After picking up Nihlus from the station, they headed to her apartment. Ashley was still driving, while poor Nihlus just looked worn down, sitting in the passenger seat. He reminded her of Alenko.

"So what did he want?"

Nihlus just shook his head with a big sigh, replying, "Stuff."

"Don't want to talk about it?"

"It's complicated." He said with another exhausted sigh.

Deafening silence crept into the small space. But it only lasted four minutes tops.

"You like c'neittas?" She suddenly asked.

Nihlus didn't respond.

"Of course you do, you're a turian. Let's get something to eat. I know a great, multi-species restaurant just a little ways north from where I stay."

"You asking me out?" Nihlus then chimed with intrigue. His sub-harmonics rolled but she couldn't hear them. And he was glad for that because if she could, then she would know that he was more excited about her offer than he was initially letting on.

With a daring smile, Williams then said, "I don't ask, turian!"

"Well if that's the case, then I guess I don't have a choice!" He was grinning and he couldn't hide it, not like he usually could. Why was he so happy—it being one of the darkest times of his life?

"I do need to head home and freshen up, first."

"I kind of figured that." Turning the joysticks, the skycar veered to the right. "I thought I'd stop by my home, to do the same."

Nihlus could drive back to his place to do what he needed, and then one could pick up the other.

"I just need to freshen up." Nihlus suddenly proclaimed. "No need to waste power cells on driving back to my place…"

"I'll pick you up." Ashley offered.

"No, it's fine. I just need to use the restroom, that's all."

Ashley glanced at him for a brief moment.

"Okay." She then stated unconvinced. "But you're going to have to excuse the mess.

"Please. I work for C-Sec. So I've seen everything!"

Ashley chuckled. "What's everything?"

"You're a detective, so you should know." He replied in a jovial tone.

Ashley's chuckle grew into laughter, humming in decisively at the end of her laughing spell. "I've seen pretty fucked up shit… some dirty, fucked up shit."

"What's the nastiest apartment you've ever seen?"

Ashley held onto her gapping smile, glancing at him every chance she could get.

"Wow, the nastiest apartment I've ever seen?" It took her a minute. Nihlus was right, because she was a detective, she had seen some shit!

"I got a call about a murder in the Eastside wards." Eastside was the worst of the worst: Little Omega as it was called by those who lived there.

"Eastside, now that's some scary stuff." Nihlus sang.

"I pull up to the apartment… there's dumpsters in the parking spaces, dead vermin in the elevators—not to mention the elevator smelled like piss and death." Nihlus grimaced. "I finally make it to the room, the door is missing, trash and crap—and when I say crap, I mean feces—all over the floors and the walls… I make to the bathroom after climbing over mounds of trash; the victim's facedown in the toilet, a toilet brush shoved up his ass…"

Nihlus exploded with laughter, "No, no, you're lying."

Ashley was laughing too. "I swear to God, I'm not."

"Wow… wow." The turian need a moment to collect himself again. "What happened?"

"Turns out, the victim's wife caught him in bed with another man. So she drugged him, then put his head in the toilet, claiming that she was just trying to drown him. But in her rage, she… violated him. When he died, she found the body to be too heavy to move, so she called us. Of course she tried to make it seem like she came home and found him like that, but the more we talked to her, the more evident it became. She confessed at the station."

Nihlus was still chuckling.

Her face went back to being serious. "I do feel bad for the kids, though."

His laughter died. "They were witnesses?"

"The daughter was home. She was only three."

They fell silent again.

"We're here." She suddenly exclaimed, pulling into the well-lit parking lot.

#

"So this Garrus Vakarian guy, is he the only one you've been with?"

Rage glanced at her from the bed, still lying down. Jack was occupying herself with some pushups. She had just passed 200.

"Garrus…," Rage smirked at the mere thought of him. She missed her turian. "No. There were others."

"Well, spill it."

Rage scoffed, sarcastically before obeying. Had it been anyone else talking to her like that, she would've made sure it was the last thing they said. But Jack had taken it upon herself to be Rage's bodyguard. She liked the fact that Rage was pregnant and often asked her about baby names. Rage hadn't really thought of baby names. She was still getting over the initial shock of finding out she was pregnant.

"Okaaaay. There was another turian named Gavorn—an ass—but he took care of me and my brother when it counted."

"That's it…?"

"No, there were a lot." Rage used to be a prostitute. She didn't like that part of her past, but Jack was the type of person who was hard to impress; which made it a little easier to open up to.

"You were a whore?" Jack proclaimed, in a shaky voice, pushing herself back up.

"For a little while, yeah."

Jack glanced at her with indifference. Looking back down at the floor, she said, "Yeah, so was I. But I made a mistake."

"You made a mistake how?" Rage was thinking that Jack made a mistake by choosing to sell her body.

"I fell in love with my pimp." Her tempo increased, beads of sweat running down the length of her shorter, tone body.

"Oh."

"Never do that!" She growled, going back down. "It always turns out bad."

Rage had done that before, and just like Jack said, it ended badly for her.

"I did that once." Rage found herself admitting. She had never told anyone this, not even Garrus. "I thought it was love… I mean, he was saying all the right things; telling me how he wanted to help me and my brother, and how he wanted me to stop selling my body…." Her focus drifted downward. "I… I was stupid."

Jack stopped, holding herself up. "No you weren't. You were just a girl, in love." She started again.

Rage felt herself smile on the inside. "What happened, between you and your pimp?"

"His name was Sonic."

"Sonic?"

"Yeah, like that ancient vid-game. He had long… spiky hair that was dyed blue… and people said that he… had big eyes… so from there… he just started calling himself Sonic." Jack spoke between push-ups.

"Wow!"

"I know, right." She did a few more push-ups before continuing, "He didn't know how to love…. He tried."

"How?"

"Buying me shit, telling me what I wanted to hear, but it was all bullshit. He didn't know how to listen, how to feel. He pretended." Doing a few more push-ups, she stopped at 272. Breathing a little faster than before, she climbed back into her bed. She could've kept going but decided to stop there. "He was abusive, verbally and physically: he was a biotic by the way."

"Sonic the hedgehog." Rage joked, even though Jack's tale was no laughing matter. But Jack didn't seem to mind the jest.

"We fought so much that I thought that I couldn't love without anger." Jack was now lying down in her bed, staring at the bottom of the top bunk. "Then I got pregnant." Rage looked at her, but it was too dark to see Jack's facial expression. "I told him, and he got so mad… he hit me and I lost the baby."

Rage tried to sit up, but the bun in her oven made it a daunting task.

"I killed the motherfucker after that."

Breathing heavily, Rage began, "Jack I'm…"

"Save it, bitch. I'm not fishing for sympathy." Her voice was firm.

"How did you…?"

"I cut his dick off and watched him bleed to death—want a snack?" Jack lifted her pillow, reaching into the case. "I copped it off of Trina I-el during reassess." She was happy again, like a switch just went on in her head.

Upon hearing the sound of crinkled wrappers, Rage nodded her head saying, "Yes. Definitely, I'm starving."

Jack tossed her a king size twix.

"Twix, it's all in the mix!" Rage sang, peeling the wrapper back to reveal the chocolate, cookie, caramel; gooey-goodness. "Mmmm!"