20 Dangerous Paths

--> Garrus’s old contacts on the Citadel have spotted Sidonis. The traitor went to a specialist criminal named Fade to obtain false ID and a hiding place. We’ll take the Normandy there right away. Thane also has business on the Citadel. He has a son who is trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and has been hired for a kill. Thane wants to stop his son making the same mistakes he did.

--> Thane’s son Kolyat had been hired by a Human crime boss on the Citadel named Elias Kelham to assassinate a Turian political candidate who was telling his constituents that all Humans were uniformly criminal and racist in nature. He then sent his security to harass Human shopkeepers. We found Kolyat at the last moment and had a textbook hostage situation on our hands. Kolyat made the mistake of raising the gun from the Turian to point it at me. He’s now in C-Sec Custody, his target alive and well.

Thane paid his son little heed in the past. It will take time for them to patch up matters between them. At least we stopped the young Drell from committing murder.

--> We found Sidonis.

Garrus and I have both killed many times, but always by necessity.  This situation with Sidonis was different. Garrus was going to kill a man, not to prevent future deaths, but to avenge past deaths. There's no question the traitor deserved death. I’d have had nothing to say but for the fact that Garrus wanted me to talk to Sidonis first; to draw him out for a clean shot.

I can not look someone in the eye with a lie while someone else shoots him unawares. I told Sidonis the facts: Garrus was here to kill him; if he had anything to say for himself, now was the time.

The sorry bastard didn’t even beg for mercy. He pleaded his cowardice more to the air than to me, his words tumbling out over themselves like rocks from a collapsed dam too long holding back a flood of guilty misery, telling of how he’d betrayed his fellows to save his own miserable skin, of how he saw their faces wherever he looked, how he wished it were over.

Garrus wavered, his simple Turian view of a black and white world troubled by the wretched creature before him. Sidonis walked away with his life. It is not for his worthless sake that I am glad Garrus chose mercy over vengeance. Had he pulled that trigger, if he had taken a life that was no longer a threat, it would have been his first step down a dark and dangerous road.

There is blood on both our hands, and the hands of every soldier. Killing is our trade, and our duty: it is necessary. But where to draw the line? I'm no saint, and cannot say for certain. Were one to attempt to draw the line of just action, it seems better to err, when tenable, on the side of mercy, that we kill only when doing so will save lives.

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