"Where is the bitch?!"
Shepard turns around as Ashley, freshly changed back into her uniform, storms into the hanger followed closely by Garrus.
"Ash," Ashara says. "I'm so sorry. I was too late."
"It's not over yet," the Spectre growls. Shepard's glad that she's angry. That's a hell of a lot more useful than despair right now. "These assholes wanted Michael alive for some reason. We just need to find out what it is and make your prisoner tell us where they've taken him."
"Actually, Liara found something on that front already. The ship registration traces back to an Eric Chernenko, who was part of the same Cerberus cell as Michael. Do you know anything about him?"
Ashley rubs her forehead, wracking her memories. "Yeah, he mentioned Eric a few times. A real asshole, a borderline psychopathic assassin if I remember right. He could definitely be involved, but I don't know if he has the brains to have planned this whole operation." Shepard can hear the fear in her voice as Ashley tries not to imagine what this man might be doing to Michael.
Ashara gestures in the direction of the unconscious Asian woman, now tied to a chair with some rope they found in the hanger. "What about her?"
"I don't know who she is, but there were a lot of people in Michael's group and even he didn't know who survived the Alliance attack on his base."
"If these are the people he betrayed to the Alliance, that's a pretty powerful motive for the survivors to seek revenge," Garrus, who should know, adds.
"It wasn't like that," Ashley snaps, turning on the turian. "This is Cerberus we're talking about. He had every right…"
"Everybody knows that," Ashara says firmly. Ashley needs to keep her anger focused, as hard as it may be right now. "He's just saying that the people behind this may not see it that way. Tali, have you made any progress breaking into her omni-tool?"
"Not yet Shepard; the encryption on it is pretty advanced. But I think the prisoner is waking up."
Ashley stamps over to the bound woman, who's shaking her head, trying to clear out the lingering effects of the neural shock. "Where's Michael?", the Spectre snarls, grabbing the prisoner by the chin.
"Not here, I see," the prisoner laughs wearily.
The Spectre slaps her hard across the face. "I'd lose that attitude if I were you. One word from me and you'll be spending the rest of your life on a penal asteroid so remote that the krogan guards will start looking good."
"Hey, I resent that," Wrex protests, returning from taking Vega to get medical treatment, but Ashley doesn't seem to be paying attention.
"Bring it on," the prisoner sneers. "I've gone through worse. And so will your miserable traitor of a fiancé."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Ashley growls, her thumb pressing against the pulse point on the woman's throat, eliciting a choking gasp from her. "You're going to talk or you'll be leaving here feet first."
"Ash!", Shepard snaps, yanking the brunette off of the prisoner. "Come with me! Now!" Ashley shoots her a dagger of a look, but steps back, walking out of earshot. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"What I have to," she protests. "This piece of crap knows where Michael is and I doubt she's going to tell us any other way."
"You didn't even try. You just jumped straight to torture. This isn't you."
"And what if was Liara that they had?", Ashley demands. "Liara that they might be doing god knows what to right now. Are you telling me you'd be worried about what happened to one of the bastards responsible?"
"No," Shepard answers quietly. She can still remember the sick feeling in her gut when the Baria Frontiers office exploded and she didn't know if Liara was alive or dead, along with the rage she'd unleashed on the Shadow Broker mercenaries that tried to stop her from getting her answer. But that's not the point.
"I'd be just as pissed off and frightened as you are. But it doesn't mean I'd be acting rationally. We have to be smart about this. This woman was probably a Cerberus operative. She's used to pain. How long would it take to beat this information out of you? Days? Weeks? Would you die first? Even if you could live with torturing her, it would take way too long. We have to find another way. Let me see what I can do."
"Give her a chance," Garrus adds. "She did bring Miranda around after all. Only a shame this one probably doesn't have a cloned sister she can rescue."
Ashley takes a deep breath, disciplining herself. "All right. We'll try it your way."
Shepard gets everyone else to clear out and give her some space to speak privately with the prisoner. Liara just sent her a name and some background information based on the photo, which gives Ashara a place to start, but it's not going to be easy.
"Yin Chen," she says calmly.
"So," the prisoner snorts derisively, "You're the good cop."
She doesn't rise to the bait. "I think you know who I am."
"Of course. The great Commander Shepard. You used to be the Illusive Man's little lap-dog, and now you're galaxy's sweetheart."
She laughs in spite of her herself. Not quite how she'd categorize things, but the bitterness in Yin's voice is a clue she can use. "I think a few things happened in-between, but you're right. I did work for Cerberus, just like you. I know why you did it too. I know your brother was taken by the Collectors at Ferris Fields, and that nobody but Cerberus was doing anything about it."
"I don't want your pity," she spits.
"This isn't pity, this is understanding. The Collectors destroyed my ship, killed 20 of my crew, and all but killed me. I woke up two years later and found out the Alliance and the Council swept all of it under the rug. That's why I worked for Cerberus, even though I knew they were up to some pretty shady stuff. For a while there, they were also doing good work, protecting the galaxy."
Yin nods, and Shepard sees the first crack in her armor. "But things changed, didn't they, Yin? The Illusive Man had you hitting targets that didn't make sense. You were involved in the attack on the STG base on Sur'kesh. What was the point of that mission? To kill Urdnot Bakara in order to stop me from brokering an alliance between the turians and the krogan. But why? We were all fighting the Reapers. Even if we disagreed about our approaches to the war, why should the Illusive Man have tried to stop me from doing that?"
"I suppose you have an answer."
"Because he was indoctrinated. You should have seen him at the end. Half-covered in Reaper tech, a ranting shell of the man who devoted his life to helping humanity. I know Michael sold you out, but that's what he was dealing with. An organization that had gone over to the Reapers."
"This isn't about them," she yells, her veneer of disdain giving way to the hurt underneath, her voice echoing in the vast space of the hanger. "We were a team. We'd been through twenty kinds of shit together, and he led the Alliance to our base to slaughter us. Even the people who survived became pariahs. You got to be the savior of the galaxy, he got to marry a fucking Spectre, and we had to live in the Terminus, living on scraps and hiding our real names, all because we tried to help save humanity."
"You're right. It's not fair." She means it. Though there were certainly psychopaths in Cerberus like Kai Leng or this Eric, there were also undoubtedly well-intentioned people who got tarred with the same brush. "But Michael isn't the one who made people turn against you."
"He betrayed us! Whatever Cerberus was, he shouldn't have done that to his friends" A tear rolls down her face. "I would have gone with him, but he never gave me the chance."
"Do you know how close a thing the Reaper War?", Ashara asks, her voice softer now. "How many times we almost lost everything?" If she'd been a little later to Ilos or Bahak, if Liara hadn't found the Crucible plans, if Sam hadn't tracked Kai Leng to Sanctuary… It still makes Ashara shudder to think about it.. "It was a chance he thought he couldn't take. Maybe you would have gone with him, but what about the others? What would Eric have chosen? If someone had betrayed Michael, you know what Cerberus would have done. He made a tough decision in a bad circumstance. You have to let it go."
She can see the conflict in Yin's teary, brown eyes. Liara had told her the same thing after the war, when she'd been too caught up in her own guilt sometimes to fully appreciate the miracle of their survival, and if it was good enough for Ashara, maybe it will work for this old Cerberus operative.
"I can't go back," Yin says wearily, her resolve plainly starting to crack. "Not after what I've done. There's nothing left to do but to see this through to the end."
"I know you feel that way. That there's too much blood on your hands. But there's always a choice." After seeing Jack, Miranda, and Thane all redeem themselves, she definitely believes that. "If you help us now, I'll see what I can do for you. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but it has to be better than spending the rest of your life in a krogan prison. Come on, Yin. How many more people have to die here for a war that ended 10 years ago?" There's a pause, and for a moment, Shepard's not sure what she'll say but when Yin looks at her, even before she hears the words, Ashara knows from the look on her face that the answer is yes.
Michael wakes to the sound of footsteps in the cargo hold. He learned long ago that in situations such as this you have to rest when you can, particularly given the likelihood that sleep deprivation will be part of his torture. He looks up to see who's come in, but the chair he's bound to doesn't have a view of the entrance. He knows it's not Eric, though. The footsteps are too light for the big man.
"Good morning, sleepy." A woman's voice, angry, bitter, and all too familiar.
"Madeline?" He shakes his head, trying to adjust to a reality where she's alive.
"In the flesh." She's staying out of view but the footsteps are getting closer. "Despite your best efforts."
"I never wanted to hurt you."
"Liar!", she hisses. Her voice has changed somewhat in the ten years since he last saw her. The hints of warmth that used to be there are gone, and there's a rasp now, a souvenir of an injury he suspects. "Don't feed me that shit. I left you, and a month later you left us. Didn't have even the balls to try to kill us yourself though, so you hoped your new friends at the Alliance would take care of me and Decker for you."
"That wasn't it at…"
He's cut off by a viscous blow to the back of his head and when his vision clears, he can hear her voice coming from in front of him. "Well, I guess one and a half out of two ain't bad." Madeline was always beautiful, tall and slim, with dark red hair, deep blue eyes, and sharp, stunning features. The hair and the eyes are still there, but one side of her face is now little but a series of angry scars, red and nasty as the sneer on her lips. "Too bad for you they didn't get the job right."
He starts to open his mouth to say something but she silences him with an elbow to the face. He tastes blood and she growls, "I don't have any interest in hearing you justify what you did."
He blinks back the pain. "That why didn't you just kill me, Maddie?"
"You think I'd make it that easy? No, you've got work to do before I let you die. But we can talk about that later. In the meantime, I wouldn't you to be bored though." She presses a button on her omni-tool and the door opens, admitting Eric carrying a vid screen which he sets down on a crate in front of Michael.
Eric turns it on and Michael sees an omni-tool recording of a street, one back on Sirona by all appearances. Suddenly, a skycar comes into view, his car he realizes, and he feels at stomach twist at what he knows he'll see next.
The car makes it half-way down the street when there's a flash of light followed by the roar of an explosion. The car skids to a stop, damaged but still partially intact, and he sees himself and his teammates start to stagger wounded out of its remains. A few seconds later, there's the crack of a gun and Pallia's blue body slumps down, blood pouring out of the asari's shattered crest. Nyria tries to draw a pistol from its holster but there's another shot and the female turian falls, followed seconds later by Gavin. Michael sees himself on the other side of the car, trying to pull himself to his feet, desperate to do something, anything to stop the slaughter before a boot crashes into his face and he falls as well. The Eric in the recording laughs, "Package secure," and the video ends.
He turns to Madeline. "Why did you show me this?", he asks weakly, though in his gut he knows.
"Sweet dreams, Michael," is her only reply before she and Eric turn and leave. On the screen, he's looking at a street on Sirona and a sky-car comes into view…
