Thunder rumbled across the sky, the clouds hanging low and pregnant. The clouds threatened to open, to spill onto the ground and turn the clouds of dust that the soldiers turned up into black, sticky mud. The trees bent in the wind, their leaves rustling, their dance muting the sound of the soldiers. The world looked gray, the colors subdued in the filtered afternoon.

The low light suited her mood. It had been dark and stormy ever since she'd first gotten her orders. Even in the trip from Earth to this tiny outpost, space itself had seemed dimmer than usual. The lights on the transport matching her mood. The starts refusing the twinkle. She'd attempted to ease some of it with sex, but while that usually helped to keep her from thinking, everyone here were N-recruits. Everyone with her on that ship the day before had been an N-recruit. There were rules about fraternization, and then were Rules about fraternization. Hooking up in the dark, when you're alone, and bored, and are probably just going to be cleaning latrines the next day anyway was one thing. Even if caught, it generally resulted only in an eye roll and a 'be more discrete next time'. Mere hours before you were about to be selected for training in the elitist corp of soldiers the Alliance had? The training that would weed the boys from the men, if one didn't mind the sexist turn of phrase, and Lillith had long ago stopped caring about that, that was another thing entirely. This was it. After this they'd either be N-recruits, students on their way to be the best of the best of the best, or they'd be shuffled back into the lines of dropouts where their buddies would buy them drinks and commiserate. And secretly believe that they had wasted valuable time trying in the first place.

Lillith was fairly certain she'd be sent back, despite the high praise she always received from her commanding officers. Basic hadn't been difficult, she'd grown up on a farm and the truth was nothing they'd thrown at them was more difficult than the year Flower had had twins and the second had been traverse. Her father had been out of town, the vet had been at the Coplands after their cow had prolapsed, and Lillith had known she either had to step up and handle it or Flower and her calf were going to die. Being a soldier really wasn't that much different. You followed orders, did what needed doing, or people died. Whatever they could be throwing at them today was just one more step. Over the last four years she'd hardly had to try for everyone to think she was excelling.

She hadn't wanted to join the N-program. She'd been happy as a grunt, unknown, unnoticed. She'd enlisted to forget. She'd become an officer to play with tech. Special forces had never even been a thought. She hadn't wanted people to see her. But the brass had noticed her. Noticed that she didn't just create amazing tech on the fly, but could also use it better than most. They had need for engineers on the field, they said. People who could run the technology while the brawny idiots fed the enemy's weapons. She'd done great in basic, they said. She had some of the highest times, considering her specialization, they said. People in training for front line soldiers had worse times, they said.

They had said a lot. And she had listened, and nodded, and saluted as needed. But she hadn't wanted it. She hadn't really wanted to be an officer in first place, but Zabaleta had saved her, had saved her sister and she had owed him. And playing with electronics was a small joy, an easy way to focus.

She hadn't owned these people anything. They didn't know her. To them, she was a number, a figure. Someone they could hold up when they needed more funding.

She had written to Clara, telling her about how they were putting her in the field. She'd promised herself she'd stop doing that. That had been years ago, now. They'd marked her as B4, and then six weeks after she'd settled into the lab, they'd called her up, changed her designation to K1, and put her in the field. She'd promised herself that she would let her sister be, that she would cut all ties with the life she'd had before, but she'd made a point of not making friends, and she hadn't known who else to turn to. She'd gotten an enthusiastic reply from the eleven year old, telling her that she was special, that they needed her, and that that is what she'd wanted in the first place. To be fighting for something. As long as she was careful. As long as she was safe. And so she had, and she was, and for a long time things had been good. She set up turrets, and configured drones, and found new and exciting ways for military grade omni-tools to kill. And she learned advanced weaponry, and was quickly accepted into her platoon as just one of the boys, despite four of them being women.

The nightmares had mostly gone away, and when they didn't, there was usually someone willing to share her bed to help her forget. Usually Kathleen, with her flaxen hair and squeaky laugh, but sometimes Jason with his large hands, and warm chest and eyes that sparked with fire that Lillith knew had died in her years before. That was how it had started, three years before.

That was why she was so edgy now, even though she knew she could handle anything they threw at them.

She'd become addicted to it. The sex and the fighting and the quiet laughter. It was cathartic, in a way. She'd hurt afterwards, her body and her mind flayed, torn open with self hatred, but when she got up in the morning, she was calm. She was collected. She was ready for anything. It worked faster, easier, than playing with tech.

There was so much riding on this, though, and neither Kathy nor James had even been selected for initial testing. The men and women around her were strangers. And none of them were going to risk their own careers to get the Alliance's golden girl off.

So now she stood, looking out at the open field as the sky finally made good on its threats and opened, and trying to find it in herself to want this. The N-program was an honor. And it was not easy to get into. Of the thirty-six possibles with her today, four would make into the program, at most. She didn't know if she wanted to be one of those four. But she found it exciting. The fact that she could be. If only she wasn't wound so tight.

She slammed a fist against the door frame, making her comrades jump, and turned and began pacing the room. They'd been told to wait. That they'd be given instructions on how the test would begin shortly. That had been hours ago. No one had come. It had gotten colder. Darker. Soldiers passed outside, sometimes slowing down as they neared, causing everyone in the room to tense, expectant.

Lillith had been agitated before they'd even arrived here, and she didn't like being used like this. It was no secret what this was. Patience was more than just a virtue for special forces. For any soldier. Running in half-cocked would get you and your team killed. You sat, you waited for orders, but you didn't let your guard down. But, she was getting hungry, and the rain just reminded her that she had to pee, and there wasn't a restroom on this side of the complex.

It didn't help that she was the youngest person here. She rolled her shoulders, absently scratched at the jagged scar over her eye, and cast her gaze over her companions. They ranged in age, certainly. A man in the corner was probably the youngest, after her. He was probably 25, maybe 26. And there was a woman, her hair grown out and tied up in a bun on the top of her head; she was probably the oldest. In her early thirties, perhaps. At 22, Lillith felt like she'd skipped a grade in school, and everyone stood head and shoulders above her. And she couldn't help but think that they all thought she was the upstart teacher's pet for it.

There was an empty chair by the door and Lillith sank into it. The weather reminded her of Mindoir. Of the long, rainy evenings. Of sitting by the window with Clara, her mother knitting behind them, humming quietly. Their father at the table, going over the finances, or reading the news, or fixing some random pieces of farm equipment. It reminded her of how her father had taught her to work that equipment. Her mother had argued that a girl would never need to know that, that they had farm hands to handle the equipment. She and her father had laughed, and continued on. She'd brought home science papers with top scores, and her mother had frowned and told her feed the pigs. She wondered what they would think of her now. Using the skills she'd learned to feed the hungry to kill. She closed her eyes tight against the memories, trying hard to remind herself that none of that had happened. That Lillith Shepard did not exist before the day she'd walked into the Alliance recruitment center. There was no happy family. There was no playing hockey in the street. There were no afternoons at the fair, cotton candy getting stuck in Clara's hair, the town boys trying to win her prizes from the ring toss. None of that had happened. None of that existed. It was just a bad movie that sometimes played in her head.

Life began when she got her dog tags.

She was the first to her feet when a Lt. Commander stepped up onto the small porch outside the portable. Her eyes had been closed; she'd heard her companions laughing that she'd fallen asleep. But she heard the sound of boots, the lack of hesitation before they mounted the stairs, and she was up and at attention before any of the others had started moving.

The Commander smiled at her, but she kept her face a mask despite the shock. She didn't know him. Didn't particularly want to know him. He smiled at the others, a few smiled back.

He walked the length of the room, then turned, his face suddenly impassive, his eyes cold as steel.

"What the hell are you kids standing around for? Get out there. Double time! There are thirty-seven emergency lockers in the woods. Open them, bring the contents back to me. No omni-gel. MOVE!"

She was out the door, her boots sticking in the mud, even while his last word continued to echo.

It was darker in the trees. She could hear the others behind her, breaking through the underbrush. She brought up the light on her omni-tool, slid under the low-lying branch, the mud oozing around her. The lightweight armor she wore kept the mud away from her skin, for which she was grateful.

Mud always sent her back. When it was cold, and sticky, and slipped up the back of her shirt. She'd smell rotted breath and blood, and nothing could keep her focused. But the armor helped. Kept it from her skin. Kept her on task.

She spotted a blinking orange light out of the corner of her eye, a little over half an hour later. She paused behind a tree, listening for the sounds of the three dozen other people. One box for each of them. Speed was the goal. To get the contents back.

She stilled her breathing; her heart rate hadn't even spiked during the run into the woods. The area around her was silent. It was a bad sign, a sign that the other's had already found their boxes. She crouched low, creeping towards the emergency box, it's light disappearing as lightening lit the trees around her. She crouched beside it, pulled out her omni-tool, and waited.

A twig snapped to her right, and she lowered herself over the light, while she waited for the boxes security system to link to her omni-tool. Whether another soldier, or an animal scurrying for cover, she didn't know. The omni-tool beeped, and eyed the complex lines moving on it. They shifted as she watched, the codes forming a pattern. They'd been taught how to read them in basic. She tried to use the way she'd been taught. She tried to follow the sequence using the patterns she'd been told would exist within the encryption. It took her half a second to realize that that wouldn't work. There was a secondary encryption. The way they were taught, it would take nearly twenty minutes to break it.

Follow orders. Do what you were told, how you were told to do it.

No omni-gel.

That's what he had said. No cheating, he'd implied.

It wasn't really cheating, if you simply didn't do something the way they expected though. Thinking out of the box wasn't for a soldier to do. Even officers had their orders. Generals had to think. Admirals had to think. 2nd Lieutenants did not think.

N1s though, if she ever planned on making it to N1, they had to think.

She made a quick change in the visualization of how the encryption looked on her omni, and less than a minute later, the box snapped open.

There was a bag inside, Alliance blue and white. She pulled it out, checked for security markers,and finding none, opened it. It was empty. She used the light on her omni-tool to double check, but it was empty. She felt it, looking for secret pockets. Nothing. N-recruitment training was just about as useful as having a screen door on a spaceship.

With a sigh, she flung the bag over her shoulder and set off at a quick run. She spotted someone hovering over a box, it still unopened. She grinned, adjusted the strap on the bag and called back to him.

"You're doing it wrong!"

He jumped, and she shook her head. Never let your guard down. He wouldn't last the first day. It occurred to her that half the people in that room she 'd started in didn't seem to really be N-qualified at all. But what did she know? She fixed tech.

She broke out of the tree line, and the villa was empty. She slowed to a walk, adjusting the bag on her back again. It was empty, but kept sliding on the mud the coated her shoulders. There was no one. The place had been teeming when she'd entered the woods. The rain was still coming down, though it had slowed to a drizzle on her trip back. She spotted someone moving around the corner of a building and she quickened her step to a trot she could keep up for hours. They were moving away from the main area. She stayed back, watching them, until she caught their rank in the reflection off a window.

She sped up again, falling into step beside the Staff Commander. He stopped and she snapped to attention.

"At ease, soldier. What can I do for you?" he asked her.

"I'm Lt. Shepard, sir. I have the contents of the box."

He looked surprised when he said, "So soon? Haven't seen anyone else. Let me see it."

"I was told to bring it back to Lt. Commander Offelson, sir."

"I gave you an order, Lieutenant."

She bit her tongue, it wouldn't do to be kicked out because she back-talked an N7. She slid the bag from her back and handed it over. He didn't take it, just eyed the canvas.

"Mess hall," he said, pointing back the way she came.

She set off again, swinging the bag back onto shoulders. There still wasn't anyone else around, but when she opened the door to the mess, the place was crowded. Everyone there was clean, their uniforms looking recently pressed. She wiped mud from her eyes, wincing at the way she dripped on the white floor. She left a trail of mud as she walked toward the Lt. Commander. He smiled at her again, when he saw her approach. There were whispers that seemed to echo in her head as she neared, saluted, and handed over the bag.

He opened it, read the label, which had been to Lillith's eyes nothing but a random set of letter and numbers, then nodded and pointed at a group sitting in the corner. They had no designation on their uniforms, which told her nothing except they had already passed her training.

"Lieutenant, you're going to take your fire team, infiltrate the base to the north, and retrieve the package. Casey, Jones, Kipling, she's in charge. You know the drill. Move out."

Shepard gritted her teeth. She'd been up for over eighteen hours. She was the first back. And they were sending her out again.

"Coordinates?" she asked flatly. Her omni-flashed as Jones transferred them over to her. She turned on a heel and loped out of the mess.