The Renegade Adored

Garrus staggered to his feet, still dazed by the blow. He couldn't think of what to do next, and realized that he was panicking. He took a slow breath, and tried to calm down. His communicator beeped, and he looked down at his omni-tool to identify the caller. "Finally," he said in relief. Garrus opened the comm channel. "Vakarian here."
"Where is here, exactly? I'm a little lost." The voice was warm and familiar, and Garrus didn't think he'd ever been happier to hear it.
"It's a big, old abandoned building. Looks like someone pinched off half of it."
"Past the bridge?"
"Yeah, I think. One sec, I'm going to go outside so I can give you better directions. That is, if she hasn't locked me in or something," growled Garrus.
"What? She's gone?"
"Yeah," Garrus opened the doors and stepped outside. It was past noon, and the heat was rolling off the water in sultry waves that made him think of Hayden. "She caught me off guard. I'll explain when you get here."
"Oh, there you are."
Garrus looked around. The bridge was empty.
"Look up."
Garrus looked up, and saw the shuttle. "What the hell is that?" He moved so that there would be room for the craft to land.
"It's a new high intensity search and rescue shuttle that the Alliance is considering. Heavy armor, high maneuverability, crap for weapons." The door opened and Kaidan stepped out. "Hello, Garrus."
Garrus held out his hand. "I'm very glad to see you."
"You sound it," said Kaidan, and took his hand. "Tell me what's going on. Where is Hayden?"
Garrus led him inside. He wasn't sure where to start, and sank into the couch, holding his head in his hands.
"What's wrong?"
"She knocked me out and left. I have no idea where she is now."
Kaidan pulled up a chair, and opened his bag. He fished out an appropriate anesthetic, and handed it to Garrus. "Here." Garrus swallowed the pill, and Kaidan leaned back in his chair. "What is she doing on Earth, anyway?"
"Getting revenge," said Garrus grimly. "On everyone."
"For her brother's death."
Garrus nodded.
"I thought she was over that. Or at least, she didn't care enough about it to come back."
Garrus tried to think. "I don't understand Humans, that's the problem. I know Hayden, but I don't … I can't put together everything she's thinking."
"So you called me."
Garrus nodded. "You know her better than I do. I can give you data, you can make sense of it."
Kaidan smiled. "Okay, go ahead."
"They were in prison, the ones who killed her brother. But they got out, somehow, and someone sent her this." Garrus pulled a small box from his armor, and opened it to show Kaidan the scrap of cloth inside. "And then she got mad, you know, that quiet angry way that she has. She dropped everything and started planning. Since she got it, she's been like that."
Kaidan pulled the piece of cloth from the box, turned it over.
"You see something I missed, don't you?"
"You wouldn't have known what it was," said Kaidan. "See this white stuff on the back? It's to keep the cloth stiff, in shape. It's common on dresses for little girls. Or for people who want to dress up as little girls."
Garrus stared at him. "What?"
Kaidan sighed. "Um… it's a common sexual fetish for Human males." He turned the piece of cloth over in his hands again, then put it back in the box. "Hayden probably used herself as bait."
Garrus thought about it. "Okay, I can see that. Set a trap for the man who killed her brother, and killed him. Somehow got the others sent to prison. And then they got out, and figured out that she was the one who had killed their leader, and … made a really stupid decision. I'm still missing something." Garrus shook his head.
"You're jumping around," said Kaidan. "Someone sent her a warning that she was in danger."
"Right. That was … oh, this is so complicated. Her brother's half-brother. He was in on it too, somehow." Garrus sighed. "I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this, am I?"
"Charlie? Charlie was in on Trace's death?" said Kaidan in shock.
"You knew about Charlie?"
"Well, I knew of Charlie. He would get her stuff from Earth."
"Fetch," said Garrus suddenly. "She called him Fetch, because that's what he did."
Kaidan looked down, thinking. "Yeah, gang names are like that. He got people what they wanted. He probably got underage girls for the gang, and then when Hayden needed to get close to the men who killed her brother, he helped her. And when they got out of prison, they needed to get Hayden to come here, so they could kill her."
"So they went to Charlie."
Kaidan nodded. "Where is Charlie now?"
"Dead. Suicide, probably. I don't think he was very happy about what he had done."
Kaidan shook his head. "And I'm betting Hayden didn't go easy on him."
"She treated him like a stranger. There was something else, too, about timecards." He handed one to Kaidan. "She was trying to figure something out, about who had been where, I think. This was the last one she pulled out."
Kaidan read the name on the card. "Sommers, Charles J. That would be Charlie." He looked at the time on the card, and pulled up the local records on his Alliance-linked datapad. "Let's see. Charlie left work, and… this is the day her brother was murdered. Three hours before his death, to be exact. Tracey Shepard, gang-related violence, tortured, thrown from the top of the Central CI Residential building, thirty-two stories, dead before medics arrived."
"Wait, that was a corporate building? How did they get in?"
Kaidan looked at Garrus in confusion.
"The corporate buildings have massive security. Only employees can – oh."
"Charlie let them in. He led them to Trace."
"No wonder Hayden was angry."
"But where is she now? What is she up to?"
Garrus growled in frustration. "There were three left, but she doesn't care about them, she never did. I just don't know why."
"She's after something bigger. Something big enough to make Charlie turn on the man who protected him."
"She couldn't have gone far," Garrus mused. "She knew I wouldn't be out that long. Oh! What's UPS? They deliver things?"
"She got a delivery? Here?"
Garrus nodded. "Stuff, she said. And a thing."
"I love trying to decipher what she means from what she says." Kaidan rolled his eyes. "Let me make a few calls."
"Monkeys. See no evil." In spite of himself, Garrus laughed. He picked up Kaidan's datapad, and read the record for himself. "Eighteen years old. And she did it all without getting caught."
"The delivery came from the Harley-Davidson factory. She had a motorcycle shipped to her." Kaidan groaned. "She could be anywhere."
"But she isn't," said Garrus sharply. "She's out there, getting ready to kill someone and anyone standing too close to whoever she's really after." Garrus glanced at the gleaming motorcycles on the Harley-Davidson extranet page, but they didn't mean anything to him.
"Heh," Kaidan laughed. "I know I shouldn't laugh, but it's true." He thought for a moment. "Did she have anything to do with that flood?"
"Yeah," sighed Garrus. "That was Hayden."
"No wonder they couldn't find any trace of explosives. I really shouldn't be so impressed, but that woman sure knows how to make destruction sexy."
Garrus smiled, then tried to think. "Oh. Water. Instead of fire. Why?"
"What?"
"Sorry, I'm trying to follow her plan. Charlie said they used to call her Sparks because she moved so fast, but now they call her Sparks because she starts fires. Only she used water this time. Why?"
"What fire was this, I wonder," said Kaidan, and pulled up the records again. "Oh, here we are. Yeah, this has Hayden written all over it." He handed the datapad to Garrus. "Took out ten city blocks around the same residential building where Trace was killed. Everyone inside died when the power failure trapped them in the burning building."
Garrus scanned the report. "This was before she knew it was Charlie. She didn't know who let them in, so she wouldn't let anyone get out. What's the phrase? Poetic justice."
"She's just trying to be fair," said Kaidan gently. "So now we just have to think of what she would do to people who unfairly got out of prison, and the person who got them out."
"In, out, she'd get them somewhere where they want to be inside, but can't get in." Garrus shrugged. "That doesn't help, but it sounds right."
"It does," Kaidan agreed. "We're still missing something." Kaidan paced the room, unconsciously mimicking Hayden.
"We're missing a who. Someone. We should know who she's after."
"Right." Kaidan looked at him. "But we don't."
"We must," Garrus insisted. "I must be forgetting something. I'm skipping around, out of order, sorry." He tried to go back over the events of the previous days. "Wait. Order."
Kaidan raised an eyebrow as Garrus typed on his datapad.
"She has two restraining orders against her. From a Senator and his wife." Garrus looked at Kaidan. "Your turn again." Garrus kept searching, trying to find out more about the restraining orders.
"Right." Kaidan called the office of Senator Fairholm, identified himself and asked to speak to the Senator.
"I'm sorry, the Senator isn't available right now," said his assistant nervously.
"How about his wife? Is she available?" Kaidan demanded.
"Look, we're still trying to resolve this situation without Alliance interference," said the assistant. "You have to give us some time."
"What? What situation?"
"The Senator's disappearance. Wait, who are you?"
"Hang up," said Garrus suddenly.
"I'll talk to you later," said Kaidan, and disconnected. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure I want to save the Senator anymore," Garrus said, and handed Kaidan the datapad.
Kaidan looked at the image and didn’t say anything.
"What is wrong with Humanity?" Garrus asked.
Kaidan shook his head. "We're still trying to figure that out."
"I'm not saying Turians don't kill each other. We do. But we don't usually kill our own children."
Kaidan looked down at the political mugshot of the smiling white-haired Senator, standing next to his beautiful Asari wife, his eyes protected from the light by dark glasses. "A novel variant," he remembered. "Her father was just a normal albino." He looked at Garrus. "I still don't understand why. Or how. He walked out on Hayden, and never even spoke to Trace. Not that she remembered, anyway."
"Is money a good reason?"
"It would be, if Trace had any."
Garrus tried to remember the exact words she had used. "He was worth money. He was the only one who could track every single CI employee. He had access to all their timecards, and the system that kept track of them."
"I can see how that would be worth money."
"I think it was worth more for someone to make sure that no one had access."
Kaidan looked down at the picture of the Senator again. "I think you're right."
Garrus took the datapad back again, and went back to the Harley-Davidson site. "Dammit, Hayden, you just like to make me feel stupid, don't you." He clicked on the right model, and held it out to Kaidan. "Electra."
"Right. Right there on the front page." Kaidan stared at the floor. "Still don't know where she is, though."
"What was the other box?"
"What?"
"If the motorcycle is a thing, what was the stuff?"
"Good point." Kaidan called the UPS office again, then a storage company.
"Well?" Garrus asked as soon as Kaidan was done with the calls.
"She was telling the truth," he said reluctantly. "It was just stuff. A box of old junk that had been in storage for years."
Garrus thought. "Junk? Heavy?"
"No, the associate who shipped it said it wasn't heavy and didn't rattle. Probably clothes." Kaidan shrugged.
"Why would she keep someone's clothes?"
"Hayden isn't sentimental. Well, not really. She didn't have any of Trace's clothes." Kaidan thought, trying to see inside Hayden's head again. "This is giving me a headache. The only thing I can think of is if she still had some of her father's clothes, she could use them for the scent."
"Scent?"
"A lot of Earth predators track by scent. I don't know what would be around here, though." Kaidan picked up the datapad again, and started searching.
"Do wolves track by scent?" Garrus asked suddenly, and knew he was on the right track from the look on Kaidan's face. "There was something on the news, about a repopulation project in this area. A place called Wolf Run."
"Let's go."