is will be consumed by the Reapers."

Kahlee didn't say anything right away, causing Anderson to glance over at her.

"Is that true?" he asked her. "Can they reverse this?"

"Maybe," she said. "I don't know. But if there's even a chance to save him ..."

She left the words hanging in the air.

"Even if it means working with Cerberus?" Anderson asked softly.

Kahlee nodded.

"Take us to your damn ship," Anderson grumbled.

"This way," Kai Leng said, pointing back down the street. "You'll understand if I prefer you didn't walk behind me."

Aria was at her usual spot in Afterlife when one of her asari underlings rushed in with news of the failed attempt to capture Grayson alive.

"Orgun and Sanak are both dead," she said. "Grayson is on the run, and Keedo is leading the pursuit."

The Pirate Queen kept her features calm, concealing her extreme displeasure.

"What about Sanders and Anderson?"

The attendant who had brought her the news shook her head. "I don't know. Keedo didn't say."

"Then why are you here?" Aria asked coolly.

"Keedo is requesting reinforcements. He says Grayson is ... changed."

"Changed? In what way?"

"Cybernetic enhancements of some kind. He didn't go into details."

Aria silently cursed herself for trusting Cerberus. There was no doubt in her mind they knew about Grayson's upgrades; they might even have been responsible for them. Yet they had failed to warn her. If she had known, she might have sent more people to the meeting ... and she might have reconsidered the idea of taking him alive.

But she was also angry at herself. Eager to avenge Liselle's death, she'd accepted Cerberus's proposal despite her misgivings. She had let her feelings for her daughter interfere with her judgment. She had let emotion get in the way of good business. She wouldn't make the same mistake again.

"Give Keedo whatever he needs," she answered. "And send an alert out to everyone we have: Grayson is to be shot on sight. Civilian casualties should be minimized if possible, but I won't hold anyone responsible for collateral damage."

The attendant nodded and rushed off to relay the orders.

Aria watched her go, sipping her drink while she thought about how she would have her revenge against Cerberus and the Illusive Man.

Grayson could do nothing but watch in fascinated horror as the Reapers sent him on a rampage through Omega. They had buried him so deep inside his own mind he had lost nearly all connection with his physical self. He could still see and hear, but he could no longer feel his own body. He knew in some academic way that he had been shot, but the pain was so distanced from his awareness that it had no meaning.

The escape from the warehouse had been only the beginning. As he raced down Omega's streets, it seemed as if everyone on the station was trying to kill him. Every time he rounded a corner he seemed to run into an armed patrol or a blockade. Aria was sending everything she had at him; Grayson wondered if it would be enough.

The Reapers had turned him into a devastating weapon, but their power wasn't infinite. The constant pressure kept them from replenishing the stored energy in his body; each time they drew on it they became fractionally weaker and more vulnerable. He was already seeing the effects of their exertions as each encounter became more difficult and more dangerous.

The first group to get in his way had been easily dispatched with a biotic singularity. With a mere flick of his wrist, the Reapers had caused a single point of near-infinite mass to be created right in the center of the four asari lying in wait for him around a corner. The gravitational field swallowed them up instantly, collapsing them into nothingness before they could summon their own biotic powers to strike back.

The next group of enemies-a mixed squad of humans and batarians-fell to a brutal physical onslaught. Grayson simply barreled into them before they had a chance to fire their weapons, his hands and feet becoming lethal weapons that bludgeoned, bashed, and tore his enemies to shreds. At the end of the encounter, the Reapers paused long enough to scoop up the weapons of his fallen foes, then sent Grayson racing off once more with an assault rifle in each hand.

The rifles allowed the Reapers to switch tactics. Instead of having to overwhelm enemies with biotics or melee combat, they were able to fight a running battle through the Omega streets. Unlike Aria's people, Grayson wasn't wearing a combat suit, so the Reapers never went toe-to-toe with any of the patrols they came across. Instead, they would fire off a quick burst, then retreat, ducking around a corner into one of Omega's countless side streets or alleys. Using speed and maneuverability to offset the enemies' kinetic barriers and greater numbers, they would pick off the enemy squad one by one until the path was clear again.

The strategy would have been impossible under normal circumstances. Technological advances had helped reduce the kickback, but the sheer volume of rounds being discharged still required the use of both hands to stabilize the weapon. Even a krogan wasn't strong enough to use one in each hand effectively, but Grayson managed them as easily as if they were pistols.

Assault rifles also weren't known for accuracy. Even with the automated targeting systems built into the guns, the odds of repeatedly hitting a single target while on the move were low. But Grayson's synthetic enhancements gave the Reapers incredible accuracy, allowing them to focus both guns precisely on a single target. Kinetic barriers couldn't hold up under such a concentrated barrage, and as soon as the target became vulnerable the Reapers would finish the job with a perfectly placed head shot.

Aria's people fought back as best they could, but no organic foe could match the ruthless efficiency of a near-perfect killing machine. However, even aiming the weapons with laserlike precision was taxing his energy reserves. No matter how superior he was to his opponents, their numbers would eventually overwhelm him. He'd lost track of how many victims the Reapers had claimed somewhere around twenty, but he knew Aria had plenty more fodder to throw at them.

Recognizing the futility of trying to defeat an entire army, the Reapers began to search for a way to escape the station. The layout of Omega was a confusing labyrinth of haphazard, unplanned construction. It was littered with dead ends and routes to nowhere. But in the two years he had worked for Aria, Grayson had become as familiar with the layout as anyone.

Now the Reapers were drawing on his knowledge, accessing it directly from his mind. There was nothing he could do to stop them; he'd been reduced to a reference library they could call on whenever they wanted.

Still battling swarms of Aria's soldiers, they plotted a course through the twisting, turning streets, heading for the closest of Omega's countless docking bays. None of the ports Aria controlled were heavily guarded-most people knew better than to steal a ship from Omega's Pirate Queen. This one was no different; only a handful of defenders were there to try to stop him. They quickly met the fate of so many of their comrades, though one managed to set off the alarms before she fell.

Grayson knew the blaring claxon meant that reinforcements would arrive in under two minutes, and even as the thought crossed his mind he realized the Reapers would now know it, too.

They had him race over to a small, single-pilot shuttle stationed in one of the bays. The boarding ramp was up, the hatch locked. The Reapers had Grayson reach out his hand and place it on the security panel. Blue sparks arced out from his fingers as he made contact. A sequence of codes flickered through Grayson's consciousness as the Reapers interfaced with the security system's programming, and a second later the hatch opened with a soft click.

The Reapers didn't even wait for the boarding ramp to descend. Dropping the assault rifles, they had Grayson grab hold of the underside of the hatch and haul himself up and in. Once inside, he resealed the hatch and took a seat in the pilot's chair.

A batarian squad arrived just as the engines were roaring to life. They opened fire on the shuttle, but their weapons were useless against the vessel's hull.

The ship rose up from the docking bay, passing smoothly through the shimmering, microns-thin energy barrier that kept the temperature-controlled atmosphere inside the docking bay from leaking out into the frozen vacuum of space.

Unlike the Citadel, Omega had no exterior defenses. There were no patrolling fleets, no GARDIAN turrets or mass accelerator cannons. No longer assailable by patrols and soldiers on the ground, the Reapers were about to complete their escape from Omega.

As the shuttle pulled away from the station, the Reapers once again began to pick through Grayson's mind and memories. He quickly realized they were digging for anything and everything he knew about the Ascension Project: names, locations, security procedures.

He didn't even try to fight them anymore; there was no point. The Reapers had broken his will to resist. His only solace was that even with full access to his thoughts, the Reapers would never be able to find Gillian. His daughter was safe ... though the same could not be said of her former classmates.

The Reapers didn't immediately plot a course for the Grissom Academy. First, they opened the ship's comm channel and connected to the extranet. With access to trillions of terabytes of information from virtually anywhere in the galaxy, it didn't take them long to find what they were searching for.

Armed with the information they needed, the Reapers began to script lines of code. While with Cerberus, Grayson had been trained in basic computer hacking. He'd seen this type of thing before; it was clear the Reapers were compiling some kind of virus.

Driven by the AI intelligence of his masters, his fingers flew over the ship's digital interface. Grayson tried to follow what was happening, but the complexity and volume of the data was too much for his organic mind to process.

It took nearly fifteen minutes of effort for them to be satisfied with the program. Then they logged back on to the extranet and transmitted a message to the Grissom Academy. The Academy had firewalls and multiple levels of virus protection in place, but Grayson knew their security protocols would be no match for whatever malicious program the Reapers had created.

As the Reapers plotted a course for the Academy into the shuttle's nav systems, Grayson could sense they were almost spent. The desperate escape from Omega had pushed their avatar to its limits. They needed to recharge, but Grayson held out no hope he would have any opportunity to try and regain control of his body.

The shuttle accelerated to FTL speeds, heading for the nearest mass relay to begin the series of jumps that would take the Reapers to their destination. As it did so, they shut Grayson down, pushing him into a deep, dreamless sleep.

TWENTY-ONE.

Kahlee and Anderson walked a few steps in front of Kai Leng as they made their way from the warehouse district back to one of the residential areas of Omega. He guided them by issuing directions when needed in a firm, businesslike voice.

"Left at the corner. Continue three blocks. Right here. Take another left."

They weren't running, but they were walking quickly, propelled by their mutual desire to get off the station as soon as possible. And as they wound their way through the crooked streets, Kahlee's mind was working in overdrive.

She was thinking about Grayson, and about Kai Leng's promise that Cerberus could save him. She wanted to believe him, but she knew that someone who worked for the Illusive Man wouldn't be above lying to coerce her cooperation.

Working solely from memory, she tried to reconstruct everything she had learned about the experiment on Grayson during her short time studying the lab reports. Much of it was theoretical and speculative; even the scientists in charge of the operation hadn't known exactly what to expect.

Try as she might, there was no way for Kahlee to confirm or deny Kai Leng's claim. She hadn't been given enough time with the data; Aria's people had attacked the facility before she'd had a chance to fully process everything.

She did manage to get a sense of the overall direction of their work, however. Their research had focused primarily on measurable and quantifiable data: physical changes and alterations to brain wave patterns. They hadn't bothered to do any kind of psychological testing; they hadn't bothered to try and figure out the purpose behind the horrific transformation. Why had the Reapers developed this technology? Why had the Collectors been abducting humans and repurposing them? What were the Reapers after? What did they really want?

Kahlee knew if she could figure out the answers to those questions, she'd be able to figure out where Grayson was going next. Whether she would actually share that information with Kai Leng remained to be seen.

Anderson could tell that Kahlee was deep in thought as she marched beside him. And he could guess what she was thinking about: she wasn't ready to give up on Grayson.

He wasn't ready to give up yet, either. The Cerberus operative had kicked his ass seven ways from Sunday, but he had no intention of simply following the orders of someone who answered to the Illusive Man.

Kai Leng was muscular, but he wasn't a big man. Anderson outweighed him by at least twenty pounds; if they were in close quarters-like the pilot's cabin of a shuttle-he might be able to use that to his advantage. Whether it would be enough to offset Kai Leng's speed and superior training, however, remained to be seen.

"Right at this corner," Kai Leng told them.

They turned down a long, narrow alley. At the far end was a large door built into the bulkhead, separating the district they were in from the one on the other side. In front of it was a reinforced, waist-high barricade extending out from the bulkhead, across the alley, then back to the bulkhead again to form a small bunker. Behind the barrier were five armed turians.

At first glance they seemed to be almost bored, leaning casually against their protective wall or sitting on top of it, idly passing the time. On seeing the humans, however, they quickly took up defensive positions behind the barricade.

"Who are they?" Kahlee asked.

"Talons," Kai Leng answered. "They control the district beyond the barricade."

During his time as a diplomat, Anderson had received regular reports from Alliance intelligence from across the galaxy. The majority of these came from inside Council space, but some were focused on key locations in the Terminus Systems like Omega.

From these reports, Anderson knew that the Talons were the largest independent gang on Omega. Like most gangs, the Talons were into drug running, weapons smuggling, extortion, killing for hire, and slave trading. For a substantial fee, they also allowed ships and shuttles looking to avoid dealing with Aria's organization to dock at Talon-controlled ports scattered around the station.

Their business model had proved profitable, and they'd slowly been extending their influence on the station by swallowing up smaller gangs. However, Anderson knew that much of the Talons' success had come from their willingness to maintain a mostly peaceful coexistence with the Pirate Queen, rather than opposing her directly.

"Aria might have sent our descriptions out to every gang on the station," Anderson warned. "If she's offering a reward, the Talons might just decide to turn us over to her to cash in."

"There's bad blood between Aria and the Talons right now," Kai Leng assured them. "Even if they knew she was after us, they wouldn't want to help."

The turian guards studied them as they approached. Two raised their weapons while a third climbed over the barricade and stepped forward to confront them. Anderson was surprised to see that in addition to his pistol he also had a short-range stunner clipped to his belt. He'd assumed the Talons were thugs determined to shoot first and ask questions later. Obviously, however, there were times when they preferred to disable an adversary instead of killing him.

In retrospect, it made sense. The clientele who hired out their docking bays weren't the most upstanding citizens; disputes over payments were inevitable, and shooting customers was bad for business. Blasting them with an electrical current strong enough to render them unconscious wasn't an ideal solution, but it beat the alternative.

"Halt," the turian ordered. "State your business."

"I rented bay 6358," Kai Leng stated.

"Step up to confirm identity," the guard replied.

Kai Leng came forward, holding out his palm so the turian could scan it with his omni-tool.

"Identity confirmed," the guard acknowledged. "Paid in advance until the end of the week."

"I'm leaving a little early," Kai Leng said.

"That's your business," the turian told him. "But we don't give refunds."

To emphasize his point, his hand hovered over the stunner on his belt.

"I'm not looking for one," Kai Leng assured him, and the guard relaxed and gave a nod to his companions.

Convinced the humans had a legitimate reason to be there and weren't looking for any trouble, the others lowered their weapons. The guard who'd greeted them climbed back over the barricade and hit a panel on the wall. The door behind them slid open, revealing nothing more dramatic than another long, narrow alleyway.

"You two first," Kai Leng said with a nod.