A Mutually Beneficial Partnership Part 2 (Excerpt - Opening Scene)

Liara T’Soni sighed as the door to her elegant Illium office overlooking the trading floor slid shut. She set down the datapad, the former archeologist-turned-information broker feeling the stress of her daily routine starting to wear on her. Though her work these many months had paid the bills and bought her a cushy life on Illium, it was also grisly work that did not exactly fulfill her. The asari felt as though she had to take a shower at the end of each day to wash away the shady dealings that she had to engage in with the most untrustworthy people day in, day out. 

Though, her line of work did come with certain benefits. Namely, her information networks and web of contacts allowed her to have keen insight into even the most classified operations of the Terminus Systems. And there was one in particular that she had her eye on. 

She sat down at her desk and turned on her personal terminal, checking her messages, eagerly seeking out the latest update on Shepard. 

Liara felt a whirlwind of emotion when she thought about her human girlfriend - the famed Specter who had saved her life, swept her off her feet and defeated Saren with her. She still carried unseen scars as a result of that fateful day when the Normandy was destroyed. Liara had been forced to watch that ship get destroyed by the Collectors with Shepard still on board. It was a moment that would forever haunt her. 

Everything had gone downhill for Liara after that. The rest of the Normandy crew had gone their separate ways, and Liara found herself without a purpose. Shepard had been her anchor - an amazing, confident woman who had helped that naive young scientist that Liara used to be to come out of her shell and gain some confidence and strength of her own. Without her, she spent some time not knowing what to do, somehow ending up on Omega. It was there, however, that she’d first learned of Cerberus’ plan to bring Shepard back somehow. However far-fetched as it may have seemed at the time, it was an opportunity she could not pass up on. If there was even a remote chance of bringing Shepard back, she had to take it. 

She and Feron had spent some time searching for Shepard’s body for Cerberus, but she had discovered that she was not alone in searching for her former lover’s body. They spent weeks contending with the Shadow Broker’s agents, and it did not take her long to deduce that he was seeking Shepard’s body to hand it over to the Collectors - the very same that had destroyed the Normandy the first time. What they had planned to do with Shepard’s body, well, Liara shuddered to think. Regardless, she had worked tirelessly to keep her commander’s remains out of their hands.

And she had failed. The Broker’s agents had managed to steal away Shepard’s body before Liara could get a hold of it. All her best efforts with Feron, and it had all been for naught. She had felt like the worst excuse of Asari to have ever lived, dooming her lover to be experimented on by the monsters who’d killed her.

Or so she had thought. Some weeks ago, Shepard had miraculously re-emerged, escaping from a Cerberus medical facility and captaining a new Normandy shortly thereafter. Somehow, the sheer impossible had happened…the resurrection of humanity’s finest soldier. 

Naturally Liara had assumed it to get some sort of ruse. An imposter, or a Collector trick. But Liara did her meticulous research and could only come to one conclusion: it was indeed the same woman that she had known and loved. The one so many in the galaxy depended on even now. 

What she had never been entirely certain of was how such a miracle had happened. Through her well-placed sources she’d confirmed that Cerberus had indeed been primarily responsible for this groundbreaking act of science - Project Lazarus. What made no sense to her, however, was how Cerberus had acquired Shepard’s body. She’d watched the Broker’s agents fly off with Shepard’s body, and she’d confirmed that the Broker was in league with the Collectors. 

Either the Broker’s allegiances had changed, which Liara doubted. Or Cerberus had managed to use their own operatives to somehow get Shepard’s body back. 

Liara turned her attention back to her terminal, reading through her messages. The latest reports from her contacts suggested that Shepard and her crew had just stopped a Collector abduction of a Terminus colony, Horizon. She breathed out a sigh of relief. After what had happened to her the first time, Liara dreaded the prospect of something happening to her again now that she was hunting down the Collectors. Even if Shepard was more than capable of handling herself. 

Any scrap of good news gave Liara hope. Even if she had not yet summoned the nerve to see Shepard in person yet. She did not have the courage to face her girlfriend after she’d failed to save her body from the Broker’s men. She didn’t know what she would possibly say to Shepard if she saw her again, or even if she could look her in her eyes again. The guilt and shame was too great still. 

Liara was about to sign off her terminal, when she saw a new message come in. It came in from an unknown sender, and the message was encrypted. Her interest was very much piqued. After sweeping the message for viruses, she managed to decrypt the message, opening it. It contained no text - only a vid file. Curious, Liara opened the file. 

She immediately regretted doing so. 

The asari’s cheeks turned a darker shade of blue the moment she heard a woman’s moans, alongside a guttural masculine grunting sound. The sounds alone left no confusion as to what was transpiring in the video. On screen, she saw an unfamiliar industrial-looking room with a single bed in it. And atop that large bed, a hulking red-colored alien that Liara had never seen before was roughly ploughing a much smaller female, her legs bouncing atop his shoulders with each of his brutal fucking motions. A human woman’s legs, to be precise. 

And not only did the woman not sound like she was in distress, but Liara began to recognize the human woman’s voice, even if she could not yet get a clear look at her face.