Like a well-placed trap his arms snared her as she stepped fresh from the shower in his quarter's head. She squeaked with equal parts surprise and joy. He pulled her close, bare skin in a fair shade of lapis lazuli alive with goose bumps. The cabin air was chilly against her bare form, but his body heat warmed her quickly.

"This might be the very definition of heaven," she murmured with a smile, looking up at him. "If asari believed in heaven that is."

He smiled back, but offered no words. Only a kiss.

Then the image began to fade. Her face became distant, the warmth of her embrace gone. He was alone in the frigid blackness of space, tumbling uncontrollably toward some nondescript celestial body. The air in his lungs felt frantic and came in short, labored bursts. There was an immense pressure on his chest and it felt as if his entire thoracic cavity would soon burst from the burden.

Then a familiar voice. "Wake up, Shepard," it beckoned. Miranda? No… a figment of his mind's trickery.

His eyelids slowly rose, heavy as lead. It was bright. Almost too bright to see. A single form manifested above him. It was large… flesh thick. Scales like charred wood. Eyes a menacing yellow, pupils only the faintest slit of black. A wide maw filled with sharp teeth smiled at him, then turned away as if to address another. "He's waking up," the voice said in a husky tone common to krogan. "Should he be waking up?"

His eyes struggled to focus, but the form never came into full view. Only the haunting sight of those sinister eyes. All else was a blur. The monstrous form was pushed aside and another familiar voice was heard. "My God no!" the man said in a Southern English dialect. "I need to administer more anesthetic."

His vision blurred as the human form came into view for only a moment. But that voice? Who? Cerberus? No… thoughts drifted away from him like nimbus clouds. His attempts to reckon his circumstances faded and before long darkness fell over him once more.

Jack felt the cold, salty air kiss her face with every passing gust of wind. But the more pressing feeling was one of impatience. She chafed at the idea of 'recon', which her newfound volus friend insisted on. Despite her arguments he was adamant.

"Let's go," she insisted. She reached back and scratched at her right hamstring. "I don't care how many there are, what their patrol pattern is, or what they're equipped with."

"This is an important –kttch—part of military operations, Earth-clan," Dabney Kur said in a hushed voice through his envirosuit's mouthpiece. He appeared to be enjoying himself, as he lay awkwardly on his rotund belly in a prone position.

"Were you even in the military?" Prangley, positioned to the volus' right side, asked.

The trio were hiding in a set of bushes arrayed perpendicular to a fence line being patrolled by a few motley gunmen. They had the same disheveled and unprofessional look to them as the other thugs Jack had seen in the market earlier. They were patrolling a paved service area. Behind them an assortment of transport crates rose high into the air, a few concrete barriers were lined up at their base. Toward the left the paving ended suddenly as the terrain dropped off into the San Francisco Bay. And on the right, beyond the cargo containers, there were ladder-wells that led to a platform where a staircase continued further up to the rusted exterior of a prefabricated building. The dilapidated edifice had been there long past the original time intended.

Dabney Kur was observing the scene through a bulky set of particularly expensive and high-tech looking binoculars. He set them down when Prangley asked his question and was silent for a moment. "No," he replied, sounding almost regretful.

"Well, I'm sick of waiting," Jack repeated. She was crouched behind the two would-be commandos. The brush barely concealed her. "And you agreed to work for me. So I'm making the calls on this one, Chubbs. Let's go."

"Chubbs – kttch—?" Dabney Kur repeated the name. "That's offensive."

"No it's not," Jack argued. "Now let's go. Chubbs."

"Not if you – kttch—call me Chubbs," Dabney Kur replied sharply.

"Sorry. It suits you, man."

"I have a name, - kttch—please use it," Dabney Kur asked politely.

"Fat chance of that happening. Let's go!" And without another word Jack was on her feet and walking calmly into the cleared space between the fence line and bushes they'd been hiding in.

"There's no use in arguing with her. It's just a waste of time, buddy," Prangley advised the downtrodden volus.

"Fine," he sighed. With some effort he struggled to his feet and followed the two biotics.

Jack strolled forward with an easy confidence. The sort born from countless vicious battles where she always came out on top. They wouldn't know who she was. At that particular moment she was a hunter. A lone wolf stalking unsuspecting prey. In a way she reveled in the anonymity. She'd torn across half the Terminus Systems, rattled the cages of slavers in the Attican Traverse, ripped off a half a dozen pirate gangs, and annihilated her fair share of mercenaries. But a whole shit load of people had no idea who she was.

The two idiots ahead of her looked at her with a ravenous leer, licking their chops at the sight of an innocent girl trying to act tough. They didn't know who she was, but they knew she was in over her head. They didn't realize the psychotic biotic was walking their way with every intention of ending their lives if they sought to obstruct her path. And obstruct it they would, because who could ever be intimidated by a diminutive, tatted up young girl with a pair of camouflage trousers, studded leather jacket and insanely revealing top. There might have been an angry spark in those charcoal-lined eyes, but these thugs had seen it all before. Faux tough chicks trying to run with the pack. Mainly for protection. They were okay with providing it, but everyone had to pay a price for such niceties…

"Well hello there," one of the grimy men said with a beaming smile. He hefted his ratty shotgun onto one shoulder and studied Jack's body as she squared up in front of them. All that lay between them was the chain link fence.

"What can we do for you?" the other snickered.

"Or maybe we can find something you can do for us," the other chortled.

Jack rolled her eyes. It was the same old song and dance. The way she dressed often invited comments from the snakes that called places she frequented home. She thought it was funny. They all saw themselves as the predator. Her the prey. Morons. "I have something you can do for yourselves."

"Oh, what's that?" one asked in a surprised voice. He glanced over at his friend with a face that said this should be good.

"You can walk the fuck away from this place," she warned deadpan. She placed a hand delicately on her hip. "If you're interested in breathing, that is."

They froze for a moment, eyes wide and mouths agape. Then burst into laughter. "Wow, I ain't heard something so dumb in all my life."

"Yeah, you're warning us? Guess you didn't see this gun I got?"

Now it was Jack's turn to laugh. But it was a low, even chuckle that had a menacing edge to it. The air around her looked as if it were sizzling. The mirage like effect of vapors swathed around her body. After a moment a dark violet hue began seep into the vapors and her chuckle rose to a laugh. "That toy isn't going to help you."

The eyes on the men widened for real now. "Oh shit! She's a biotic!" In an instant he snapped the shotgun down from his shoulder to aim it at the woman, but it was already too late. He felt his feet lift off the ground and then a force like a freight train smashed into his chest. He was flung fifty feet into a concrete barrier, his sternum cracked and his spine shattered. Only the last, useless breath of oxygen still residing in his lungs escaped from his dead lips.

"L-l-look I didn't mean…"

"Of course you didn't," Jack seethed. She flung both hands outward and the poles holding up the chain link fence crumpled under the might of her biotic strength. The wire-mesh fencing screamed toward the remaining man on a tidal wave of biotic power. The galvanized steel wire snared him like a fish caught in a net. He screamed as he felt his limbs get tangled up. He was flying backward, the fence closing around him, tightening his body into a smaller and smaller ball-like shape. He careened off the ground, bouncing wildly and all the while the mesh contracting around him.

All Prangley and Dabney Kur heard when they joined Jack was the distant, horrendous scream that rose up from the distance just before Jack flung him into the ocean to drown. Neither had anything to say, but both were taken aback by the violent manner in which she'd disposed of the men—especially the second one.

"Jeez," Prangley groaned. Unconsciously he wiped at his sweat-less forehead.

"What?" Jack looked at him innocently. "I warned them."

"Yeah but he's going to drown. That's a terrible way to die," Prangley pointed out.

"So? Dying is dying. It would have been better if I just ripped his intestines out through his asshole?"

"Uh," Prangley paused for a second. "You can do that?"

"I don't know. Never tried. But probably," she sounded chipper. With a nod of her head she motioned for them to come along and stepped off toward the prefabricated building. "Don't be such a pussy, Prangley. Let's go."

Prangley and Dabney Kur were frozen in place for a moment, then exchanged looks. It wasn't the first time she'd charged Prangley with such a task and probably wouldn't be the last. He appeared reluctant. The volus only shrugged. Then they followed after the Psychotic Biotic.

There were a few more hired hands that stepped up to challenge Jack's entry into their rudimentary facility. The first came sprinting down the staircase at the sound of the commotion below. He was lifted off the steps and caught a few mass accelerated slugs to the chest for his trouble. His limp body was chucked off the two-story façade with a flippant wave of the biotic's hand.

Prangley and Dabney Kur watched the man get flung downward. His body flattened into the concrete below, a spray of blood ejected in a bright, explosive pattern around his fractured skull. "She is effective – kttch—," Dabney Kur observed drily. "But very violent."

"Well, at least that one was dead before she threw him off," Prangley added. He placed his hands on the guard rail and glanced down at the carnage below. He'd taken his fair share of lives. It was part of the job during the war. He and the team were providing biotic artillery barrages to support mainline troops. They were very successful. They killed a lot of the Reapers minions. But that was just it. They were Reapers. And certainly, before their horrific transformation they were normal people with ordinary lives, but it was easy to overlook. Some of the NCOs used to joke that there was no need to dehumanize the enemy in the Reaper war, because the Reapers had already done the job for them. It made killing them easy. It took away the remorse of taking a life. Yet there were times when Prangley thought about what those monsters were before the Reapers took them, mutilated and bent them to their will. He found such thinking made it easy for him to sink into a depressed mindset, whereas Jack seemed to enjoy killing—perhaps even lusted for it.

And then, almost as if she heard his thoughts, another body was cast down to the concrete below. His descent was accompanied by his desperate screams and punctuated by Jack's laughter. Prangley winced as he saw the man go over the side and disappear from sight. His screams were like nails on a chalkboard to the young Alliance veteran. But they were cut short when his face met with the pavement below- the sound replaced by an awkward crunch followed by silence. Prangley's face was pained as he glared up at the stairs Jack had preceded him on. Wearily he followed.

By the time he and his volus compatriot caught up with the Psychotic Biotic she had entered the rusty prefab building. Inside were the remains of a quick and chaotic violent encounter. A female in coveralls without sleeves lay slain against a nearby wall. There were two holes in her chest and another just over her right eye. Beside her limp hand lay an M-3 Predator. Her arms were tattooed and wiry with muscle that were of no use to her in a gunfight. The grungy wall behind was doused with a splash of her blood and brain matter.

A turian was folded backward onto the surface of a nearby table. Dark pools of liquid were forming in lakes below his eviscerated form, mingling with the carryout trays of food now contaminated with the dead man's blood. His feet were just slightly elevated off the floor. And a shotgun sat idly where he must have been standing before the force of Jack's gunshots lifted him up and onto the table behind him. His eyes were open. A blank stare that bore into the wall to his right was affixed deep within. The sight was particularly haunting to Prangley. He was reminded of the many dead civilians and Marines he'd seen in his short tours of duty during the war. He shuddered momentarily before his eyes caught sight of Jack across the room.

On the far side of the prefab's interior Jack was holding a bearded man up by the neckline of his shirt. His legs were crumpled beneath his bodyweight in a useless tangle of shattered bone and ruptured tendons. Jack had apparently targeted his legs with a particularly grisly biotic attack that left him quite literally without a leg to stand on. He was still alive, but so deeply in shock he hardly seemed cognizant of the questions she was shouting at him.

"Where are they?" she hissed loudly. "The mercenaries with the skulls and ragged wings—they brought someone here and they escaped. Where are they going? What ship are they on?"

But there was no response. The man's head lulled backward lifelessly. His eyes were vacant, but he blinked incessantly. His body had shut down his nerve responses in order to deal with the tremendous shock of his cataclysmic injury. Blood loss was rapid as his femoral arteries had been shredded by jagged bone and his heart rate was rapidly declining as it struggled to perform its job. The body's physiological response to the trauma was to rush more blood to the injured region to help expedite repair, but this counterproductive maneuver was only increasing the speed with which he was dying. This, perhaps, was a reprieve given his current company.

"Answer me!"

"He can't," Prangley said. "He's in shock. Really bad. He probably doesn't have any idea what's going on."

Jack's head whipped around in Prangley's direction and her eyes shot him a venomous glare. It was enough for the young man to take a step back. She wasn't the same teacher he'd come to know in the classroom at the Grissom Academy, or even the rough and tumble leader he'd known in battle supporting the Alliance war effort.

"Fine," she replied, her voice now eerily calm. She looked back down at the man, a pitiful wreck. His mouth hung open and breathing came in short, shallow breaths. Jack put her heavy pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. Then released her grip. "Chubbs, get into the system like you said you could and find out where the hell those assholes went and on what ship. And do it fast." She walked past them both them both. "I'll be outside."

When she left it took a moment for them to get over the shock of her hurricane of violence. "Is she – kttch—always like this?"

"No," Prangley muttered solemnly. "No, something happened. Something changed her." Changed her back into what she was? Or something worse? He let out a deep exhale and thought of Rodriguez and what had happened to her and the rest of his team. He glanced at Dabney Kur and offered the volus a meek smile. "We better get to work. This is important. I'll help you anyway I can."

The volus glanced up at him and shook his head. "It shouldn't be necessary," he assured, cracking his fingers. "Now – kttch-, let's get started."