Ascension

teaching and nurturing her until she'd been accepted into the Ascension Project. She had been, and still was, the center and totality of his world. There was no doubt in his mind she was truly his daughter; if she hadn't been, everything would have been so much easier.

'It was never meant to be like this,' he said softly. 'Gillian is special. All we were trying to do was help her tap into her biotic abilities. We just wanted her to reach her full potential.'

'Kind of sounds like your Ascension Project, doesn't it?' Pel said to Kahlee, grinning.

'We would never do anything to endanger the life of a student!' she shot back at him, finally showing some anger. 'Nothing is worth that risk!'

'What if it meant helping dozens — or even thousands — of other lives?' Grayson asked quietly. 'What if your child had the potential to be a savior of the entire human race? What is that worth? Then what would you risk?'

'In other words,' Pel chimed in, still grinning, 'if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.'

'They're not eggs!' Kahlee shouted. 'They're children!'

'Not everyone can be saved,' Grayson said, repeating the words of the Illusive Man, though he stared down at the floor as he spoke. 'If humanity is to survive, sacrifices must be made for the greater good. The Alliance doesn't understand this. Cerberus does.'

'Is that what we are?' Kahlee demanded, her voice filled with contempt. 'Martyrs to the cause?'

'Not really,' Pel said, gleefully interrupting once more. 'See, Cerberus pays well. But the Collectors pay better.'

'I thought the Collectors were just myth,' Kahlee muttered, as if she suspected Pel was toying with her.

'Oh, they're real. And they're paying good money for healthy human biotics. We'll make enough off that girl and your friend to live like kings for the rest of our lives.'

'What do the Collectors want with them?' she asked.

Pel shrugged. 'I figure it's probably better if I don't know all the grisly details. Might give me nightmares. You know what that's like, right, Killer?'

'You're a traitor to the cause. A traitor to the entire human race.'

'Cerberus really sunk their hooks into you,' Pel said with a laugh. 'You know, if all their agents were this dedicated, the Man might actually accomplish something. But the fact is, it's human nature to look out for number one. Too bad you never figured that out.'

'What's going to happen to the two of us?' Kahlee asked.

'I figure the Collectors will pay us a little bonus for you, sweet-cheeks, seeing as you're something of an expert on human biotics.

'As for my old friend over there, we'll throw him in for free. Should help buy us some time to disappear before Cerberus figures out what happened.'

'The Illusive Man will hunt you down like dogs,' Grayson snarled.

Pel stood up from his chair. 'With the kind of rewards they're offering, that's a chance I'm willing to take.'

He nodded toward Kahlee. 'Throw her in with the other two. If we leave the two of them alone together she'll probably scratch his eyes out.'

One of the guards stepped forward and hauled Kahlee to her feet, dragging her from the cell.

Pel, chair in hand, paused just before closing the door.

'Nothing personal, Killer,' he said, getting the last word in as always.

Sixteen

Pel followed the guard and Kahlee down the hall to the room on the far end, then opened the door so they could toss her in. The woman gasped when she saw the two figures lying motionless on the floor.

'Relax, sugar,' Pel said with a wink. 'They're just unconscious.'

The guard shoved her into the room and the door slid shut before she could reply.

'Keep a close eye on the cameras,' Pel warned the two guards charged with watching the monitors that showed the inside of each cell. 'If either one of those biotics even rolls over in their sleep, you hit them with another dose of the night-night juice. We're not taking any chances with them.'

They nodded in acknowledgment, and Pel left them there, heading for his bed on the ground floor. It was already past midnight, and he was ready for some shut-eye.

Of course, he first had to traverse the maddening labyrinth of the building's interior. As if mirroring the streets in the district outside, the warehouse had been constructed as a confusing maze of corridors and stairwells. It was actually necessary to take one flight of stairs down to the ground floor, weave through several alternating left and right turns of branching hallways, then climb up another flight of stairs to a small landing that overlooked the garage, before finally taking a third set of stairs down to the large common room they had converted into a barracks.

'Message came in from Golo awhile ago,' Shela, the woman who was his unofficial second in command, told him once he finally reached his destination.

She was sitting on the edge of her cot, removing her boots as she got ready to bed down for the night. Apart from the two guards stationed to keep an eye on the prisoners and the one patrolling the garage, everyone else was already sleeping.

'He have an update on when the Collectors are supposed to show?'

She shook her head. 'When I asked he just said they'll come to us when they're ready. He told me we have to be patient.'

Sitting down with a weary sigh, he asked, 'So why'dhecall?'

'He wanted to warn us. He says there's another quarian who's going to try to sneak into the building tomorrow night. He sent us all the details.'

Pel raised an eyebrow in surprise. Golo might be a cowardly, backstabbing, double-dealing little quarian, but he was damned resourceful.

'Okay, we'll set something up to take care of him tomorrow.'

'What about the other one down in the basement?' Shela wanted to know.

In all the excitement of Grayson's arrival, Pel had almost forgotten about the quarian pilot they had captured from the Cyniad. They had finally managed to make him give up the info they wanted, but he doubted they'd get much more out of him. Between the torture and the fever from whatever diseases he had contracted when Golo had broken his mask, their quarian prisoner had been reduced to a barely coherent babbling madman. Of course, now that they were breaking off all ties with Cerberus it had all been a waste of time. . though it had allowed Shela to show him some rather interesting new interrogation techniques.

'We've got no use for him now. Put him down in the morning,' he said.

'He looked pretty bad last time I saw him,' Shela remarked. 'I don't think he'll make it until morning.'

'Care to put your money where your mouth is?'

'Twenty credits says he doesn't see the sunrise.'

'Done.'

As Pel leaned over to shake on the wager the entire building was rocked by the sound of multiple shotgun blasts fired in quick succession. The noise came from the floor above them.

Lemm was young, but he wasn't stupid. He knew better than to trust Golo, so after the other quarian had fallen asleep Lemm had snuck out of his apartment and made his way back to the rooftops in the Talon district. He figured there was a fifty-fifty chance Golo was in deeper with the humans than he admitted, and he had no intention of walking into an ambush. The best way to avoid the possibility was to strike a day early. If Golo hadn't tipped off the humans, it made little difference. But if he had alerted them, Lemm would now have the upper hand, as they wouldn't be expecting him until tomorrow.

He moved quickly over the rooftops, blood pumping with adrenaline as he worked his way toward the small