Alenko's mind worked at full throttle. 'Brain butchers,' There was only one entity associated with that title, that was spoken with that much scorn. They ran experiments, grotesque, unethical experiments, and the survivors were always walking wrecks…when there were survivors.

Cerberus. They kept cropping up, their victims kept cropping up, and sometimes it was harder to deal with the live ones than the dead ones. It might explain why this biotic was so strong. He wasn't sure how long he could have let her hammer at him, even with the space he had to protect minimized.

Shepard's face, pale but with red eyes and thin lips appeared before his mind's eye, her voice in his head too controlled to be naturally calm. They found a survivor. From Mindoir. Poor kid…they really messed her up…

Looking closer, he saw the echoes of fear and desperation hidden behind the easier emotion of anger. Or, rather, the appearance of anger. He'd seen a look like that on a face once…but in that case the face was equine, he was twelve, and the beast had nearly trampled him.

As vividly as he remembered horse he remembered the trainer who had, without flapping her arms or shouting at the beast, caught its attention, talked to it, then put it back on a leading rope.

But he'd seen it elsewhere, too: Shepard had excelled at talking people down, using firm command to attract attention, using her projected sense of steadiness to quiet the nerves, using a sort of compassion or empathy as a leading rein to bring everyone back to the barn again.

What was Shepard's rule of negotiating? Aside from doing it best when everyone was armed…?

Find common ground, if it existed.

"Oh, I think I can." He met her gaze directly, uncertainty at his sudden position under orders of 'find out what the hell is going on' easing. "You ever hear of a company called Conatix?"

"Who the…" she had to pant for breath, sweat standing out on clammy cold skin. Overstretched. She had to know she was, and she had to know that the best thing for her would be to cut off the biotic shimmer, faint defiance. She wasn't as scary by this point as she seemed to think she was. It was almost pitiful to see.

"The first program for training human biotics; it was run by a company called Contatix. A lot like Cerberus."

The woman swore eloquently—the sentiment boiling down to 'they're nothing like Cerberus'.

Something in him snapped. Yes, he knew Cerberus was much worse than Brian Camp…but hadn't it been just as traumatic for him, at the time? Wasn't trauma gauged on personal scales? They might not match up when two people compared experiences, but in the singular…

"They're exactly like Cerberus!" he roared. "They took us from our families, promised us a future and turned us into their own damn lab rats! And those sons of bitches had no idea what they were doing! None!" A ringing silence followed as he glared at her. "How do you know that our hell didn't pave the way for yours? How do you know?"

It was a good question, and had come to him as sudden inspiration. It was a good question. Cerberus seemed to have roots in everything, who was to say some of the current members hadn't been with Conatix in a so-called previous life?

A silent struggle of wills ensued, one that Alenko won. Winning gave him the next turn to speak. "You come back from places like that, you're just a freak. People who knew you can't see you anymore: they just see the freak." His voice shook. "But you didn't have that—you had other horrors but you never saw your own parents ashamed to look at you." Not because he was a freak, but because they had let him fall into the hands of unscrupulous people. The shame came from having failed to protect their son. "You never had people who were supposed to be you friends turn their backs on you."

"Am I supposed to feel shocked? Or guilty?" the woman demanded, scoffing.

But he saw it: for a moment, he saw a flicker of something, a moment of connection.

I'm an L2, like you: believe me, if anyone can make Burns follow through, it's the Commander.

"I killed my way out of that pisshole, and then I blew the damn thing up!" the woman shouted, her voice bouncing off the walls. "I buried my private hell—you seem to have reserved a room!"

"I killed our way out," Alenko answered, his tone flat, "and in the end it didn't mean anything. The damage was already done: we lost a lot of people, kids who'd never done anything to anyone in their lives. Dead. For no reason."

He was hitting the right words, but rather than elation, he felt nothing but a sick sort of horror, fear that this would somehow go wrong. Snipers had to be in position: a raging biotic was nothing to laugh at, and whoever was on that ship was probably trying to explain themselves to the brass… "Because Conatix hushed us up, stuffed us through the cracks and chinks in the system. L2s are so widely mistrusted that it's a wonder I made it as far as I have."

She pressed her lips together in resolute silence. "I don't believe you."

"I don't care. But believe this: right now, I am the only thing between you and probably half a dozen snipers. And whoever's on that ship back there is probably trying to convince the Brass that you're insane, dangerous, and should be shot on sight. So who's talking to them while I'm trying to talk to you?"

The girl's, face twitched. Clearly he'd hit another point already in her mind. For a moment she seemed to want to use the information as a bargaining chip, but whatever mental battle raged she didn't.

"Eva Rogers."