The ship wasn't large – it was simply big enough to hold this week's catch, an assortment of young adults from all over this region of Earth. Almost anyone could deduce that this ship was used primarily for shuttling Cerberus's new recruits, holding a minimal amount of sleep pods and having no visible weaponry. It wasn't quiet, either – the hum of the engine was giving Kelly a headache. They sat awkwardly in a briefing room, in a relatively empty deck below the bridge and navigation center. The room had a tastefully large and bright Cerberus logo mounted on the wall they were facing, and most of the new recruits either stared at it or at the ground, nervously awaiting the speech they were about to receive.
After a long stretch of down time, a somewhat older man who seemed almost military entered. He wore a charcoal and yellow-orange armor, and his hair was short and grey. His dark-colored face had Asian accents to it, and he wore an eye patch on his left eye, a scar stretching down to his lip. The man proudly strutted to the back of the room, where he turned and surveyed the fidgety beginners, hands clasped behind his back, his chin high in the air. Kelly herself even began to feel like she should squirm a little under his strong gaze, reaching up a hand to stroke her hair, but after some moments he broke a friendly smile and pulled an empty chair towards himself, sitting in it before the whole room.
"Don't worry, y'all aren't on an Alliance ship," the man joked in a much gentler voice than the psychologist had imagined him having, allowing a few of the young adults to chuckle nervously. "Welcome t' Cerberus, th' next best thing in th' galaxy. Lemme start off by introducin' myself. My name is Lieutenant Mark Bishop, but you c'n call me Lieutenant. I used to be in th' Alliance, until I got injured in some freak accident on an alien planet, lost m' eye." He pointed to the patch emphatically, earning a few nods from those who were closer to him. "They let me off, gave me some retirement money, and sent me on m' way back to good ol' Earth. But I wanted some action! I was still good t' go, and I wanted t' go down fightin', not rockin' on my back porch in Texas. So, like you, I was approached by Cerberus. They let me be a weapons trainer, said I wasn't reliable with only one eye. When I were sick of it, I decided t' be in charge of new recruits. They let me do what I wanted, and I still got paid, and I have not been disappointed.
"See, problem with th' Alliance, is they're tryin' way too hard to get friendly with the aliens. I say we need to forget them, keep goin' with what's good for us. Take what we need, stay at home with our planet. We're riskin' way too much fraternizin' with some bluebloods. That's what Cerberus thinks, too, an' I like that. We do what's right for humanity, and we keep it simple and clean. Get in, get the job done, get out. Everyone's happy." A few of the new recruits muttered approval, nodded to each other. Kelly merely sat still, taking in what she was hearing. Who cares if Cerberus didn't want to make friends with aliens? They could still interact, still gain from each other. There was so much to learn, so much to see… Cerberus seemed to be behind the scenes, working for the needs of humanity instead of doing what was legally and socially correct. That didn't seem so bad.
As the Lieutenant began to go over the rules of the organization, the boy sitting next to her took it as a cue to whisper to her eagerly. "Hey, I'm Liam. You heard the news on Shepard?" he asked, and she gave him a sideways glance. He had to have been fresh out of high school, which meant that he felt the right to talk while others were talking. The psychologist rolled her eyes at him disinterestedly, deciding that she didn't want to waste her ticket off of Earth for the gossipy sake of some kid.
But Liam persisted. "I heard that she's trapped on a prison somewhere. She needs rescue. And this is what's going to get me to her," he continued.
Kelly frowned. Obviously, this boy had been listening to the same newscast she had been the morning before, but even they had said the stories were ripped directly from tabloid media. If he thought he could get away from the organization and rescue a woman who'd been missing for over a year, he was sadly mistaken. "Shut up and listen," she murmured back, trying to tune in to the man explaining the regulations on contacting family.
"I've got a friend, see," the young boy said, "who's a computer hacker on the Citadel. He said he's been getting some signals and he knows where he can find her. Says she's captured by some Batarians near a Cerberus base. If I can get to her and I can rescue her, I wouldn't just be a gun for hire, I'd be a hero." Kelly felt that with every word, Liam was getting closer, and it was starting to disgust her. She inched away from him ever so slightly, trying very hard to block his voice out. Turning and glaring at him,
The Lieutenant was going over consequences for deserting, and she really strongly considered turning this hopeful hero in. After some debating in her mind, she decided it would be for the best. The organization would keep him from stepping out of line and keep him well away from that base, where he could try and break away and do something stupid. Not to mention, she would get some small approval from this Lieutenant, who was likely a prominent figure in where she would wind up in this new career.
"Sir, what exactly counts as deserting?" A piercing voice cut through the air, and Kelly's gaze darted to a skinny girl about her age, with thick, curly black hair, glasses too large for her face, and a long, thin nose. Squinting her eyes at the odd figure, Kelly was immediately irritated.
Lieutenant seemed to be just as pleased by the interjection, leaning closer to the girl to get a better look. "And what would you happen t' be here for, young miss?" the older man asked, raising a bushy grey eyebrow.
"I'm Naomi Eavral, and I'm here for psychology!" the young woman squeaked, and Kelly wrinkled her nose. She hoped she wouldn't have to work with this mouse of a girl. The Lieutenant looked at her for a moment, before letting out a low chuckle.
"You won't have t' worry about getting' in trouble with desertin', sweetheart," the man laughed, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. Kelly bristled a little. How could anyone with the same expertise as her not know something as basic as what deserting entailed? Considering that most of these recruits were probably going to wind up in combat anyway, she decided the rest of the room felt the same as her about this smidge of a woman.
At that moment, the pilot came over the speakers, proclaiming to the passengers that they were about to meet the Mass Relay and that they should brace themselves. The redhead realized that she wasn't the only one with their first time in space as a few of the recruits exchanged scared looks, clenching the edges of their chair in anticipation. However, the burst of energy was relatively short and not as turbulent as Kelly had expected it to be, and she untangled her tightly clasped hands from each other as the Lieutenant continued with his speech.
After another seemingly infinite half hour, the Lieutenant shakily stood up from his seat, and the recruits watched as he gained his balance, favoring one leg highly over the other. But once again he stood straight and strong, with a powerful but friendly smile on his face. "If y' have any concerns, you c'n come t' me with 'em," he advised, limping forward a few steps. "If y'all will follow me, we'll get y' out onto th' Citadel and t' our local office, where we'll get y'all registered n' fitted for uniforms n' ready t' set out t' your assigned places."
Kelly wiped her slightly sweaty palms on her pants, standing up with the rest of the group and following the Lieutenant to the exit for the ship. As one of the shortest in the crowd, she had problems stretching her neck to see over those a head taller than her. She wanted to see the Citadel, to be in awe of its space-age wonder. Something she had dreamed of - since, well, birth - was finally in her grasp, ready for the taking. Her heart began to beat faster as they inched, as a group, off the ship. One by one, they went through a short security checkpoint, an asari scanning their wrist implants to register that they were arriving. And finally, her foot touched the metallic ground, and the group around her began to spread out a little.
It was breathtaking to say the least. Tears formed in Kelly's eyes as she stared at what could be considered the sky. They had landed on one of the five arms, and she could see the others all around her, above her head. She could see the stars, the ships coming in and out, as was to be expected for the central hub of the galaxy. The redhead's chest swelled as she saw asari, turian, salarian, volus, hanar – all these alien species she had only ever seen in a textbook, all around her, talking with humans, interacting with each other, as they came off their ships and boarded others, or lounged around waiting for a friend. The woman nearly wanted to grab the arm of the person next to her to steady herself as she saw the intergalactic ads, describing vids and products that people of the citadel could watch and buy. The buildings all over stretched far above her head, and they glittered in her eyes as the most beautiful pieces of architecture she had ever seen. Never had she felt so fulfilled, not in her entire life.
But then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw that boy who had pestered her earlier, and remembered that she had a personal duty to fulfill. He seemed to be pestering someone else towards the front of the group, and she thanked God for the distraction. Speedwalking around the other recruits, who shuffled along slowly behind the old man who led them, she reached the Lieutenant.
He noticed her approaching him, and greeted her with a kind smile that wrinkled his eyes. "And what have we here, Miss…?"
"Kelly Chambers, sir, Psychologist," she replied, hoping she sounded much more dignified than that shrew had earlier in the day. "I'd like to inform you of something."
The man seemed to sense the tiny urgency in her voice, and the smile fell away to reveal something more serious and curious. "Go ahead."
"On the ship, one of the other recruits, Liam, was telling me about how he planned to reach a specific Cerberus base and leave it for some sort of absurd rescue mission. He believes that the late Commander Shepard is being kept near a base somewhere, and his goal is to find her."
Before the Lieutenant could even let the information sink in to process what to do with it, the recruit boy was pushing through the protesting group at the front of their small crowd, and running past in a panic. Kelly realized that he must have been eavesdropping in on their conversation, and upon hearing her snitching, to make a run for it. The man straightened up. "Miss Chambers, was that by any chance the boy you were just—"
"Yes, sir," Kelly said urgently, her body tense. She now felt personally responsible for him running away, when she could have tackled this with more poise.
"I want you to go find a C-Sec officer, and take them with you to stop that recruit. He must not be lost at any cost."
"Y-yes, alright," she stammered, a little bit confused, before running off in the direction where Liam had taken off.
C-Sec. Citadel security. What kind of uniforms did they wear? She didn't know that much about the Citadel.
She approached a Salarian in an official-looking black and blue uniform, who was staring at a datapad. "Excuse me, sir, are you a C-Sec officer?" she ventured, and he turned his greenish face towards her, staring at her with large black eyes. Her heart caught in her throat.
"Yes, do you need something?" he said in a slightly high-pitched voice, sounding only a bit annoyed. She was suddenly grateful for the translation tool Cerberus had added to her omnitool the second she had arrived on the ship.
"I was told to get your help to track down this man, he's crazy, I'm with Cerberus, this could cost me my job—" she began to say, her voice hovering on the thin line between sane and panicked. The salarian held up a hand.
"Calm down. What does this man look like? What's his name?"
"I—he just got off the ship with me less than five minutes ago, his name is Liam, he had light skin and dark hair, around age nineteen—" but the Salarian was already typing things into his datapad, registering what she was saying at lightning speed.
"Got him on here. Follow me." He began to run in the direction she had seen Liam go, and she figured he must have a tracker on that datapad, something to do with how they were scanned when they first got off the ship. After only a few blocks of running, they caught up to Liam, who was coincidentally in a dead end alley.
Looking around himself, the boy was in a state of panic. "I'll fuck you up!" he threatened, pressing himself to a wall, but pointing a finger at Kelly. He turned to the C-Sec officer. "This bitch told on me! I'll kill her! They're gonna kill me!" The boy was nearly ballistic, screaming and crying like a baby. The salarian drew a gun from his holster.
Liam stopped making noise once he saw the barrel of the gun pointed at him. "You'll come here and let me put handcuffs on you, or you're going to let me put a bullet in your leg, kid," the officer threatened. The human seemed to be somewhat responsive. He took a shaky breath and put his head in his hands, not responding.
"You wouldn't shoot a kid; I'm just starting my life! I could be a hero!" he muttered as he approached the salarian tentatively. Ending up only a few feet from the officer, he obeyed the salarian's motion to stop. Keeping the gun up, but taking a pair of handcuffs from his pockets, the C-Sec officer approached Liam cautiously.
"Turn around and put your hands behind your back." Liam obeyed, relaxing. But just as the salarian approached him, he turned and ran towards Kelly. She flinched, but not fast enough, as he planted a fist on her face. A loud crack filled her ears as she felt his fist make contact with her cheekbone, and then he was sprawled on the ground in front of her, blood beginning to seep from his leg. The girl cried out in pain, putting a hand to where she had been hit and backing up a few steps, real tears now streaming out of her eyes. The salarian approached the boy and handcuffed him, then grabbed his collar and began to drag him along the ground.
"Come with me," he ordered in a cold tone of voice. Kelly followed close behind, feeling throbbing beneath her hands. Luckily, the crack she heard must have been from the gun, not any bones breaking. She followed the C-Sec officer back to where the Lieutenant stood. The old man looked at the bleeding recruit with disdain, but ordered a few of the other newbies to pick him up and carry him the rest of the way to the office. Liam hadn't even made it into the arms of the young men before the salarian was angrily barking at the Lieutenant, the words coming out of his mouth faster than she could imagine.
"…for the past month, bringing group after group of miscreants onto my Citadel! As head of immigration, I'm disgusted by the behavior of your organization. I'm sick of chasing down your newest guns for hire who are just as willing to fight as they are willing to eat dirt. This needs to stop or I will personally set up a team to investigate the ethics of Cerberus and if they can even legally be allowed to hold an office on the Citadel. And don't you even think of sending me another poster girl to convince me to chase down some goon for the sake of her job." The officer ended quite forcefully, making a gesture towards Kelly, who shrunk back a little in shame. She felt the bruise forming on her pretty face, and she looked away from the large-eyed stares of her peers, hands leaving her cheek to stroke her hair nervously.
The Lieutenant nodded, squinting at the officer, who then left in a frustrated huff. "Can never please Officer Harsin," the old man said, shaking his head. He smiled at Kelly, who looked back at him with hurt, watery eyes. The psychologist was sure she looked awful, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. She used the butt of her hand to wipe away her tears as she merged into the crowd again.
It didn't take long to reach the substantially sized Cerberus office, in which a few desks and secretaries sat. The Lieutenant was pleased. "Looks like we're the only one to come in this time," he said happily, which led Kelly to believe that normally there would have been a much longer wait. One woman at a desk began to call names alphabetically, where the recruits would sit down at her desk for a short interview before being sized for their uniforms. All but one.
Liam was taken into a side room by a few uniformed Cerberus men, and Kelly assumed it was the office of some administrator. The Lieutenant entered shortly after him, and Kelly closed her eyes, hoping that the sounds of muffled screaming and a faint gunshot were all in her head.