Ascension

come at them from the opposite side.

She pulled the orange curtain back, only to discover an empty room staring back at her.

Gillian was still wandering up and down the halls when the loud noises her mind had refused to identify earlier began to ring out even louder. She saw a quarian run across the far end of the aisle she was standing in, and the gun in his hand forced her to recognize the sounds as gunfire.

/ don't want to be here, her mind screamed at her. Go back to the ship.

Gillian intended to do just that. She could hear the gunfire all around her now, sporadic bursts coming from in front, behind, and off to either side. But her overwrought mind simply blocked it out and she continued to make her way toward the stairs.

She took a left turn and came face-to-face with a man and a woman. She could tell right away they weren't quarian — they had no environmental suits.

They were wearing helmets, but the visors only covered the first three quarters of their faces, and they had big, bulky vests that hid their chests, shoulders, and arms. Each was carrying a gun, and when they saw her they raised their weapons up and pointed them in her direction.

Gillian simply continued to walk toward them, as if oblivious of their presence.

'Hold fire!' the woman shouted, lowering her gun as the girl approached. 'It's her! Grayson's daughter!'

The man lowered his weapon and rushed forward, reaching out to grab her. Without even thinking about it, Gillian made a fist and snapped her hand out, just like Hendel had taught her. The man hurtled away from her, slamming his back against the edge of one of the cubicle walls. There was a sharp crack and he bent in a funny way.

'Holy mother—' the woman gasped, but Gillian cut her words off. Moving on pure instinct, she reached out with an open hand, palm upward, and flicked her wrist. The woman launched up to the ceiling, smashing against it so hard her helmet cracked. She dropped down at Gillian's feet, her eyes rolling back into her head and blood trickling from her nose, mouth, and ears. Her leg twitched once, her boot kicking against the side of a nearby cubicle, then went still.

The girl simply stepped over her and continued on her way. She reached the staircase without running into anyone else, then went down to the lower deck.

She could still hear the gunfire from up above, but it was quieter down here. Feeling a little better, she began to hum a tuneless song as she headed toward the shuttle.

Kahlee was in a near panic as she raced up and down the aisles, desperately searching for Gillian. Fortunately, her training allowed her to keep her wits together just enough not to do anything stupid, and instead of dashing blindly around corners, she would poke her head out at each intersection, taking a quick peek for enemy combatants.

All around her she could hear the sounds of fighting, but she didn't encounter any Cerberus troops until she came across two dead soldiers lying in the middle of one of the aisles. For an instant she thought she'd found proof that Hendel had survived being thrown twenty feet through the air: it was obvious the soldiers had been killed by a biotic attack. Then another thought occurred to her.

Gillian.

Since coming to the Idenna Hendel had worked closely with the girl, teaching her to develop and control her biotic abilities. But despite the remarkable improvement in her condition over the past few weeks, she was still an emotionally fragile, easily disturbed little girl. Something had set her off in the cafeteria back at the Academy, unleashing a storm of biotic powers. Now Kahlee had clear evidence that the storm had been unleashed yet again.

She's scared, Kahlee thought to herself. Confused. She's going to want to go somewhere she feels safe. An instant later she had it.

She's heading back to the shuttle.

Leaving the two dead soldiers where they lay, Kahlee continued to work her way carefully through the aisles back toward the stairs.

Golo was thoroughly enjoying the battle against his former people. While he hadn't been a crew member of the Idenna, he had no trouble imagining the quarians he gunned down as being the ones who had banished him from the Usela, his old ship.

Heavily armed and armored, he had already notched six kills during the battle — two on the trading deck and four more hunting through the cubicles up above. Given the superior weaponry Cerberus had provided him, it wasn't even a fair fight.. which was exactly how Golo liked it. In fact, he was enjoying himself so much that he nearly lost track of the time.

It was only when the timer in his helmet began beeping softly that he realized they had only ten minutes left. They hadn't found the girl yet, but that didn't really matter to him. It was time to head back to Grayson's shuttle and get off the Idenna.

He knew the rest of the team would keep fighting and searching for Gillian for another five minutes before pulling back, but he didn't like cutting it that close.

With a sigh of regret he abandoned his hunt among the cubicle maze, and made his way quickly and cautiously back toward the stairs leading to the deck below.

Inside the passenger cabin of the nameless shuttle that had been stolen from him on Omega, Grayson paced anxiously. Checking his watch, he realized they were down to just under ten minutes.

'You and you,' he said, pointing at two of the three soldiers left behind to help him secure the shuttle. 'Get out there and find the controls to release the docking clamps.'

He intended to wait to the last possible second before leaving, but that didn't mean he couldn't have everything ready beforehand.

The two soldiers rushed out to the airlock, while Grayson and the other man — the pilot who had flown the quarian vessel in — waited in silence.

He heard a loud, heavy thump coming from outside the ship. Curious, he made his way cautiously toward the airlock and saw a small, female figure covered head to toe in an enviro-suit standing in the center of the landing bay.

'Daddy?' the figure said. Though the voice was partially obscured by the mask and breathing apparatus, he recognized it instantly.

'Gigi,' he said, dropping to one knee and holding out his hand to her.

She approached him in her familiar, stiff-legged walk until she was close enough for him to touch. Knowing her condition well, he dropped his hand without making contact. And then, to his great surprise, she lurched forward another step and hugged him.

Only when he was clasping his daughter to his chest did he notice the two soldiers he'd sent out only moments before — they were pinned beneath an overturned forklift the quarians would have used to load and unload cargo vessels. It looked as if the six-ton vehicle had somehow been picked up and dropped on them, crushing them like ants and killing them instantly.

Their private reunion was broken an instant later when he heard the copilot speaking behind him.

'S-s-sir,' he said in a stuttering, trembling voice, staring at the mangled bodies of the two dead soldiers peeking out from beneath the forklift. 'What happened to them?'

'Never mind,' Grayson said sharply, releasing his hold on his daughter and standing up. 'Just get on board and fire up the engines. It's time to go.'

'We can't go yet,' Gillian said. Grayson was surprised to hear real emotion in her voice, rather than the flat monotone he was used to. 'We have to wait for my friends.'

'Your friends?' he asked, humoring her.

'Hendel and Kahlee and Lemm,' she answered. 'Lemm's a quarian.'

'We can't wait for them, honey,' he told her gently.

She crossed her arms and stepped away from him — a gesture he'd never seen her use before.

'I'm not going without them,' she said defiantly.

Grayson blinked in surprise, then nodded. 'Okay, honey, we'll go find them.'

As she turned away to head back toward the Idenna^ys interior, he stepped up behind her and drew a small stunner from his belt. One quick shot between the shoulder blades and