Three turians, three humans, and a batarian in front of her. Two more batarians at her rear. The human and the batarian that had assaulted her in the bathroom last week were standing in the group at the front. Now that their friends had shown up, they didn't look quite so terrified. It was funny how they thought the numbers mattered to her.

"You," she said, pointing at the human. She turned her finger to the batarian. "And you. I'm going to rip you apart so fast you'll be able to see your fucking insides on the floor beside you before you die. I suggest the rest of you limp-dicked little pussies get the fuck out of my way before I decide that you've all pissed me off."

"You're outnumbered, Zero," the batarian said with a scoff.

Jack's jaw worked, her lip twitched at the name. She didn't think she could hate the petty excuse for a man standing in front of her any more than she had, but he'd managed to surprise her. The fingers on each hand spread as she was consumed in a glorious blue haze the spread from her core.

"I'll throw you like a toy!" she screamed.

The guards all raised their guns to fire, despite the warden's specific instructions two days ago to keep Subject Zero alive. Bullets ricocheted off the barrier Jack had thrown up and she yelled as she pushed the field out in a violent wave, toppling over the guards around her. Before they could do anything more than fall over, Jack reached out, the warm, crackling glow of the mass effect field filling her, and she plucked the batarian up from the floor. She smiled viciously before slamming him to the floor. He landed against the metal tiles with a sickening crunch and lay still in a pool of his own blood.

Jack turned her attention to the human. He caught her eye and shook his head, terror making him tremble from head to toe. He moved to pick up his gun and Jack let a shockwave fly loose from the tips of her fingers. Her blood sang, her skin tingled, she felt the rush of power surge through her bones as a line of destruction ripped through the floor towards the second guard. He cried out as the biotic blast tore his limbs from his body, rents opening through his armor and down to the muscle and bone inside.

The rest of the guards were getting up now, but they were too late. Jack let another blast flow wide around her, toppling those who were just getting to their feet before she plucked one guard after another from the floor before tossing them aside over the banister, into the wall, across the walkway. More guards were coming, but she didn't care. She was alive and on fire, rage burning a hole through her center. Her chest was heaving, her blood pounding in her ears.

Then suddenly she was enveloped by in a shimmering bubble. Not her own blue fury, but from a generator. Jack turned to see the warden striding towards her confidently, his omni-tool glowing. Jack grit her teeth before yelling.

"I'll fucking skin you alive!" she screamed.

Kuril paid little mind. "I specifically instructed that Zero was to be kept alive. Clean this mess up before I put a bullet in the rest of you. Do you know what you almost cost me?"

Jack yelled again, wordless rage and she tried, despite knowing that it was impossible, to call up her biotics within the generator. The blue haze coursed sluggishly through her veins, it flickered once, again, and then slowly held, growing stronger by the second. Jack frantically pulled at the air with her fingers. The guards stepped back, raising their guns panicked as she pulled chunks of the barrier out of the air by sheer force of will. At first she managed only to make small pockets, but her movements became frenzied and bolder with each second. The barrier flickered. Jack screamed. And then the warden jabbed something into her neck and she collapsed to the floor.

Jack tried to roll her eyes up to Kuril's face, but couldn't. She couldn't so much as twitch a finger. Her biotics had retreated and left her cold and empty. The warden bent to look her, his face unmoved and complacent.

"You're almost more trouble than you're worth, Jack," he said to her as two guards came and picked her up between them. "But, as it turns out, you're worth quite a lot. Lucky for you. Take her to cryo."

Jack tried to scream, to cry out, to flare up. But whatever Kuril had injected into her bloodstream had paralyzed her every muscle. She could feel panic rising, darkness closing in. She couldn't kick or curse. She couldn't fight back. She couldn't defend herself. What was she without her biotics? Nothing. Just a skinny, soft girl who still had to remind herself to not cry herself to sleep at night.

The guards clamped restraints across her stomach, her wrists, her neck. She could feel the cold through the metal. She focused on trying to open her mouth as fear pounded darkly in her temples.

"No," she almost managed to whisper.

And then there was a painful blast of icy air from below and darkness.

...

Six months.

That's how long it had been since the last time he had felt at ease. Not filled with frustration or rage or bitterness. That's how long Shepard had been dead.

Garrus hadn't noticed back then how much he had come to depend on her, how much she had managed to temper him. He had felt a sense of purpose when he worked with Shepard. What they had done had mattered and in the end, that's what he had always wanted. When she had died, the sense of fulfilment and purpose had died too.

It wasn't as if he didn't try. After her funeral, Garrus had gone back to the Citadel and rejoined C-Sec. He had sat at his old desk and for the two weeks, he managed to forget what it had been like there. He had pushed away the memories of fruitless effort and red tape. Then the reports started coming in about how the geth threat was over. Sovereign and his forces had been defeated.

The worst part was that everyone, everyone, ate it up with a spoon. "The battle is over," he'd hear while walking down the streets. "We won. We're safe."

Garrus clicked his teeth. Safe. He scoffed at the word. They were no safer than they had been three months before. But the thought of danger was swept under the rug along with the Reaper threat and Shepard. Everything they had accomplished, everything they had done was being hidden away and forgotten.

It was the new promotional vids for the rebuilding project that started running throughout the Citadel that really got to him in the end. "A better Citadel for a better, brighter future." It made his blood boil. When that coupled with the fact that the Executor allowed yet another red sand dealer slip right through his fingers, Garrus had finally snapped. Before he was even fully aware of what he was doing, he was standing before Pallin resigning and then he was on ship to Omega after following the leads he'd picked up. If he wasn't able to bring this piece of scum down through C-Sec then he would bring him down on his own.

He had stood at the exit of the docking bay where his ship had dropped him off, nothing but a duffle bag strapped over his shoulder. Inside the duffle was what little money he had to his name, a random assortment of clothing he'd grabbed in his anger, spare ammo clips, and his guns. He could hear the hiss and clank of old pipe works, the air swirled thickly around him, heavy with sweat and fear and burning metal.

The truth was he hadn't known where to begin now that he was here. His burning anger had brought him to this point and it had started to fade. He eaten when he got hungry, made a couple of inquires about the red sand dealer, managed to find out about a place to sleep that night. Then he'd heard the terrified sobs coming from an alley and he'd stumbled upon a vorcha holding up an elderly couple. His gut took over once more and before long he was watching as the vorcha scuttled away, bleeding and terrified, and the human couple was hanging on his arm and thanking him, calling him an angel. Once again, Garrus found his purpose. He settled into a room for rent located on a street you had to work to find. It took him two weeks before he pinned down the drug dealer.

Now here he stood, his pistol held to the red sand dealer's temple as the man pleaded for his life. He was shaking, his eyes wide and full of fear. His nose was red and bleeding and Garrus knew he was high. Moments ago he had been violent and dangerous, but now he was nothing more than a trembling pool of filth at Garrus's feet.

"Please," he sobbed, mucus and blood dribbling over his quivering chin. "I-I-I-I'll stop! I'll give it all up and get out of the game. Just please, don't kill me. I'll stop! I'll stop!"

"How many people died because of you?" Garrus asked, his jaw clenched hard. "Huh? How many lives have you ruined?"

"I just wanted to make some money! Please, please, I'll stop!"

"You won't."

"I swear! I swear I'll stop! I swear!"

The man had feeble, pale hands raised to half shield his face. His eyes were watery and bloodshot, the whites yellowed with the taint of the drug and the irises jumpy. He was sweating, his skin covered in a greasy sheen of filth and fear. There were bloodstains on his clothes, days old, and Garrus wondered if it was his own or someone else's. His pants were soiled and stiff with grime. He licked the blood off his lips nervously, still murmuring promises to stop his drug dealing and killing and raping.

Garrus knew he should've felt pity for him, for the trembling, destroyed creature sitting at the other end of his gun, but he felt nothing but revulsion and hatred. Shepard would've been able to talk him down, to convince him that turning him in and letting the system work was the best thing he could do. But Shepard wasn't with him to tell him any of that. She hadn't been with him for a long time, too long a time, and she wouldn't ever be with him again.

He pulled the trigger.

…

Miranda had been called a lot of things: "shallow princess", "plastic whore", "conceited", "arrogant twat", "stuck-up", "egotistical megalomaniac", "uptight skank", even one time - probably the most creative one she'd ever heard - "cock-sucking, anal-fisting, tramped-up, cunt-licking bag of tits and ass". She'd been impressed at that last one. Not impressed enough to hesitate on pulling the trigger on the colorful asari commando, but impressed nonetheless.

But the name she was called the most, by far, was "bitch". It was far from creative, overused and underwhelming, but she thought that people liked it the most because it rang the truest. They whispered it and screamed it. It came out all at once in a moment of rage and hissed through clenched teeth. It could be impersonal or filled with all-consuming hatred.

Wilson liked to mutter it sourly under his breath when he thought she was out of listening range.

Miranda didn't care. If she flew off the handle every time some idiot with a bruised ego called her a bitch or an ice queen, she would've killed seventy-five percent of the people she came in contact with. And unfortunately, she still needed Wilson to complete the Lazarus Project.

With a sigh she glanced over at the medtable again where the mass of tubes and lumps of meat that was supposed to be Commander Shepard was. The assignment was difficult and expensive and there had been more than one time where nothing but Miranda's sheer will and stubborn refusal to fail had been the only thing that had pushed the project along. Wilson was in the corner, monitoring the regrowth of Shepard's muscle tissue. He was doing it carefully now that Miranda had snapped him into attention with a cold rebuke on how, as talented as he was, he could be replaced if he wasn't fully invested in his work. Wilson had glowered and tried to lob a messy response to save what was left of his dignity before watching her walk away and muttering an angry, "Bitch," under his breath. Miranda ignored him. As long as he got his work done, she didn't really care if he called her childish names.

She stepped back to her own work, piecing together Shepard's extensive file. When the commander did wake up, she would have to run memory drills to make sure the experiment was a success. She read over the basic background information again.

Shepard, Jane. Born April 11th, 2154 on Mindoir. Orphaned at the age of 16 during a slave raid on the colony. Joined the Alliance two years after. Awarded a Star of Terra and was called "Hero of Elysium" after remarkable actions during the Skyllian Blitz.

Miranda read the name again before looking at the picture in the file. Jane. She'd never have imagined her having such a simple name. It wasn't that it was completely wrong, but the fact that it was never used seemed natural.

Shepard's file, which Miranda had been carefully compiling for the past nine months, listed off achievement after achievement. There were scores of near-death experiences and seemingly impossible feats accomplished. She was an impressive specimen, to be certain, but four billion credits in and Miranda wasn't sure one woman was worth it. She rolled her neck and got back to her work.

It wasn't her job to decide how much Shepard was worth, it was her job to make sure Shepard was put back together.