The law as written

Omega smelled like... something. Was it piss? Cum? Blood? Vomit? Some heady mixture of all of them and more? The smell was strong enough to punch through air filtration. A collective festering soup of interspecies waste product, equal parts fetid and impossible to look away from. They got off the shuttlecraft and the landing operator tried to hustle them for a tip, somebody else greased his hand with some bigger interest. Cerberus was probably too big-dick around these parts for any harassment to stick. A turian woman had flashed them in between drunken lurches toward her date's apartment. It was like a Saturday morning cartoon depicting vice, where the shady adults went to do goofers and drink mysterious things until they got silly enough to crash their cars... or just miss her boots with piss. Ducking through the archway into the main street after greeting Zaeed, she caught sight of air traffic passing dangerously low.

"Hell of a place, if it doesn't kill you," Jacob muttered.

It had probably hit them with about twenty different ways to kill them already. Shepard didn't unseal her helmet despite the breathable air. Crossing the road to the front door of the Afterlife, she ducked past an assemblage of waiting patrons. The doorman saw a flash of the Cerberus insignia and let them past.

The music had been gratingly loud from the outside, in the threshold it made her teeth rattle. The entryway was itself a waiting chamber for the club proper, itself with a unique group of hustlers. She turned down a few offers for uppers, the rising humidity of the bodies inside was getting her high strung enough. Besides, getting wasted in this kind of place was the last thing you wanted to do. You might end up going home with somebody that proved biologically harmful, or worse, a diplomat.

It was too loud to think inside the club. A wide horseshoe-shaped bar jutted out of the back wall, beset on both sides by snaking stairways that pushed up toward the ceiling, drawing attention to the bigwig box up above the haze of smoke. Around the bar, there were stools, tables, and then a floor that vibrated with a harsh scrum of decadence. On the bar's roof and up away from the floor, a multi-special congregation of scantily clad bodies twisted in time to the music. It was like some assortment of every conceivable delight, no matter what you wanted to see in their skivvies, you could find it. Shepard had been to a few seedy clubs before, both on business and pleasure, this one was on another level. The party was like the world was ending, Afterlife had been a sharp choice of name.

"Up in the balcony, we have an appointment with the woman in charge." Even using in-helmet coms graded for warzones, Miranda had to shout.

Shepard started to elbow her way into the crowd, trying to slip upstream while stomping as few toes as possible. Three officers in combat armor stood out like a sore thumb, which didn't stop some of the bolder dancers. An Asari woman fell into her arms, thrown there likely by herself. Shepard caught her on instinct, the girl seemed to giggle and tried to say something to her. Shepard read "Take it off" and "Buy me a drink" on her lips. She set the girl aside and kept moving. Miranda decked a handsy one, the party didn't stop long enough for him to hit the floor.

About halfway up the stairs, the noise cut off like it didn't exist. A look back down at the throng told her that the club hadn't stopped being real. This was some military-grade noise suppression. The "Pirate Queen" must have liked her eardrums intact. Looking down, the smoke and the humidity rankled but stopped the second it came into contact with the shimmering field of energy that shut the noise behind her. The woman in charge liked to look down, have that party as something she owned, she wasn't part of it.

The top of the stairs was an open-air landing. One way in, one way out, the boss got to look at you coming the whole way. It was a pretty normal practice, like a boss with a chair taller than that of his guests, spoke to authority. To have your whole office built to look down on people was both a stroke of great strategic thought and insane narcissism. A krogan stopped them, rocking the kind of civvie clothes that did a bad job hiding body armor. He didn't care if you saw, same reason to wear a concealed gun openly on his hip. He scanned them with his omni-tool while an Asari woman lounged on the couch. Her head was turned away but her eyes were on them. It was all a carefully practiced kind of domineering disinterest. She wanted you to know she had bigger fish to fry than the likes of you. There were a hundred thousand of her type in a hundred thousand other offices in the galaxy. The main difference was that none of them controlled Omega, none of them could compete in her dick-measuring contest without controlling a relay or the citadel itself. In a contest of speaking softly and carrying a big stick, she probably owned the bigger stick.

"Initial scans clean." The Krogan grumbled.

"Well, that's close enough if I can't look them in the eye." Controlled, austere, reveling in being on top. Play by her rules or not at all.

Shepard unlatched her helmet, slid it off under her arm. The smell up here was like the cool honey-like blossoms Liara had grown in her quarters. The temperature was close too, a little cooler than human room temperature. Smell and temperature like Thessia, the Asari were known for having trouble letting go of home.

"Better," The Asari smiled softly, "Come sit with me Shepard, your companions can wait."

Though Miranda's face hardened a little, she seemed unwilling to take off her helmet. Jacob was content to set up against the wall. Shepard stepped up the final set of stairs into the main lounge. Behind her, another wave of fielding crackled, hardening just enough to not let anybody else through. The sound of the krogan grumbling something at Miranda and Jacob droned out too. Soundproofing on soundproofing, a woman that liked her privacy.

"Irssal blooms?" Shepard asked as she approached the lounge seat the Asari lazed across.

"A discerning human nose!" The woman clapped, "Where did you learn that word?"

"I traveled with an Asari two years ago, she grew them in her quarters."

"That would be Tsoni? The daughter of a matriarch is usually given more leeway to... indulge her tastes than most."

"Yes, Liara, do you know her?"

"Not personally, but Matriarchs and their offspring have a certain level of... infamy. Asari society, not something I'd expect an outsider to understand. Not unless you two were closer than the galaxy knew?"

"Liara and I? I admired her but she was too innocent, it wouldn't have felt right."

"Oh of course!" The woman chuckled. "Perhaps not the case now?"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

The Asari stood up, "Well you've both changed so much since then. Two years is a long time." She strode over to a cabinet.

"Her maybe, I was dead for most of it."

"Oh of course!" She pulled out a pair of glasses. "But we both know that you've changed since then., even if you didn't ask to."

She offered Shepard a green drink, Elasa. Cold and bitter, good for moping drunk. Liara had never been a fan but anybody who knew **** had had Elasa. Leave it to the Asari to come up with booze that nearly the whole galaxy could drink... then charge out the nose for it.

Shepard took the glass, "Is there anybody left in the galaxy that doesn't know?"

"About your affliction?" The Asari offered her glass in a toast, even when they touched glasses she drank very meagerly. "It's not as bad as you think, I only know because it's my job to. Anybody else who knows only knows because Cerberus lets them."

"Or because you let them."

"Oh of course! But I have no reason to let anybody else know. Anybody who would pay for the information already has it through Cerberus and anybody who couldn't get it that way isn't important enough to be on my radar."

"Seems like the information business is a little crowded."

"I'm not sure what you mean?"

"You and the Shadow Broker both seem to be willing to line pockets for information."

"Well, we're not competitors," She replied almost indignantly. "The Shadow Broker is more concerned with knowing everything, I just want to know the useful things."

"Useful things like which of your guests have been modified?"

A dirty little smile comes across the Asari's face. "Well, it does inform how I treat those guests."

"How so?"

"Well," She throws her arms back to either side of the lounge's arm, body turned perpendicular to Shepard. She kicks her bare feet up into Shepard's lap. "There's no one size fits all face when it comes to business. Sometimes you need to know when to show your guests a softer edge."

The feet aren't as attention-getting as the fact that they're grinding into Shepard's crotch. "And by "softer edge" you mean trying to tease and prod me into doing what you ask."

"Oh of course. Is it working?"

It's getting her attention, that's for sure.

"And if I hadn't been modified, what was your strategy?"

The Asari feigns thinking, "Probably the boss-bitch hellfire and damnation schtick. This way is better for both of us."

Shepard tries not to think about the pressure against her crotch, or the swell of blood happening in response. It's like the thing had been built with a hair-trigger response to any sort of stimulus. Keep her talking, keep it going, don't start drooling.

"Better for both of us?" She winces as Aria presses down a little harder.

"Oh of course!" Her eyes narrow, cutting into Shepard as she tries not to meet the intense gaze. "If I didn't have fun with my work, I wouldn't do it. You interest me, Mary."

Her use of interest is important, judging by the way she's intoning it. It feels almost clinical, almost. There's an undercurrent of intensity that makes it hard to read as anything other than possessive. That with the first name, not the title or the official address. A dash of personal intimacy, adds some intensity. Danger, bad touch, get her feet out of your lap before you start barking for her.

Shepard grabs one of her feet and pulls it away from her crotch, "I'm not really in the mood to give the whole club a demonstration."

The Asari lifts her feet away, then slides close and presses her chest into Shepard's arm. "Afraid you'll make the Cerberus girl jealous?"

"In so many words."

"You know, if I gave the order, both of them would be dead before you could finish saying my name."

Miranda and Jacob stood outside, mouths frozen mid-syllable. The shimmering field had frozen a mirror image of the other side in place for an amount of time she could only guess. Privacy fielding, if either of them looked in they would only see both women on the sofa together. They wouldn't know the order had been given, out of the blue and into the black. No time to get bored of dying.

"I... need them." She had to **** it out.

The Asari climbed into her lap, drawing their faces only an inch or two apart. "And how do you know I haven't killed them already?"

Her breath was hot in Shepard's face, quick and shallow. There was something a little wild in her eyes, but not fully. Shepard had seen asari women who weren't in control, this wasn't that.

"Because you need them too."

The Asari smiled and rose off of her lap, getting back to where she had sat before. The field between the club and the box shimmered, Jack and Miranda moved on the other side again.

"It's good to know that you can still think straight while pitching a tent," She took a sip of her drink. "If only most of my men were the same way."

Shepard took a long drink of hers, it was her third or fourth day and she needed a vacation.

"So what was the goal of that little performance?"

The Asari turned to her, "A test of sorts, I wanted to see how far gone you were."

"You're the second person to tell me there was a concern of that."

"What Cerberus did crossed a lot of lines, Shepard. Even if they'd done it to some nobody, it would have crossed a lot of lines."

"But I'm not just some nobody?"

"I don't think I have to explain the danger of having the most important human alive under one organization's thumb. Let alone on a single person's leash."

She flicked her head toward Miranda, Shepard would have got the notion either way.

"You know about her controls?"

"The scan confirmed what I already heard, you're half-synthetic between the legs. It'd be an impressive leap in medical science if it weren't being used for the whims of a single ice queen."

"You think Miranda's doing things with it Cerberus isn't telling her?"

"Who would stop her? You? With krogan hormones in your bloodstream and begging on her floor?"

"She doesn't seem like the type."

"Oh of course! People are always what they seem."

Shepard finished her drink, she wanted another really badly. Then a few more after that.

"Let's get to the point, why did you call me here?"

The Asari finished her drink, "I wanted to test you, then if you passed I wanted to ask for your help."

"Did I pass?"

The Asari poured herself another, "You didn't try to **** me, I'd say it went as well as could be hoped."

"You were willing to risk the possibility of me forcing myself on you?"

"I said try, Shepard. I'm Aria Fucking T'loak, you wouldn't have gotten your cock out of your pants. Though frankly, I'm surprised you got it in there to begin with."

"They didn't exactly size it for convenience, Aria."

She turned to face Shepard, "I wasn't lying when I said that you interest me, scratch my back and I can scratch yours... in so many words."

"I'm surprised you would have an interest in... this."

Aria laughed in a way that seemed to surprise even her, a completely unguarded and earnest laugh. "By the Goddess, you have a lot to learn about the universe. Are you sure they fixed your brain correctly?"

"You can laugh at me later, what do you need me to do?"

Aria sighed, setting herself back beside Shepard, "Where to even begin?"