A couple of days passed without Jack finding another opportunity to talk to the captain. She spent as much of that time as possible in her makeshift quarters, avoiding the stares of the crew, and subsequently, any trouble she might have stirred up among the lecherous dogs. It wasn't anything she hadn't dealt with a hundred times before. In fact, she fell back into her old defense mode with unnerving ease, as if she had never left the life where she had to watch herself every time she turned her back.

She really only had to deal with the presence of Phillips' men once, when they brought a cot down for her the first night. The two humans who had apparently drawn the short straws were sufficiently intimidated - either by her silent occupation on top of one of the storage crates as she cleaned her pistol or the glowing, monocular stare of Legion from the darkest corner of the room – to warn their comrades to stay the hell away. While this fortunate outcome saved her from having to deal with their bullshit, it also left her and her stoic companion with basically nothing to do but sleep and stare at each other as boredom began to eat away at her sanity. Not that she could manage any kind of restful sleep while Phillips had her waiting for the inevitable knife in her back anyway.

And to be perfectly honest, having the geth around staring at her all hours of the day and night wasn't exactly calming her nerves.

"This is stupid," she finally declared, sitting up from her reclining position on her cot and propping her elbows on her knees. Legion had hardly moved since they had boarded but turned its head toward her, the flaps rimming its shining eye fluttering into an expression that was vaguely recognizable as curiosity.

"I thought he'd be down here harassing me all the time. At this rate I won't see him again 'til he's kicking us off the ship." Jack hopped onto her feet and crossed the room toward the stairs, rolling her shoulders to work out the stiffness in her muscles. "I'm going to find him."

"We will accompany you to interrogate the target."

"Nuh-uh." She paused once she was a few steps up, shooting a look behind her to find that Legion was already at the base of the staircase and primed to follow her. "Did you see how he reacted to you? He's not gonna say shit while you're around."

"Irrelevant," it insisted, immovable. "Shepard-Commander's orders were clear."

Jack raised her eyebrows at that last part, slowly turning all the way around to fully face her crewmate. "What was that?"

It did not answer immediately. A heavy silence fell over them for a long moment, broken only by the quiet whirring of Legion's expression continuously shifting as if in a nervous tic. Jack clamped her fists around the handrails on either side of her, leaning down toward the AI with a suspicious scowl. "What exactly did he say to you?"

Legion finally stilled when it spoke again. "We are not to let you out of our sight." The eye on her shifted up to the ceiling above them. "This platform is not equipped to see through the two floors required to monitor the captain's quarters. Therefore, we must accompany you."

Well, that was just impressive. The two of them weren't even on the same ship, and Shepard could still manage to irritate her.

Jack knit her brow, doing her very best to ignore the suspicion that a robot had just given her cheek so that she could concentrate on the unexpectedly difficult task of leaving the goddamn room. "This is my mission. That means I'm in charge here, right?"

"Correct."

"So you have to follow my orders, don't you?"

"Yes," Legion granted. "Excluding the occasions on which they conflict with Shepard-Commander's orders."

"The whole point of us being here is to get this guy to talk," she countered, her efforts to hide her frustration tightening her jaw until she was speaking through her clenched teeth. "If the boss man had known that the easiest way to wrap this shit up included getting you to fuck off, maybe he would have picked his words a little more carefully."

"…Acknowledged." It gave a slight incline of its head, as if conceding.

Legion was quiet long enough to convince her that she'd actually gotten somewhere. She even started climbing the stairs again. She had nearly reached the first landing before the voice trailed after her, delivering a quick prod to her patience with a relentless, "However-"

"Legion," she cut in, swinging back around. She jabbed her finger at the synthetic, speaking sharply as if it were a dog that had suddenly been stricken half deaf. "Stay."

And miraculously, Legion did stay. It remained obediently at the bottom of the stairs as the biotic climbed toward the upper floors, shooting intermittent looks of suspicion back at the AI to make sure that it still hadn't moved. Legion didn't move.

Not until she disappeared around the corner, at least.

Immediately afterward, the geth strode purposefully back into the room behind it, optics drifting up to the ceiling and the vent it had noted days ago as a possible emergency escape route from the ship's basement. In the time it took to flutter an eyelash, distance was determined, optimal levels of force and momentum were calculated, and Legion was already off the ground.

It grabbed hold of a low-hanging beam and swung its bottom half up towards the ceiling. With a jarring clang, the grate that covered the entrance popped cleanly out of its place and Legion slid with an almost reptilian grace into the vent and out of sight.

Jack managed to make it to the upper deck without getting lost, something she considered a small victory in itself seeing as she had only made the trip once before. She felt eyes on her almost constantly from the moment she left the subdeck, curious and probing, though they flickered away as soon as she glanced in their direction.

She didn't actually know where the captain's cabin was, but it was a small enough ship that she couldn't waste too much time wandering around the bridge before it turned up. Judging by how skittish the crew had seemed around her so far, nobody was going to stop her anyway. She had worked her way nearly halfway to the back of the ship before a voice from an approaching doorway made her stop in her tracks.

"Do you have her?"

Her?

The paranoid mercenary part of Jack's brain immediately lit up like a Christmas tree and began screaming at her to either retreat back down to Legion or barrel through the doorway with her biotics blazing before anyone got the chance to notice she was there. She began to lean toward the latter, but then swallowed both urges altogether. This was strictly a fact-finding mission, she reminded herself again, though was sounding less and less convincing in her own head. She pressed herself against the wall instead in order to creep closer and hear the conversation more clearly.

The voice she had heard was a man's, unfamiliar, with a slight accent that she couldn't quite place. It was probably coming from some kind of communications array, she realized when she picked out a light crackle of static; she must have stumbled onto the Scylla's debriefing room. As her gut continued to assure her that whatever was going on was sure to end with her being fucked over, Jack wondered again why exactly she had volunteered for this. They should have picked Thane's scaly ass up from his shore leave on the Citadel. Fuck.

"Yeah." Phillips' voice now. "Yeah, I've got her. Though I can't help but point out that you failed to mention anything about Commander fucking Shepard getting involved in this."

Okay, pretty safe to assume they were talking about her. Double fuck.

"I gave you all the information that was necessary in acquiring the subject – nothing more."

"Hey! This is my ass we're talking about here. I can't 'acquire' shit for you if I get blown fulla holes 'cause I swiped a Spectre's bounty out from under him."

A first, there was no response. Then laughter came flowing through the communicator that grated on her almost as much as it probably grated on Roy. She knew this whole thing had reeked of a setup. The money-grubbing son of a bitch had sold her out. She would've caved his head in right then if her curiosity hadn't convinced her to wait and find out more about the apparent puppeteer.

Then she would hunt that bastard down too.

"The hell is so funny, old man?"

"Bounty," the voice repeated, unperturbed by the pirate's anger as the laughter trickled slowly down to nothing. "Is that what she told you?"

"Did she lie?"

Suppressing some final chuckles and clearing his throat, the man seemed to quell the rest of his mirth. "Nevermind. It doesn't matter now."

"She's got some synthetic with her, too. Says it's a VI, but it creeps me the hell out."

"Mmm," came the response, sounding intrigued. "Disable that as well. I'd like to take a look at it. How have you contained her?"

"Haven't yet." There was a light creak, like from someone leaning against a desk or shifting their weight in a chair. "She still thinks she's getting dropped off at the next refueling station."

A long pause settled into the conversation. Jack could imagine her old friend beginning to squirm as the silence dragged on; she could feel the building tension even from outside the room. Wrong answer, apparently.

"I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly," said the stranger, his voice unnervingly calm. "You are traveling with the most powerful human biotic in the galaxy, fully intending to betray her, and didn't think that it might be a good idea to incapacitate her."

"I was gonna." Phillips sounded a little defensive. "Just-"

"Just what?" the man spat, finally giving evidence of his anger.

"Relax! She hasn't left engineering since she boarded. Once we're close, I'll…"

He trailed off, and Jack resisted the urge to peek into the room to figure out the reason for the sudden quiet. His contact seemed just as confused as she was, prompting the pirate after a few moments with a drawn-out "Yes?"

"I heard something."

Jack's blood went cold as footsteps thumped through the room toward the hallway and her current listening spot, and she bit her lip to keep from letting out a curse. How had he heard her? She hadn't fucking moved.

Then, just as she began to back away, she heard it too – a movement behind her. She had just enough time to turn around and see the turian that had managed to get the jump on her, just enough time to glow blue with energy as she prepared to smash the bastard's head through the wall, but the alien was fast and ready for her attack.

With a violent crack, the butt of his gun connected with her forehead and she crumpled to the floor. The biotics surrounding her body faded as she slipped into unconsciousness.

"Hey, Boss. Look what I found," the turian smirked as Phillips appeared in the doorway.

Neither of them noticed the single, shining eye watching from the grate in the ceiling above them.

Miranda strode at a brisk pace out of the elevator when it reached the crew deck, making a beeline toward port observation and the makeshift lounge into which it had evolved once the destruction of the Collector base had left the crew with plenty of extra downtime.

It was where one naturally went looking for Shepard after a search of the CIC and his cabin proved fruitless. Normally, that was a subject of some annoyance with the straight-laced officer (couldn't he at least pretend to be working, damn it?) but at the moment, futile arguments were far from her mind as she wrung her hands in uncharacteristic anxiety for a moment longer out in the hallway. A brief hesitation and one deep breath later, she was stepping into the room as the door opened with a hiss of air.

As expected, Shepard was there with Garrus. It was increasingly common to see the two of them – plus Joker, whenever they could manage to pry him away from the pilot's chair - in the lounge watching films on an Omni-tool. It seemed such a normal, reassuring scene that she hated to interrupt it, hated having to deliver the news that she knew Shepard had been dreading for days.

Shepard was crouched beside a sizable collection of movie cases, listing off a nearly unbroken stream of titles to the turian sitting on the section of bench that Grunt had "relocated" from starboard observation. Garrus hardly even seemed to be listening except for the faces he would pull when he heard a title he particularly didn't like. He was lounging languidly with his long arms draped over the back of his seat, apparently oblivious to the growing annoyance in his friend's tone as he failed to agree to any of the suggestions posed to him.

"Evil Dead."

"Can't watch that without Joker," he rebuffed without pause.

"Fleet and Flotilla."

"Seen it too many times."

"Pitch Black."

"It's too early in the morning for Vin Diesel."

"Sleepless on the Citadel."

At this, the turian finally looked over his shoulder to shoot an amused look at his commander.

When the idea wasn't immediately shot down, Shepard looked up to meet Garrus' gaze, furrowing his brow as he caught his friend's expression. "What? Some of these are Tali's."

"Riiight."

"Star Wars episodes sixteen to eighteen."

"Four, five, and six are the only ones worth watching."

Thanks to his armored hide, Garrus hardly flinched when the movie case hit him in the back of the head, flung by an exasperated Shepard. The gunnery officer's shoulders shook with laughter.

"Fine! You come over here and pick the movie, you damn hipster," he exclaimed in defeat, before he noticed that the obviously distressed XO had entered the room and all signs of playfulness left his face. From his look, she had a feeling that he knew exactly what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth. "Miranda. Is everything alright?"

"Not exactly," she began tentatively, and felt Garrus' concerned gaze shift to her as well. "We've lost Jack's signal."

Jack's first thought upon regaining consciousness was a desperate wish to go back to being blacked out. A sharp, insistent ache was reverberating from one end of her skull to the other, making her feel as if her head were about to split open like an overripe melon. She groaned, clenching her eyes tight together and finding a small crick in her neck when she lifted her head. She was sitting upright, but couldn't move her arms or legs. When she tried, she felt the pressure of rope around her wrists, around her ankles. She lifted her eyelids slowly in fear that any sudden lights might aggravate her pained head further, but her left one blinked immediately shut again when her eye started stinging like a big angry bitch. There was something sticky in her eyelashes, blood maybe. She must have bled right into her eye from where she had been knocked on the head. With the good one she had left, she took a cursory look at her surroundings. Cramped room nearly filled with junk. Two armed guards. She looked down; she was tied to a chair.

She let out a colorful string of muttered curses when she came to this realization, immediately beginning to brainstorm a list of all of the horrible, violent things she was going to do to Phillips as soon as she got out of this. The guards took notice of her then, realizing she was awake, and she sent them a glare. They were both turians. Most of the crew of the Scylla was human, so she could only assume that her old friend had hand-picked the biggest, most intimidating members he could find to keep watch on her. She hoped he wasn't stupid enough to think that they were going to scare her.

"Where the fucking heck am I?"

They didn't answer right away, instead just looked at each other as if trying to decide whether or not they were supposed to be talking to her. In the interim, she took a closer look at the pair of them. They must have been from the same clan – they both sported the same darkish mustard-colored face paint. Call her a racist, but she had a hell of a time telling the aliens apart when they didn't come in different colors.

"Cargo hold," one finally answered. The other straightened from where he was leaning against the wall and walked right up to her. She jerked her head away when he reached a hand out toward her face. He clucked his tongue.

"Hold still."

She didn't have much choice when it came to obeying or not, as he planted one large hand right on the top of her head to hold her steady. With the other, he wiped the long streak of drying blood from her skin, carefully manipulating his taloned digits so as not to cause any further damage. Her closed eye fluttered and then opened again, blinking and watering until the stinging subsided. Still a little burry, but at least she got her depth perception back.

She knew that he wasn't doing it just to be nice; it wasn't how things worked with people like him – them. Her. He did it to rub his position of power in her face, in case she hadn't caught on to it right away. It didn't matter that she didn't want to be touched, that she would rather go half blind than accept any charity from him; he was going to do what he wanted to her and she couldn't do shit to stop it. Maybe she should have appreciated the ability to use both eyes again anyway, but all she could think about while the guard was so close was how easy it would be to lunge at his hand and rip a chunk clean out of it with her teeth. Tempting, but she fought the impulse. It wouldn't do any good to just piss her captors off, no matter how satisfying it might have been to watch him scream and bleed all over the floor. Maybe Shepard was rubbing off on her after all.

Instead, she asked, "You the fucker who hit me?"

"Nope." He glanced sideways at her, tugging on her restraints to check that they were still tight enough as he jerked his head toward the other turian in the corner. "That was him."

The future dead guy he gestured to threw up his hands, immediately beginning to squirm under the withering sneer she shot in his direction. "Oh come on, man. Why'd you have to tell her that?"

"Relax. She's not getting out of this chair." He straightened, walked calmly back to his post and crossed his arms. "Even if she does, we both have guns. She doesn't have shit."

And at that moment, she realized this was true. Something was… wrong. She felt naked, weak. She tried reaching out for the comforting presence of dark energy with her mind but couldn't quite get a grip on it; it kept slipping away from her before she could get a good hold. It was like trying to pick up a hunk of jello with a couple of fucking chopsticks. Fuck!

"Where's my amp?"

The mouthy turian smirked. Or at least she thought whatever he did with his mandibles was a smirk, assumed it was probably what the asshole's reaction would be to the suddenly urgent tone that her voice took on. As much time as she had spent around Garrus, sometimes turian facial expressions still went right over her head. But it turned out she was starting to be able to tell these two apart after all; every time the one opened his trap, she wanted to slug him.

"The captain wants a word with you. He should be down soon." He picked idly at the side of one of his talons where a small splintered piece was breaking off. "Why don't you ask him?"

Recognizing a dismissal when she saw one, Jack fell silent again and tried to smother her growing frustration. She couldn't move, couldn't pummel this asshole turian, couldn't even scratch her damn nose if she wanted to.

All she could do was hope that nobody had gotten to Legion yet.

Around the same time that Jack was waking up, Legion had navigated its way back down from the bridge to the bowels of the ship. It was near silent as it moved through the ceiling's ducts, distributing its weight so that its hands and feet hardly made any kind of depression on the thin metal across which it was crawling. The farther it went, the more difficult it would be to detect as the hum of the mass effect core grew louder and muffled the sounds of its movements. It stopped as it reached another vent, allowing it to see down into the room below.

Engineering.

Two humans were present – one tapping away at a set of consoles and the other standing idly almost directly below the geth's position. Neither human even looked up from their activities when Legion quietly popped the vent out of place and slid fluidly down to the floor.

The first was dispatched quickly. The warning cry the man was about to let out when he felt cold metal hands grasp either side of his head was instead replaced by the wet snap of his cervical vertebrae being twisted apart. The other turned at the thud of his comrade slumping lifelessly to the ground just in time for Legion to clamp one hand around his trachea. His scream turned into a wheeze that quickly turned into nothing at all as his throat closed completely and the synthetic pinned him down to the console he had previously been monitoring. A thin stream of blood began to drip from where his head had collided with the unyielding surface.

The amount of time that humans can hold their breath varies greatly between individuals. This particular human was doing an admirable job of remaining conscious, grasping at the vice-like grip that held him in place even as deoxygenated blood cells began to turn his face a vibrant shade of purple. To maintain optimal efficiency, Legion turned its attention from the thrashing captive to the console itself, the fingers of its free hand flying across the controls as the other continued to mercilessly squeeze.

By the time the pirate had finally gone still, the geth had stripped away the first layer of the system's defenses.

Jack didn't have to wait long before Roy Phillips came storming down to the cargo hold. He wasted no time, striding straight up to her seat as soon as the door to the room opened for him. His face was beet red, contorted with anger and hinting at barely-restrained violence. She wondered at first what could have crawled up his ass and died to make him look even angrier than her, but she got her answer soon enough.

"Mind explaining what the fuck this is?" Phillips held a tiny object up between the two of them, and the biotic turned her attention briefly from his livid face to what she immediately recognized as the tracking device she had been fitted with before leaving the Normandy. They must have found it when they took out her amp.

Judging by his anger, he knew exactly what it was already. So she stayed silent, even put on a cocky smirk when he threw the hardware to the ground and crunched it to nothing with his boot (Mordin was gonna be pissed). She was in a tight spot, but she wasn't about to lose her cool. She'd gotten out of worse before, and a singular thought kept ringing through her head and delivering a steady stream of confidence in what seemed like an otherwise hopeless situation:

If she was going down, it wasn't going to be because of this schmuck.

"Who sent you?"

"Your mother."

"I like you, Jack," he began with a frown, leaning over her and grabbing hold of her chin in order to hold her head still. With his free hand he drew a pocket knife and flipped it open, pressing the flat of the blade firmly against her face so that she could feel the sharp itch of the pointed tip just above her cheek bone. She stopped trying to squirm away for fear of getting herself stabbed in the eyeball. "But don't think that there won't be any consequences if you make things difficult."

She answered after a moment's hesitation, trying to ignore the metallic glint that kept drawing her gaze down to the bottom edge of her field of vision. "Shepard." She thought of how shaken he had been back on Omega, how he had brought up the man to his boss, and hoped that she had discovered a way to wind this guy up enough to make him careless. What harm was there in telling him at that point, anyway? "I work for Commander Shepard."

He scowled, gritting his teeth into a sort of grimace as he pressed her back against the chair and dug the knife in a little more, releasing a quiet hiss from her along with a teardrop of blood that rolled slowly down her face. "I'm serious. I will put those pretty little eyes of yours right out."

"So am I. And you know what the best part is?" She managed to keep from wincing despite the fact that her hostage eye was beginning to tear up, as if anticipating the twitch from the blade that would darken it for good. "I'm his main squeeze. You're gonna be in big trouble when he finds out you tried to sell me off."

"You're kidding me. That's really the best that you can come up with?"

"Ain't lying, Phillips."

"You and Shepard? Hero of the Citadel Shepard?" He finally removed the knife and stepped back, his voice growing in volume as he became more incredulous. "You and Commander John fucking Shepard?"

Jack smirked and tried not to look too relieved, getting the feeling that she had at least started to make him nervous. "You know, I'm pretty sure that's not his middle name."

Phillips narrowed his eyes shrewdly and shook his head. "You're bluffing."

"Am I?" She jerked her weight forward so that her chair took a hop toward him. "You know what else they call him? The Butcher of Torfan. Maybe when he gets here, he'll show you why."

The man cursed under his breath, his face contorting into scowl as he paced and raked his fingers back through his hair. Oh yeah, she had gotten to him. With any luck, he would be freaked out enough to make a mistake and give her an opening, just enough to give the Normandy time to catch up while they still knew where to look for her.

"Ripley!" the pirate spoke, seemingly to the ceiling. After a couple of seconds' delay, a reply came from over the ship's speakers, presumably from whoever was in the pilot's chair.

"Aye, Sir."

"We need to be in FTL yesterday. There's a ghost on our tail and I want you to shake him off. You got me?"

Before Ripley could respond, the room went pitch black. The low, persistent hum of the engine died along with it, leaving the Scylla practically blind and drifting. The vessel's fearless leader yelped as he stumbled around in the dark with his turians, bringing a smile back to Jack's face. She guessed that nobody had managed to get their grimy hands on Legion yet. The old bucket of bolts had proved itself useful after all.

Shit. She was never going to hear the end of that from Shepard.

Taking immediate advantage of the fact that she was no longer the center of attention, Jack began to rock her chair from side to side, each time leaning a little farther one way and then the other. Her captors were still struggling to adjust to the darkness and were otherwise occupied. She heard frantic shouting from over somebody's com-link about an approaching ship, but didn't dare to get her hopes up – she doubted even Joker would have been able to get there so fast after her tracking device had gotten stomped on. She had to assume that she was still on her own.

When the chair finally tipped, she hit the ground gracelessly and let out a pained grunt when she felt something pop in her wrist. No, no time for that. Deal with it later. Move on. She kicked her feet out in an effort to slide the binding around her ankles off the legs of the chair. The rope was tight, enough to make her toes tingle from lack of circulation, but she was making progress. Inch by inch, she wiggled one foot free, then the other. Jack grinned toothily and turned her focus toward the vague, shadowy shapes of Phillips and the turians off to one side of the room, still totally oblivious that she had escaped her restraints.

Now all she had to do was fight her way out of there with no biotics and both hands tied behind her back.

She picked a target as she rolled to her feet – one of the turians, judging by the height of the figure – and went for him at a run. By the time they noticed that things were about to go very wrong for them, it was too late. She threw all of her weight and momentum into her unlucky victim's solar plexus, alerting the other two with the loud clang of his turian hide slamming against the wall behind him. He bent double and wheezed as all of the air rushed out of his lungs at once, then sank heavily to the floor clutching at his gut. Jack heard a snarl from the nearby darkness and ducked down low as a few concussive rounds went whizzing over her head. She twisted to feel around the waist of the dazed pirate on the floor, scrabbling for his pistol before his friend could score a lucky shot. After a few precious seconds, her hand closed around the grip of the gun. Of course, that was when the emergency lighting finally decided to kick in.

There was a pregnant pause as Jack and the second turian – the one who had cracked her on the skull – locked eyes. What was probably a split second felt like half an eternity before they both moved at the same time. But she was faster.

She fought against her awkward position and squeezed off a couple of wild shots. The first skimmed harmlessly past his fringe but the second landed low in his gut. He grunted and gripped at his stomach, dark blue bubbling up between his fingers as he sank to his knees. As he dropped, he revealed Captain Philips standing behind him. The man looked like he was about to piss his pants.

Jack chuckled low in her throat, almost drunkenly, her brain buzzing with adrenaline and that sweet rush of endorphins she knew so well. The moment was almost surreal; the tinted glow of the lights shining down on them had her, both literally and figuratively, seeing red. She rose slowly to her feet, never taking her eyes off the last remaining obstacle that was now standing between her and her freedom. Said obstacle took one look into her eyes, at the murderous expression on her face, then turned tail and ran.

She eagerly gave chase, hardly feeling the rope grating painfully against the skin of her wrists as she fought to keep up despite her restraints. She followed him to the next deck up, taking the stairs two at a time, and found the rest of the ship in chaos. The crew was all running, shouting, firing their guns as uniformed men came swarming in through the airlock. Jack hardly paid them any attention as she followed her target with a brutal single-mindedness, vaulting over fallen pirates and avoiding getting drilled by any stray shots by nothing but dumb luck alone. She wasn't even really sure what she was going to do to Roy once she caught him. All she knew was that somebody was about to get hurt real bad.

It wasn't long before the man's intended destination became evident. Off to one side of the crew deck, nestled neatly into the wall was a row of escape pods. He was headed right for them.

Oh, hell no…

Jack growled and forced a last burst of speed out of her tiring legs, determined not to let him weasel his way out of this. She barreled into his back just before he reached the door to one of the pods, ramming his face into the metal and sending the both of them toppling to the floor. The escape pod opened dutifully for its captain a moment later, but he was no longer in any position to be climbing into it, blood gushing out of a broken nose and chest compressed by the weight of the angry biotic sitting on top of it.

She grinned maniacally down at him at the sight of his blood, panting to catch her breath after the sprint through the ship. "HAH!"

It was then that she noticed the rest of the deck had gone strangely still around them, the only sound aside from their labored breathing being the high-pitched whine of about half a dozen assault rifles priming as they aimed at her back. Well… shit.

"Turn around and put your hands on your head!"

At the booming voice, Jack glanced quickly over her shoulder at the group of soldiers that had her in their sights. She wasn't sure which one of them had spoken. All of them appeared identical in the dim lighting with their lowered visors and black armor. Alliance? She wasn't sure if that was something to be relieved about or not. Shepard might have had a couple friends among them still, but that didn't mean that they were going to take too kindly to her. She scowled at them all in turn.

"I can't, you idiot," she spat back, wiggling the fingers of her good hand to draw attention to her bound wrists. "I'm not part of this crew. I'm from the Normandy. Shepard sent me here for this asshole," the slur was punctuated by Phillips' grunt as she dug a knee sharply into his side. "So I'd appreciate if you would keep your fucking guns out of my face."

"Shepard?" came a voice from behind the other soldiers. It was a woman who spoke this time, and Jack heard the shuffle of boots behind her as the men shifted to let her through. She felt eyes on her back, like she was being sized up, and bristled at the tone of amusement, of incredulity, as the stranger spoke again. "You are on Commander Shepard's crew?"

"Sound any more surprised and I'm gonna start to get insulted." She smirked humorlessly and turned her head toward the voice, blinking when she saw the person it came from. The soldier was watching her, unruffled, with one hand planted on her hip and the other grasping an assault rifle that was hanging casually at her side. She was clad from head to toe in pink and white armor, seemingly designed to remind everyone around that there was definitely a woman underneath that hard shell. Brown eyes met brown eyes as Jack narrowed hers in response to the confident gaze staring down at her through the girly-colored helmet. The biotic had just finished deciding that she could picture Miranda wearing some kind of shit like that when something suddenly clicked on in her brain. That odd feeling of familiarity she got when she saw this chick, she knew where it was from.

Horizon. That's where she had seen this armor before.

For God's sake. Was she never going to catch a goddamn break today?

Author's Notes: So supposedly, Jack got her name from the kid in Pitch Black and Ash got hers from Bruce Campbell's character in Evil Dead. I was just watching Pitch Black again a little while ago and realized that the voice actress of another one of my favorite Bioware characters is actually in it. Cool Points for anyone who knows witch- *ahem* which character I'm talking about.

On another note, ever since I heard about a Mass Effect movie being made, my brain keeps trying to picture Olivia Wilde bald and covered in tattoos. Is that happening to anyone else, or is it just me?