Head down and hood up: a simple mantra that had served Kali well on Omega. She had received a degree of combat and stealth training before departing the Flotilla, but the odds would still not have been in her favour against many of the hardcore malefactors and career mercenaries that flocked to the criminal underworld's twisted reflection of the Citadel. As such, she had learned to hide - to seem unthreatening enough that she was unnoticeable, despite the scarcity of quarians in these lawless regions of space. She still drew stares as she walked down the street, her stride quick and fluid, but the eyes of the krogan warriors, batarian slavers, and vorcha thugs would usually slide past, coming to focus on something beside or behind her. It still astonished her how much one's appearance and attitude could be used to shape whether they are noticed and what impression they gave - and at 5'3", slight of frame and invisible behind her visor, it was not difficult to avoid her presence even registering with less observational people.

Kali had more to fear than usual on this day, however. Today, she crossed a line. The daily, run-of-the-mill dangers for a quarian alone in the Terminus Systems were many and varied, but despite having been surrounded by dangerous individuals and gang life on Omega, she had managed to avoid becoming embroiled in any such activity herself. She had never seen the attraction in doing so, a quarian to the core - she had no desire to harm anyone else, to be negative for the community around her, nor to break the law any more than her research had already necessitated. Now, however, she was on her way to - with full knowledge - meet a collection of hardened criminals; those who had spent their entire lives thieving, killing, and selling good folk into slavery. Kali was no coward - her bravery in travelling to one of the most dangerous regions in the galaxy and defying quarian and Council law to follow her beliefs and interests demonstrated that. Nevertheless, a nervous fear, a sort of slightly heady anxiety, held an icy grip on her as she walked the streets of Cartagena Station. 

She fought her fear both internally and externally - the latter by occasionally, almost subconsciously brushing her hand against the pistol concealed at her hip, and the former by reminding herself of why she was here. She may fear the people she was about to meet, and she may fear that she was making the wrong decision by finally crossing the line into full-out criminal activity, but it was for a good cause. Her anxiety was briefly overshadowed by a flare of anger as she remembered all Siame Industries had done - were still doing - and all that they planned to do. To rob people of their homes, to ostracise them where once they had belonged, to destroy an entire way of life... Kali had her problems with much of the Terminus and its inhabitants, but to cast out all who lived there, to crush them and their free spirit beneath Rebekkah Gaela's heel, was abominable. It was not only for her friends, but even for her enemies, that Kali wanted to combat Siame's march upon the Terminus - to protect not just individuals, but also the very right to belong, the very concept of home, itself.

As her uncharacteristic anger died and her nervousness returned, so did her concerns. It worried her that she was not even entirely certain how they had obtained her name, or known of her desire to combat Siame - she had not thought she'd garnered enough attention from the criminal contingents on Omega, or anyone else, to be on a goddamn [i]mailing list[/i] for recruitment for an illegal undertaking. She assumed that her subtle inquiries regarding Siame must have travelled further than she had planned - otherwise, she could only theorise that somebody had pieced together what she was researching from comments made on the rare occasion she went through the hassle it took for a quarian to get drunk, or from her purchasing history at the kiosks around Omega, and knew she was not totally averse to breaking the law. Either way, they must have thought she would be useful - she had garnered a rather unique skillset, due to the combination of her rather unusual area of study with the technological capability the majority of quarians possess, after all. 

The hotel was just up the street, now. Being able to see it only made the situation more real; her uncertainty, more defined. Her feet clacked on the sidewalk, seemingly creating a symphony with her racing heart, the beat of her body seeming overwhelming as she felt her mind go blank but for one thought: [i]am I doing the right thing?[/i] She knew there were terrible people in the hotel she was now standing beside, but she feared the repercussions for her own morality even more than she feared them. Physical enemies she could defeat or escape from if things went South - but her own demons would pursue her, unrelenting, were she to regret her actions later. And - though this had not stopped her before - who knew what the consequences would be if anyone on the Flotilla were to hear of her actions...

Steeling herself, Kali crossed the threshold of the hotel, and before she had a chance to lose her nerve she found herself speaking to the receptionist and being directed toward the meeting room. Hesitating once more outside the door, fiddling nervously with her belt, she resisted the urge to touch the pistol at her hip for the thousandth time - and before she could psyche herself out, she did her best to gather the same sense of certainty and strength of purpose that had driven her here in the first place, and opened the door. 

Intuition took over now that the moment of decision was past. Not wanting to look at her potential teammates just yet, she kept her gaze lowered, instinctively making herself small and unobtrusive as she quickly located a trio of empty seats and, walking on light feet, planted her behind in the central one. For a moment she kept her eyes on the table, tense - but she fought to ensure her nervousness was only palpable to her, and not to the men and women around the room, and forced herself to look up to the head of the table, acknowledging those who had presumably organised this little meeting.