Bioware's Sandbox. I'm just borrowing it.

Captain's Personal Log: The Convict

It's not every day a rogue prison warden tries to capture me and sell me to the highest bidder. It's also not every day I get to see Garrus in a towering rage, either. I didn't understand why. Kuril hadn't done anything to me, not really. And he'd gotten Garrus' sniper bullet in his skull for his trouble. Garrus had been all right with the guy and his "prison" until he'd tried to capture me. But other than that small flaw, Garrus had liked the idea of Purgatory. I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about it. A small voice in the back of my head reminded me I'd been headed there if not for the Alliance.

The angry turian had gone straight to the forward batteries and growled at anyone who came near. Not literally, of course, turians weren't animals, but he wasn't polite to visitors for awhile. So, I left him to brood and swear at his calibrations and went down to visit my newest crewmember.

Down in the bowels of my ship, the red lighting made me pause at the bottom of the stairs while flashbacks of the old Normandy ricocheted around my mind. Terror engulfed me and I broke out into a cold sweat all over and trembled, my mouth dry. Alarms, fire… Kaidan.

Sirens blaring, the emergency lights rendered the walls gory, smoke clogging the air, hazy, blood red. Kaidan running toward me, frantic to get me off the ship. "Shepard!"

I'd told him something inane about the distress beacon. Professional to the last. No matter how I'd spent that morning with him. "The Alliance won't abandon us! Get everyone onto the escape shuttles!" Fire, everywhere, the flickering glow competing with the blood of the emergency lights.

"Joker's still in the cockpit! He won't abandon ship. I'm not leaving either!" The velvet voice was laced with fear, for me, for the pilot. One thing I had to grant Kaidan, he was never afraid for himself. The jostling of the ship, rocked by explosions knocked him against me, his arms encircling me. It would be the last time in that life he'd ever touched me, and that had been through the barrier of our hardsuits.

"I need you to get the crew onto the evac shuttles, I'll take care of Joker!" I yelled through the noise of the ship breaking up around us. He pulled away, reluctantly.

"Commander!" his voice was frantic, urgent. I still would have gone for Joker, though.

"Kaidan, go! Now."

I shook my head to clear it and stop my trembling. I straightened up from leaning against the bulkhead and wiped the cold sweat from my forehead. I hadn't been afraid at the time. I'd been confident we'd get out of there, that I'd get out of there. Now that I'd decided to live, I wanted to keep doing so. I was alive and I was here, there was no emergency, there was no fire, we weren't under attack, and there was no Kaidan. There was no musky aftershave and five-o'clock shadow to rub my face against, no strong shoulders to lean on. No one to tell me, "It's going to be all right."

I really needed to find Kaidan and not just because I wanted to chase him around my quarters. I had Garrus at my back, but it still felt naked without Kaidan there, too. I needed my Lieutenant, though I guess technically, now, he outranked me. But something about this whole situation was screaming at me. Something wasn't adding up. I'd never really believed Kahoku's claim that Cerberus had gone completely rogue from the Alliance. Privately funded? Ok… but the Alliance could very well have been one of those private funders. No one pays 100 million credits for toilet seats even if it is on a state-of-the-art warship.

Jack, or Subject Zero, as her Cerberus dossier labeled her, was a tiny spitfire of a woman and covered in more ink than the last bill to go through Earth's Parliament. Young, maybe even ten years younger than me. The dossier didn't give her age and it was hard to tell, either good genes or genetic tinkering gave her that perpetually youthful face the wealthy paid a small fortune for on a daily basis. I had one of those faces, too, but I think the mileage was starting to show on mine, if not the years. The scars crisscrossing my cheeks and forehead certainly didn't help. I didn't really care how I looked, though. I wasn't going to enter a beauty pageant and I couldn't seem to find the one person in the galaxy for whom I actually wanted to look pretty. Besides, my grumpy friend had to wear his scars, might as well keep mine.

When I got to the bowels of my ship, I asked after Jack's well being and her comfort, then I motioned for her to keep talking while I pinged Garrus' Omni-Tool. She looked at me quizzically then shrugged. When she started in on going pirate, my eyes widened but I let her keep going. We were just stalling till Garrus got here anyway.

I heard the turian before I saw him and watched Jack's eyes grow wide as he approached (I felt an odd flare of what felt like jealousy? Seriously? For Garrus?) as she looked him up and down, a smirk on her face. I resisted the urge to punch her. I turned to my friend and signaled him to overload the listening devices in Jack's quarters and to block EDI's feed. Giving me a sharp look, his Omni-Tool flared to life as he complied. A few muffled mini-explosions later, I stepped closer to Garrus and motioned for Jack to get closer to us. She stood up, crossed her arms and shook her head, her face twisting into anger. "Just get over here! The electronic devices are disabled, doesn't mean the human ones aren't still listening in!" I hissed, ordering her.

Her eyes widened and she complied. "Look, Garrus, you were right to remind me of those sick experiments." Jack shot a questioning look at me and I held up my hand. Still whispering, I continued, looking up at the turian, "Kuril must've already had buyer lined up or he wouldn't have tried that shit." Garrus nodded his agreement, and I looked back at Jack, "I doubt very seriously it was Cerberus, since they have no motive. Unless they changed their mind about the control chip." I went on before either could react to that statement. "But, someone had to have put the word out. Maybe even a bounty on my head." They both nodded slowly. "So, that's the first bit of information I need you to look for, both of you. Second… I don't for one second believe that Cerberus is completely rogue from the Alliance." Jack opened her mouth but before she could reply, I continued, "In your search for names, dates and places, I want you to look for the trail that'll lead us back to the Alliance. It may not be obvious. In fact, I'd suspect any data that led you to that conclusion directly. But the pattern's got to be there, buried."

I pulled the small OSD out of my pocket. It was what Anderson had slipped to me the night I was reinstated. "This might be a good place to start." Both their eyes widened and Garrus took the disk from me.

He looked at me, quizzically, "Anderson?"

I nodded and looked at both of them, steadily, "Someone's not being straight with us."

"That's an incredibly obvious statement," Jack drawled, crossing her arms over her nearly bare breasts.

"Isn't this a little . . . extreme, Shepard?" Garrus asked.

I looked at the turian steadily, his species didn't have the reputation for duplicity mine did. He'd probably expect it of the asari or the salarians first, though, and not the humans. We didn't yet have that bad of a rep for deviousness, but it was probably only a matter of time. I glanced at Jack who was looking at the infiltrator as if that rocket had lobotomized him, "Garrus, you were there two years ago. Their operation was pretty damned extensive for being just a rogue black ops group, even if they stole everything from the Alliance."

Reluctantly, he nodded, I could tell I'd given him something to puzzle over and put his detective skills to use on. Jack piped up, "How'm I gonna hide what I'm looking for, Shepard? It'll be hard to cover up that I'm looking for more information than just what involves me."

I glanced at my friend, "Can you help her with that, Garrus?"

I could see the wheels spinning in his head as he thought it over, "Yeah, I can. But not here. I'll have to calibrate it from my station in the main battery."

I nodded, "Good. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark and I intend to find out where the stench is coming from."

They both looked at me, puzzled. I rolled my eyes, "Am I the only one who reads Shakespeare around here?" I waved my hand at them, "Never mind. Operation Denmark starts," I glanced at my Omni-Tool, "now."