Odette's meditative state was broken by the immediate sounds of celebration. The dead silence was broken by obnoxious cheering and jeering. Masculinity in its most primal form beyond the walls of the still peaceful office space.
That same excitement returned to her chest again, the thrill of a hunt about to end. "Step into my web, said the spider to the fly," she hummed under her breath - soft as the silk of a Widow, with all the underlying venom of her bite too. In the gloom and darkness of her hiding place, her eyes flashed with malice and turned a menacing shade of azure momentarily.
Unable to make out the face of the mark as he strode in, she took no moment to waste in her ambush. Steadily she pushed herself up from the surface of the inside of the lighting, without disturbing it, and without even casting a flicker of a shadow. A pin that dropped would make more sound.
The mark was in his seat, vulnerable, the gentle sound of his fingers over the keys of the datapad told Odette he was distracted. Like liquid, she slipped down behind him, hands already over her pistol. Her arm slipped around his neck, tight as a noose as the barrel of her trusted Harpy Pistol aimed at his temple. "Not a sound, little one, not a sound," she whispered ominously into his ear - his face still a mystery.
“You’re fucking bold.” Callan replied calmly, rage seething inside of him at his own stupidity. He always checked the cameras around the warehouse, but not this time. He focused his breathing and composed himself internally. The voice ringed of familiarity but he was in no position to glance whoever had the gun to his temple in the face.
“You’re also about to make the biggest mistake of your life if you pull that trigger. Who the hell sent you?” He asked, as he released the datapad from his grip and placed his hands on the desk. If he played this just right he could fling this cocky intruder across the room. But for the moment he held his composure as he went along with their words.
“You’ll find out when I take you in,” Odette answered, a smug tone pinned to her words. “If you play this right, then nobody else has to die.” She continued. Loosening her grip around his neck. “The mistake will be all yours if you choose to push back…” she warned. Something about the situation irked her, his voice. She was faltering in the pistol. She knew that voice, from somewhere.
After a moment, she took control of it again, pushing against him, gesturing for him to get up by nudging her knee into the back of the chair. “What’ll it be then?”
“I’m certain I’ll break out as soon as you ‘take me in’, then splatter you on the wall on the way out.” Callan taunted as he scraped through his mind for where he’d heard the voice from. He’d been on Omega for a few years now, but this mysterious individual did not strike him as a Terminus systems assassin. They weren’t as swift or suave as this one. But every bit as arrogant.
“I don’t know how you’re going to get me out of here. There’s one door out of this office which leads right into view of dozens of my loyal soldiers. Which would be suicide. But lets go.” Callan added, knowing the ins and outs of his chosen headquarters well. He had to hold back a smirk as he felt the grip loosen around his neck, all he needed was a bit more space.
“You know, I thought about that myself,” she mused in an almost whimsical, mocking tone. “How will I get out of here, with all of your men -- alert as they are, not distracted at all…?” Odette clucked her tongue, holding back a smirk as her eyes narrowed in the direction of the door. “I’ve been here for hours, do you think I didn’t lay a trap or two through there?” she lied, and convincingly so. “I lined your crates with enough grenades to blow this warehouse off Omega. You’re going to walk us out of here, nobody will notice, nobody will care. They certainly won’t see me.”
It never took more than that, the vague threat of excessive violence, the image that it created. The Cerberus operative let him go, gun still pointing firmly at him. “So move,” she repeated, firmer this time, giving the back of the chair a harder kick.
“I don’t believe you. Even if you did you’d blow yourself up in the process.” Callan stated plainly. That would be an extremely risky trap to lay. No simple paid assassin would do that. Everyone on this blasted space station was selfish and self preservationist to the core.
Regardless he rose out of his seat, following her demands. As he dug deeper into his memories and mind for the familiar voice. Callan clenched his fists as he stood to his feet, his back still to the woman threatening him. He was still clad in his shielded armor, a shot to anywhere except for his neck and face would be absorbed by that. If he could create room, then fling her away he’d be able to take control of the situation. He shifted in front of his desk, his hands to his sides as he continued to bid time to counter pounce.
Odette frowned from behind him, he was at least smarter than the average criminal. Not that it took that much to question her threat, it was guts more than anything else. “Alternatively, if you are so concerned about your men catching us, I can take care of them right now and they wouldn’t know about it,” she hissed, stepping back from Callan to aim her pistol to the back of his leg. “It seems like you enjoy playing difficult - and I enjoy being serious,” at the end of her last word she fired - striking him at a close enough range to the back of his leg that it would sting even through the shield. There was a raucous round of applause that sounded elsewhere in the warehouse, drowning down any noise the already silenced weapon made. It was almost perfect. The tattoos on his neck, as she was afforded a closer look...
“Move,” Odette commanded ruthlessly, ready to take her second shot if he didn’t.
“I don’t think so,” The biotic replied as his figure lit up blue, then with a twitch of the hand he flung the woman towards the opposite wall. The cocky smirk had manifested on his lips as one of his hands dove for his sidearm, the Carnifex heavy pistol pointed directly at his would be captor. “Tell me who the hell sent you and I’ll make this quick and painless.”
The powerful biotic added as his free hand ignited in the frightening blue once more. He felt adrenaline burst through his veins. Then Callan felt the breath in his chest release as he noted something all too familiar in his attacker. The brief lapse caused his concentration to falter and his jaw to drop open. The gang leader’s heart accelerated its beating inside of him, as his entire body shook in a formerly long buried down shiver.
His realisation was hers too. That careful rage that had brought her to the wall. She knew it all too well. Catching her breath from the freefall, she blew a strand of hair away from her face, her grip on her weapon relinquishing as she finally gazed upon her target. It was Callan. Of course it was. Who else could they have sent to bring him in? “You,” Odette whispered out in surprise, her expression showing as much.
Then again, it wasn’t too long for the Cerberus operative in her to take over; “you deserted,” she spoke, standing strong again, rising up into a powerful stance but taking no steps forward. “You’re a traitor -- no wonder they..” she paused. “You’re coming back with me, Callan.” The woman lifted her pistol arm again, taking aim at her old partner. This wasn’t personal, personal had nothing to do with it anymore.
As soon as he made eye contact with Odette Desmarias he felt every single memory, horrific and happy slam through his mind at a rapid fire pace. Those piercing blue irises tore through him like a blade. His hands shook worse as he came to the realization that his worst fear had become a reality. Cerberus had tracked him down, in their typical disgusting way they’d sent the one person after him who he had actually been close with. Who he would’ve done anything for and practically died for. He took a long moment to try to collect himself and utter a reply.
“No way in hell. I’d rather die,” Callan stated, his words coming out weaker than he’d intended, more akin to a whisper than a holler. He tried to keep his pistol leveled at Odette but with every passing second it felt as if it weighed another fifty pounds. He forced himself to speak with more strength. “How the fuck did they find me? That’s just like them to send you after me. Did they even tell you it was me you’re going after? It sure sounds like they didn’t.”
“I buried everything about my past. I left no trace of where I was going. I burned anything bearing that cursed symbol on it,” The biotic muttered, the strength shattering in his voice as the words trembled out of his lips. He swore he felt tears welling in his eyes, a formerly foreign thing. “You don’t know that they did to me. You have no idea.”
“We all get trained,” Odette answered quickly, defensively. The tears she could see beading in the corners of his eyes caught her off guard, disarmingly so, and her gun hand briefly shook. “You didn’t bury it enough,” she continued, “causing trouble, even in Omega. You know we’re watching. You know we do. Cerberus gave you a career,” she stressed, pausing. There was an alien feeling in her too. Like she was soft on him, still -- even after all this time, he had the ability to get past her walls, past the icy bullshit.
Through clenched teeth she spoke again, the fabric of her glove squeezed around the gun and creaked in the silence between them. “You were going to be the best. We were going to be the best.” Disappointment. Disappointment and anger was the ghost infecting her normally calm aura. “You threw it away, everything. For what? Because it was too hard?” In an unusually spontaneous action, she fired a rogue bullet in Callan’s direction, aiming it to skim past the side of his head and into the wall behind him.
“You weren’t abducted away from your family as a child, then tested on like a lab rat. Do you want me to take this armor off and show you the scars they left on me? Where they injected me with chemicals to make me stronger, where they sliced open my skull to implant me?” Callan replied, unable to stop the tears as he tried to wipe them away with his free hand. The handgun gripped in his other palm noticeably shaking. He didn’t flinch at the bullet slamming by him, he didn’t believe she could kill him and live with herself. Even after all of this time.
“I’m sorry that I disappointed you Odette. I never told you what they did to me. I pushed it all down to not disappoint you, to try to escape it,” The former Cerberus aligned biotic replied, forcing himself to drag the words out of his trembling mouth. Through falling tears he spoke once more. “I chose my own life. Independence. To not to be a drugged up slave. I took on a new name, hid my old life. But it still haunts me every single fucking day.”
“They did it to make you better. To make you strong,” Odette said, in disbelief of the words that were leaving Callan’s lips. She purposefully avoided his teary gaze.
She clenched her jaw again, anger simmering inside. “You left, do you know what Cerberus did to me when you left? You didn’t even tell me. You told me nothing, you were just gone.” It was useless, now, to hold the weapon, and the tension in her arm was too much to bear. She let it fall to the side, relenting to her own feelings. The anger was all words, it wasn’t yet actual violence. “I was put on trial for your disappearance. They ransacked my quarters, harassed my family, they didn’t believe that I had no idea. It took me a long time to wash off the stain of your freedom.”
For a while after, she said nothing, and just let her gaze wander his office, at the stark emptiness of it all, the words were bubbling, and grievances she’d thought had been left behind wanted to rise to the surface once more. “I’m glad that you have your freedom, your precious independence. I’m proud of the wonderful things you’ve decided to do with it,” Odette finished, bitterly. She wanted to twist her knife in just that little bit.
“And look at how strong I am. Sure I can practically take on an entire army with my biotics but is it worth the pain? I can’t even look myself in the face in the mirror when I wake up every morning,” Callan replied as he tried to wipe more of the tears. “You don’t think I thought of you when I ran? If I said a single word of it to you I know you would’ve done everything to stop me. You would’ve been in worse danger, they would’ve tortured you terribly if you said anything about knowing.”
“You don’t mean that. None of it. There is not a chance in the whole damn galaxy that I will go with you.” The biotic stated as he felt the wave of emotions flow through him. With his free hand he pulled his desk from its sitting and flung it out his office window in a fit of frustration.
Glass exploded across the warehouse floor beneath as the desk impacted into the metal wall on the opposite side, crumbling into a heap of misshapen metal upon impact. His formerly partying underlings stared at the disturbance, the thumping music cutting out as the desk rested on the floor. His fine bottle of whiskey had been flung to the side, shattering near Callan. He stared Odette down as the tears continued to rain down his cheeks, some dripping onto his armor.
That was the Callan she knew. But was there any merit to his words? Torture? Cerberus wouldn’t do that, would they?. As he threw the desk, her heart raced and she turned to the door as the music stopped, she didn’t have the upper hand anymore unless she was willing to kill Callan, to forfeit the integrity of the mission. She turned to the window, too -- to escape without collecting her target was even worse than bringing back his corpse. Was there another way? Was this the challenge? It had to be.
The thought struck her - this wasn’t a mission at all, so was this a test? Did this mean that Cerberus didn’t trust her? For once, she was blindsided and answerless. The Illusive Man wanted his expensive biotic, and he was willing to risk a top operative to do so. For the first time, she felt doubt.
“I just…” Odette finally spoke, the fear and confusion in her voice speaking volumes. “You have to come back, you just have to.” Her features softened, and she managed to finally look him in the eyes again, tracking on his armour where his tears had landed. Callan? Or Cerberus? This was the confronting decision that had landed into her lap, unwanted. “What am I going to do?” she asked, for the very first time - looking for help, from someone else.
“I can’t go back. They’d kill me, or worse. I just can’t.” Callan said calmly, trying to compose himself. His Carnifex fell from his fingers, landing on the floor with a loud thud. He took a step towards his former partner, looking into her eyes as he tried to speak through the bullrush of emotions.
“Whatever you think is right Odette. If you bring me back I can’t even think of what they’ll do to me. They sent you after me for a twisted reason, they didn’t even tell you it was me.” He stated as he took another step towards her, then gazed out the shattered windows. The soldiers he controlled stared up at him with confusion.
The woman’s nostrils flared as she took one last look at Callan, there was little rage in the air now and yet there was so much tension. “I need time,” she whispered. “I wasn’t here, you weren’t here. The mission isn’t over,” she continued muttering under her breath as she paced slightly, back and forth by the door.
“Let me out,” Odette spoke up, facing Callan briefly before she turned for the door again, her hand pressing the sensitive control over and over to no avail. “Let me out, let me out,” she repeated - fixated on smacking the controls, a panic catching in her throat. Her volume rose, as did the force in which she hammered away at the door until there was a hairline crack on the display. Boxed in, she felt as though the room was trying to swallow her. “Just, fucking, let me go already.” The impatience in her tone was apparent -- it was not his fault but she stared at Callan accusingly, unable to deal with his emotions or her own, her only response was flight.
Callan did not say a word in response. He looked out into nowhere for another moment, contemplating what could possibly happen after this. Cerberus knew he was on Omega, even if Odette said he was dead or she lost him they’d just send another agent after him. Then another until the job was done and he was back in their grasp. He could feel the conflication in his former partner’s words, the panic manifesting as she did not know what to do. He wordlessly pressed the switch on the wall near where his desk had been and unlocked the door, letting her go.
Then the tattooed man leaned against the wall as his eyes drifted to the ceiling, filled with a dread of unknowing. The tears evaporated from his features, as he walked back across his office. He paid no mind to his loyal underlings below, they were silently watching everything as it occurred. He stared into space silently.
There was shame in this. She felt it.
The moment that her foot crossed the threshold she activated a tactical cloak, Odette just… Did not wish to be seen, not like this, not by anyone. It didn’t stop her from turning back, one last time under the guise of her invisibility to look at Callan once more. She just needed time. The Cerberus operative knew she would be back for him, as soon as she had worked it out.
And then she was gone.
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