Val Shepard reflected that Cerberus had caged her.

It was a really nice cage. It had the big cabin with the fish tank. The leather seats. The upgraded drive core and stealth system. She didn't have a handle on the tech upgrades; that was the sort of thing she was used to relying on Adams and Alenko and Tali and Garrus for. Tali had walked away, for good enough reasons, and there were rookies instead of Adams down in engineering, and Kaidan's location was classified, and Garrus was... missing, but she couldn't dwell on that now. Joker understood the new tech schematics, though, and he was practically salivating over them, so that told her something.

Shepard watched the bubbles in the fish tank and counted the ways they'd caged her.

They had caged her with missing colonists. She might be paranoid, but she wasn't paranoid enough to think that they had staged the scene on Freedom's Progress for her benefit. (Besides, Tali wouldn't be a party to something like that.) But Cerberus obviously knew her background, and knew that the girl from Mindoir couldn't stand by and let other human colonists get carted off like so much livestock.

They had caged her with the ship. She couldn't love it yet, even though (because) it looked so much like her lost frigate, ripped to pieces over a frozen world. It had been her first command, her beautiful prototype, with all the little quirks that prototypes had. This ship was bigger and brighter and glossier, but it wasn't hers yet.

They had caged her just by bringing her back. Shepard had thought about running, taking the data from Freedom's Progress and going back to the Alliance with it. But she knew that she came with a four-billion-credit price tag. Even if Cerberus let her walk, she would be still suspect in Alliance eyes. She'd been presumed KIA for two years. No one was going to believe the resurrection story, even if she toned it down to "I was in a coma." They would have to presume that she'd gone rogue; without Cerberus backing her, they'd put her in a cell. It might be the proper, regulation thing to do, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not with the colonists' lives on the line.

They had caged her with the crew. Even if she ran, Joker and Chakwas were here, vulnerable, guarantees of her good behavior. And the crew seemed, for the most part, like decent folks, with spouses and families. Some of them, like Donnelly and Daniels, didn't seem to have any real idea what kind of organization they'd signed on with. Some of them were probably true believers. She would need to figure out which. She didn't quite trust Chambers. The yeoman probably read her mail, and was either fairly gullible or a really good actress. Shepard sure as hell didn't trust Lawson, but at least Lawson was open about the fact that she reported to the man behind the curtain. Taylor she did trust, a little; he was too ready to trust in Cerberus, but he seemed like too straightforward a soldier to shoot her in the back.

Everything just seemed so calculated; she could almost feel the Illusive Man's hand pulling her strings. Her life, her mission, her ship, her crew. Crew that she could care about, crew that she already felt responsible for.

Crew that she could persuade to take her side, not Cerberus's.

Even on a casual conversation, too many of them looked at her with awe and admiration. They were here because of the great Commander Shepard, not because of Cerberus. That gave her an edge.

The only way out of the cage that she could see was to take them all with her.

Days later, she sat on a crate in the main battery and laid it all out. It occurred to her that Garrus ought to be the one sitting, but he'd always been a terrible patient, and he obstinately stood, leaning back against the railing, arms crossed, head tilted, listening.

"So that's about the size of it," she finished. "The Illusive Man said it was up to me whether to take on the mission, but I don't know that I believe him. Four billion credits they supposedly spent on me, who knows how much on the ship and the crew, and then... what? If I say no, I won't do it, they just drop me off on the Citadel? I doubt it."

He said, "Shepard, if you want to jump ship, we'll find a way."

We. A wave of relief washed over her. She took in a breath. "Not yet. If it's true that the Collectors are taking the colonists, I need to know if there really is a Reaper connection. I need to see it through."

He nodded. "I can understand that." He hesitated. "Shepard, you've talked a lot about the mission, but what about you? The reports said..."

"That I was spaced?" She folded her arms across her chest, trying to suppress the shiver. "Yeah. I remember the explosion." He breathed out a word she didn't quite catch. She went on, "My O2 line was damaged. It... vented pretty quickly."

"Damn. I'm sorry I asked."

"It's all right," she said, too quickly. "The next thing I remember is waking up in the lab. That was just a few days ago. I know it sounds ridiculous to say they brought me back from the dead, but... I think I was in pretty bad shape. I don't remember..." She trailed off, trying to dredge up a memory where there was simply nothing.

"You're here now." Garrus's tone was sharp enough that Shepard looked up, to find his gaze intense and focused. "You're alive now. The rest of it doesn't matter."

"Thanks, Garrus," she said. The moment abruptly felt too charged, so she stood. "So, we'll cut the Cerberus leash eventually, but for now we'll play along, if you're up for the ride."

"Hey, I was promised a walk into hell. You'd better not disappoint, Shepard."

She smiled. "Never."

As she left the battery, she reflected that the cage seemed more surmountable with the right company.