Chapter 8: Reputation
POV: Marc Wayne
The morning after the Blood Pack ambush brought visitors to Marc's temporary shelter—six different groups arriving separately, each representing a different aspect of Omega's ecosystem, all wanting to know what the "regenerating human" could do for them or what he might be worth.
Marc sat on his makeshift bed, watching through his expanded visual field as the delegations gathered in the alley behind the destroyed bar. His Batarian Four-Eyed Vision let him track all of them simultaneously, cataloguing body language and threat levels while pretending to focus on bandaging cuts that had already healed.
The first group consisted of Eclipse mercenaries—professional, well-equipped, offering bodyguard contracts that came with the kind of credits that could buy genuine safety. The second was a collection of independent traders who'd heard about his "analytical abilities" and wanted someone who could spot patterns in shipping manifests. The third group made Marc's skin crawl: Batarian slavers who spoke in euphemisms about "test subject opportunities" and "research partnerships" with generous compensation.
[THREAT ASSESSMENT: MULTIPLE FACTIONS]
[ECLIPSE MERCS: OPPORTUNISTIC, NON-HOSTILE CURRENTLY]
[INDEPENDENT TRADERS: NEUTRAL]
[BATARIAN SLAVERS: HIGH RISK, RECOMMEND EXTREME CAUTION]
The System's warnings overlaid his vision like digital paranoia, but Marc was learning to filter the constant stream of tactical data. What concerned him more was the fourth group—a single Salarian in expensive robes who'd arrived alone and radiated the kind of confidence that came from having powerful backing.
"You see patterns, yes?" the Salarian said when Marc finally agreed to speak with him. "Like where data would hide? Where people store secrets they think are safe?"
The phrasing was odd, too specific to be coincidental. Marc studied the alien's face, noting the calculating intelligence behind compound eyes that seemed to catalog every detail of their surroundings.
"I'm good with technical problems," Marc replied carefully. "Information recovery, system analysis."
"Interesting." The Salarian's mouth curved in what might have been a smile. "I have a technical problem. Data cache, heavily encrypted, stored in location that previous recovery teams found... challenging. You retrieve it intact, payment is fifty thousand credits. Plus expenses."
The number made Marc's breath catch. Fifty thousand credits was fortune-level money on Omega, enough to buy real equipment, real shelter, real security. But nothing on this station came without risks proportionate to the rewards.
"What kind of challenging?" Marc asked.
"The previous teams died," the Salarian said with clinical directness. "Environmental hazards, automated defenses, structural instability. Standard retrieval risks, elevated by the sensitive nature of the data."
Marc's enhanced pattern recognition was screaming warnings. This wasn't a simple recovery job—it was something that had already killed multiple professional teams. The kind of mission that either made careers or ended them permanently.
But fifty thousand credits...
Before he could respond, Anto emerged from the ruined bar carrying a toolkit and wearing an expression that suggested he'd reached a decision Marc wasn't going to like.
"Marcus," the Turian said, his sub-harmonics carrying the weight of a conversation they needed to have. "We need to talk. Privately."
The Salarian nodded politely and withdrew, but Marc noticed he didn't go far—just far enough to maintain plausible deniability while remaining within listening range.
Anto surveyed the destroyed interior of his bar, his mandibles clicking in what Marc had learned was either amusement or resignation. Broken glass crunched under their feet as they picked their way through the wreckage, past overturned tables and scorch marks that told the story of the previous night's violence.
"Aria's people came by this morning," Anto said without preamble. "Official assessment: the bar is a total loss. Unofficial assessment: you're now a known quantity on Omega, which means you're either an asset or a problem. Aria doesn't keep problems."
Marc felt his stomach drop. "She's going to—"
"She's going to let you prove which one you are," Anto interrupted. "But not here. This location is compromised. Blood Pack knows about it, Cerberus knows about it, and now half the station knows that the regenerating human lives in the storage room behind Anto's place."
The logic was inescapable, but the implications were terrifying. Marc was losing his only secure base, his only protection, his only friend who knew his secrets and hadn't betrayed him.
"I'm sorry," Marc said, the words feeling inadequate. "This is my fault. The fight, the attention, all of it."
"Yes, it is," Anto agreed with brutal honesty. "But surprisingly, I'm not throwing you out."
Marc blinked, certain he'd misheard. "What?"
Anto set down his toolkit and faced Marc directly, his scarred features serious. "You work for me officially. I train you properly, you handle the problems I can't, we split profits. Partnership, not employment."
"But the bar is destroyed. What profits?"
"Omega always needs people who can solve problems," Anto said, gesturing to the wreckage around them. "Bars can be rebuilt. Insurance can be claimed. But a partner who heals from gunshots and fights like he's got pack instincts? That's rare."
Marc stared at his friend, processing the offer. Partnership meant equality, shared risk and shared rewards. It meant someone believed he was worth investing in rather than just exploiting.
"Why?" Marc asked quietly. "After last night, after everything that happened, why would you want to tie yourself to me?"
Anto's mandibles twitched in what Marc recognized as genuine amusement. "Because watching you take a shotgun blast and keep fighting convinced me you're too stubborn to die easy. And because the Vorcha won't leave you alone anyway. Might as well profit from the chaos."
As if summoned by the mention of his name, Kreek appeared in the doorway with his characteristic enthusiasm intact despite the bandages covering various wounds from the previous night's battle.
"Adapt-friend awake!" the Vorcha announced happily. "Kreek bring news! Pack scout bad-humans gathering. More Blood Pack coming. Also Eclipse. Also people Kreek not recognize."
Marc closed his eyes, feeling the weight of cascading consequences. The bar fight had been a stone thrown into still water, and the ripples were spreading far beyond what he'd anticipated.
"How many more?" he asked.
"Many-many," Kreek replied with the precision typical of Vorcha mathematical analysis. "More than pack can fight. Need bigger pack. Or different fighting."
The assessment was characteristically blunt but accurate. Marc had made enemies faster than he'd made allies, and raw force wasn't going to solve his problems—it was only going to create bigger ones.
That's when the Asari courier arrived.
She moved through the ruined bar with liquid grace, her attention focused entirely on Marc despite the presence of multiple other individuals. When she spoke, her voice carried the melodic tones of her species layered with absolute authority.
"The Queen of Omega requests your presence at Afterlife. Tonight. Alone."
It wasn't phrased as an invitation.
Marc's System immediately began cataloguing the message's implications, highlighting metadata that revealed it had been composed and transmitted mere minutes after the previous night's fight had ended. Aria had been watching, analyzing, forming conclusions about his capabilities and value.
[MESSAGE ANALYSIS: OFFICIAL SUMMONS]
[COMPOSITION TIME: 00:17 AFTER COMBAT END]
[PRIORITY LEVEL: MAXIMUM]
[ASSESSMENT: REFUSAL NOT RECOMMENDED]
"When?" Marc asked, though he suspected the answer wouldn't matter.
"Twenty-one hundred hours, station standard. The Patriarch's alcove. You'll be expected."
The courier departed as efficiently as she'd arrived, leaving Marc alone with the weight of an inevitable confrontation. The Patriarch's words echoed in his memory: "She permits you." Now he was going to learn whether that permission continued, or whether it had expired along with his usefulness.
Kreek bounced nervously from foot to foot. "Aria-queen scary. Maybe pack come? Protect adapt-friend?"
"No," Marc said firmly, imagining the diplomatic catastrophe that would result from bringing a Vorcha honor guard to a meeting with Omega's ruler. "This is something I have to handle alone."
Anto's mandibles clicked in what Marc now recognized as resigned acceptance. "Wear the clothes from your mysterious benefactor. Look professional. And try not to say anything that gets you spaced."
That evening, as Marc prepared for what might be his final conversation, he practiced managing his speech curse. Every attempt to voice warnings about the coming threats transformed into increasingly absurd alternatives: "Dangerous things are coming" became "Dangerous things are coming to host a charity bake sale!" His frustration mounted with each failed attempt.
"How am I supposed to help anyone if I can't warn them?" he thought, adjusting his appearance in the reflection of a broken mirror. "What's the point of knowing the future if the knowledge is useless?"
But as he walked through Omega's neon-lit corridors toward his appointment with destiny, Marc realized that actions spoke louder than words. He couldn't warn Aria directly about the Collectors, the Reapers, or the coming galactic extinction. But he could prepare, could position himself to make a difference when the time came.
The entrance to Afterlife loomed before him like the gates to either opportunity or doom, its strobing lights casting shifting shadows that made everything seem unstable. Marc paused at the threshold, feeling the weight of choices that had brought him to this moment.
[SOCIAL ENCOUNTER DIFFICULTY: EXTREME]
[USER CHARISMA: INSUFFICIENT]
[RECOMMENDATION: DON'T DIE EMBARRASSINGLY]
Even his System's confidence was wavering. Marc laughed despite himself—at least his digital parasite maintained its sense of humor in the face of probable disaster.
He stepped across the threshold and into the chaos of Omega's premier entertainment establishment, where the Queen of Omega waited to determine his fate.
Whatever happened next, Marc was certain of one thing: his quiet life as an anonymous bartender was definitively over.
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