A year passed, and a lot of things changed along the way. Matt had expected that he and his friends would stick together, but by the end of the year that didn't happen.
Within a few days of their escape, Matt and his fellow escapees boarded the Flying Dragon, the pirate ship run by Jordan's brother Jake. Jake gave his little sister a big hug when she boarded the ship and then he gave each of them a bottle of ryncol to celebrate their escape. Jake had the same sandy blond hair as his little sister, but he was way more easygoing than Jordan. He wore glasses and had a small goatee on his chin, and was a big fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe classic movies. On one Halloween, according to Jordan, he had dressed up convincingly as Captain America.
Before the first week was out, Ares Station was no longer a secret. Faster than you could say "Hey guys, Cerberus terrorists have a station over here where they're committing atrocities, sadistic experiments and war crimes," the Alliance cruiser Tipperary and the turian cruiser Resolve arrived at high speed. The word around the campfire was that the Alliance and Turian cruisers bombarded Ares station's defenses and sent boarding parties to take it. A few fanatical surviving defenders tried to scuttle the station and failed, thanks to the boarding parties and the desperate escaped prisoners who fought alongside them.
Footage of haggard but undeniably alive asari, krogan, turian and even human prisoners of Cerberus were broadcast across hundreds of worlds. The footage also showed lines and rows of grim-faced Cerberus prisoners being led away with their hands in bindings. The Director of the station had apparently abandoned his post and left most of his troops to their fate before the cruisers arrived. One widely-seen moment showed a glassy-eyed prisoner being led away as he blankly stared straight ahead and mumbled, "The Illusive Man can go to hell."
An anonymous message from someone claiming to represent the Illusive Man denied any knowledge of Ares and claimed that the station was clearly the work of a splinter faction. Distraught families were interviewed afterward as their missing relatives were identified among the dead captives and Cerberus troops. No less than Urdnot Wrex himself declared that the Director of Ares would die screaming and without dignity for having killed members of his clan "as though they were pieces of meat."
The first shock to Matt's system after boarding the Flying Dragon had been meeting Jake's crew. He had expected them all to be human. Instead, the crew included not only a few humans, but also a turian engineer, a salarian engineer, and an asari navigator. Much to Matt's surprise – and Jordan's, and Evan's – none of the non-humans on Jake's crew treated them with any suspicion even with though they were from Cerberus. Among the pirates, it was all about trust and loyalty. The crew trusted Jake, and Jake trusted his sister Jordan and her friends, and that was that.
Matt never felt that level of trust during his time with Cerberus. In Cerberus, you were taught that trust was basically a luxury. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one. Treat everyone with respect, but have a plan to kill everyone you met. Literally. Size up threat levels at all times. If you're ever on leave, make sure you have an escape route wherever you are, and sit a place where no one can sneak up on you. Expect non-human races to be loyal to their own kind first. Non-humans only cooperated with humans if they needed to, and never because they wanted to. They do NOT think like us, he was taught.
Ever since the escape, Matt had recurring dreams of falling, drowning, or being surrounded. He kept seeing the airlock, kept finding himself hunted or surrounded by predator animals or his former Cerberus friends on Ares who had fired upon him. Another time, he dreamed that he was sliding toward the edge of a cliff and unable to stop. Sometimes he saw the terrified eyes of the asari who had fired at him in the cargo bay. Except, in his dreams he felt every rifle round fired by the asari hit him in the gut.
Jordan and Evan had similar dreams, though it seemed to be hitting Matt harder. They all wondered if it had anything to do with their Cerberus implants, which still remained in their brains and nervous systems. Unfortunately, they couldn't get the implants removed by any doctors who were on the take with the pirates' guild. Maybe the Alliance Military Medical Center on the Citadel had surgeons and equipment who were good enough, but they weren't an option.
The second shock to Matt's system happened during the second month. Jake had gladly accepted the team's infiltrator shuttle as payment for saving their lives. He told them it was priceless, not just for his crew's ability to make a score, but also for his reputation as a pirate. They had just used the shuttle and the Flying Dragon to rob a freighter, and were celebrating their latest big score on the planet Tortuga in the Terminus Systems. While partying in a suitably seedy and smoky tavern with loud live music, the Flying Dragon'sasari navigator had locked eyes with Matt and then kissed him for a moment. He backed away with his jaw dropped, and then walked out of the bar. She had apologized as he turned away, but he didn't respond. The part of Matt's mind that remained a soldier was ashamed and furious that he'd walked away like a coward just because someone had kissed him at a bar, even if it was an asari. But his heart pounded in his chest and he felt like running. In his mind's eye he could only see a brief flashback to the terrified asari standing over him in the Ares cargo bay, fumbling for the safety and trigger on a rifle that she obviously had no clue how to use. The asari navigator and Matt quickly patched things up, but Matt felt a tension in his bones that he just couldn't shake.
The third shock happened during the third month. According to some sources that the pirates' guild paid very well, the Illusive Man's spokesperson wasn't completely lying when he told the galaxy that Ares was the work of a splinter faction. Rumors now had it that Cerberus had fractured and gone to war with itself, and apparently the former Director of Ares Station had started it. Battles were now being fought in more than a dozen systems over the pieces. Rumor had it that the Director had been doing experiments with alien tech that the Illusive Man had long prohibited, and some sources wondered if the Director himself was really fully human. Supposedly the Illusive Man himself had personally put out the order that the Director had to be killed with extreme prejudice. Some sources suggested that the situation was so bad that the Illusive Man had sent trusted people on secret missions to seek help from the Alliance. The Alliance, supposedly, had more or less told the Illusive Man's people that there were bigger problems looming, that it wasn't their responsibility, it was his problem alone, he'd made his bed, and now he had to lay in it. God help anyone who got caught in the middle.
That was the news that made Evan want to leave the Flying Dragon. If there was a chance to get back at the Ares Director, he wanted to do it. Matt and Jordan tried to talk him out of it, of course. Evan was taking a big risk getting into a war when he couldn't be anywhere close to sure who any of the good guys with Cerberus all split into factions, and all of the factions were claiming to be the "real" Cerberus or an offshoot from it. But Evan's mind was set, and the best they could do was wish him luck.
As for Matt, he decided that he couldn't stay as a pirate either. His nightmares and tension had gotten worse, and having a job robbing freighter crews at gunpoint wasn't helping. He needed to lay low. Jordan tried to talk him out of it – she argued that he was good in a fight, and he'd be safer among the pirates than hiding out somewhere. Matt made his decision, and paid Jake to have someone get him a fake identity and forge some documents to get him a place on a transport to work on the New Ericson mining outpost. He made sure they smuggled his weapons pack through customs. Mining wasn't exactly a relaxing job, but it didn't involve gunfire, and New Ericson was so remote that it was about as far removed from Cerberus as anywhere in the galaxy.
Matt had been a miner before. In his younger years, Matt's parents had moved him, his two brothers, and his sister to a planet in the Terminus Systems. His father was a miner, and had arranged for Matt to leave school and lie about his age to become a miner in his late teens to help the family make ends meet. There was a term for illegal underage miners like him. They called them "ghost miners."
He'd been horrified at the idea. Some of his friends teased him about it. They told him that he would end up like the ghost miners of legend who spent months under the ground and had their hair and skin turn white because they hadn't seen the sun in so long. His dad assured him that it was temporary, and that it was just what needed to be done. He would emerge from the dark of the mine every day. It wouldn't be for long. The Citadel had declared that it was illegal to have teenage miners, but they didn't seem to be trying hard to enforce that law on human colonies. The Citadel seemed to think that teenage miners were a human problem not worthy of the larger galaxy's attention.
So Matt spent a full two years illegally handling plasma drills, rock crushers and sifters, mass effect grinders and tunnel borers, having his stomach muscles flex in response to the booming concussion of underground explosives, driving heavy equipment larger than your average tank, tripping over autonomous drones which were programmed by the factory to do God-only-knows-what, working in occasional utter darkness, surrounded sometimes by toxic volatile fumes, thick dust, handling faulty substandard equipment held together by little more than duct tape, wondering if his environment suit and respirator would allow him to survive in the heat and pressure deep underground, and then getting his leg injured in a rock burst when a "room and pillar" excavation just didn't quite seem to go as planned. His father had rallied the miners to walk off the job, but that was also around the same time when the friendly Cerberus recruiter with oily black hair named Morden had visited their town, and promised all the young men and women that Cerberus offered them a brighter future and humanity a safer future, if only people like them were brave enough to step up and make it happen. Matt left his family a note and then left on the next shuttle.
Mom, Dad, I can't live in the dark anymore. I want something better and I'm joining Cerberus. I'll make you proud of me. Matt.
Matt would have throat-punched Morden now. Looking back, the guy had a creepy leering smile that now made Matt wonder if the guy worked weekends dangling dreams as bait and tempting people to join religious cults. Or doing the occasional Satan worship.
Before Matt left for New Ericson, Jake had given him a thug hug and said, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do. If you need us, you know how to reach us."
Jordan hugged him and said, "I've still got your back. Stay safe."
The asari navigator had simply waved to him. Matt had said, "Well, you know what, you really are a good kisser."
Jordan and Jake's jaws dropped. "Wait - she's what?"
And with that, Matt left the Flying Dragon for New Ericson colony, and things continued to change.