Shepard sat with her hands clasped in front of her, elbows on knees, on a cot near the crew cabins plotting her escape. Her options were few. The ship had already departed Mindoir and was on its way to one of the other outposts to re-supply and to drop her before shoving off for the Outer Rim. Escaping a spaceship while it was en route was futile. No one could survive absent of a spacesuit for very long. First there was the lack of oxygen. She would last about fifteen seconds before passing out. Then there was the pressure. After passing out, she might have a few more minutes before the air pressure would have burst her brain with an embolism. And barring all that there was the bitter cold. Frostbitten and out of air, she would die. Even with a suit, what would she do? Float till she starved to death?

No. She needed a plan. Commandeering one of the life rafts wasn't a great option. She was a terrible driver and a worse pilot. And on top of that, she didn't know where to go. Likely the outpost was the closest hospitable landmass within a couple light-years. But at least she would be free of these people and their needling sympathy. She might be able to dock at a different port, slip unsuspected through the station, collect a few supplies, a map, maybe a rumor or two and head out on her way to hunt the slavers down. She might even be able to harvest a few weapons and supplies from on board the SSR Bergen that she could sell at the station. Yes. There was a plan.

She stood up from the cot, letting the blanket someone had draped over her shoulders fall to the floor, and walked to the door. She cracked it open and peered around the corner. With no one coming in either direction, she was free to leave her quarters and explore the halls. They were brightly lit, and open, with width enough for two people to travel abreast, and the doorways were curved metal. Most doors were open, and she peered in carefully, taking note of which held crew cabins, which were store rooms, which contained food, or spare parts, or simply office supplies. Inside a janitorial closet, she found a layout of the ship and triangulated her position with relation to the life rafts and, just as importantly, the weapons storeroom. She was engulfed in this task when she heard the door creak open behind her.

"What are you doing?"

Shepard whipped around to see Lieutenant Anderson standing in the doorway.

"Just looking around."

"You should be in your cabin. I thought you were—is that a pistol?" Anderson's eyes went wide and he lunged for her, trying to grab the weapon from her hand.

Shepard, much smaller and quicker than the grown man, and agile as a cat, sidestepped his grasp and ducked under his swinging arm as she dashed behind him and closed the door.

"I'm sorry," she said as she locked the Lieutenant in the closet and dashed off down the hallway.

She could hear him pounding on the door behind her, the hollow, metallic thuds reverberating off the walls as she ran. She couldn't help but feel a little guilty. The man had been kind to her. Had pitied her yes, and she had only scorn for his pity, but he'd saved her nonetheless, and for that he had her thanks. Perhaps she'd write him a letter once she was off this tub and apologize. Maybe she'd reach out to him and see what had become of him. Getting locked in a closet by a teenager couldn't be good for a person's military record. But for now she could only run. Her plan would have to go into effect much sooner than she had intended.

Up ahead, around the corner was the weapons storage. The lock to the metal mesh safe hadn't stopped her the first time, and they wouldn't the second. Among the many other talents her older brother had shared with her was the ability to pick locks. Not for any particular reason—nothing was ever locked on Mindoir—but for the sheer joy of duplicity, and the freedom that it gave them. The older Shepard would sit with her for hours around the kitchen table showing her the guts of each mechanism, explaining how they went and why, coaxing her through the more difficult bits. The only time they'd ever been able to use it in earnest was the one time a supply drop ship had landed in their port for a few nights while they made repairs. They'd snuck on together, with James in tow, and had tried to see how far into the ship they could make it before they were unceremoniously kicked out. She smiled at the memory, thanking the older Shepard silently for the skills he'd taught her. Only in their wildest dreams would this have been how they'd imagine she'd use them.

She rounded the corner into the locker, and immediately ducked under the table. Two soldiers were milling among the gun racks, looking for spare parts.

"The Rail Extension, I think," the first said.

"Nah, I had one of those on for a while and it practically killed me. The damn thing kept overheating," said the second.

"Yeah, that'll happen when you have no aim. One good hit will take down just as many as six lousy ones."

"I've got great aim."

"Sure you do."

"I do!"

Shepard crept deeper into the shadows under the table, quieting her breath until the soldiers had finished making their selections and walked out. She heard the clanging of the wire gun cage, and then the click of the padlock that secured it.

"I'll bet you twenty credits, I could take you."

"Yeah, yeah. I'd like to see you try."

"One hundred credits!"

The door closed behind them, and the light clicked off. She was alone in the dark, safe for now, but with Anderson banging away at the janitor closet door, someone was bound to find him soon, and then people were bound to start looking for her. She crawled out from under the table and kneeled beside the locked gun cage. She quickly plucked a couple of pins out of her hair and began fiddling with the padlock. Thankfully, it clicked open without much trouble. The amateurs didn't even have proper locks.

She found a bag to the right of the cage and grabbed it, stuffing it full with upgrades, bullets, and a few guns. There was no way to tell for sure their value in the dark, but if the crime novels she'd read back on Mindoir had any relation to real life, there was always a rich black-market to be found for a person with the right goods. She zipped up the bag and slung it over her shoulder. The bag was bulky and jostled as she walked. There was no way to hold it without hearing the clacking of metal against metal or the rustling of bullets, and no way to get around the station without raising any eyebrows.

Shepard had always been light on her feet. Quick, quiet. She could make herself disappear into the trees and crops of Mindoir, could hide for hours from her parents, from her brothers—and often did. But that wouldn't help her here. Not with a 20 pound bag of ammunition strapped to her back and only the metal and fiberglass of the ship to hide behind. The closest escape pod was still half the ship away, and on an entirely different floor.

As she considered her options, she heard the faint click of the air conditioning unit turning on. Of course.

Clambering up on the table was quick work, but reaching the vents was not. After some half-hearted attempts, she was forced to climb back down again and pull a chair up onto the table as well. With her newfound height, she could just reach the vents. Pulling the same pin she'd used to pick the lock from her hair, she fit it into the screw and began to twist. Making short work of the screws, she carefully pulled the vent from its purchase and dropped it to the ground.

She tossed her bag up first, heard it clang against the floor of the vent, and then jumped up after it, managing to fit the top half of her torso through the hole and then pushing the rest of her body up using her biceps. The effort it took to hoist herself up left her winded, and Shepard had to lay on her stomach panting for a few moments. As soon as she was out of here, she thought, she'd learn to do a proper pull-up.

Recovered, she began to make her way through the ventilation system, pulling her bag behind her. Every few moments she'd be able to look down through the vents and see the rooms below. The galley, the cabins. Up ahead the vents forked, and the took the one that headed up. As she began to push her way up, fighting against the slick metal and gravity, a siren began to blare.

"Alert. There is a hostile citizen loose on the ship. Presume that she is armed and dangerous. I repeat, there is a hostile citizen loose on the ship. She is armed and dangerous."

"Well this complicates things a little bit," she whispered to herself.

Presuming nobody found the open vent, she had only a few more minutes to get to the escape pod without being discovered. She began to move more quickly, a little less quietly, and much less carefully. She scrambled up until the vent leveled and, knowing she'd reached the right floor, began to maneuver her way through the maze again, using the rooms below as rough signposts. She passed over the galley, glancing down only long enough to notice that full plates were sitting unattended on the tables, likely most of the people had run off, on high alert, to search for her. If she remembered the map correctly, up ahead was the infirmary, and then, the escape pod. If she could just make it past the last room and escape the vents into the hallway, she'd be right there.

She began to scramble, proximity and fear making her careless, letting the bag of weapons clang against the walls of the vent as she dragged it behind her, cursing quietly at its weight and at the situation she'd found herself in. The bag caught against a protruding screw, and she was jerked back.

"No, now. We're almost there," she said.

Panicking, and in too tight a space to turn around and rectify the situation, she began to yank on the bag, pulling and tugging harder, and harder until she heard a loud rip, and her whole body fell forward, hard against a panel, and then through it. Down she tumbled, out of the darkness and into the bright sanitary whiteness of the medical ward. She landed on her back, with the bag on top of her and felt all the wind funnel out of her body like a broken bottle. She wheezed, fighting for breath, but her lungs seemed to be in shock, refusing to move at her instruction.

Above her, a young woman began to help her up.

"Breathe, girl. Breathe."

And like that, as if her instruction had been the magic balm, her lungs remembered their function and she felt air re-enter her lungs. Shepard gasped a few more times, more thankful for the recycled oxygen than she had ever been in her entire life, and then turned to face the woman.

She was wore in a long white doctor's uniform, with close cropped hair, and a wry smile.

"So you're the one everyone's been going on about." The woman picked the bag of weapons up off Shepard's chest and walked it over to a medicine cabinet where she quickly locked it up. "I assume you've got something on you as well, but I don't imagine that you'll be using it anytime soon. Not in your state anyhow. Probably a fractured rib."

The doctor walked back over to Shepard and softly placed her fingers on the side of her stomach.

"Do you mind?"

Shepard shook her head no and winced only once as the doctor began to check each of her ribs for soreness.

"There it is. Just as I suspected," she said, helping Shepard to sit up. "You've broken one of your ribs, and bruised a few others. Could have been worse, falling the way you did. Now about that other weapon." She held her hand out patiently and with such confidence that Shepard was unsure of what to do besides pull out her handgun and set it in the doctor's palm.

"There. That's better," she said. "The only thing to do now is set you up with some painkillers and let the medi gel do its work. It's topical. I'm afraid you'll have to lift up your shirt a bit in order for me to apply it. Is that okay?"

Shepard nodded, helplessly. The doctor rolled up her shirt and, in less than the time it took to skin a pyjak, had cleaned the area above her broken ribs, applied the medi gel, and wrapped her torso up with a clean bandage. Shepard pulled her shirt back down over the bandages as the doctor walked back over to the medicine cabinet and withdrew a paper cup and a tablet. She handed the pill and cup, now filled with water from the sink to Shepard and sat down beside her.

"If you swallow it, the pain will go away more quickly."

Shepard looked at it skeptically. It was probably a sedative, meant to knock her out and make her meek and malleable until they arrived to port. She shook her head.

The doctor nodded, and held her hand out to take the pill back. Shepard put it in her pocket instead.

"You can trust me, you know? It's just a painkiller. I've no dog in this fight."

Shepard said nothing, simply focused on trying to make the pain go away and to ignore the still blaring of the alarm.

"I heard you were very brave," the doctor said. "I heard about what happened to you. "

"Yeah?"

"I did. Lieutenant Anderson was going on quite a bit about it. He's the one that heard your distress beacon."

"I know."

"Of course you do. I also know that you've had a bit of a rough go of it. You're probably angry, right?"

Shepard nodded.

"And you probably going to be angry for a long time. But you can't let it own you. You've got to take that anger and channel it into something good. Something productive."

"What would you know?" Shepard snapped. The bitterness rose up in her throat like bile.

"Not very much. And not as much as you, I'm sure. But I do know this. There are good and bad people in this world, and now-a-days most of us have known loss. But what makes them good or bad is how they take what's happened to them and what they do with it. What they do with all that energy and pain and rage."

"I just want it to stop hurting," Shepard said.

"The pain in your ribs will subside eventually."

"Not that."

"I know. But that's not the sort of thing I can fix. That's the kind of thing that will always hurt. Sometimes it will hurt less, and sometimes more. Some days you'll forget about it completely, and other days it might be all you can think about. Eventually it will dull. Eventually you'll be able to look past it, but I can't do that for you. Only time can heal that particular wound."

Shepard squeezed her eyes shut tight, fighting back tears. She wouldn't cry. Not again. Not ever. "I just want it to stop hurting," she said again, softer this time.

"And so you shall make it happen, eventually."

Shepard nodded.

"But we need to focus on what we can do right now. What you can do with your anger."

She nodded again.

"And we need to turn off this blasted alarm."

The doctor lifted her omni-tool and contacted the bridge. "I think I've found our little stow-away. Not armed, not dangerous… Yes… Yes… Well I don't know what Lieutenant Anderson has told you, but she's been here with me the whole time. Absolutely. Must have got himself in the brandy again, I swear."

She chuckled to herself as she turned to her patient. Shepard managed a smile. "Thank you."

"We'll sort this out," the doctor said.

Not a few moments later, Lieutenant Anderson stormed through the door, his face red and glistening with sweat. "You," he said, his voice a low growl.