Chapter 31: Shelter From the Storm

Defences were coordinated in the event things would go wrong, and Shepard expected them to. She had Wrex and Kaidan present to subdue with biotics, with the rest of the team waiting outside the chamber and watching through the security feed Tali had set up long ago. Dr. Chakwas would wait in the shadows with Shepard to attempt to divert further disaster with a quick hand and a sharp needle.

All this preparation, all this organization, and Shepard could not fathom how Liara could just sit in front of the cryo pod without ever moving her gaze away from it. There was a determination in those eyes that still have not yet dampened.

It was terrifying.

"Can you bring me into the meld?" Shepard asked as she saddled up beside the archaeologist, clasping her wrists behind her back so some familiar stance could bring some kind of conclusion to this incessant buzzing under her skin.

Nothing ever worked.

"No, it doesn't work that way. I can only dive into a consciousness, not direct it," Liara explained calmly, her tone even. It was almost as if she was meditating. "The only possible way would perhaps be if both mother and I melded with you, and then three parties would be present in your consciousness."

There was a thought.

"Let's try it," Shepard affirmed without thought.

A chuckle caught her off guard.

"We have yet to persuade her to cooperate with anything but hostility, Commander."

"Yeah. Well."

"Well?" There was the tiniest smile dancing on the corner of Liara's lips. "Well, nothing, it seems."

Shepard sighed and crossed her arms, lowering her voice when Dr. Chakwas entered the room to prepare what tools she suspected she would need, if the worst came to pass. Usually that was all fine and dandy, something the soldier was completely pro-prep for, but this was unnerving.

"I don't like the risks associated with this, Dr. T'Soni. Isn't there something more that we can do to mitigate them?"

More importantly, wasn't there something she could say or do to dissuade Liara from venturing on with this sentimental recklessness?

"None that I can think of." Still with that even tone, but it had softened. There was a gentle hum to it that coursed directly into veins. "You forget, I melded with you, Commander. Unprepared."

Lips thinned in a frown as Shepard conceded with that logic, but... But she wasn't dangerous of indoctrinating somebody. Or was she? She'd learned recently the painful truth of how Dr. T'Soni had felt in regards to the relationship they had explored in weeks past. She fooled the asari into thinking she was normal and sweet and attentive when in reality, she was anything but. She was brutal. She was lacking compassion. She habitually practised secrecy. She was controlled by a darker power in her mind, a predator that lurked in the shadows that she could not shake free from.

With such a roster of damning traits, what made her different than Benezia, right now?

"May I have privacy with my mother?" Liara inquired, and she was swiftly reprimanded with a stern shake of the head, followed by bewilderment for such an insane question. She seemed to have expected it with the way she had actually chuckled, then sighed as she settled in her seat. "Very well then." Her gaze traversed to the two guards that waited in the corners of the room, Kaidan and Wrex. "During the meld, I will need the utmost quiet - especially during the initial transition into her subconsciousness. Mother will likely be aware of what I am attempting and will be resisting. I urge that nobody-" her eyes snapped up to Shepard "-intervene."

"No promises," Shepard inwardly grumbled in the safety of her thoughts. She looked away at one of the walls and tightened her crossed arms.

There was a resounding pinch to the side of her thigh.

"Commander."

"Yup. Got it. Perfectly understood."

Another chuckle. "Overcompensating accomplishes the opposite of hiding."

"Is she implying that I'm lying? 'Cause I am, but, how the hell is it so easy for her to see?"

Disgruntled, all Shepard could think to say was grunt. She was disabled of words, deduced to that of a mindless animal around this woman. It was not often that someone could make her truly speechless. She tried and tried but came up with nothing, condemned to continue to observe the preparations made around them.

Doomsday had come when Dr. Chakwas took her side by the cryo pod. "Are we ready?"

"No."

"Yes."

It didn't take geniuses to figure out who was saying what, and Shepard ignored the way Liara inhaled beside her. This stubborn asari. Rash. Emotional. Her judgment was clouded. What could she possibly hope to accomplish, after everything that's been tried and failed? Even truth serum didn't work. If heavy chemicals cannot alter and overpower this fucking indoctrination, what hope was there?

Now, more than ever, Shepard was sincerely regretting indulging in her love for explosives. She should have thought ahead, prepared ahead, utilized the creature on Feros to shove Benezia in one of the disgustingly slimy pods and wait for sanity to emerge. This was her own doing. She was the one that condemned Liara to sit in this chair.

"Commander?" Dr. Chakwas asked tentatively. "I will not proceed with this operation and begin the thawing process without your say."

Well, there was that. What a surprise she still had some form of authority and control in this situation... But the way the stubborn mind bristled beside her had reminded her that it was just an illusion, this power she thought she held. She nodded towards the doctor, though her sharp gaze fell on Liara as she issued stern words in her helpless attempt to hold onto that illusion.

"If I see anything going wrong, I am pulling you out."

"You can't dive in my consciousness either," Liara reminded. She wore a slight sly smile that seemed more like it had fangs behind it. "Or do you possess those telepathic powers, after all?"

"There are other means."

"Violent means?"

"I'm not above choking you out, no."

Liara sighed, muttering irritably under her breath. "What a wonderful idea."

"It's for your protection."

There was a despondent way the asari had inhaled now, but her focus was re-ignited when the thawing process begun. Dr. Chakwas squeezed her hand in as soon as the pod's lid lifted enough to do so, her needle-aim instant as it sank into the bruised neck. A hand pushed the side of Shepard's thigh and she looked down at Liara, annoyed over this persistent resistance - a sentiment that seemed to be shared.

"Hide where she can't see you. I need to catch her off guard and initiate the meld as soon as she's awake, and she will orientate to her surroundings if she sees you."

"Won't she anyways, if she sees you?"

Shepard begrudgingly complied, though, not wanting to hamper what little chance of success this had. She forced a bit of distance and stowed herself off on the side, leaning against the wall to try and find some measure of comfort somewhere in this insanity. She never took her eyes off of Liara, a new unnerving wave rocking her stomach when she'd seen what happened to the asari's eyes.

"Mother." Liara rose from her chair and came dangerously close to the pod, tempting a rebuke from Shepard. But then she blinked, once, twice, and her eyes turned into the abyss itself. "Embrace Eternity."

Roars rumbled through the sky. There was a heavy thunderstorm here, with no shelter to be found for miles. Liara trudged on in the thick muck encasing her feet, feeling heavier and heavier with every step as if there was an attempt to cement her right to the earth, and earth that was comprised of slithering snakes. The forms of resistance certainly were expressing creativity.

"Poetic as ever," Liara mused with hope. She lifted her arm to shield her eyes when it began to downpour, obscuring the distance of infinite plains. She rose her voice to bellow. "Mother? Where are you?! Show yourself, I know you're still in here, somewhere!"

Weary step after step, her legs began to protest and ache. She navigated the storm and struggled to steel herself whenever lightning would strike nearby.

"This is not real," she reminded herself. "Her consciousness is trying to evict me. Whatever presence has gripped her is trying to scare me away."

It was a promising sign, one that showed where the presence had no power to force her out.

There was no sign of life nor other thought manifesting itself, however, and time crawled slow. She'd felt like she'd aged a century with what was probably only a minute passing by, the passing of time heavily skewed and altered to muddle the mind and cast it into delirium. She grounded herself in her reminders, checking her hands often for the signs of aging.

Another lightning strike. Closer. She yelped when she could see sparks crackle in the air, and a pungent burning smell accompanied it. There was a soot patch of seared snakes.

"Mother?!" Liara called out again, scrutinizing the veiled distance in the rain.

Nothing.

Over time, snow trickled in on her journey. It collected on the slithery ground, and frigid shivers gripped her as soon as she crossed some invisible line. The entire scenery changed abruptly and she'd stepped into a blizzard, hugging herself, telling herself over and over again that none of this was real, that she was not actually freezing. These sensations were compelling, however, and she'd found herself slipping up whenever her thoughts would grumble away over how cold she was.

Instincts warred with control over conscious thought as they demanded she escape, before she froze to death. She powered on, teeth chattering, rubbing her arms incessantly for some paltry warmth.

She wandered for another century.

306, she told herself. She had another 700 years to go, give or take. Was mother aging in here as well? Would her consciousness expire - if it hadn't already - if she transcended the natural lifespan the average asari typically lived on for?

"This isn't real. I'm not actually aging."

Another mental check as she looked at her hands, hands that were coated with a light frost. It did little to quell the burning in her lungs.

"Mother, give me something already!"

Once more, she'd crossed some invisible line. The snow and rain and thunder and snakes had all disappeared into nothingness. Her heart crashed against her ribcage when she had literally nothing beneath her, nothing above her, nothing surrounding her. She was floating, but it felt like she was falling. Her limbs flailed about in panic and she had trouble calming herself, reminding herself, with the fear that beat hard under her skin that she might very well feel the way her body would splat against whatever would be conjured out of thin air, next.

"Flap, flap, Little Wing," whispered into the essence of her mind, decayed lips pressed to her aural. "Try, try, before you die."

Terror seized her when there was a small little dot beneath her, rapidly expanding. The ground was coming to swallow her whole, crush her bones into dust. She screamed when she realized she was going to collide and fracture into a million pieces.

Instead, she fell through, the floor like a trampoline. It stretched and stretched and snapped and then she was underwater, viscous liquid that resisted her and weighed down her arms as she tried to stroke and swim. There was a thin sliver of light at the surface, but she was so far away, and she couldn't breathe. She couldn't breathe. She was going to choke and drown and be forgotten in this abyssal sea.

She was screaming, but no one could hear her. No one would be able to figure out that the ripples that reached the shore were because of her.

{Was the trip to the beach good enough to become a happy memory?}

A memory. A memory! Something real, something tangible, something to make that sliver of light grow larger, burn brighter. This? This wasn't real. She'd been dunked before, she knew exactly how that felt. It wasn't cold and empty and suffocating like this. It didn't drag her down to drown, it compelled her to kick off the ocean floor and dive up for the surface, to enact revenge.

"How's the water?" Liara asked.

"Cold," Lucy answered wryly, blaspheming. "You could join me."

"Or not and avoid freezing to death," Liara countered. Her lips automatically quirked upon the sound of a chuckle. "On that note: how aren't you? How long have you been in there?"

Another voice. Another reminder. Lucy. Lucy. She used to be Shepard, she was Shepard again, but here in the center of this chaos she was Lucy. Warmth bellowed through the water, insisting to be heard, to be felt. She reached out to grasp it and clutched it to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut as tightly as possible. She mouthed every word that echoed in her memories. She would embody them - she refused to drown.

{Back then, I only had to worry about those buckets, or when rations were going to be skipped, or when we might be sleep deprived to discipline us for our 20-hour long scenarios.}

"That..." Liara's forehead pinched. "That sounds..."

"Like a breeze, compared to what we are forced to deal with now. They never trained me for the problems I face now. This water..."

Lucy stopped for a moment, glancing over to gesture to the endless horizon at sea.

"I feel like I am lost out there, and no amount of swimming will get me anywhere or do anything. No one will hear me if I scream out there. No one will know that the ripples that eventually reach this shore are because of me, drowning."

{Let's work together so that neither of us drowns. Or we can at least scream together.}

A synthetic hand slipped into hers, the biting chill of metal had shot a shiver right up Liara's arm and through her.

This wasn't just a hand. It was a bridge.

And apparently it was also a trap.

There was a second of a smile in her peripheral vision, vision that was soon blurred as she sailed through air, then blotted and submerged. The cold shock of water swallowing her nearly overwhelmed her, but a fire was ignited in her heart and her brain oriented itself to her current reality much faster this time. She kicked off the sand floor and launched herself to the surface, waving an arm to launch a splash as she shot an indignant look to the soldier who revealed why she had abused the unnatural strength of her cybernetic arm with a cheeky wave of her hand.

"Let's start working together on that now, Dr. T'Soni." Lucy taunted.

Laughter broke the surface of the water. Not just Lucy's anymore, this time, but Liara's. She resurfaced. She prevailed. She shot a heated look up at the abyss, where there was another tiny dot far off in the distance. "I will find you mother! Show me where you are, and I will swim any matter of distance to reach you! You will not win, you cannot silence me or drown me!"

{Was watching Blue Bloods good enough to become a happy memory?}

"You remember pain, don't you?" Liara murmured as she ran her finger down the mechanical forearm. "You remember it as if it's happened yesterday."

"This is beginning to sound like territory you don't want to tread, Dr. T'Soni," came the blunt warning.

"I... I don't mean to ask about the circumstances, b-but what I mean is... How do you do it? How do you move forward, despite that pain?"

"I don't. I haven't been able to move forward no matter how hard I try. I'm stuck in one place because of that pain. I know that's not really reassuring to hear, and I don't mean to say it to cause you worry that you'll be stuck too. I still try no matter what, no matter how many times I fail. It's a constant effort and it always will be. That's just life. If you can't find that strength in you to try the same, then just borrow from me for a bit. Lean on me. I'll carry you forward until you feel like you're able to try. And if you still can't make it? That's fine. I'll keep carrying you."

{Was Shirvan good enough to become a happy memory?}

"O-oh, I am so sorry, Commander. Sometimes I get carried away. It is not often I find someone interested in my culture, but I will do better from here on out to try not to overwhelm you."

"No, no, it's not that, don't worry. Just a headache, not related to you." Lucy stopped massaging and offered an apologetic smile. "I don't mind and I enjoy listening. Personally, it gives me a break from doing all the talking and commanding that I do aboard the Normandy, or on missions. It's a nice change of pace for once." She gently tapped Liara's food container with her fork. "Though, from all my observations since coming to Thessia, I have found that the most interesting part of your culture is you, Dr. T'Soni."

{Does it become a happy memory to get revenge on me, Commander?}

Tears and hopelessness pricked Liara's eyes. Try as she might, she was being overwhelmed. She was on the edge. She couldn't find mother. She couldn't sense her nor feel her presence anywhere, and she was terrified of that the most, upon diving into this consciousness. She feared to confirm that Benezia was already gone, already dead, her soul departed from the shell in the waking world, an empty vessel now filled by all these hateful atrocities.

An empty vessel. A new world exploded to life. Liara could see Lucy. For a moment, she thought she had failed, that she had somehow been evicted or had lost the concentration to maintain the connection - but she hadn't failed.

Because she could see herself too.

Unblinking eyes watched the world. Lucy still had crossed arms, but now she was leaning against the wall behind Liara, who seemed to have been forced back into sitting. There was a machine hooked up to her, a machine she didn't remember being hooked up to prior to the meld. They showed her vitals, and Dr. Chakwas was on a stool to monitor. Liara couldn't move her head, restrained, but she could hear how Wrex was restless in his corner, grumbling something underneath his breath. Kaidan in the other corner, came into view when he hesitantly approached Lucy.

"Commander, we've passed the two hour mark."

"Understood, Lieutenant. Return to your post."

Reluctance came through a little more. "Commander... Shouldn't we pull her out? We don't know what will happen if she stays in there for too long."

"I concur," Dr. Chakwas added, "I've yet to study the mechanics and physiology of how asari are able to meld, so I understand little of the process. However, to sustain it for this long with an influenced mind, an influence we also don't understand-"

"Carry on your duties," Lucy interjected stiffly. "We are to maintain watch until further notice. She will take as long as she needs."

"Respectfully, Commander, she is my patient," Dr. Chakwas softly argued. "I have reason to believe she is in danger and I can order-"

"Go ahead, order all you want. Do you think she'd be here if she listened to orders? This is the safest we can make it. If we deny her, she will find a way on her own."

"Varren's quads," Wrex groaned, "We should just start takin' fingers. Makes anyone talk."

There was a dark look in Lucy's eyes as she glared in the direction of the krogan. She renewed her stance and marched up behind Liara. "Carry on your duties. We are to maintain watch until further notice." She leaned over as if to inspect Liara's face, and would that she could, she would blush upon helplessly watching Lucy poke her face. "Would be nice to get some kind of notice here from you, Dr. T'Soni," came the disgruntled prod.

It dawned a new question. Liara was trapped, watching, caught in limbo of whether or not this was truly reality outside of her consciousness, or if it was yet another stale attempt to trick her and confuse her with these figments of imagination. She yearned to hear and tried to concentrate on being back in her own body when Lucy seemed to be whispering something in her aural, before patting and squeezing her shoulder - looking conflicted as if what she did was okay to even do.

It wasn't, but it was, and this confounding mess must have been reality.

"What did you say to me?" Liara desired most, listening in hopes the words would somehow reach her, but they didn't.

Time ticked by excruciatingly slow, and she was condemned to watch, to listen to this instead. It was torture. To be trapped here, helpless, unable to do anything. It was like banging on a window. She couldn't conjure any memories, any other images, something to help her pull herself out of this perspective. It hurt more than it should have to see Lucy just wait, rebuffing the others when she so clearly wanted to listen to what they were saying. It must have been torture for her too.

Was this a point that mother was somehow trying to get across? To watch, helplessly, unable to do anything? Unable to say anything?

"Flap, flap, Little Wing." That sinister voice returned. "Try, try, before you die."

Alarms resounded off the vitals monitor. Liara watched in horror as Lucy was the first to react, curling her synthetic arm underneath the archaeologist's throat to knock her unconscious.

Who knew if it had worked?

She was still trapped in mother's body, condemned to watch.

"That isn't possible. This isn't possible." Liara groped for the truth, to try and find that muddled line of where reality began and ended. She shouldn't be able to maintain a meld if she was unconscious. Lucy was standing over her body, barking orders at the others. Garrus was rolling in a mobile plinth into the room. Dr. Chakwas rushed to get a new machine, some kind of helmet, almost, and it was thrust upon her to scan her brain.

Zero activity.

Nobody could hear Liara screaming.

There was a raw laughter, morbid and dark. The abyssal snakes returned, inky tendrils thrashing violently at the ground to frighten her. She was sheltered from them, somehow, banging on a window. She was banging on a window. She was banging on a window. Words echoed, delayed. Lucy's lips were pressed to her aural.

"You will find her. And if you are lost, I will find you. Even if it takes me a thousand years."

A beat.

"But kindly hurry the fuck up, would you? There are other ways I desire to spend that time with you."

Bangs on the window rebounded even when her hands weren't the ones beating upon them. The images before her suddenly changed within a blink, and the scene was back to normal. She was being monitored. She noticed Lucy's head lift a little, her gaze now square on her - she seemed to have noticed something. As if on a limb, Lucy pushed off the wall, standing behind Liara. Her hands rested on the archaeologist's shoulders, still with a guilty look, Kaidan tentatively sounding off the time.

"We've passed the five hour mark, Commander."

"Understood." Lucy closed her eyes for a moment, bowing her head. She sucked in a deep breath. She knelt on a knee and rested her forehead against Liara's shoulder, her thumb pacing anxiously over the corner of it. "Just... One more minute. Give her one more minute. Then we'll pull her out."

"Flap, flap, Little Wing."

The banging grew louder. Nearer. The images grew fuzzy, blurring out of existence. The last she'd seen was Lucy whisper something in her aural again, but she couldn't hear. Liara rested her hand on the window. She closed her eyes and listened to the banging - the one beating inside of her, outside of her.

And beside her.

Beside her, mother was. Mother had to be. Here, in this realm, Liara had power. Control and authority over reality, that which was and was not. She stepped outside her shelter and ignored the tendrils that whipped away, heading straight towards them. They weren't real, they had no power over her. They may have gripped Benezia, but Liara was outside their influence. They'd be kept outside. There was a reason why there was banging on a window. That fact alone spoke louder than any image these tendrils could conjure - that they could not kill a mind. They could throw it into disarray, they could feed and drown, and that was the extent of their influence.

The abyss swallowed her again, trying to consume her in it's desperation to throw her back into chaos. She walked through a storm, she walked through a blizzard, she walked through bloodstained water. She walked until she saw that tiny dot in the distance grow larger. A building.

A shelter from the storm.

Liara smiled with relief upon her approach. The shackles were broken, the muck on her legs weighed nothing. She came up to the building and placed her hand on the window.

"Mother," she whispered, tears collecting in her eyes when a hand came up on the other side of the window.

Kindness bloomed in the soft curl of graceful lips. "It's so nice to see you again, Little Wing. Oh, how you've grown strong."

"I-"

And the abyss knocked Liara out.

Once a-fucking-gain, Shepard anxiously wait by a bedside of a despondent body, condemned to be tortured by the sounds of the vital monitor. She damned the consequences and held Liara's hand, her thumb pacing over knuckles over and over and over again - until she realized she had actually begun to chafe the skin. She rose and lumbered over to help herself to Dr. Chakwas' compound section, retrieving a small ointment container that had lidocaine and cortoderm mixed together.

Horrible thoughts plagued her upon her return to the lifeless body. The mission failed. Liara was lost - and for what? Shepard should have fought harder to stop the stubborn asari. She should have been evicted from the Normandy. She could have her wrath, sure, but at least she would still have her mind and heart to do so, a life still yet to be lived.

Dejectedly, Shepard unscrewed the container and dipped her finger in, dabbing the ointment away onto Liara's knuckles.

There was a disapproval emanating from Dr. Chakwas' corner, the doctor understandably disturbed that her ability to care for her patient was denied.

And for what?

Shepard inhaled sharply as she screwed the lid back on, the container clattering ever so quietly in the monitor's basket. She plummeted in her chair and leaned over, careful not to rest her head on the bed in lieu of accidentally falling asleep.

"Not that I could really do anything worse, at this point."

God, why the hell did it have to be Liara, this time? Why was the universe so hellbent on destroying Shepard and those that dared get close to her? Why crush every little piece she tried to crawl away with? Why was it so frowned upon to have hope? She watched Liara stand so tall, that it compelled doubts to disappear. But now she wasn't standing anymore, and all the doubts soared back with a vengeance.

There was no way to know if Liara was ever going to come back to them, now. Shepard had to put safety measures in place again, instead, having the team wait outside the med-bay to contain whatever thing would have captured and corrupted Liara now.

Rage buzzed hard in her veins, a wrath she could not remember being burned by other than Akuze. It was difficult to contain, to consolidate, to come to terms with. Now, more than ever, she wanted to tear the Reapers apart - and Saren, and even Benezia for being such a misguided fool that's now dragged her daughter with her. But the soldier was tired. Her source that convinced her to be an optimistic fool was gone. There was no information. There was only another casualty.

"You aren't even here for me to say 'I told you so'," Shepard sighed. She ignored the sigh that bristled behind her as Dr. Chakwas worked away at her terminal, supposedly plugging notes in about everything that transpired, perhaps so that future research might have something to work with.

That's all this body in this bed was, now. Voluntold and donated to science. A fitting end for a scientist and researcher, she supposed, but it made her wonder if Liara had a will.

"Who would think to write one, so young? Well, not young to me, as she was so inclined to point that out, but..."

Shepard hunched in her chair and burrowed her hands in her hair, fingertips scratching. She gnawed on the edge of her tongue.

"But even I don't have one."

Not that she'd care to write one.

Something caught Lucy's eye and her head shot up with hope, but it was soon deemed to be a figment of her imagination. There was no movement beyond a simple rise and fall of the chest. She frowned in disgust of herself upon closer inspection of a bruise on the throat - nearly fully healed, but it should have never been there. It wouldn't have been, if she never allowed herself to get close to the asari. This was all her fault. Had she simply neutralized Benezia back in Noveria, dealt with the consequences then for having no information to work with, this would have never happened. She should have stuck to the plan they had agreed upon in the beginning, in Liara's apartment.

God, but it felt like she was dying with every single minute of the day that she spent waiting on Liara. She promised to find Liara, but how in the world could she actually do that? There were no telepathic powers to speak of. She immediately ruled out the notion that she could convince Benezia in her indoctrinated state to do anything about it, perhaps dive into Liara's mind, now.

"Yeah, sure, give her all the time in the world to indoctrinate Liara for sure, too. What a fantastic idea."

Fingers scraped and dug into her scalp. She gritted her teeth, her legs subtly bounced. She was going to explode.

There was only so much someone could take, could endure.

"A thousand years. Another great idea. I somehow lost my mind and forgot that only asari live a thousand years. How am I supposed to find her? I'll be six feet under in fifty, if I'm lucky."

Something caught her eye again, but it was still her imagination. She was falling apart. The pieces she so precariously stitched together were falling apart and there was nobody left to catch and collect them. She desperately wished to shut off, to go back in time and be who she was before she met Liara. Why the hell did the asari have to go and... And do... Or say... Or just be who she was? Couldn't she not? That was perfectly reasonable to expect. Shepard went back to rubbing her scalp raw and bounce her legs. She couldn't bother to look to see who'd entered the infirmary when the doors hissed.

"Commander, the Council-"

"Can go fuck themselves," Shepard muttered, but was thankfully unheard as Kaidan continued to report.

"-believe they have valuable information that will aid us in our investigation with Saren. They've found a base of operations."

"Yeah."

Shepard wearily rose her head.

"Yeah."

Speechless, other than that. She stared blankly. The Lieutenant appeared uneasy, shifting his weight from leg to leg. He had every right to.

Especially when wrath exploded with a chair shattering against the wall.