If Sloane Kelly was a woman of the people, it was very clear that Sara was not one of her people. The leader of the Outcasts sat cold and aloof, propped up on her makeshift throne, and when Sara was introduced, Sloane was preoccupied, dismissive and rude.

"Vehn Terev? What's he to you? And don't lie to me." So much for small talk.

Sloane was armed. The turian behind her throne was armed. The two krogan that congregated casually at the door were armed. SAM was blaring in Sara's head over the multitude of potential dangers and all she could focus on was Sloane's multicolored eyes. One brown and one blue. Was one a glass eye, Sara wondered, or did Sloane just have heterochromia?

It was then that Sara realized she had just been standing there, glazed over while the leader of the goddamned Outcasts stared her down. It was always refreshing to know that people took her extended silence as a reflection of her intelligence (or lack thereof,) and not that her brain was busy computing endless philosophical and otherwise pointless tasks. Moments like this made her miss Scott. She'd always been a slow thaw and he was better at smoothing over the awkwardness of any introductory period.

Still, knowing Scott, he'd smooth Sloane over to his bed and then Sara could look forward to her, guns and all, appearing spontaneously at a Prothean dig site. Sara still hadn't said anything and Sloane was still staring.

Since the length of time stretched from thoughtful to creepy, Sara decided to be honest, because if she was already embarrassed by her silence, she didn't want to imagine how uncomfortable it would get if she tried to be evasive. For her efforts, Sloane Kelly couldn't care less. She barely spared a glance as she waved Sara off.

"Kadara is an angaran port and I want to keep them happy," she said. "You don't need Vehn- you need his intel. Talk to him before I put his head on a spike."

"But-"

Actually, that made a lot of sense. The Nexus records SAM was currently reciting inside Sara's skull stated that the only thing that marred Kelly's otherwise exemplary service prior to exile was her explosive temper. Did Sara really need to get into a pissing contest with a woman whose wiry limbs and sun leathered skin were intimately familiar with beating the shit out of dissidents? No. No, she did not.

Sara quickly changed her tune. "I can work with that," she agreed.

"See?" Sloane reclined on the throne and gestured at one of her men to get the door. "No reason we can't be civilized."

Sara smiled in relief. Sloane didn't smile back, so Sara let herself out, before anyone changed their minds.

The civilized leader of a civilized shantytown with civilized decapitated heads of kett attackers civilly decorating the outskirts of the port. Lost in her thoughts, Sara nearly didn't see Reyes leaned against a crate just outside Sloane's stronghold. She startled as he waved.

"Have a nice chat?" he called out.

"I think she likes me," Sara replied as she tried to smooth an invisible wisp of hair from her face.

"Don't worry," Reyes chuckled. "I found a workaround."

"I bet you did," she drawled. "Just how many strings are attached?"

"Not any new ones," he assured. Reyes straightened up from where he was slouched and closed the gap between them. Sadly, it was for business only. "When you get inside, give Vehn this. That'll eat through whatever Sloane's holding him in and it can't be traced back to us. A Resistance agent will be waiting to pick him up."

Sara examined the oversized vial as Reyes waited, his eyes never leaving the tube until she tucked it into her jacket. She snorted. "Vehn's intel had better be worth it."

"You'll be the judge of that, not me." He stunk like the rest of Kadara, but holy hell, that grin.

She told herself she could keep it cool, despite SAM letting her know she'd already blown it. "There's still the matter of the bill you left me with."

"I'm usually the model gentleman..."

"I don't believe you."

"Because I'm lying." There was that smile, again. He had to know how effective it was with the frequency in which he displayed it. "When you're done, meet me at Tartarus. First round's on me, I promise."

"Sure." She nodded. Wherever the hell Tartarus was. Sara stood there a while, long past when Reyes Vidal sauntered off into the midday sun, before she spoke. "Hey, SAM? Run me the Nexus files on Reyes Vidal."

SAM complied, but there wasn't a lot. He had been a pilot assigned to shuttle N-503 before being grounded on Kadara and was apparently- if it mattered- a Cancer. Everything else had been corrupted when the Nexus flew through the Scourge. Sara supposed she would just have to rely on her gut going forward, like anyone else.

Well, that and have SAM monitor Reyes for minute elevations in heart rate or heat signatures that might signify lies or other deceptions.

Sloane's word held true and Sara was allowed into her jail. She was led down into a basement warehouse by some Outcast flunky and instructed to knock on the door when she was finished with Terev. She wasn't sure what to think about the situation. Were the Outcasts so assured in their position they were becoming lazy and complacent or were they that confident in Sara's trustworthiness? Or was it her complete ineptitude, maybe?

Perhaps they just didn't give a shit what happened to Vehn Terev between the now and his execution. She could think of a few weirdos getting their rocks off at the thought of her pistol whipping a caged man.

Regardless of any hypothetical why, she was there. The cells in the basement were just enormous Initiative packing crates, stolen and altered. Sara could imagine them originally containing ship parts, all terrain vehicles or furniture prior to steel bars being welded across the open side of the box. Vehn sat on a dirty mattress on the floor and didn't even turn his head as she approached the bars.

Sara decided it best not to waste any time. "You have information on a kett flagship that I need."

"Well, this is a new interrogation technique," he scoffed. As he laid down on the mattress, he turned his back to her. "Has Sloane gotten desperate or just bored?"

"I'm not with Sloane- I'm the Pathfinder." Her words sank listlessly into the air as they fell on deaf ears. She supposed if even everyone in the Initiative wouldn't take her seriously, there was no reason to expect an angaran to respect the title. She needed a different angle. Sara tried again. "The Resistance- Evfra- sent me."

He turned to her, then. His tattooed face wasn't sympathetic exactly, if understanding. Vehn's eyes held the dull, despondent gleam of a man who knew he was dead regardless of the conversation's outcome. "I know who you are, human, and what you did for the Moshae," he said. "Just like you know who I am and what I did."

"So you know I'm good for it." Sara gripped the bars, because it was the closest she could get to him. "The Resistance wants you freed, you know? That's why they sent me."

"Why? So they get to be the ones to execute me?" His head flaps seemed to swell as he breathed an angry laugh. "I'd rather die here than have to look Evfra in the face, again."

"How about making it right, then?"

That made Vehn pause. "What do you want?"

"The Archon's ship," Sara said. "Where is it?"

"Never saw it." He shrugged. "Got my orders from a kett transponder."

Well, there went that.

Vehn's brow ridge lifted as he thought. "But you could use its frequency to triangulate the Archon's location."

"You still have it?" Sara spluttered. If he did, the Outcasts really were incompetent.

"No." He grinned. "I buried it before I was arrested. Should still be outside the city."

"Thanks." She unzipped her jacket and removed the mystery vial from an interior pocket. "This is your way out of this cell. If you want. A Resistance contact will be waiting."

Vehn Terev didn't budge, so she slipped it between the bars and set it softly on the ground. He was going to force them to leave the port, now, was he? She was never going to hear the end of that from Cora.

As Sara shuffled off, Vehn called after her, "Don't you want to know why I did it? Why I betrayed the Moshae?"

She didn't. Not really. But it seemed important to a dying man. "All right. Enlighten me." Maybe SAM could document it and make sense of it later.

"We're losing the war against the kett," he told her. "And still, Evfra puts my brothers and sisters in danger to protect a useless, old woman. The Archon only wanted the Moshae. I thought if I gave her up... I didn't know what the kett were doing to my people."

"And now you do." She didn't turn back to look at him, again. She didn't want to know if he regretted it or stubbornly rationalized it away. She just wanted to be done with the whole thing.

As soon as she was inhaling that Kadara surface air, Sara was dialing up frequencies on her omni tool. "Hey, Vetra? Are you and Drack finished with your completely legitimate business dealings?"

The audio popped as she was rewarded with Drack guffawing.

"Yup," Vetra chirped. "All tidied up and nothing to see here. What do you need?"

"I need to find something just outside the city limits," Sara replied. "Let's do it fast."

"Uh huh."

"Without telling Cora."

"Uh huh."

"What?" Sara could hear her pitch rising, so she took a deep breath. "The only scenario in which we go out into the Badlands on foot where Cora does not shit herself over it is the scenario in which we don't tell her until the objective is completed. My real mom's already dead, let's not give ship mom a heart attack. "

She was answered with more laughter over the comm.

"Kid's got a point, Vetra," Drack was saying.

"Yeah," Vetra replied. "But it would be fun to see the look on Lieutenant Harper's face."

"Is that a yes?" Sara insisted. "It didn't sound like a no."

"Sure," Vetra snickered. "The exit to the Badlands is in the slums. We'll meet you down there."

Kadara the slum-port-shantytown had an even worse slum beneath it? Of course it did. Sara had to laugh as she dropped her wrist from her face. They were all going to die of exposure, weren't they? And then she'd have to pass the role of Pathfinder to Jaal or somebody.

It was meant to be a joke, but SAM announced suddenly that if she was to perish, he had clear directives to merge with Scott, next. The wording was precise in a way that was very Alec Ryder. Well, fuck everything, then.

The elevator lift to the slums was open and precarious. Slow enough to hear every creak of its cables, it gave Sara too much time to consider any number of uncomfortable scenarios in her head. Like why would her father have wanted to keep SAM in the family? There were others obviously more qualified. Good to know Dad's decision hadn't been for the knee jerk love of his daughter after all, and just more calculated bullshit. For a drop of only four stories or so, the descent was much too long.

The slums were a city beneath a city. Devoid of light, its skyline was Sloane Kelly's plumbing. People were living in shipping crates stacked like kennels along a massive scaffolding. At the center of it was a single, massive building that SAM identified as Tartarus. Sara was certain it would have just as many reputable drinks as Kralla's as she circled around its outskirts.

Even at ground level, there was a path of plywood laid out atop something draining out and pooling onto the soil. Sara wisely chose to walk the plywood and requested that SAM refrain from informing her of what exactly that goo was.

The walls that held up the port of Kadara proper encased the slums in their entirety. It made the air stale and its humans deficient in vitamin D, but it also protected them. There was a single sally port in the wall guarded by a nonplussed krogan that opened into the Badlands.

The thought of Nexus exiles exiling their undesirables even further made Sara giggle. Drack and Vetra both were by the sally port as promised. She waved to them as they were exchanging a look. The krogan warden at the gate didn't try to sway them from leaving, but he also maintained a matter of fact pessimism about their odds of survival.

"We're not going far," Sara insisted. "It should just be a quick in and out."

"If you say so," the warden maintained. "If you really are quick you shouldn't have to worry about exposure or the sulfur springs. There's still the Collective, though."

"Collective?"

The warden just stared at her, unblinking. "How have you managed to make it all the way down here without being shanked when you don't know what the Collective is?"

"Because she's with us." Drack clapped a hand on Sara's shoulder as he laughed.

"They grow up so fast," Vetra murmured to the warden with a conspiratorial smirk. "Thanks for your time."

The warden shook his head as he punched in the code to open the gate. "Whatever. Try not to die."

The difference between the somber glow of the slum's "mood lighting" and the angry, unforgiving sun that beamed down upon the cracked earth of the Badlands was glaring. Sara couldn't help but wince and shield her eyes as they took the time to readjust. Fortunately, Drack kept his amusement to a single chuckle before he sobered into the hardened veteran that she constantly relied upon.

"Okay," Vetra breathed. "So what are we looking for, exactly?"

"A buried kett transponder," Sara replied. "It should be somewhere just outside these walls."

"Yeah, I can see how you'd think searching the entire perimeter of a town would be a quick in and out," Vetra commented dryly.

"Relax, Vetra." Drack rolled his shoulders as he stared down the horizon. "It's been a while since I could enjoy a nice, leisurely walk."

Sara would not roll her eyes, she would not glare. She would choose to lead by quiet, passive-aggressive example. "SAM, run a search for any likely transponder beacons within a five mile radius of Kadara proper."

That earned an approving nod from Vetra. The turian crossed her arms as she silently kept a lookout.

There was obvious interference by the numerous frequencies, power sources and couplings that helped run the town. Sara silently willed the burial spot to be nowhere near the docks, because even SAM with his incalculable speed might have trouble differentiating a single kett transponder from the many other ships with their own unique transponder codes. She shifted her weight from one leg to the other and tried not to appear impatient.

The wait was long. By the time SAM had narrowed down their search to two likely locations Sara had felt a bead of sweat form and trail all the way from her collarbone to that awful spot just beneath the cup of her bra. She had stopped shifting, because one foot had fallen asleep and she was worried the slight movement would just topple her over.

Drack and Vetra handled it better. She could tell both were accustomed to late nights keeping watch, though she didn't feel it was her place to ask the what or why of it. She turned the conversation to other things to pass the time.

"You're an exile," Sara blurted out to Drack. "Were you exiled here? Probably Elaaden, right?"

Drack only grunted.

"The majority of Clan Nakmor is on Elaaden," Vetra informed her. "He's just grouchy because no one deferred to his opinion on curtains for the new lair."

"Fresh starts don't sound very fresh when you're using names like 'New' Tuchanka," the krogan barked.

"And that's why you're fighting like you always have?" Vetra replied.

"What I really meant is that if you came from the Kadara group, you might be able to tell me what the Collective is," Sara said quickly. "I thought Sloane and the Outcasts ran this place?"

"They'd have you believe that, wouldn't they?" Drack snorted.

"So they don't?" Sara asked. "It's actually the Collective?"

"You might not have noticed this, but Sloane Kelly isn't exactly what you'd call a people person." Vetra's eyes never left her post, but she did smirk. "Good or bad, she came into her power violently and has continued with a heavy hand since. There's always going to be challengers to that, whether they think they can do better or just want a share of the pot."

Drack shook his head. "That was pretty of you Vetra, but I wouldn't trust any organization that has a leader who hides in the shadows. At least Sloane has the quads to show her face, ugly as it is."

"...She's not that bad?"

"Don't worry, you're still uglier."

Vetra broke her gaze from the horizon to share a look with Sara. "I think the takeaway from all our chitchat is that any local will have strong opinions and loyalties about the Outcasts and Collective."

"So, probably not the best thing to bring up in casual conversation," Sara finished for her.

"Exactly." Vetra beamed.

"And SAM's got a location," Sara announced as he began to ping. "Everyone, synch up omni tools."

It looked closer on the omni tool's tiny holographic map, but after a brisk fifteen minute jaunt they'd made it to the location. Right behind a small shrub there was crumbly, freshly turned soil. Sara snorted. It wasn't exactly subtle. She dug with her hands, the soil embedding itself in her fingernails, until her fingers hit something hard.

"I think I've got it," she declared as she yanked the piece of tech from the ground and began to brush the dirt off it.

"That's definitely seen better days," Vetra said. "You sure it will still work?"

Sara shrugged. "Don't know, but that's not my job, is it?"

Their return to the slums and Kadara Port was refreshingly uneventful. The warden, a little chagrined no one had fallen into a sulfur spring, let them back in with little more than some muttering and a head nod. No huge life or death struggle, the biggest thrill was for all three of them to pile into the lift and listen to it languish and shriek beneath their weight, all the way to the top.

In fact, Sara had nearly made it all the way back to the Tempest before she'd was intercepted by some Outcast asshole. "Sloane wants to see you."

"Okay..."

"Now." The intimate pat he gave his rifle implied that it wasn't a request.

Sara shared a bemused look with Vetra and passed the transponder over to her before she turned to Sloane's lackey. "Lead the way, I guess."

The man marched Sara right back through Kadara and led her directly into Sloane Kelly's base. Sloane was exactly as Sara had left her, on her throne and browsing schematics. As soon as she saw Sara she snapped shut the feed on her omni tool and narrowed her eyes, livid.

"You've got some real fucking nerve, you know that?" Sloane demanded. "Who do you think you are?"

Egged on by confusion, or perhaps the rifle butt helpfully rammed into her shoulder, Sara shrugged. "The Pathfinder?"

"Very funny- it's always a fucking laugh with you, isn't it?" If Sloane leaned any farther out of her chair, she'd have to stand up or fall over. Sara had to resist her impulse toward nervous laughter, because that temper SAM had cautioned about was out in full force. Sloane lowered her voice to a growl. "You come into my home, I accommodate your request and this is the thanks I get?"

"I did exactly what I said I'd do," Sara said slowly. "Was I not supposed to go into the Badlands? It was where Vehn's intel led me."

"You can set up shop in the Badlands until the cannibals eat you for all I care," Sloane snapped. "I know what you did for Vehn Terev."

"What I did?" So he did run. "I didn't do anything!"

"You think you're on the Citadel, still?" Sloane scoffed. She slumped back into her throne, her lips pulled back in a sneer. "I should arrange for a tribunal? Give you plenty of time to lawyer up and plead your case? I don't need proof. The only reason there's not a bullet in your thick skull right now is because you're a bigger hassle to me dead than alive."

"Thanks, I guess?"

Sloane breathed an angry huffy of air through her nose. "Oh whatever. I suppose it doesn't matter. Vehn's still dead regardless if I publicly execute him or he drinks poison in a cell like a coward."

"What?"

"Oh, please." She rolled her eyes, despite Sara's heart plunging deeper into her guts. "Like you weren't the one to give it to him."

"No, that can't be right..." Sara shook her head. It couldn't have been. She would have been told- SAM would have noticed! "Poison? Really?"

"You really didn't know?" Sloane's anger was gone instantly, replaced with a wry laugh. "Well, shit. Lucky I didn't shoot you. Welcome to Kadara, right? Now, get out of my face."