(quick)<br/><br/>Falkris' eyes never moved from Milenya as she answered the question.<span style="color: red">Doctor, you've looked very hard. But often a hunter who strains her eyes to search the horizon for her quarry fails to see it sitting at her feet. The answer is deviously simple.</span>Falkris, kept his eyes on Milenya with that same predatory stare, a beast with its prey's scent in its nostrils. He stood, his stature putting his gaze down upon her. There was no slouch in his shoulders. His carapace was riddled with the scars of old bullet holes, knife wounds, and burns.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">Pirates and Mercenaries... doctor. </span>He looked out the window, around the commons though for the moment it was empty. His eyes settled once again upon Milenya.<span style="color: red">Every one of them. <i>Pirates</i> and <i>Mercenaries</i>. Minds and bodies for hire. Dangle credits before them and they will bend their knee. So long as the credits hang there dangling before them, satisfying their appetite... they will obey.</span>He took a step closer to Milenya.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">They'll avert their eyes for credits, they'll pile into a ship and commit murder across the stars, so long as the credits keep coming. Shira'Va, Taseer, Ashana, Firas... all of them pirates... </span>He whispered slowly, and took another step toward Milenya, forcing her to step back,<span style="color: red">and mercenaries.</span><br/><br/><span style="color: red">It makes them elegant. It makes them <i>simple</i>.</span>The word stung with condescension, the Turian taking another step forward, forcing Milenya even further back until she bumped into the counter, making a set of instruments clatter slightly. Beruut stood silently by watching with pursed lips, extremely uneasy.<br/><br/><span style="color: red">But you...</span>Falkris' head twisting slightly to the side with a flaring half sneer of his mandibles.<span style="color: red">Your not a pirate, are you? No... your a scientist. Dangle credits in front of you... and... nothing.</span>The look in Falkris' eyes and his posture striking a threat of real bodily harm toward the Asari. The Salarian tried to remain calm, but he couldn't stop the trembling in his hand which had been holding a medical instrument. Falkris' voice had become a low, quiet growl.<span style="color: red">We hand you a quarter of a million credits and unlike your colleagues you don't scurry away to fling it upon some idiotic pursuit of fleeting lavish excess... you come instead here, digging deeper into the tantalizing mystery you've found. </span><br/><br/><span style="color: red">You're a problem. You're not some transient filth stealing and murdering in a scramble to satisfy your banal existence. You're a doctor - an archaeologist; pursuer of truth. You have morals. <i>Ethics</i>. Admirable out there, among the civilized. But here... that is <i>dangerous</i>. </span><br/><br/>Falkris stared at Milenya with such intensity that at moment it felt like he would strike like a raptor upon its prey. After what felt like an eternity passed in but a few moments, Falkris broke his gaze from her and returned to his seat on the medical bed. He looked at the door, away from Milenya and extended his broken battered arm to Beruut who took a moment to realize the cue, then hurried to continue his work, trying hard to pretend as though nothing had happened.<br/><br/>Without looking at her again, Falkris uttered.<span style="color: red">This is a place for the damned.</span>Within that sentence, whether he had meant it or not, a disquieted murmur something; regret, and perhaps a sadness long buried. Or perhaps it was simply the angered fatigue of an old Turian who was tired of speaking.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>