"Why the hell are these idiots just running forward to die?"

Kara had lost track of how many groups of Cerberus troopers they had encountered, but the group they had just demolished had to be at least the fourth. She knew how the troops had gotten there - the woman that Liara had identified as Dr. Eva Coré had clearly bypassed the Mars Archives security protocols and let her allies in. It was standard Cylon protocol and Kara was annoyed with the fact that it made her dwell on all the times it had been used against the Colonials. And the tactic of throwing as many bodies at your enemies as you could was also pure Cylon. But at least the Cylons were either machines who didn't care about dying, or skinjobs who knew they could be resurrected. The Cerberus troops were just people - weren't they?

"Got me," Williams said as the four of them stepped out of cover, scanning the area for anyone they might have missed. "I don't understand anything Cerberus does."

"How many times do I have to say it, Ash?" Shepard asked, sounding tired. "I'm not with them."

Williams didn't respond. After a minute Shepard sighed and walked over to a set of controls before pressing a button and halting some kind of process that had been taking place in the next room. "That's the clean room," Liara said, seeing Kara's confused expression. "Shepard stopped the sterilization process so we can pass through there unharmed."

Kara nodded and waited for Shepard to signal them forward before moving. She had fallen into the pattern of looking to Shepard for direction as Williams and Liara did. There was no doubt that Artemis Shepard was a fine soldier. Her grasp of tactics could only be compared to the Old Man or the late Admiral Cain, both of whom were older and more experienced than Shepard. The four of them were consistently outnumbered, but Shepard always knew where to put them to get the greatest effect. She kept them moving, rotating to and from the front line, always trying to get maximum impact for minimal effort. Shepard ensured that all four of them walked away with only minimal dents in their armor and dead bodies around them (along with ammo to scavenge). Kara idly wished that Lee could have been there with her to see how Shepard operated. She knew he would have appreciated it as well.

The four of them scavenged the room, Kara passing off her findings to one of the other three for evaluation. With all of them working they cleared it in no time and moved on to the next room, towards the tram line that Liara said would take them right to the Archives - though first they'd have to deal with the Cerberus troops that had undoubtedly locked down the security station.

Kara resisted the urge to grumble, yet again, about idiots throwing their lives away.

"Kara," Shepard said, after rounding a corner. "Something you may want to see."

"What've you got?" Kara asked, coming up besides her.

"First of all, I'm going to take this opportunity to thank you for proving me wrong," Shepard said. "I was afraid you'd be a liability, but you haven't been. You've done just as good of a job as the rest of us." She offered a wry smile. "Because I've been paying such close attention to you to ensure that you weren't going to fuck up and get us killed, I've noticed that you do best up close, and that the Avenger's a bit heavy for you. Not your fault, it's the only thing we had to give you."

"But now?" Kara asked. She looked at the weapon Shepard was holding and tried to fight back the slight giddiness that came from Shepard's praise. She was not a raw recruit desperate for validation, dammit!

"Now, we've got this," Shepard said. "The M-23 Katana shotgun. Still a heavy weapon, but devastating up close. Want to give it a shot?"

Kara passed the Avenger to Williams and took the Katana. Shepard was right about the weight - it wasn't actually that much of a change from the Avenger, but Kara felt like the small difference would still be meaningful. She noted the barrel size and couldn't stop a smile from spreading across her face at the thought of how much damage this would do.

"I know that look," Shepard said, chuckling. "I usually see it on-" She stopped herself mid-sentence and almost looked ... embarrassed? It was odd to see Shepard looking less than completely confident in something. She cleared her throat. "Well. If it suits, you can leave the Avenger here. It's going to be a big cleanup job for the facility, one more weapon won't make a difference."

"Thanks, Shepard," Kara said, keeping the Katana out.

"That's the last door, up ahead," Liara said. "That'll take us to the tram station."

Shepard nodded. "Ash, Kara, you go on either side of that door. Liara behind Ash and me behind Kara. Ash, you open."

They took their positions and Williams reached out to open the door. Instantly a loud whirr sounded and all of them flinched back from the unexpected high velocity bullet spray.

"The frak is that?" Kara demanded, heart pounding in her chest.

"Autoturret," Shepard said, sounding disgusted. "We're going to have to time this very carefully. At least there's cover moving forward."

The whirr stopped. "Ash - see if you can run forward," Shepard said.

Williams nodded and dashed forward, hugging the wall until she got to the next spot of cover. The autoturret unloaded again, but it didn't seem to be very accurate and it stopped before Williams had actually gotten to cover.

Shepard nodded. "Doesn't move while firing, inaccurate at long range, and small clip size. We're going to have to move between cover spots quickly, but I think we can do it. You up for it, Kara?"

"You bet," Kara said. "Can't be any worse than dodging a heavy raider planetside."

"You've had such an interesting life," Shepard said, deadpan. "All right. Move when you're ready, but do it fast."

Kara took a deep breath, counted to three, and sprinted. She hugged the wall and mirrored Williams' movements, hearing the bullets flying past her. Her heart was pounding when she flattened herself against the wall. She looked back and nodded at Shepard.

Shepard returned the nod. "Ash, Kara - move forward. Liara and I will take the spots you're about to vacate."

"Is giving it more targets a good idea?" Williams asked.

Shepard laughed. "Whoever programmed thing that ought to be ashamed of themselves. The aim is complete shit and it reloads way too often. It's scary, no doubt, but if we just use a bit of common sense it won't be able to hit us."

"You're the boss," Williams replied.

"You two see the next spots to aim for?" Shepard asked, looking between Kara and Williams. They both nodded, and Shepard grinned again. "Count of three. One, two, three!"

We use the same numbers, Kara thought idly as she sprinted forward into the next bit of cover. And we understand them from the moment they first made contact with us. It's frakking weird how alike we are.

Kara and Williams crouched next to one another behind a large crate, directly in front of the turret, with Liara and Shepard behind them. "The room is the same on either side," Liara said. "You should both be able to find cover while running to opposite sides."

"And once you're on the walls, you'll be better covered from the turret," Shepard said. "Home stretch. On three."

Kara was moving as soon as Shepard called three, sprinting for one crate and then the next. The turret didn't seem to know where to shoot with two targets running in opposite directions. Shepard had been right, the person that had programmed it was a frakking idiot.

"Good work," Shepard said in a low voice once they were right in front of the door to the security station. Liara and Williams waited on the other side, looking over for Shepard's signal.

"You weren't bad yourself," Kara replied with an impish grin.

Shepard chuckled, then lifted her left arm and deployed her combat drone. "On my signal, open the door, but don't move in," she said, holding up her right hand with her fingers tucked into a fist, keeping Liara and Williams still. She met Kara's eyes and nodded. "Now."

Kara opened the door. Shepard's combat drone glided inside. "Hey, what-" one of the Cerberus troops said, and then the crackle of electricity told Kara that the drone had just shocked the speaker.

"Don't just stand there, kill it!" one of the other soldiers said. A few short bursts of gunfire sounded, broken only by more electric crackles from the drone. Kara bit back a disbelieving laugh. Surely they weren't all going to be taken down by the drone...

Then, silence fell, and the drone flew back out to Shepard, who used her omni-tool to make it vanish. She beckoned them all forward into the room, where Kara could see that the drone had, in fact, taken them all down.

"Idiots," Williams said. Kara nodded in agreement.

"Want us to dig for treasure, Shepard?" Liara asked lightly.

"We are searching for valuable resources and information," Shepard said indignantly, but she was grinning. "Get to it."

Papers strewn across the floor caught Kara's eye. They just looked wrong with the corners still on them. The incongruity was like an itch she couldn't reach, and she did her best to ignore it.

"Shepard, I can't override the security controls," Liara said. Kara turned to see the asari bent over the computers, shaking her head in frustration.

"We could try helmet-to-helmet communication," Williams suggested. "Grab a Cerberus comm and tell them to send a tram for us."

"Worth a try," Shepard agreed.

"Help me with this guy," Williams said to Kara, gesturing to one of the downed troops. Kara took one of the arms and helped to drag it over. Williams poked at the helmet, muttering what sounded like curses to herself, before getting it to move off.

"Frak me!" Kara swore as she saw what was underneath. It looked like a body that had been dead for a week instead of a handful of minutes, with unnaturally pale skin and purplish-black bruises. The eyes were even worse, an inhuman white with blue at the edges. Her stomach turned. She took a breath and got herself under control, struggling not to run away from the sight.

"That looks like a husk," Williams said angrily. "A goddamn husk like the ones on Eden Prime and Horizon. Reaper technology."

"They've ... definitely done something to him," Shepard said, kneeling to inspect the body.

"They? Cerberus? They did this to their own guys?" This time the angry voice was Kara's. Her hands clenched into fists.

"And they claim to stand for humanity," Williams said, disgust evident in her voice.

Shepard shook her head. "I knew he was determined to stop the Reapers, but..." She sounded tired, almost resigned.

"Do you get it now, Shepard?" Williams asked. She was still angry, Kara could tell, but she was also pleading with Shepard. "Do you understand why I was suspicious? For all I knew, they did something like that to you."

"They didn't," Shepard said. She looked Williams in the eyes. "Ash, I swear, they didn't. You think that didn't cross my mind? The Illusive Man wanted me just as I was before Alchera. I got a look at some of the records. He paid a lot of money to ensure that they brought me back the same way I was before."

Williams was the first one to look away. "Sorry, Shepard," she said. "I just ... I had to know. I had to know who I was going to follow. If you were the same Shepard I followed before."

"I'm the same person, Ash," Shepard assured her.

"Hey!" Kara said, causing the other three to look at her. Williams seemed to have calmed down, but Kara was still boiling with fury. "You said Reaper technology? A human used this on their subordinates?" Kara was remembering everything she'd been through, everything the Cylons had done to her at the various stages where she was at their mercy. The Farm, on Caprica. Leoben, on New Caprica. She'd hated it, hated them. It was very easy to hate your enemy. What Cerberus was doing seemed worse, somehow, because they pretended they were on humanity's side. Seeing this thing that had once been a person just confirmed that Cerberus was only on its own side.

Shepard nodded slowly. "We first saw this two years ago. It's some sort of process that turns people into … mindless, violent creatures."

"Not totally mindless, if they can hold a gun," Kara said bitterly.

"Yeah. The bastard's improved on it." Shepard shook her head. "I bet if we popped off the other helmets, we'd find the same thing. That means there have to be a lot more people in on this. A lot of Cerberus scientists participating in this atrocity." She went absolutely still for a moment. "Which means there's a lot of people that are going to need to pay for this. A lot of facilities to destroy."

"And us with no time to do it," Williams said. "Dammit."

Shepard nodded, looking resigned.

"You know," Kara said slowly, "that could be a job for us." The others turned to look at her. "You've got bigger fish to fry, right? The Reapers? Galactica can't take on a Reaper, but with a few repairs it might be able to blow a few bases to smithereens." She was warming to the topic. "And our Cylons-" how frakking weird is that, our Cylons - "can help. Raiders can scout ahead, and they'll be so far outside of what Cerberus is expecting that they can't respond."

"Damn," Shepard said after a long moment. "I'll need to think about it, but … you could be right, Kara. You may have just saved the Alliance a lot of trouble."

Kara grinned fiercely. Finally, something that they could do that this Alliance couldn't.

"What are we waiting for, then?" she said. "Let's get started on kicking some Cerberus ass."

Shepard returned the grin and picked up the comm the Cerberus soldier had been carrying. "Uh, hi, this is Delta team…"

Kara had not been prepared for the Prothean Archives.

She felt like kicking herself as she just stood there like a lunatic, gawking. She had been thinking so hard about the similarities that she had almost forgotten the staggering differences. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting from the Archives, but it wasn't this.

She stood alongside the other women in a large circular room, with an impossibly large black monolith at the center. Bright blue lines, alternately straight and curved, could be seen up and down the length of the monolith. It was surrounded by cables, which lead into computers and translucent screens at the edge of the monolith's setting.

After spending so much time with Cylons and their semi-organic computers, this hard black shape just felt wrong to Kara.

Liara and Shepard moved forward without a second thought, but Williams seemed to be in the same kind of half-trance that Kara had been caught up in. "I'll never get used to that," Williams commented. "Just when you think you've seen it all…"

"You too, huh?" Kara asked. They traded grins.

"They're going to be absorbed in the terminals for a while," Williams said. "We should take the perimeter. We still haven't met this Dr. Coré, and I'm not willing to bet on her being gone already."

"Good idea," Kara agreed. They started off in opposite directions. Perimeter watch wasn't the most exciting way to pass the time, but Kara knew better than most how necessary it was.

But frak, the room was big! Kara wished for more people - she could easily see some secluded nooks that exploring would mean exposing her back. She'd have to content herself with a general watch.

"Shepard."

The voice was new, male, and Kara whirled to see a translucent image appearing off to Shepard's side. The level of detail on the image was astounding. If it weren't for the blue holographic shimmer, Kara could almost be convinced that the man was in the room with them.

"Illusive Man," Shepard said cooly. "How nice of you to call."

Kara started walking back towards Shepard, determined, and then she saw Williams, holding up a hand and shaking her head vigorously. Kara came to a halt and scowled at Williams before remembering what she had proposed to Shepard earlier - to take the Colonial and Cylon forces and hit Cerberus. If Kara was going to do that, it was best not to give their asshole leader any clue that someone other than Shepard was coming for them. Kara nodded to Williams and stayed where she was, listening. She kept herself from having any reaction when the Illusive Asshole started talking about his plans to control the race that was currently laying waste to Earth. Earth. It seemed just wrong that he didn't have any reverence for its homeworld, given how much he thought of humans compared to the other races. That bigotry made him a stupid asshole. Kara's only experience with aliens so far was Liara, but she didn't need any more convincing that Liara was a person and worth respecting. Liara was smart, friendly, loyal, and absolutely devastating in combat. Careful, Starbuck, she thought to herself. Someone might think you have a crush on her. Female and alien - not your type.

Then again, she kind of prided herself on not really having a type.

Not the time. Focus.

As soon as the connection was broken and Liara raised the alarm about the data being erased, Kara went back to scanning the area, Katana in hand. Then she saw it - a woman who strongly resembled the one they'd seen on the security cameras. "Hey!" Kara yelled, hating that it drew Dr. Coré's attention as much as it did her companions'. They didn't have time for a better option, though. Kara took off at a run, dropping the Katana and focusing only on getting to Dr. Coré before she could escape.

Gunfire whizzed past her head, and then Shepard's combat drone appeared and shocked Dr. Coré. The other woman staggered backwards, off-balance. Kara heard an electric hiss and crackle and felt something in the air prickling her skin as she leapt forward, tackling Dr. Coré to the ground.

Kara lifted her right hand to throw a punch, but the movement was blocked and Dr. Coré attempted to push Kara off. Damn, she's strong! For a moment Kara flashed back to her fight against the Six on Caprica. The Cylon had been stronger and faster than Kara, and when Kara had thrown them both off of the edge, she honestly hadn't known if she would survive the fall.

There was no convenient pit to throw her enemy in here - but she did have backup. She just needed to keep Dr. Coré from getting away before Shepard, Williams, and Liara got there. Kara held onto Dr. Coré's arms tightly, not trying to land another punch, but to keep the other woman immobilized. Her grip slipped, just for an instant, and Dr. Coré punched Kara's face. Crying out in pain, Kara moved to fight back, propelling herself upward to bash their foreheads together.

That was a mistake. Kara's head rang with the force of the impact, somehow much greater than it should have been. She fell backwards, her head colliding with the floor, and blacked out.