The walls of Samantha's little dorm room were cluttered with "Employee of the month"-plaques, the rest of the space mostly undecorated. There was no room for much anything other than the narrow bed in the back of the room and one small desk. The kitchen consisted of a hot plate and a mini fridge placed on the counter opposite to the desk. She -and no one else as low on the food chain as she was despite her numerous achievements- didn't have a personal shower, when she wanted to get cleaned, she needed to use the communal showers which allowed for ten minutes of water. It wasn't anywhere near enough to get properly cleaned, especially not after as messy a job as this one had been. Shepard's offer to let Samantha use her shower was growing beyond tempting.

Samantha sighed as she made her way over to the floor where Shepard's cabin was.

"What took you so long?" Shepard grinned as she answered the door.
"Don't start, I already regret coming here," Samantha said.

"Again, that's very hurtful, you know."
"I'm sorry. I just hate having to be in this situation. Especially with you."

"Why, what's wrong with me?" Shepard asked somewhat sarcastically, knowing perfectly well she left a lot to be desired as far as being normal and easy to deal with went.
"You mean besides the fact that you're a mass murderer?"

"We all go a little mad sometimes."
"Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I never killed anyone in the shower so fear not and let's get to business, which was... me washing your back," Shepard wiggled an eyebrow.
"No, the deal was me taking a shower using your rations, alone ," Samantha narrowed her eyes at Shepard.

"If you say so, Sam."
"Do not call me that."

"Whatever you want, Sammy."

"Stop. Go sit in the corner and face the wall or something, no peeking, you owe me this," Samantha then said, and Shepard gave in, holding her arms up in a surrendering gesture before graciously turning to face away as Samantha went to undress and stepped into the shower.

Shepard would have remained subtly creeping on Samantha had the phone on the far side of the cabin not rang. Sighing, she retreated from the room and walked over to the phone.

No calls could be made with the phone and all the incoming ones were screened before they were put through to her. She already knew this wouldn't be a pleasant conversation to be had since there really was only one person who called her and right now she could think of only one reason for him to be calling. Momentarily, she considered simply not answering, but she knew it wasn't a permanent solution, so she picked up.

"Commander Shepard," she answered, knowing that using her rank would undoubtedly annoy the man calling. To her disappointment, he was too furious to pay attention to that.
"Of all the fucked up stunts you have pulled, this is the worst! We'll have to pay ourselves sick to keep the neighbor quiet!"

"Good evening to you too, Udina. I take it the inspector of the scene wasn't happy either."

Udina grumbled for a moment before answering, obviously not happy about having to admit the job itself had been done well.

"The scene was immaculate but that doesn't excuse the way you did it, you and that new girl will bankrupt me at this rate!"
"That sounds like a you-problem which means I don't care, I've done my part, what you do with the rest is up to you."

"If you think you can just...!"
"If I wanted to listen to an asshole, I'd fart," Shepard interrupted and ended the call while Udina was still in the middle of his scathing rant.

She hung up the phone to disconnect and then moved the receiver onto the table to prevent him from calling back, all he'd get was the tone telling him the line was busy. She then went to the far wall and pushed her shoulder against a stack of heavy boxes she'd piled up to hide the doorway to the cabin next to hers. A doorway she'd illegally made herself over the years. It was a miracle it hadn't been discovered yet. Shepard retrieved the item she'd stolen from the job, a scalpel she'd had to very carefully tape on her calf. She'd gotten a few minor cuts, but didn't care. She entered the cabin and undid the tape holding the scalpel in place.

Shepard had been a model inmate for almost two decades and some of the guards had been here for as long as she had; that had given her a lot of time to build trust and flimsy friendships with some of the guards. Most of them were assholes, but there were a few good ones who had by now begun giving Shepard the benefit of the doubt. When it came time to pat her down after a job, the guards she'd gotten somewhat friendly with didn't bother doing a very good job of the pat down. They assumed Shepard wouldn't want to risk losing her comfy position by doing something as stupid as trying to smuggle something from the job back to her cabin.

Shepard had grown bolder with the items over the years, but she hadn't tried smuggling back something like a weapon until today. Frankly, she didn't even want to think about the consequences if she'd get caught with all this but at the same time, it would not make a difference really because what were they gonna do, add another hundred years to her sentence? She was already serving thirteen consecutive life sentences, she doubted there was much more they could do to her. She supposed they could move her back to the lower levels and keep her there indefinitely or until she died, but realistically, she didn't see that happening.

Udina was a dick but he recognized efficient workers, and efficient workers meant profit. When he'd invested in the prison, he'd done so solely for the reason of having a stream of free labor available to him at any time, but with free labor, you really got what you paid for. So, to encourage the inmates to perform well during their assignments, Udina had implemented a good old "Employee of the month"-program, which didn't actually mean much; you got a lame plaque and you got to choose between extra water rations for the shower (if you were high enough on the food chain to have your own shower), a decent meal instead of the nutrient paste the inmates were usually served, a pack of cigarettes, or a bar of chocolate.

Shepard had been here for over twenty years and she'd seen it all, Udina's incentive wasn't working as motivation for her anymore. At this point, she was intentionally looking to get herself demoted just so she'd have something to work for, to make her way back to the top.

"Shepard?"

She swiveled around, startled, and stood in silence for several seconds as she and Samantha regarded each other.

"Hey! So... does this look... as bad as it looks?" Shepard laughed awkwardly.
"What is this place?" Samantha exclaimed softly as she looked around the space connected to the main room via the hidden door.

"Well, um... it's my... museum...?" Shepard trailed off slowly. Technically, this wasn't her space, she'd simply taken it upon herself to expand -without permission- since discovering that the cabin next to hers had been empty for decades now. She didn't worry about someone possibly getting moved to the cabin, these levels were restricted to "loyal employees", and at the moment, Shepard was the only one who had been locked up in here long enough to have gotten the "honorable" title. Everyone else either got out after serving their sentence or died before they made it this far.

Shepard didn't know how or why she'd been so resilient. The conditions she and the other inmates had to work under sometimes were downright potentially lethal. If there wasn't an immediate danger like getting run over by a truck while picking trash from a roadside, there were scenes that exposed the workers to chemicals and radiation, and nobody batted an eye.

Shepard had seen a lot of her "colleagues" get cancer or tumors in vital organs, then there were those who'd inhaled so many chemicals they could no longer breathe properly. Shepard didn't know why none of it seemed to affect her, she hadn't been given the opportunity to take any better precautions against the dangers than the others had. Not that she was complaining, although at times, dying at a young age of a disease did feel like a better offer than living here for the rest of her life. That, or commit suicide, but she'd never been the suicidal type.

"You know how we have to clean up a bunch of interesting scenes?" Shepard began her explanation.

"Interesting scenes" was one way of putting it. There were crime scenes, boring industrial scenes, factories, military bases, sometimes even something as mundane as a retirement homes or roadsides. The work was always the same, but at least the places changed.

"So, whenever I've stumbled into something interesting, I've, um..."
"You've stolen things from the job sites," Samantha said.

"You say 'steal', I say 'salvage'. It was all gonna go into the incinerator anyway."
"That, or a conveniently placed woodchipper," Samantha interjected, and Shepard barked a laugh.

"What can I say, I'm a collector. I'd be really bored without my collection, and you know how it is. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl."
"You're a disturbed hoarder, and I'm leaving now and you are going to stay away from me. I mean it," Samantha said and held up a finger to emphasize her point, realizing it was rather ridiculous; if Shepard really wanted to do something to her, pointing a finger at her would hardly be enough to stop her.

"If I wanted to kill you, I would've just shoved you into the woodchipper earlier," Shepard shrugged nonchalantly, and Samantha blinked at her, unable to come up with a response.

"That was a joke."
"Was it though?" Samantha narrowed her eyes at Shepard.

"And yeah, I'm a collector, but I'm not disturbed," she shook her head and smirked.
"Oh, yes, you just happen to collect items from murder houses instead of collecting stamps like normal people."

"I cannot believe that you are in all seriousness telling me you consider stamp collectors normal people."
"I'm leaving."

"Sam! Please, don't tell anyone about this."
"I won't, for as long as you promise that if you get caught, you will not tell anyone I knew about this, because the last thing I need is to be considered your accomplice in... whatever the hell this is," Samantha said, gesturing at the room.

"Deal."


"So, you never told me what you are in for," Shepard said as she vigorously ran the toilet brush around the bowl. This time the job site was as near as in Warden Kuril's office. Usually, the staff's offices were handled by the newcomers, but Kuril enjoyed having Shepard do jobs that were well below her paygrade. Shepard was certain he was watching through a monitor in some other room, jerking off to the sight of her scrubbing his bathroom right now. He'd taken pride and pleasure in trying to break her spirit, and Shepard had always been more than happy to disappoint him by never letting him see anything but flawless work ethic and results from her.

"I worked as a comm specialist for the Alliance which meant I got to monitor a lot of comm traffic... most of it classified intelligence about black ops. I came across something regarding the Alliance funding the terrorist group Cerberus to enable them to cause unrest at certain sectors so that the Alliance would have a reason to interject themselves into the situation, and I took it upon myself to forward the intel to a reporter because I thought what they were doing was wrong. They were killing innocent civilians just for an excuse to insert themselves into the situation."

"Well, democratically elected governments aren't gonna overthrow themselves, Traynor," Shepard drawled but Samantha ignored her terrible humor.
"And as it happens, leaking classified intelligence is considered treason, but I'm guessing you already knew that."

"Huh," Shepard mumbled as she thought about it. For a while she considered that perhaps Samantha had been the one who had leaked the intel regarding the operation which had led to Shepard's prosecution, but that had been over twenty years ago. She doubted Samantha and her legal team had managed to drag out the proceedings for a ridiculously long time, she couldn't have been the one responsible. That, or she'd served a large part of her sentence elsewhere, which was also a possibility, Shepard supposed.

"I got off with a relatively light sentence, eight years and a fifty thousand credit fine," Samantha shrugged and went back to wiping mirror above the sink, having to wonder how the hell did Kuril manage to get such impressive amounts of fingerprints on it unless he spent hours just passionately fondling his own reflection.

"So, when are you getting out?" Shepard then asked to keep the conversation going.
"Nine months left," Samantha responded.

"You haven't been here for more than a few months, where were you before?"
"In a government run prison. I was offered a chance to transfer here for the rest of my sentence, and I took it because I'd been told good things about the accommodations and the possibility to work."

"Was it everything you hoped for?" Shepard chuckled, already knowing it couldn't have been.
"Exceeded my expectations," Samantha said sarcastically.

Private prisons had always had a bad reputation and for a good reason. This prison, lovingly named Omega, was no different. The accommodations were better than in most prisons and there was a certain freedom to it because the cells were more like small apartments than typical prison cells, but the downside was that the expenses were cut even after they'd been kept to a minimum.

That showed particularly well in the fact that the majority of the staff was at the very least incompetent and partly comprising of freaks who'd offered to work for almost free just for the opportunity to make their fantasy of working in a women's prison a reality. That in turn translated to inmates getting beaten, degraded and raped on a regular basis. The allegations -if anyone even bothered making one anymore- were never put on any record and certainly never investigated.

There also were no decent meals, only nutrient paste which contained just enough calories to keep an inmate from starving. If one wanted a hot meal, they would have to either earn it by working hard enough to become employee of the month, or buy it themselves from the commissary, if they could afford it.

In other words, if the truth were ever put on the pamphlet, no one would be volunteering to come to Omega.

"So, what about you, how long..." Samantha began to ask but cut herself off upon realizing how idiotic the question was. Shepard laughed and pursed her lips as she thought about it.

"Let's see, I was given thirteen life sentences... or seventy-five years minimum per sentence, so that makes a total of... what, nine hundred and seventy-five years? Minus the twenty or so I've already served, so... nine and a half centuries. Will you wait for me when you get out?" Shepard batted her eyelashes.

"Suuure, you seem totally worth the wait," Samantha commented, her tone heavy with sarcasm as she threw the wet cloth in Shepard's face.

"So, have any plans for this fine evening?" Shepard asked jokingly once they were done with Kuril's office and moved onto the guards' break room.

"Well, I was thinking about having a nice beef wellington for dinner, wash it down with an expensive fancy wine and then go to sleep in my king size Tempur-bed, warm and cozy underneath my luxurious goose down blanket," Samantha said, and Shepard laughed.

"And here I thought I could entice you into spending an evening with me by offering you some of this prison's finest toilet hooch."
"If you honestly thought I would drink something that you've made in a toilet, you are crazier than everyone says you are," Samantha guffawed and rolled the cart containing the cleaning supplies through the door which Shepard held open for her.

"Would you have said yes if I'd called it prison wine?"
"Now we'll never know, will we?" Samantha smirked.

"How about dinner then? I admit I don't have any beef wellington handy but I do have an impressive collection of contraband tasty goodness that beats nutrient paste any day," Shepard flirted and Samantha thought about it for a moment.
"Well... what's the worst that could happen?"

"You could get the shits from the prison wine."
"Which I have no intention of drinking."

"Just give me a couple of weeks to get the supplies and get the pruno done. I promise I'm more charming if you're wasted."
"I'm sure you are," Samantha scoffed.