Chapter One: What Fate Befell Her

One by one, her body began to register various sensations and dutifully passed them along the neural pathways to her brain for processing.

Coldness and the feeling of something smooth and metallic against the skin of her face. A faint hum, barely perceptible, felt more than heard. Subconsciously, her mind analysed this new piece of information and offered up the theory that she was aboard a vessel under FTL flight.

Where? Silence was her only response.

Another, less pleasant sensation: a dull full-body ache made itself apparent as her mind clawed its way toward full wakefulness. Something's not right. It felt as though somebody had placed a metal band around her head and was tightening it by degrees; she felt her pulse beat too-rapidly in her temples, heard the blood roaring in her ears, like the way she could hear the ocean when she placed a seashell to her ear as a child.

Thoughts of her childhood sparked other, random thoughts and soon she was taking a disjointed walk down memory lane.

She was nine years old and at school, being pushed around by a small clique of older girls who had singled her out because of her gawkiness and the braces on her teeth. Her older brother, Julian descended upon them, seemingly out of nowhere and put the frighteners on them. The girls scattered and ran. Julian hugged his little sister, told her not to worry, he'd always be there for her.

Her memories jolted forward a full decade - she was being chewed out by an instructor after royally screwing up a training exercise on Arcturus Station; had the cadet officer's actions carried real-life consequences, her squad would be so much cooling meat by now.

You need to wake up

Another memory, this one more recent. Torfan. Her unit decimated, she called desperately over the comm for reinforcements. There were none. Beside her, Serviceman Parker fell back, half his face blown off. His remaining eye, shockingly blue amid the blood seemed to be pleading with her to help him.

Lieutenant Hayley Storm jerked awake, lips clamping down tight, biting back the scream.

---

Even as she came to, Shepard knew her situation was badly compromised. Slowly, her eyes opened, only to find an impenetrable blackness. Am I blind? was the first, panicked thought. Blinking rapidly, unaware that she was emitting a low moan, the Spectre forced herself into a half-sitting position. Even through the unremitting darkness, she could feel the world spin erratically about her. Feeling her gorge rise, Shepard fought a brief battle with herself to not vomit. She lost. Coughing weakly, utterly spent, Shepard wiped a hand across her lips.

Even with her hand held up before her wide open eyes, Shepard couldn't see it. I'd rather die than live the rest of my life like this.

As though a star had manifested itself in the room with her, the darkness was suddenly banished by a brilliant, agonising light. Shepard's eyelids slammed shut, purple after images dancing behind them. Tears leaking from her eyes, the Spectre pressed both hands against her face, trying without success to block out hard white light.

"They always react the same way, have you ever noticed that?" Va'ath commented from the other side of the observation window. The turian tapped a taloned finger to his chin in thought. "Although I must concede that if I had spent the past thirty-odd hours in a lightless box, and was recovering from an immense hang over, I'd probably be curled up like that too, when the lights came up."

"Bah, humans are just weak," Belith opined, voice hard. The turian turned to the other hunter, appraising him as he had the human captive. In Va'ath's opinion, the batarian was too quick to judge, and his preconceptions blinded him to new possibilities. Such preconceptions would likely get him killed, one day. Va'ath hoped to be there to see it happen.

"No, not weak. Not this one at least," the third member of the trio muttered. Belith's four eyes rolled. Va'ath nodded at the krogan to continue.

"That is Shepard, isn't it?" Bex enquired. The turian nodded again, dark skin contrasting with his white tribal markings.

"Shepard, survivor of Akuze, saviour of the Citadel," Bex stared intently at the woman inside the holding cell. She had yet to uncurl herself from the foetal position and a low moan carried through the speakers. "It isn't right, her being treated like this," the krogan finally stated.

"Pfft! I didn't take you for a human-lover, Bex!" the batarian scoffed. Wordlessly Bex turned, seized the batarian by the shoulders and slammed him against the clear-steel observation window.

Inside her cell, the captive jerked at the sound.

Pinning the struggling batarian to the window, Bex leaned right into his face, nostrils flaring with rage. "I respect warriors, batarian scum. Shepard," Bex jerked his head towards the woman, "Is a warrior. You are just a carrion feeder. Warriors deserve better treatment than to be locked in a cage like animals."
Breath coming in harsh gasps, Belith snapped, voice shrill, "Humans are animals! Krogan are animals!"

Before Va'ath could do anything to stop the krogan, he unsheathed a blade as long as his forearm and rammed it, hilt deep into Belith's chest. Bex dropped the batarian and left without a word.

Looking down at the Belith's corpse, standing well back from the spreading pool of blood, Va'ath said with broadly flaring mandibles, "Well, I guess I was there to see your preconceptions get you killed, after all." Bending over the corpse, the turian worked the blade back and forth until it came free. The krogan would likely want his weapon back.

Shepard listened as the second set of foot steps echoed away into the distance and tentatively opened her eyes. This time, the glare wasn't as bad. Or maybe her eyes were finally adjusting to it. Bracing herself on the cold metal floor, Shepard climbed upright. She staggered slightly, supporting herself against the window. Her pounding headache was the least of her worries, she belatedly realised. Slumped against the outside of the window lay a dead batarian. Swallowing in an attempt to relieve the dryness in her mouth, the Spectre took in her surroundings.

The cell she was in - for it was certain she was somebody's captive - was bare grey metal with only the light panel in the ceiling and a metal toilet with no seat to break the featurelessness. Shepard amended her survey as she noticed, high up in one corner, the blinking red light of a surveillance camera. She heard a faint whirr as it kept her in focus.

Outside was a corridor, more gunmetal grey, more evenly spaced lighting panels in the ceiling. Opposite her position was another cell, identical to hers. It was empty though Shepard saw through the glass barriers pools of what was probably blood on the floor. Red.

A thought slowly dawned on her. "Where's Hailstorm?"

Then another. "Where am I?"

---

Walking rapidly, talons clicking against the deck, Va'ath soon caught up with Bex. Idly, Va'ath twirled the long-bladed dagger between his fingers. The balance felt a little skewed to him but it clearly served the krogan well enough.

"Bex," he quietly addressed the krogan. Without turning from cell, and the captive within, Bex held out his right hand. Va'ath flipped the dagger around and placed it, handle first, in the krogan's hand. "Thanks," he rumbled and sheathed the blade at his waist.

Stepping up beside his fellow hunter, Va'ath nodded at the human woman inside the cell. She was seated in a corner, knees drawn up to her chest, back pressed hard against the wall as though hoping to escape through it via osmosis. "This is the one captured with Shepard?"

"She is," the krogan nodded his green-crested head. He studied the human with dark red eyes. She too had the look of a warrior, her brown eyes met his gaze unflinchingly. Briefly, she broke eye contact and shot a look at the turian.

There was no small amount of fear in the woman's eyes, Va'ath saw. Not that he blamed her. But she was holding onto her nerve remarkably better than some of the captives he'd seen in his time. Mewling wretches, with their wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"Has she spoken yet?" he asked the krogan, mind on the standing wager between them - typically, the average captive would blurt out something woefully predictable like Why are you doing this to me? or the equally unoriginal Who are you people?

"I'm betting she opens with where are you taking me?" Va'ath predicted, feeling confident. She had that look about her, this flaxen-haired woman clad in the rumpled uniform of the human Alliance Marine Corp.

Bex shook his head, "No, she'll want to know what fate befell her ally. At least I would, in her position."

"Let's find out, shall we?" Va'th said and pressed a button set into the door frame, activating the microphone. "Hello in there," he greeted the human, voice deceptively pleasant.

The woman stared hard at him before replying. Va'ath leaned in a little closer to the glass, so he wouldn't miss a word.

"What have you done with the Commander?" the captive answered, voice pitched low, fear well concealed. Va'ath slumped back. Without a word he opened a pocket on his hardsuit, plucked out a fifty-credit chit and passed it to the krogan.

Bex smiled widely, exposing a great many fangs. "Do not worry too much, human. Shepard is alive. You'll see each other again, I imagine. Though in less pleasant circumstances than you might hope for."

"What do mean?"
It was the turian who answered, "Oh, you'll find out." Va'ath closed the channel. Turning back to Bex he asked, "You feel like lunch?"

---

"Karrick, the Vengeance has arrived in-system and her captain reports success in the latest capture runs," Jorik informed the other batarian, having just received word of the ship's arrival.

"Excellent. Shepard is unharmed?"

"Badly hung over and dehydrated but no permanent damage. The Vengeance reports that a second human female was taken along with the Spectre," Jorik went on.

"Good, maybe they can be made to kill one another. The viewers always enjoy that. Once the Vengeance is docked, I want Shepard brought to me."

---

"I'm tellin' ya, one'a Karrick's capture teams pulled in a Spectre," Karn told his drinking buddy, scooping up a handful of nuts from the the bowl on the bar top.

"How can you eat that stuff?" his friend replied with a mock shudder.

"Uh, you take a handful of nuts, pop 'em in your mouth and chew. See?"

"The people who paw through the bowl of complimentary nuts are the same people who never wash their hands after using the facilities," Lurn explained, watching the action on the wall-sized vidscreen.

"That's...that's disgusting."

"Anyway," Lurn went on, enjoying his friend's discomfiture, "how could a Spectre let himself be grabbed like that? Where'd you even hear that...oh did you see that? The Reaver just about blew that guy in half with his shotgun."

"And that's the Reaver's fourteenth kill of the season! Ladies and gentlemen, that krogan just will not be stopped!"

"Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Anyway, I read about the Spectre on the extranet. It's a woman, by the way."

"Oh, he read it on the extranet! So it must be true!" Lurn scoffed.

Ignoring him, Karn waved the bartender over. "Can I have some more nuts?"

---

Time passed. How much, Storm didn't know. The chronometer normally worn around her left wrist was gone, revealing the five-pointed star tattooed on the inside of her wrist, a birthday present to herself, to mark her eighteenth. For the sake of symmetry, she'd gone back to the tattooist and had the same pattern inked into her right wrist. Storm shook her head, hoping to encourage coherent thought and a few loose strands of hair whipped around. Absently, she tucked them back behind her ear.

"OK, think. Reason things out. They took your watch so you can't mark the passage of time. Classic method of putting a captive off balance. Fine. So who's they? Batarians...they've had a beef with the Commander ever since that X57 incident a while back. This some kind of payback? Why not just kill us, we were both drunk enough so as to pose no real resistance. A ransom demand? Makes no sense..."

Storm looked up from the floor as she heard booted foot steps approaching from the left. A pair of tall humanoids stood outside the glass, hardsuited, heads covered with full-face helmets, visors darkened. They each held an assault rifle and Storm noted the cuffs dangling from their belts.

Cuffs implied that they meant to restrain her before taking her someplace else, at least the Lieutenant hoped so. Could be they just wanted to mess with her mind and simply intended to take her outside, put her against a wall and riddle her with mass accelerator rounds. Hell of lot of trouble to go to, just for that.

Storm cautiously stood upright, trying not to visibly wince at the pins and needles sensation in her legs.

"Step away from the door," a deep male voice ordered. The man's voice had a metallic-sounding quality, no doubt an effect of the helmet's comm circuitry. Storm backed up until the heels of her boots hit the rear wall.

The door to her cell slid open and both guards trained their rifles on her chest. "Turn around," the second man ordered and she complied, hoping they merely meant to cuff her hands behind her back...rather than something else.

Footsteps drew up behind her and one of the men quickly pat her down, and, finding nothing that could serve as a weapon, pulled her arms behind her back and slipped the cuffs around her wrists. The metal of the bracelets felt icy against her skin.

"Turn around. Move."

Staring hard into the man's visor, attempting to see past the tinting, Storm saw only her own darkened reflection. She doubled over, gasping as he rammed the rifle stock into her stomach, hard.

"When I say move, you move!" he snarled. The harshness of his accent as he spoke the standard trade language convinced Storm that her new friends, the one who'd hit her at least, were batarians.

This can't be good.

Suppressing a groan as she straightened up, the Lieutenant again looked into the batarian's helmet, saw her lips move as she quipped, "Take me to your leader." She gave him a small, mocking smile.

This time, the rifle butt struck her in the face, opening a gash above her right eye. Unable to break her fall, Hayley's head met the floor with enough force to render her insensible.

"Why do you always do that to them?" the other batarian snapped.

"She disrespected me!"

"There's a reason humans think we're all barbaric savages, and that reason is people like you."

"Don't start with me. Bad enough I have to pick up this piece of human filth because she's too stupid to walk," he kicked her in the ribs, "When I tell her to walk!"

"And there you go again," his long-suffering compatriot muttered as they hauled the woman out of the cell.

A second team of guards walked the corridor to Shepard's cell. A Spectre, now that was something to brag about.

"Be careful with this one, they say she's biotic."

"And I suppose they also say she can chew nails and spit out thumbtacks, too. Oh and breathe fire."
"Fine, don't believe me but don't say I didn't warn if you end up turned into a bloody pile of raw meat after she warps the very fabric of your being. Don't laugh, I've seen those damnable asari commando units do the same thing."

"Well why don't we just stun the bitch and be done with it?"
"Because Karrick wants to...talk to her."
"Then let Karrick come down and get her."

"I'll be sure to pass along to him that you said that...alright we're here. Prisoner, step away from the door."

The woman, tall and well-muscled without appearing mannish looked tired and washed out. A casual onlooker would be hard-pressed to know she was an agent of the Special Reconnaissance and Tactics arm of the Citadel Council.

"Tell me what you did with the other officer I was with."

"Step away from the door. Now."

"Or what? You'll shoot me? Go ahead, do it. I'm feeling fairly addled-headed just at the moment but even I can tell you didn't go to the trouble of capturing me just to have me shot. Consequently, you need me alive for some reason. So, to make things easier on all of us, tell me what I want to know."

"All you need to know, human, is that the boss wants to see you. Whether you get to him under your own power or not, is entirely up to you. For the last time, Step. Away. From. The. Door," the batarian bit off the words one at a time.

The human's bloodshot eyes were defeated by his visor in their attempt to lock with his own eyes. The guard could see the fury simmering within the human. Finally though, she stood back.

The batarian entered, cuffed her and led her away.

A/N: This chapter came out faster than I'd imagined. Thanks for the reviews so far.