The crew quarters of the Hong Kong Shatterdome were built with one purpose in mind – survive a full-scale kaiju attack.

Jeb Harrelson had designed the Shatterdomes to withstand and support jaeger operations but he had anticipated smarter opponents. The entire facility could be locked down like a submarine with watertight seals on all crew quarters and heavy pressure doors that would shut down during emergency operations. Oxygen bubbles and emergency supplies would keep personnel alive for 48 hours. The integrity of the Shatterdome had yet to be tested but it had the same warmth as a nuclear submarine. It was steel, it was functional, and it might save their lives one day.

Margret quartered near her crew on the 3rd floor, flush against the walls to the interior core. Almost fifty feet of concrete and fifteen floors insulated them but sometimes she could press her cheek against the wall and feel the humming from the base's reactor. The radiation tags remained staunchly unchanged so she rarely thought about her proximity to it. The proximity to the Field Marshall laurels in her pocket was something different. Since Marshall Pentecost had left them, she still couldn't process that they were going on her collar.

She was spinning the airlock on her door when she heard a familiar cadenced step from behind her. Gottlieb was limping towards her, one hand on his cane and the other clutching a scattered stack of papers against his tablet. She smiled and raised a hand in welcome even as he pursed his thin lips.

"Ms. O'Donnell."

"Margret." She reminded him as her door opened and she started to step inside.

"I need to speak with you about the data I've been evaluating. I asked Marshall Pentecost…"

"Come in."

He limped up after her and spent a long second debating whether to close the door until Margret reached past him and did it for him.

"Talk fast, Doctor, I'm supposed to be on a bird in five minutes. I know you grounded Foxtrot again, the Marshall told me."

"I've…" he stammered. "I meant to tell you myself. I'm reading energy in excess of 72 kilo-Noughts. That much energy stimulating the nervous system would kill you in a solo rig and is still higher than the proscribed pilot maximum of 40 kilo-Noughts."

He shuffled sideways and cleared his throat as she stepped behind a changing screen and began to toss out her boots and coveralls.

Margret glanced out, saw his nervousness, and grinned at him. Her dark hair was loose of its braid and she waved a hand at the wardrobe. "Pass me my blues. Come on, Doctor, you have something to say and I have somewhere I need to be. We're going to have to be efficient with our time."

"I could wait outside." But he handed her the hangar with her dress blues on them. Despite the Ranger calls to make something more striking, she always though the Ranger blues looked about as formal as a bus driver's uniform, back when bus driver's still wore them.

"Talk." She ordered and slid the button-up shirt over the long lines of scarring on her left arm and down across her chest and stomach. Despite the mirror she could feel it on her back as well where the sensitive skin caught at the material of her bra. She paused and considered the length of her arm. The skin was reddened and slightly warped but smoother than many burn victims.

When the British amphibious assault vessel HMS Albion had gone down under the kaiju Shrike, fire had turned the ship and its refugees into a mass of screaming chaos.

"Dr. Gottlieb?"

He cleared his throat and began again. "I know that you wanted better news."

"Than grounding my jaeger? Yes, I'd hoped for something more useful."

"I didn't just ground your jaeger."

The words sent a chill down her back. "What?"

"I ran your most recent brain scans back through the database. I should have looked at the numbers before but you were so insistent that you were fine."

Margret stepped out from behind the screen. Her shirt was untucked and her feet were barefoot but Gottlieb stared as though he'd expected her to come out naked.

"I'm fine."

"You have neural scarring. It's not noticeable in your day-to-day activities, but I think…"

"Is this why Pentecost made me an Acting Field Marshal? Because you're grounding me?" Her voice broke.

Herman nodded. "When I gave Dr. Cheng your numbers, he pulled you from the active roster. I'm sorry."

The air went out of her and she barely made it to her desk chair to sit. Herman took two slow steps towards her and put his hand on her shoulder. It was the most contact they'd had in five years. She could feel his awkwardness at human contact and she noticed, almost hysterically, that he'd gotten another awful haircut.

"Grounded."

"I thought that you had survived Yoshi Nagata's death without injury. And when the Marshall severed your link before Molly Tanner died, you should have been okay. But…" he took another step towards her. "I was wrong. Numbers are not wrong, or rarely anyway."

"We will…." Margret ran her options through her head over and over again. The thought of never setting foot in Foxtrot made her want to vomit. What was even worse was the certainty that Herman was trying, in his own way, to do something heroic. "…talk when I return from Australia."

"The numbers don't lie."

"No," she stood up and faced him. He had a few inches on her but his normal posture was always slightly stooped so she found herself feeling like they were on the same level. "But life isn't about numbers. Not in the way that you see them."

She finished dressing and turned to her mirror to brush and braid her hair back into a tight tail. She could see Herman standing behind her, staring at her, as she twisted and pinned the strands of hair into a sleek and functional knot. The formal dress made her look older than her thirty-two years, the reddened skin around her eyes didn't help.

"Ms. O'Donnell. Margret." Herman said to her. "I'm trying to protect you. Foxtrot Alpha may not kill you but she still has the power to damage you beyond recognition. Why would you willingly put yourself in harm's way knowing that?"

She focused her eyes on him and took the tablet that had always been meant for her.

"The next time you want to protect me, Herman. Buy me some chocolate instead. It will get you a lot closer to getting laid than your current plan."

He stuttered as she pushed past him and spun her door open but Margret was already hurrying towards the hangar bay. She slipped the comm. back into her ear as she hurried.

"Tendo, can you link me to B13?"

"Can do, Field Marshall." Tendo's voice sounded vaguely amused in her ear as she jogged past a group of sanitation workers preparing to open a sewer pipe on the floor.

"Really? Gotta rub it in, don't you?"

"You shoulda seen Gottlieb telling Pentecost. That man," Tendo's voice faded out for a second as she stepped into the elevator. "Has a crush on you."

"B13, please."

"I hear you ignoring me. No one is answering in the bay, do you want me to leave a message?"

She laughed and the men and women around her glanced over but didn't say anything. "Link me to his quarters then."

"Done." Tendo told her and Margret thought of all the ways that she could explain what had happened to Ygor but none of them seemed adequate.

"Ygor," she said into her comm. despite those listening in as the elevator breached on the helicopter deck. "The Marshall sent me on an errand. Pull the Conn-pod from Foxtrot. We're out of time. We have to do something or she'll never fight again."