AN: Sorry, it's going to be a long one, but there are just a couple of things I feel I need to say.

First, I'm not a neurologist, doctor, or psychologist. Everything I learned about the limbic system I learned from google. I don't know if there are any neurologists, doctors, or psychologists reading this story, but if you are, and my science fictioning doesn't actually make sense, then I apologize. I always thought that was the fun part of writing science fiction. Make it sound good and normal people will buy anything. No offence to normal people, I'm the same way.

Second, I don't speak/understand Chinese, Mandarin, or any other languages spoken on the Asian continent. (I used to know a little Russian, but aside from Hello I've mostly forgotten that, too.) Therefore, all my translations for the Chinese used in my story also come from google. To anyone who actually knows something of the language I first want to apologize for any wacky translations, and secondly, ask for any help you think I need in that area.

Third, I really STRUGGLED with this chapter, which is why it's sort of late. For the first part of the story, I chose to write it the way I did, because I felt these little glimpse were important for character stuff, if not totally plot relevant (although some of it is), but I didn't want to spend tons of time on it, which is why it's sort of tell not show. That is on purpose. I just sort of envisioned a long, panning camera shot, from person to person, narrated perhaps, by Joker, who is flipping through surveillance channels looking for something good to watch and giving a discourse on human nature to EDI. Not really, though, because Joker can't see into peoples thoughts and dreams. (Or can he?)

Disclaimer: I'm poor. I don't even own my car. I certainly don't own Mass Effect.

Chapter 13

It was a very long night for everyone.

Liara, who seldom slept at all anymore, who hadn't slept a night through since Thessia, had spent the night working with EDI, who never slept, for obvious reasons. Together they managed to infiltrate the rest of the security protected information in the Lazarus station's top secret archive files, which gave them a whole new list of names, places and security protocols which they then turned to using to reach deeper into the Cerberus information network.

When she met with Commander Shepard in the morning, the Shadow Broker would have another stack of files on their prisoner and his missions while under Cerberus. She also made a note to get ahold of Kahlee Sanders and interview her about her encounters with the Cerberus agent. Of all the people that had ever come up against Leng, less than a hand full had lived to tell about it, and since Admiral Anderson was a bit hard to pin down at the moment, his close associate Miss Sanders seemed the next best choice. It would also be a great opportunity for her to check in with the Crucible team and found out how things were going on that end with the Sanctuary Research.

She was glad for the work, glad to keep busy.

Kaidan, finally off duty, was sitting at the small bar in the port obs deck working on his newly cracked bottle of Peruvian Whiskey. He clinked his glass against the bottle in mock toast. When Shepard had given him the gift he'd thought, maybe, things weren't ruined between them, after all. He'd been so pissed about her and Cerberus back on Horizon. Pissed, and hurt that she was alive and she hadn't thought him important enough to get a hold of, to let him know she was alive.

Afterwards he'd gone to Anderson to demand answers, but what he'd been told just made him angrier, this time with himself. And with Cerberus and the Alliance and the Council. He'd just been mad at life and the universe for a while.

When she turned herself in after Aratoht he'd been too angry and afraid to go see her. He'd done what he could behind the scenes to help her case with the tribunal, making sworn statements about the Reapers and vouching for her character, but he knew it wasn't enough.

After the Reapers hit Earth his emotions had been in such an uproar, he'd acted like such an idiot on Mars. Thinking back now, it seemed like his injuries there were a mixed blessing. It gave him time to think, time to consider what was really important to him. He'd thought, he'd hoped, that it had been the same with Shepard.

When she'd come to see him he'd seen the worry in her eyes. She thought she was so good at hiding her emotions, but he could see them. He used to be able to read her like a book.

During the Cerberus attack on the Citidel, he'd been startled to find Shepard there, and pointing a gun at him. Again, he'd felt that flicker of doubt. It had all seemed too coincidental, but after he'd had a second to think, to see the pleading desperation in Shepard's eyes he'd known he had to make the choice. Did he trust Shepard? Turned out, he did. He'd turned his gun on Udina and hadn't regretted it for second.

He knew things were a mess between them, he did, but he'd felt a ray of hope when she'd invited him back aboard. His heart had been beating so hard when she'd reached out a hand to him, and he'd hoped that had been some kind of symbol. She'd invited him back on her ship. He'd half believed it was also an invitation back into her life as well.

The thing he'd realized, staring down the barrel of his gun into her eyes, that there wasn't anything more important to him then she was. He would have tossed aside honor, and duty, even loyalty for her, had she asked. Of course she hadn't asked. She would never ask him to do that. It was part of why he loved her so much. She understood the things that made him tick. She forgave him for being a self-righteous ass. He thought she had, anyway.

That was before she'd yelled at him, earlier.

When he'd finally worked up the guts to ask about "them" she'd told him she needed time to think. He thought he'd understood that. They were, after all, at war. There were more important things then the two of them to consider. He'd backed off, given her space and worked on winning this war. He'd waited, and waited, and she'd just pushed him farther away. He had started wondering if one of them would be dead before he could tell her he loved her. Then she'd been shot.

Holding her in his arms with her blood smeared across his chest had just brought it all back. Those two years when he'd thought her dead, all the pain and the loss. It had been everything in him to keep it together to get her back to the ship.

He had, and Dr. Chakwas had said she would be fine.

Apparently, the doctor had been right.

Chakwas had called him just as he was getting back to the ship. He'd worked all through that night, knowing he wouldn't be able to sleep until he knew Shepard was up and around. He'd been on his way to med-bay anyway, but Karin had informed him that Shepard wasn't there any longer.

He'd found her in her quarters getting dressed for duty.

"What the hell do you think you are doing, Raina? You should be in bed. Better yet, you should still be down in med bay." He'd tried to keep the frustration and worry out of his voice. He'd failed.

"I appreciate your concern, Kaidan, but I'm fine. Dr. Chakwas says my wound is healed enough to be back to work, provided I take it easy on the heavy lifting. I have a lot to do, and I can't afford to stay in bed when I'm fine." She'd been working on the last of the snaps and buttons when she'd called for him to enter, and now she sat down and began pulling on her boots.

He'd knelt in front of her and told her she wasn't fine, that he'd been watching her cough up blood not ten hours earlier and it wasn't safe for her to push herself.

She'd pulled her hands away when he tried to grab them and refused to look him in the eye.

She'd insisted she was fine, that he could check with Chakwas if he didn't believe her.

He'd said it wasn't a matter of believing her, but that he knew she would require things of herself that she'd never ask of anyone else.

She told him to mind his own business.

He'd told her to quit being such a stubborn, hypocritical idiot.

She'd pulled rank and told him to leave.

Needless to say it hadn't gone well, and he'd spent the rest of the day in a pain filled haze, trying to forget that look and focus on the work. He had made a mess of things, while trying to get his emotions under control. He'd yelled at three people, including Tali, who didn't deserve it.

He tossed back his head and down the rest of his whiskey, then reached to pour himself another glass. The worst thing had been her eyes. He'd expected anger, or irritation, he'd even have taken that burning rage that said she was about to pull her gun and blast him to hell. At least then he'd know she felt something for him.

Her eyes had been completely empty.

Major Kaidan Alenko put his glass to his lips and drank deeply, the burning as the whiskey whispered down his throat was a heavenly pleasure compared to the fire in his chest, the one burning where his heart used to be.

Lieutenant Vega was back on duty guarding the Cerberus Prisoner. He didn't really mind guard duty, except for the fact that it was infinitely boring, and he much rather be cleaning his armor or modding his shotgun. Or working out. Or sleeping. Ah hell, who was he trying to kid? He hated guard duty, but he tried to look on the bright side. At least Shepard trusted him to keep el bastardo peligroso under wraps.

He was just thought they'd be better off if they'd space the guy pronto and get back to fighting the reapers.

Even he could tell Shepard was different since they brought caught the cabrón on Horizon. She was distracted, somehow, more intense, sure but there was something else. She just seemed more… well he wasn't sure what, but it bothered him. She'd been shot in the back by a downed mech. That was a rookie mistake, one he'd never have believed her capable of if he hadn't seen it for himself, hadn't watched the doc pull the slug out of her back personally.

That had been right before he'd caught the prisoner with his filthy, murdering eyes all over the Commander's exposed chest. Even now he wanted to wring the guy's neck and beat his face into his own toilet. That puta madre did not get to look at the Commander that way. Not ever.

James glared evilly through the reinforced plexi-glass window that ran the length of the door to the make shift cell. He thought it was pretty lucky for Leng that he was asleep.

There was a scuffle from the ceiling overhead, and thump, and then a muffled curse. Vega tensed and reached for his side arm. Before he got his pistol off his hip, he recognized the soft, high pitched voice.

"Sparks, is that you?" Vega called, looking up with an amused half smile, though his hand was still on his gun.

"James?" The question was followed by quiet knocking just to his left.

"Yeah, that's me," Vega replied walking over and knocking back. "What are you doing in there?" He assumed she was in the vents, since she sounded like she was crawling around.

Just then Garrus came around the corner at the end of the corridor. He trotted up to Vega and said, "Have you seen, well, heard Tali? I'm supposed to be guiding her to that storage room over there."

Tali's voice from above sounded distinctly irritated. "Vakarian! Where have you been? I've been wandering around lost up here for twenty minutes!"

Garrus winced. "Sorry, Tali, these passages don't really follow the vents; I had to make my way around several of the larger labs that were locked down for the night." He glanced at Vega and whispered, "And I may have stumbled on the armory and been…distracted for a moment or two."

"I heard that," Tali growled in her mild, quarian way. "Well, am I getting close? These schematics I got from EDI are totally inaccurate."

"Yeah, you're right outside Lieutenant Bastard Leng's cell now. You'll want to patch in the cable from there and then the new interrogation room is the next room to the left. My left. Over here," he jogged quickly down the hall and knocked loudly on the ceiling in front of the next door down. "Can you get here from where you are?"

"Just give me a second," Tali muttered grumpily. She continued to mumble to herself and Vega followed her low murmuring across the hall and then down to where Garrus had knocked.

"…Militant turian nerd… coulda ripped… half the night on my stomach… Bosh'tet Alenko…no appreciation…"

Vega's grin went ear to ear as he listened to her tirade, catching just enough to amuse the hell out him. Garrus grinned back, until, a few seconds later he snapped his fingers (Vega didn't know turians could do that) and started back down the hall. "Can you watch out for her for a minute?"

"Sure," James laughed and whispered wryly, "No problem, what's one more person to babysit."

"Are you calling me a baby?" Tali's voice was part curious, part annoyed.

"Wouldn't dream of it, babe," Vega called back, his grin still playful.

"Ridiculous human idioms, my translator must be malfunctioning again," Tali said, her words punctuated by some more thumping and another, louder sound, like drilling. That continued for another ten minutes, with Tali moving away, into the storage room, or rather above it, for several minutes and then moving back to the hallway.

There was more knocking from above, and then one of the square panels from above began to be outlined in bright light, the burr of a cutting torch echoing softly in the small spaces above and below. Just as Garrus reappeared, a collapsible ladder clenched in one fist, there was a soft sucking noise and the panel rose up and sideways, revealing a black hole, from which Tali's masked and hooded head shortly poked out.

Garrus moved to just beneath the opening and set up the ladder, which unfolded in a jerky extension of runners and rungs.

"About time," Tali grumbled grumpily.

Garrus rolled his eyes at Vega and held the ladder steady with one hand.

As the young quarian woman turned and began climbing down, though, Garrus' eyes were drawn to the slender curve of her calf, up over her knees, thighs, and finally to one of the most shapely posteriors and supportive waists, turian or not, that he'd ever seen. He'd seen them all before, of course, many times, but as they lowered from above, right in front of his face, Garrus found himself really noticing them for the first time.

Perhaps there was a way to take Shepard's advice, after all, he thought with only the smallest quiver of his mandibles.

Vega watched Tali with no less appreciation, but with far less intention. Then, as Tali replaced the panel above and began welding it back into place, Vega sighed and moved back into his position across from Leng's door. Distraction time was over.

James looked in the window again to make sure the prisoner was still there, asleep on his bunk. He was. The lieutenant thought that, with all the racket from above, it was incredibly lucky for Leng he'd been able to sleep through it.

As it turned out, Leng wasn't asleep, and he was grateful for the fact, too. Every time he drifted off, his dreams rolled in, filled with lustful images and pleasant sensations, all focused around one woman. That, in itself wasn't the issue. It was who that woman was that was driving him to frustration and contempt for his own subconscious.

Leng did not need his head filled with Commander Raina Shepard, especially if his mind insisted on her being naked and doing… all sorts of things to his dreaming self.

She was already a distracting figure, and a challenge to his skills. She was already everything that his boss had tried to make him.

All his training, his missions, even his cybernetic enhancements were an attempt at the illusive man to replace the asset that he had lost when Shepard betrayed Cerberus and turned her back on them. Leng was not unaware that the Illusive Man, though sure of his skill and competency, didn't think him an equal match for Shepard. It was something Leng was determined to prove him wrong about, though the Illusive Man had constantly held him back from their actual confrontation.

He wanted to take Shepard on, one on one, and show the Illusive Man that he was better than Shepard, in more ways than just his loyalty and dedication, that he was better in every way that that Alliance-loving traitor.

He'd pictured the battle hundreds, if not thousands of times, imagining just how he would best her, bending he to his superior will and strength and breaking her spirit before he broke her body.

Now, though, whenever he pictured facing her one on one, it wasn't violence that he gave her with his hands. He still wanted to bend her to his will, sure, but now the visions in his head were of tearing clothing and hungry mouths. He wanted her beneath him, her skin against his, her legs around him and her arms clutching him with desperation. Not in fear, but in pleasure. He could see her submission, not to his superior skill, but to his demanding needs, the need to be inside her, pushed deep and…

Leng pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and growled softly.

There was something wrong with him.

This was not how he was wired.

Shepard had done something to him, the hazel-eyed witch.

He needed to find out what, and fix it. Then he would make her pay, Reapers or no.

Shepard, too, was tormented by dreams, though hers were of a distinctly less pleasurable quality. She was surrounded by dark, oily shapes, and dead ashy trees. She had had this dream may times, and so began searching out the fleeting form of the boy.

Instead, she came face to face with Thane. His large, dark eyes were blank, staring past her, as if not seeing her. Shepard reached for him, her arms extended, but when her fingers ran over his chest and up to his shoulders then left long, searing streaks on his scales that began eating away at him like acid, striping the flesh away in seconds.

Thane's eyes focused on her in an instant and he began to scream in pain, the sound a horrid, tearing shriek that was so alien it was more like the sound of ripping metal then something that should be coming from the throat of her lover.

She wrenched away from him, but it was too late. The melting strips quickly spread, the layers of tissue bubbling and churning in what had to be an agonizing fashion. She wanted to reach out, to stop the pain and the hurt and to comfort him, but he pulled away from her, his cries growing louder, until she had to clutch her ears in an attempt to block out the shattering sound.

She watched, in horror, as Thane was jerked away, pulled by unseen forces, up into the smoking canopy above and away. His face a mask of pain and horror, not the peaceful expression she remembered. She fell to her knees and began to cry.

Soft soothing sounds brushed aside her hair over her ear and she felt gentle hands on her back, rubbing her shoulders comfortingly.

Shepard turned to see her mother, kneeling beside her, concern creasing her brow.

"Raina, my sweet Rainy, what's wrong?" Her mother continued to look loving and worried and Shepard collapsed into her arms, sobbing as she told her mom about Thane. About how he had been there when her whole world had been sent spinning, a solid, comforting force for calm and reason. She told her mother how she had felt a strong connection to him because of his illness and his acceptance of death, because she had been dead herself and was not afraid to face death again. He understood what it was like to feel distant from the rest of life as it swirled colorful and vivacious around them, and yet not be part of it.

Raina explained how he had been pulled back to himself by her, and his amazement of her skills and her intelligence and her grace, and how they had fallen in love, in that soft, peaceful gray place between life and death.

When she was finished telling her mother about Thane, she wiped her nose on her wrist, just as she had done as a small child and looked up into her Mother's oh-so-wise eyes. They were hazel, much like her own, but with more rich browns and copper flecks mixed into a slightly darker green. She searched those eyes and asked what she longed to know.

"Was I wrong, mom? Was it wrong to love Thane?" She had never thought so, had never even paused to wonder about such a thing, until Leng had spit his venomous accusations in her face.

Her mother ran a hand down her hair to the side of her face in one comforting motion. "Oh, no, my love, no. Love is never wrong, or evil. I'm so glad you had someone in your life who could bring you comfort, when I could not be there."

Commander Shepard sighed in relief and hugged her mother tightly.

Hannah Shepard patted her daughters back softly and whispered in a low voice. "Love isn't your sin, Rainy. Hate is. Hate and murder. Those are your sins."

Raina sat back as if she'd been slapped. "What?"

Her mother let go of her and stood, stepping back until she was standing next to Shepard's father, who placed a loving arm over her shoulders and looked at Raina sadly. "It is wrong to hate, Raina. You know that, and it is wrong to kill. Don't you remember the things we taught you?" Her father's voice was filled with sorrow and disappointment. His light green eyes, soft behind his glasses, and framed by his dark hair, speckled with grey, were not accusing, but Shepard felt the accusation all the same.

"But I only kill to help save others. I'm trying to help. I'm trying to save the galaxy!" Desperation and despair both, painted her voice.

Hannah shook her head, her dark blond hair moving around her face like phantom seaweed. "That used to be true, Rainy, but now, you have so much hate. How can you say you aren't a murderer when you hate those you kill. You want them dead, do you not?"

Shepard shook her head and bowed it, fresh tears stinging her eyes. "It's not like that, it's not! I'm not!"

When she looked up again, her parents still stood there, silent and grave. Around them, other figures resolved from the inky shadows.

Wrex

Ashley

Zaeed

Samara

Thane

Kirrahe

Miranda

Some had eyes filled with pity, others with rage and disdain. Behind them, there was a wave of figures, all of them looking at her in accusation, two sets of angry red eyes burning from each face.

Batarians.

So many she had killed.

So many more yet, who would still die because of her and her choices.

She looked back at her parents, pleading with her eyes and she took a crawling step towards them.

"No, please, I don't want to be a killer. I don't want to do this anymore, please, just take me with you."

"You can't come with us," her father whispered. "You can't die."

"Because I'm needed," Shepard said with resentful fury, spitting the words she had already told herself many times.

"No." The voice that answered was cold, and not her father's or her mothers. She watched as her parents, the dead faces of her crew, and all of the batarian civilians melted away into the black, sticky, dripping shadows. This new voice was filled with alien certainty, and seemed to emanate from the very darkness around her.

"You can't die, because you're already dead."

Shepard opened her eyes, gasping deeply as she sat up straight in bed. She raised her hands to her face, feeling tears on her checks, she knew she had been crying in her sleep. That wasn't something she'd done since she'd been a teenager. She wiped her face dry and pushed back her hair.

After several calming breaths she rose from bed and began preparing for her day. She didn't care how early it was. She was done with sleep.

She showered, dressed and was down in the mess in less than fifteen minutes. Through it all, her dream stayed with her, though she tried desperately to think of other things.

She had no appetite, but managed to choke down a quick breakfast of instant oatmeal and orange juice from concentrate, not tasting a thing. Afterwards, she checked her messages from the CIC, and browsed reports of the work completed on the Lazarus station.

It seemed all her people had been working overtime to get the holding facilities ready for their prisoner. Tali had completed installation of the shielding device that would keep the Reapers from broadcasting their indoctrination signal to anyone, especially Leng, aboard the station. She had also spent several hours installing transmitters in all the rooms Leng would have access to that would help reinforce the dampening signal on his implants. His cell, the showers he would be using, the medical lab and the interrogation room were all wired to keep Leng from his full strength.

It was all they could do, for now. Chakwas had sent over two of her support staff to help with the medical lab, incase Leng needed any further medical treatment. This was supposed to be because Karin worried about further side effects from the injection he'd received, but Shepard was thinking it might be a good if she got carried away today, which she might if she wasn't able to get her emotions under control.

Luckily, she had some time. She still had a call to make.

When he got tired of lying there, trying not to sleep, Leng got up and started doing pushups. He found, as long as he focused on working his muscles, and didn't push things to the point where his cybernetics would kick in he didn't get that draining, exhausted feeling.

Try as he might to focus on the physical aspects of his work out, he kept seeing visions of Shepard beneath him, naked as he lowered his body towards the floor.

So, he rolled onto his back and did sit ups. This became increasingly uncomfortable because of his rock hard erection. He growled in frustration and sat up, turning his back to the window. He tried mediation.

Eventually, he had some success. It took every trick he'd ever learned, but, eventually, he regained control of his mind and his body.

With that done, he stood, dusted off his suit, and walked to the door. The tank with the Mohawk was standing against the opposite wall, watching him with narrowed eyes.

"I want to see Dr. Chakwas. Now," Leng said through the door.

"Mrs. Tung, I'm Commander Shepard of the SSV Normandy," Shepard said with her most professional smile. The woman she saw on the Vid screen on her personal terminal was probably in her late forties with shiny, shoulder length, dark hair and dark eyes with a pronounced epicanthic fold. Her round face gave her a very kind, pleasant look.

"Yes, Commander, I know who you are." The voice was firm and somewhat cold, with only the slightest of accents.

Shepard nodded and let her smile fade. "I appreciate your getting in touch with Dr. T'Soni regarding your nephew. This can't be easy for you, I'm sure, but any information you can give us on him will very helpful…"

Mrs. Tung cut her off then. "I don't see how digging up my nephew's past is going to help the Alliance in the war with the Reapers, Commander."

'At least she's direct' Shepard thought as she decided how much to tell the woman about Leng's recent activities.

"How much do you know about Kai Leng?" She decided to start by finding out how much she already knew.

The woman frowned slightly and shook her head. "That name means nothing to me. The man who's picture was circulating the colony, is Lóng Dāi, my sister's boy. I haven't seen him since he was fifteen, but I'm sure it's him. He ran away from home after my sister… after they had an altercation, and none of my family has seen him since. That was almost fifteen years ago. We thought he was either dead, or living on the streets somewhere."

"Have you heard of Cerberus?" Shepard asked after considering what Mrs. Tung had said.

The woman's eyes widened slightly and she took a deep breath. She then bowed her head slowly and seemed to be praying, her eyes closed and her expression schooled into blankness.

Shepard waited for a moment before saying, "Mrs. Tung?"

The woman sighed and raised her head once again to meet Shepard's eyes. "Sorry, Commander. This Cerberus is a terrorist group, yes? And I suppose my poor nephew has gotten himself tangled up with them, has he?" Shepard didn't give any sign of acknowledgment, but the woman nodded all the same as she continued. "I am saddened by this news, but not all that surprised. My sister, his mother, was a woman filled with much hatred. I had hoped the boy had escaped her poisonous influence, but when his step-father was killed… well, it does not surprise me at all."

Shepard looked into the woman's eyes and saw real sorrow. She should not have been taken back by this, but somehow, she had not expected it from this rather brisk woman. She softened her own face and voice before continuing.

"He used fraudulent documents to enlist in the Alliance when he was 16. He was honored with the Medal of Valor and received ICA training. He was an N7 after only four years of service, which is impressive, especially considering his youth. Shortly after that, however he was… in an altercation with a Krogan. The Krogan ended up dead and Kai… uh, your nephew was sentenced to prison. He was recruited there by Cerberus who managed to free him from prison and he's been working for them ever since." Shepard paused. So far everything she'd told her was basically public knowledge. After a moment's pause, she continued. "My crew and I managed to capture him alive. Cerberus has been hampering the Alliance's war effort and I need information on him to help put a stop to Cerberus."

Mrs. Tung nodded, looking at something beyond the camera on her side. "I do not like to speak ill of family, but I understand this is important. I'll tell you what I can. What do you want to know?"

Shepard didn't think requesting a list of personal weaknesses would go over very well. Instead she said, "I need to know about his past, his childhood, I guess, as far as you know. I'm trying to figure out where his anti-alien tendencies came from, and why he has sided so strongly with Cerberus. I need to know why he is the way he is, and why he does what he does. Can you help me with that?

"I suppose I can answer a few of those questions for you, though I was not as close to the boy as you may think." She sat back, conscientiously straightening the hem of her shirt, laying it flat against the fabric of her trousers. "In order to understand who Dāi is, you must first know about his mother. My sister is, or was, a rather… unpleasant woman. She was pretty, but arrogant and outspoken, and very selfish. She was my parent's youngest child and rather spoiled. They treated her much like a princess, and she often acted like one."

As it turned out, young Hai, Leng's mother, had turned her nose up at the wrong group of young men. Min didn't know the entire story, but she'd seen her sister after they'd finished with her. Nine months later a still teenage Hai had born a son. She had not wanted the child, and only the admonitions of her parents had kept her from either having an abortion or giving the baby up for adoption. She'd consented to keep him, given her parents would take over raising him.

Hai had named the boy Dāi, in protest of her parent's insistence that, given time, she would come to care for him. Little had changed for Hai, except for her deep and abiding anger at all men, and a hardening, bitter hatred inside her that turned her from an ungrateful, conceited girl into a jaded and cruel woman.

Several weeks before Dāi's third birthday, his grandparents had been killed in a hover car accident.

"I tried to help her as much as I could, but by then I was married and pregnant with my first child. My husband refused to allow me to invite her to move in with us, since they didn't get along." Mrs. Tung's wry twitch of lips was harsh, but brief, showing only the smallest flash of teeth. "If we had at least taken in the boy, things would have been different, but, we had little enough money for ourselves."

Hai and her son had struggled on as long as possible, with what little was left from her parent's death, but their lives had been poor and very difficult. The few times she'd been able to visit her sister and the boy, Min had found young Dāi to be smart, but very reserved. He was well behaved, and hardly spoke, and his mother's eyes had burned with hatred whenever she bothered to notice him. Mrs. Tung had also noticed the boy often had bruises or small injuries, though she never actually saw her sister beat the boy, she was certain she had.

"My first husband and I divorced in '66 and when I remarried a year later my new husband, Mr. Tung allowed me to invite them to move in with us." This seemed to brighten her face slightly, lightening the heavy confession.

A few months later Min had met Leng Wu. Somehow the man had convinced Hai to let him court her, and a few months after that they were married.

"Wu was good to my sister and to Dāi. He paid attention to him and did things with him. I believe he also put pressure on Hai to be kinder to him and refused to let her abuse Dāi." Mrs. Tung smiled then. "We had tried to show the boy kindness, and bring him out of his shell. He was still very smart and very quiet, but he was also very distant, as if he didn't know how to respond to kindness or love. My husband tried to befriend him, but at the age of twelve, what he needed was a father. Wu was that and more. He took the boy under his wing, pushed him to do well in school. He even began training him in martial arts." Her smile faded at this. "Leng Wu was good for my sister and her boy, but he was not a good man. He told us he was a business man, but he was Triad at least, and probably worse."

Apparently, when Leng was fifteen, his father had been killed by a Turian Bounty Hunter. Tung Min was not sure what he'd done to piss off whoever had put the bounty on his head, but had surely involved drugs or weapons or slaves.

Hai had been inconsolable. Despite her mistrust of men, Wu had managed to make himself a necessary element in her life. Whether she actually loved him, or him her, remained to be see, but love or not she had always tried to please him and get his attention. She had always been jealous of the time Wu spent with her son, but had allowed it because it was what her husband wanted and he was a man that always got what he wanted.

So, in addition to mourning the loss of his step-father, Dāi had also had the renewed, as well as intensified, animosity of his mother and her grief to deal with. They might have gone back to the way things had been before Leng Wu entered their life, except for one thing. Dāi had changed.

The three years he'd spent with Wu had been a revelation. He was no longer the cowed boy he had been. He was a much stronger, much more confident, and much more formidable person. He had become a young man.

The next time his mother hit him, he hit back. She had screamed and made such a commotion that the neighbors had called the law enforcement.

"When the officers arrived they found my sister, unconscious, with a bloody knife clutched in her hand, and my nephew was gone. Hai said he'd attacked her and she had defended himself. She spent some time in the hospital, but overall her injuries weren't very bad. With Dāi gone, though… she had no one to take care of her. My husband and I were getting ready to migrate here to Xīnshēng, and she wouldn't come with us. She was so afraid of space and aliens." Min shook her head sadly and looked at her hands, which were folded neatly in her lap. "She'd always been fond of her drink, but after that… well, I heard she passed away a few years later. And we never heard from Dāi again." She raised her hands as if to say, 'and that's all there is'.

Sitting quietly in front of her terminal, Shepard had listened raptly, taking in every detail. It wasn't a very long story, but it was a sad one. Now that she had names and dates and places, she could have Liara find out more, but she did have one question for Tung Min.

"Did your nephew know what his step-father did? Did he know what he was involved it, do you think?"

Min shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know, but he could have. I think Wu was trying to groom Dāi to be the heir to his illegal empire. I suppose you could ask him."

Shepard felt her face tilt in a half smile. "I'll do that."

AN: I know I said I'd get to the next interview, but this chapter was just so long already, and I don't want to rush that. Next time, I promise. As always please let me know what you think! I live for feedback!