The crash brought Vega into the medical room, or would have had the door not been locked. His orders were clear: Shepard was his responsibility. In fact, he didn't even think that hard about it. The door was locked. It shouldn't have been.

He kicked it open, heartrate spiking.

The door banged open as he took in the scene of chaos.

Medical implements lay on the floor, threatening to get under the feet of Shepard and the tech.

Shepard, down to bra, boots, and trousers, was locked in a grapple with the lab tech, her expression hard, eyes blazing. She was a lean whipcord of a woman, hard planes and muscle corded tight under her skin. The scars across her belly gleamed white in the examination room light. Thick gouges and valleys of scars ran across her shoulders, like someone had rubbed her into broken glass.

The tech looked at the noise of his entrance as Vega went for his sidearm. The motion seemed so slow—

Shepard did not bother looking. She didn't flinch, didn't even seem to register she had backup.

She merely took advantage of the tech's distraction, kneed him viciously in the groin caught him under the chin with her palm to snap his head back as he recoiled in pain, she grabbed his arm and broke his elbow with one practiced motion.

He flailed at her, but with the elbow broken, the syringe slipped out of his hand. Shepard grabbed his hair in one hand, a handful of shoulder in the other and slammed his face into her knee. Once. Twice. Three times, leaving it in a bloody ruin. A sharp twitch and an audible crack and the tech went limp.

Shepard dropped the body—obviously dead—retrieving the syringe with its clear contents.

It had happened in less time than it took for Vega to free his gun and acquire is target.

The light of the examination room played across the scars on her shoulders, casting them into sharp relief. Her skin shone with sweat and she shivered with adrenaline—but her hands were steady and her expression angry rather than scared. Although she breathed heavily, he was sure it was simply efficient intake of oxygen—she wasn't truly winded.

That was to be expected from an N, but he found himself having trouble wrapping his head around what he'd just seen—not the least because it shouldn't be possible for an assassin to get in here at all. She had taken the man out so easily, the movements stringing together like a choreographed fight scene for a movie. Hands training never looked quite like that; she knew exactly how hard to hit, knew to the centimeter where she needed to land a blow, and did it all with practiced effortlessness.

More than that, she'd been in control of the situation before he even got in there and had it over with before he could pull his pistol. All it took was a moment of distraction to give her the upper hand she would have had sooner or later.

And no kung-fu stuff.

He knew enough about punches, kicks, and knees to recognize that Shepard hit like a damn truck. Even he'd be feeling a beating like that—drop-kick aside.

She turned letting out a shaky breath that seemed to start the process of pushing all the amped-up energy and adrenaline out of her.

Her stomach was decorated with scars of another kind, these white, and showing up only as the lights played across the flesh.

She was a lean, hard specimen of humanity and, in that moment, was battle ready. Kill ready. Her eyes bored into him, bright above pink cheeks. It was a fragment of his original expectations looking at him: she was a tiger in a cage. However, he saw the cage for what it was: she caged the fiery soul within walls of flesh and sinew, a failsafe in case something ever let the tiger out.

Controlled, the tiger was a weapon. Uncontrolled, it was a blight. It was ferocity, but ferocity guided by a human mind. And this tiger was what was going to lead the fight against the Reapers.

A shiver went through Vega, a tightening of his throat, and something, some fragment of poetry he'd completely forgotten until that moment came back to him. Something about a tiger and nighttime forests.

Shepard shattered his reverie by speaking, her tone calm and casual if a little hard. Who wouldn't sound a little hard? Someone had just tried to kill her while she was in protective frikkin' custody. "We need to find out what that shit was." She found the cap for the syringe and put it back into place and handed it over to him. "Thank you Miranda…" Shepard breathed when Vega took the slender weapon from her.

Vega didn't ask who 'Miranda' was, but it was clear that the woman had given Shepard some advice. "Shepard, I—"

Shepard shook her head once, then ran a hand through her hair. "Response time is good. Nice work with the door, by the way." Although she'd cut him off, she sounded approving and not the least bit sarcastic.

Before Vega could formulate a response—in his head or in his mouth—Shepard smirked at him. "I didn't exactly call for help."

"How am I supposed to protect you if you don't?" he demanded, feeling mulishness replace that momentary…awe.

Shepard snorted. "Easy. You don't." She looked at the pistol. "What were you planning to do with that? Shoot through me?"

"Hell no!"

Shepard shook her head, but made no further comment. She simply walked over to the table where her shirt was and pulled it on, tucking it in as if nothing untoward had happened.

"Are you okay?" Vega asked, wishing he had something else to say. Anything else.

Shepard smirked at him. "I'm fine, Vega. Really. You gonna call security, now?"

Vega snorted. Security. Right.

How'd this creep get in?

-J-

Author's Note: A little on the predictable side, but I just couldn't see Cerberus not trying to contain the Shepard situation somehow.