"I should have known

Just what to say

To make you want to stay"

Unknown - Present Day

Blinking blearily, Hope attempted to use her hand to wipe the sleep from her eyes - and was jolted awake by the startling sound of the handcuff chain rattling as the chilled metal pulled painfully at her wrist.

The first clear sensation that rushed into her mind was that of the hard, cold surface pressed against her bare back. She'd had a crazy dream about sneaking out of the house to meet Zach, and he and some unknown accomplice abducting her, but she'd fully expected to wake safely in her own bed at home. Now, disorientated as she emerged from the depths of unconsciousness, she scrambled into a seated position, eyes wide, heart racing.

Oh, my god. Not a dream.

Hope was in a small, empty room, with grated metal floors and smooth metal walls. Blinking rapidly as adrenaline chased away the last of her grogginess, her eyes followed the chain at her wrist to a conduit that ran from floor to ceiling. She gave it a few sharp pulls, but succeeded only in making a clanking noise that echoed loudly in the enclosed space. The pipe refused to budge.

Calm. Be calm. What would Mom do?

Taking a deep breath, Hope attempted to get her bearings - and became aware of a soft thrumming sound and the fact that the floor beneath her was vibrating slightly. Growing up with a father who was a pilot and having done her fair share of travelling, she knew what this meant - she was on a ship of some sort.

The racket she'd made must have attracted the attention of her captor, because moments later, the door slid open. Hope staggered awkwardly to her feet as Zach entered with a bottle of water and an apple. He was still wearing the jeans and black shirt he'd been wearing on Tiptree, but he'd added a black, bomber-style jacket of a reflective material that bore a logo that looked vaguely familiar to Hope, though she couldn't place it at the moment."You're awake. Good." His face was expressionless, and he spoke matter-of-factly. "You were out for so long I was worried we'd given you too much sedative. Are you thirsty?"

Hope nodded, and Zach uncapped the bottle before handing it to her. She drank half of it in one gulp, then paused as her stomach lurched, queasily.

"Better take it easy," Zach advised. "It could take awhile for the effects of the drug to wear off." He took the water from her and gave her the apple. "You can save this for later, if you like."

"Who are you?" Hope rasped through still parched lips. "What do you want?"

"I'm precisely who I said I was, Hope. Well, with a few minor exceptions. And what I want? Well, that has nothing to do with you. That's between your mother and I."

"My mother?" Hope was confused. "You kidnapped me because you want something from my mother?"

"Some extra leverage for our negotiation," Zach shrugged.

Despite herself, Hope laughed. She couldn't help it. "If you think she's going to cooperate with you after this, you've obviously never met my mom..."

Zach silenced her with a shake of his head, looking unperturbed by her remark. "We know what we're doing, Hope. Now just sit back and relax…" Before he could finish, the door slid open again and the boy she'd glimpsed in the alleyway appeared. She was surprised to discover that he was smaller than she - only about five feet tall and 100 pounds. She guessed his age to be around 12 or 13. He glanced her way with those eerie glowing eyes, and then quickly looked away. He addressed Zach nervously. "Mom wants to talk to you."

Mom? Hope pondered that. They were brothers?

Zach frowned. "I told you not to come in here."

"I know, but she said to get you...now."

"Fine." As Zach strode angrily from the room, Hope called, "My mom's going to find me!" When Zach merely scoffed dismissively, she wound up and threw the apple at him. She had a pretty good arm from years of playing outfield in softball, but her dominant arm was chained to the wall. She missed by a good eight inches or so, and the apple bounced off the wall with a loud thump. Then Zach was through the doorway, and just the younger boy remained, observing her with wide eyes.

Hope knew she should regard him as an enemy, too, but the poor kid looked more frightened than she was. "What's your name?" she asked him in as friendly a tone as she could muster.

His gaze darted around the room as if seeking escape, but he finally whispered, "Adam."

"I'm...well, I guess you know who I am."

After a moment, a small nod. "Yes."

"Is Zach your brother?"

Hesitating again, Adam answered, "I don't think I should be talking to you."

"Okay," Hope said, sliding down the wall and taking a seat on the floor, cross-legged. Now that the initial adrenaline rush of waking in a strange place was wearing off, she suddenly felt exhausted again.

But Adam didn't leave. Instead, he continued to watch her in silence while she closed her eyes and rested her head against the unyielding surface of the wall. Finally, Hope heard him ask, "Do you really think your mom will find you?"

Hope slowly opened her eyes, steadily meeting his gaze. "My mom's Admiral Shepard. Do you know who that is?"

"Yeah," Adam replied, quietly, his voice oddly devoid of emotion. "She's the one who killed my dad."

With that, Adam slipped silently from the room, leaving Hope staring speechlessly after him.

Tiptree - Present Day

Once it was clear that there was nothing else to be accomplished at the Radial, Sam and Jeff decided to check out the address James had given them for Zach Moore. As they climbed back into the vehicle, Jeff asked Lucy, "Are you okay? Do you want me to run you home first?"

"I'm fine, Uncle Jeff," the teen replied in exasperation. "You don't need to treat me like an invalid." Realizing what she'd said, Lucy blushed as she said, "Sorry. I didn't mean…"

Jeff shrugged it off. "S'okay, kid. I don't like people treating me like an invalid, either."

They rode in silence the rest of the way. After a short trip, they arrived in front of a derelict building in a mostly abandoned housing development. "This is it," Jeff announced, setting the car down on the cracked concrete landing pad near the side of the dwelling. They climbed out beside the overgrown front yard. Insects buzzed angrily as they forged a path through the knee-high weeds to the front door.

Half of the front steps had crumbled away, causing them to step carefully as they climbed. The windows were boarded over; the front door jammed partly open. "I can't believe Zach was living here," Lucy said in amazement as Sam squeezed through the doorway.

"This whole part of town was stomped pretty hard during the Reaper invasion," Jeff muttered, following Sam inside the ramshackle structure. "Deserted for years. Guess it's gonna stay that way, too; no demand to fix it up when you can just live somewhere with less...rubble." He paused inside the front door, glancing around the dim interior. "Good place to hide, though."

Nothing happened when Sam passed her hand over the wall-mounted sensor, but there was a battery-powered light sitting on a weathered table in the foyer. She picked it up and shone it around the front room. It was empty except for a soot and debris-covered sofa, and a coffee table covered in empty bottles and food wrappers. A backpack with worn sneakers and a scuffed datapad spilling out - a familiar sight to parents of high school students everywhere - lay discarded in one corner.

"That's Zach's bag," Lucy said as the beam of light passed over it. "I recognize it because he has all those stickers on it."

"Well, we're in the right place, at least," Sam replied.

"What are we looking for, exactly?" Lucy asked, kicking some trash aside as she made her way across the room.

"Anything that might tell us what Zach wants with Lucy, where they went, who he's working with," Sam rattled off, absently, as she aimed the light down the hall. The doors on either side appeared to be closed and inoperable, but the door at the end stood open, revealing a bedroom beyond. She could barely make out a heap of bedding on the floor. "I'm going to check out the bedroom. You guys okay here?"

"Yeah," Jeff said with a dismissive wave. His eyes had adjusted to the dark, and there was a sliver of light seeping in through a cracked, but uncovered, window in the back of the house. "Go ahead. Lucy can search the living room while I check out the kitchen."

Nodding, Sam made her way down the hall. Despite the fact that she now knew that Zachary Moore was not a teenager, but an adult with a criminal history, she still couldn't help but feel some sympathy for him. He was too small time to be calling the shots, which meant that somebody connected with Cerberus had sent him to the tiny agricultural colony of Tiptree to live in a crumbling hovel - apparently by himself - and spend months posing as a student in order to get close to her daughter. She knew firsthand that Cerberus' agents were often well-intentioned but misinformed, convinced that they were fighting on the side of good. And, of course, some were just outright mercs, lured by the promise of wealth and power. She wondered which description fit Zach.

Which brought Sam to another perplexing conundrum - Cerberus was supposedly defunct. The Alliance, in tandem with the turians, had been ordering covert raids on the organization's holdings since well before the Reaper War. Fifteen years ago, the facility on Horizon had been destroyed and sealed after she and Miranda had revealed to the galaxy the horrific experiments being conducted there. And although Sam - who had been perilously close to death at the time - still had no clear memory of the events that had occurred on the Citadel just prior to activating the Crucible, she was positive that the Illusive Man had perished (although exactly how that had happened still remained a mystery, even to her.) His demise remained unofficial, however, since his body had never been recovered from the wreckage.

Then again, if it hadn't been for Jeff, her body might never have been discovered, either. Certainly not while she was still breathing.

Shaking off these musings, Sam stepped into the bedroom. The bundle on the floor was a military-issue sleeping bag, composed of synthetic material designed to withstand extreme temperatures. A small, flat pillow lay atop it. There was no furniture in the room, and no clothes in the closet - Zach had taken his personal belongings with him when he'd left. That, combined with the alteration of the school's records earlier in the day, indicated that the abduction had been planned in advance for this evening. She lifted the bedroll and shook it, followed by the pillow, but discovered nothing.

Sam was about to exit the room when the beam of light reflected off of an item tucked into the corner of the closet, on the floor. Kneeling, she discovered a printed photo covered in a shiny, protective coating. It was of two boys - approximately four and ten years of age. The older one might have been Zach, but she couldn't be sure. They both looked pale and solemn; the younger one had haunting blue eyes sunk into a gaunt face. Something about him was familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.

"Did you find anything?" Jeff called to her from the other room.

Heading back down the hallway, Sam held the picture out to him. "Not much...just this."

Jeff regarded the picture in silence. "Who are they?" he asked, finally.

"I don't know. I think the older one might be Zach. Does the younger one look familiar to you?"

"Familiar how?"

"I don't know," Sam repeated, the frustration evident in her voice. "That's why I'm asking."

Tamping down his irritation at her impatience, Jeff studied the image for a moment more, and then shook his head. Handing it back to her, he asked, "So, you'd never heard of this Zach guy before tonight?"

"What?" Sam asked, confused by the apparent non sequitur. "No! How could I?"

"Hope never mentioned him to you?"

Sam bristled at his accusatory tone. "No. Did she ever mention him to you?"

"Wouldn't I have told you if she had?"

"I don't know, Jeff. You two always did enjoy keeping secrets from me," Sam snapped.

"Guys," Lucy said, softly, but they ignored her.

"That's a cheap shot," Jeff told his wife.

"But it's true. You're the one she talks to, not me."

"Not anymore."

"And whose fault is that?"

"This isn't helping," Lucy tried interjecting once more, but the adults again took no notice.

"You're never going to let that go, are you?" Jeff said, his voice rising, angrily. "I made a mistake. I apologized. What more do you want from me?"

"It's not me you need to worry about."

"As long as you're still pissed at me, Hope is going to be, too."

Sam laughed, bitterly. "Um, excuse me? Have you met your daughter? She makes her own decisions, and she doesn't give a damn about what I think, believe me."

"Hey!" Lucy shouted. "Stop! Please!" They both finally turned in her direction to discover the girl near tears. "I hear enough yelling at home these days, I don't want to hear anymore!"

Sam and Jeff exchanged chastised looks. "Sorry, Luce." "Yeah, sorry."

"And just for the record," Lucy added, "Hope is pissed at you, and with good reason," she told her uncle. "What you did was stupid, and you scared the hell out of her. You act like we're the only ones who fu-...make mistakes, but we're not."

"And she does care what you think," Lucy continued, rounding on her aunt, "but she doesn't always agree with you. You raised her to think for herself, right? So, you shouldn't get mad at her when she does. It's not fair, and it hurts her feelings." She paused, gulping for air, while Sam and Jeff stared at her, agape. "It's not fair," the young woman repeated, miserably, her eyes cast downward, and they both realized she wasn't just talking about Hope anymore.

"You're right," Jeff said finally, stepping forward to wrap an arm around his niece, who sniffled grudgingly into his shoulder a few times while trying to regain her composure. "We fuck up just as bad - if not worse - than you guys," he said, holding Sam's gaze over Lucy's bowed head, "and we're old enough to know better. If we expect you to take responsibility for your actions, then so should we. I'm sorry."

Sam was struck silent by the intensity of his stare, as well as his regretful words. It was true that Jeff had apologized more than once for the events that had led to their separation - as well as the incident several months ago - but his mea culpas had always seemed to come with qualifiers and excuses, and Sam had never been convinced that they were entirely sincere. But now, rebuked by his niece and worried about his daughter, he sounded truly contrite. Their eyes locked for a long moment in the non-verbal communication that had been common during their marriage - but absent between them for a long while now.

"Me, too," Sam finally murmured, wrapping her arm around Lucy from the other side, turning the hug into a three-way embrace. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that it was Hope squeezed safely between them instead of Lucy. But wishful thinking wasn't going to find their daughter.

After a peaceful moment of silence had passed, Sam asked, "Did you guys find anything helpful?" turning their attention back to the task at hand.

Lucy shook her head as she pulled away. "The datapads in the bookbag are password-locked. Other than that, just a pair of smelly sneakers and a bunch of trash." She wrinkled her nose. "Boys are disgusting."

"'Boys are disgusting', says the pregnant girl," Jeff teased, pitching his voice higher in imitation of his niece. "Where was that attitude a few weeks ago?" There was no rebuke behind the dig, and Lucy and Sam both laughed. One thing Sam could say for her husband - he was great at using humor to dispel tension. Maybe not always appropriately - but reliably.

"Nothing in the kitchen, either," Jeff continued. "A box of cereal; some milk nearing the expiration date. It looks like our boy did a good job cleaning up behind himself...relatively speaking," he admitted, acknowledging the surrounding litter.

"I think we're done, then," Sam said, tucking the photo into her pocket for safekeeping. "Let's get the hell out of here."