The hits just kept coming.

Out of the shower, Sara was intercepted by Cora while wringing her hair dry. Cora was her typical, cloyingly apologetic self, but it didn't stop her from whisking Sara to the bridge with a towel still wrapped around her sopping wet hair.

"You need to hear this," was all Cora would say. She shot a stern look to the science officer. "Suvi, play it."

From her seat, Suvi Anwar glanced at Sara from the corner of her eyes before she flipped a switch and a log played over the bridge speakers.

"I'm not going to lose you!"

"And you're not! You have me always, but I am going to die."

"Not if I have anything to say about that."

"Just stop. I'm dying, Alec. I'm dying."

"You saw that too, huh?" Sara murmured.

"There's more," Cora said, a crease marring her brow. She nodded and Suvi hit the switch again.

"And a Pathfinder mutiny is outside drama."

"You really don't need to say it like that..."

"I think I do."

"Listen, I don't know how or why, but the fact of the matter is that since you left, things have completely fallen to pieces."

"Uh huh."

"Sara, please."

"That was our conversation on Kadara," Sara said, frowning.

"The one you requested SAM store as an eidetic memory." Cora nodded.

"I meant that as a joke," Sara muttered. "Guess I'll have to explain the concept to SAM a little more thoroughly."

"Our connections were wide open," Suvi said hesitantly. "When SAM... killed you."

"Wide open?" Sara asked. "What do you mean?"

"A failsafe," Suvi hazarded. "A last ditch exchange of data in the event SAM can't transfer from his dying host, like a final hail Mary."

"So you have all of my memories?" Sara demanded. Her wet hair whipped at her shoulders with how quickly she turned her head. "Delete them. Now."

"I don't know if it was all of them..." Suvi was stammering.

"There's a bigger issue than some of your memories being broadcast to the Tempest," Cora interrupted.

"Oh really?" Sara heard herself laugh sharply. "This I've got to hear."

Suvi's eyes darted to her hands and dashboard. "The broadcast wasn't isolated to just the Tempest," she mumbled.

"What do you mean?" Sara asked, rushing to the science officer's dashboard like she'd be able to make more sense of it. "Did Paarchero pick it up too?"

"Probably, but we're more concerned with-"

"The whole of the Nexus? What?"

"The crew of the Verakan, mostly."

"The Archon saw those memory flashes?" Sara felt the blood drain from her face. She reached out and dug her fingers into the back of Suvi's chair to keep herself from wobbling. "Fuck."

"Aye," Suvi murmured.

"He'll know how much we need Meridian," Sara breathed. "We need to warn the Nexus."

"You heard her." Cora clapped her hands. "Move."

There was a lot to think about, a lot to consider. What memories, exactly? They were stored by SAM due to some inexplicable importance. As embarrassing as the thought of any of her romantic hookups being displayed across vidscreens in Ark Paarchero, that seemed monumentally better than revealing just how connected she was to SAM and it becoming public knowledge. Sara mostly just wanted to drink away her lucidity until someone more capable worked out a solution.

A solution did not arrive. Instead, it was Peebee, tapping her knuckles on the doorframe of the Pathfinder's cabin.

"Knock knock," she said softly.

"I'm not here," Sara replied as she hid her face with a pillow.

"Right..." Peebee edged in slowly and stuffed her hands behind her back to keep them from fidgeting. "I know you didn't want to talk about things prior to the Verakan, but hey. It looks like you're alive and back from the Verakan."

Sara laid there with the pillow over her face and when Peebee didn't leave, she sighed. "Peebee, you got drunk and tried to sleep with a guy you knew I was seeing," Sara's exasperation shone through her muffled words. "I'm not really sure you can spin this situation in a way that's not totally ick."

"He turned me down, so you know you've got a good guy."

"You were stumbling drunk." Sara shot up and the pillow fell off her face. "That's not being a 'good guy.' That's the absolute bare minimum for behaving like a person and not a complete slimeball."

"There's your face!" Peebee did a little hop backwards and chuckled uncomfortably. "I know there's not a lot I can say that can make up for... well, that-"

"And yet you're still talking..."

"I am!" Peebee inched closer to where Sara sat on her bed, one skittish footstep at a time. "Because I know I screwed up- I knew I was screwing up while I did it, but I did it anyway!"

Sara frowned at her. "And this is supposed to endear you to me how..?"

Peebee took a finicky step back before she sat at the edge of the bed, her muscles tightly coiled and ready to spring her back up if she outstayed her welcome. "I just want to say: Whether you know it or not, I've had one foot out the door since I got here. Kalinda was the only one who ever really got me. It was okay if the rest of the world and the people in it didn't make sense or didn't want me or they annoyed me or I annoyed them. If I needed some time to recharge, I'd find Kalinda, we'd have a quick laugh and I'd be ready to start again."

"Okay." Sara raised her brow. "I'm still not seeing a direct connection to how that lines up with you trying to sleep with Reyes."

Peebee shrugged. "I was just lost." She waved her hands like it would magically waft away everything else. "I wanted to belong, to feel a connection."

"Get out of my room, Peebee."

"No." She jumped to her feet. "Hear me out. Because I got it all wrong."

"That's obvious," Sara snapped. "What would have made it right?"

Peebee ignored that and began frantically pacing. "I didn't have a home, I didn't need a home, I just needed Kalinda, but now she's gone, so what do I do? That's fifty years down the crapper! Ryder, I don't have a home- I don't even have a fucking escape pod!"

Sara shook her head. "Yeah, Cora wants you to pay for that."

"We've drifted through space and time!" Peebee dashed forward and snatched Sara's hand in hers. "But I have to put my feet down eventually. Maybe I thought that if I pushed you away first, you wouldn't realize I'm nothing worth keeping around and maybe you'd even miss me when I was gone-"

"Peebee-"

"I'm proud," she insisted, yanking so desperately on Sara's hand that she tumbled to her knees. "Proud and happy to be part of this team. This family."

"We are not a family."

"Whatever this motley crew aboard the Tempest is. You know what I mean!"

"...Do I?"

"Of course you do!" Peebee exclaimed. "I need an anchor to ground me in the vast weightlessness of the galaxy!"

"Is that anchor my arm?" Sara reclaimed her hand and rolled her shoulder.

Peebee giggled nervously. She gingerly patted Sara's shoulder and hand. "Don't let me go, okay? Give me a long leash, but pull me back every now and again. Can you do that?"

Sara didn't know what to say to that. What could she? She massaged the wrinkles forming between her brows. "I know I can't be the first person to tell you how frustrating you are."

"I will screw up. I will continue to screw up," Peebee vowed. "But I threw myself inside a volcano for you and I would do it again. I shudder to think of what the Archon meant to do with you. And I hated watching... well that and that, um... that's really it."

"Peebee, you're such a pain in the ass." Sara dry-washed her face for good measure.

"I like to think of myself as daring and death defying," Peebee said with a shrug.

"Not exactly the words I would have chosen." Sara flopped back onto the mattress and sighed. "I'm too tired to be angry. Don't think we'll be painting each other's nails any time soon, but I'm not planning on tearing your tentacles out, either."

"I can work with that!" Peebee giggled and hopped from one foot to the other. "I'm going to let you stew on that for a bit. Make myself scarce, stop digging myself deeper, you know. All of that." She backed up out of the Pathfinder's cabin and just as Sara was convinced that she'd left, Peebee popped her head into the doorway a final time. "Thank you!"

Sara just waved her off.

Sara hadn't returned to the Nexus since Cora's mutiny. It was strange to think about it in those terms, so she tried to focus on the multiple upgrades. Since then, the Leusinia had limped back and Paarchero was in the process of being cleared. The Nexus was as bustling and as whole as it could possibly be. Welcoming music trickled out of the Visitors Center and Sara ducked her head to avoid an asari journalist and her video drone.

She watched her crew disembark and disperse and very nearly did so herself. Scott was still listed as a patient aboard the Hyperion and she had half a mind to go down there and jump at the foot of his hospital bed until he woke and kicked her off of it. Cora snuffed out that dream with a tired look, however. "You might want to debrief Tann and the others about Ark Paarchero," she said.

She was right of course. As usual.

Hydroponics looked like a jungle and Sara bumped into so many people hurrying about their day it was disorienting. It was exciting to see the results of her efforts playing out by way of thawed stasis pods. The downside to the steady stream of little successes, however, was that the bureaucrats were settling in and becoming comfortable with being bureaucrats. With the day to day guaranteed, her superiors could resume playing games and one-upping each other safe and secure in their survivability.

Sara could hear Kesh before she even entered the room.

"Of course you approve, Ryder saved your people."

"Ryder saved our people," was Tann's strained reply. "It doesn't matter they were salarians, they were citizens of the Initiative."

"But it doesn't hurt there's a few less krogan around, does it?"

Addison was the only one who spotted Sara waving in the doorway. The Director of Colonial Affairs cleared her throat. "The Pathfinder."

Kesh turned her head sharply. "Ryder. We were discussing how things ended with the Archon."

The official version or her grandfather's Sara wondered. She fought the urge to make herself small as she placated. "Kesh, it's true I had to leave some krogan behind. I'm sorry about that."

"You've already done your part for us. That's more than I can say for others," the krogan said with a snarl for Tann.

Kandros, however, had the quad to say what they were really grousing about. "Yet I have to question what we gained, provoking the Archon like this."

"Fifteen thousand salarians?" Sara shook her head at him. "The Archon had a map showing the location of Meridian. Now we have it and a short window to get there. It's the control center for the terraforming network. If we get that working, all our problems are solved."

Maybe "all" was a gross overstatement, but this was where they were supposed to be awed by that information. Maybe smile and nod and ask what kind of resources she would need. Instead, they opted for being infuriatingly obtuse. "Based on what data?" Tann asked. "This is all alien science."

"The vault on Aya suggests that Meridian is the key," Sara insisted.

"While I appreciate what you've done, we're not equipped for a war with the kett," Kandros said. "If what you say is true, they'll be defending Meridian with everything they've got."

Sara tried to keep her composure, but SAM was already suggesting a stream of obscenities and her frustration got the better of her. She tore her ponytail free of its elastic and stalked toward those four bureaucratic roadblocks. "War's coming, anyway," Sara declared. "This is how we beat them. The Archon doesn't know how to bring Meridian online. He can't control the technology, I can."

Addison stood there with her arms crossed and shook her head. "Vaults, maybe. We can't know that Meridian works the same way, and attacking the kett only to find out you're wrong..?"

"Then there's this SAM of yours," Kesh added, rubbing salt in the wound. "We took a chance letting AI get involved. Frankly, I'm uncomfortable with just how involved it's become. I'm grateful, Ryder, but I can't support your plan."

"Then I will." A reedy, female voice announced from just outside the door. Zevin Raeka marched in and stopped at Sara's startled shoulder.

Raeka wasn't alone. Through the open door, Sarissa Theris and Avitus Rix added their voices to the discourse.

"And so will I."

"I agree."

Raeka stared down Tann unblinking. "Ryder deserves a chance to try."

Tann predictably broke first. He blinked his glossy black eyes and stepped back toward his compatriots. After a glance to Kandros and Addison for reassurance, he clasped his hands together and turned back. "I applaud the gesture," he told them, "but you answer to me. I hope you understand."

"I do not understand," Sara crisped. "You have every single boot on the ground telling you we need to act now, but you'd rather go against our combined knowledge and experience in favor of sitting on your collective asses-!"

"It's not called the Pathfinder Initiative." She had to give Tann credit for interrupting her in spite of flinching. He straightened his back and raised his chin in the air. "The chain of command has to be respected. That is all."

Chain of command! They all wanted caution. It was a safe approach, but caution cost time. How much food were they wasting, how much energy was being expended with no way to recoup on account of safety? It was all a balance and Sara couldn't tightrope walk. She curtsied with her knees dipping low, earning her a sneer from Kandros and head shake from Addison. Raeka nodded to the door and all four Pathfinders left.

As soon as they were marching toward Pathfinder Hall, Sara sighed. "Why am I surprised? Don't exactly have a plan B..."

If Raeka was bothered by it, her stony face gave away nothing. "There may be a way."

"Sure there is," Sara snorted. "SAM says all we need to do is tie up Tann and stuff him into a closet-"

"Pathfinder, apologies..." Sara spun around at the salarian tapping her shoulder. He was dressed in that sleek Initiative business casual and judging from how he huffed and panted, he must have ran the entire way to her. He blinked his large eyes, taking in Sara's three friends and corrected himself, "Pathfinders," before addressing her specifically, "Pathfinder Ryder, there was an urgent message for you. They said your brother is awake."

"What?" Sara heard herself gasp. "Scott?"

As if there were any other. She could see Raeka's mouth moving, but couldn't hear anything over the buzzing in her ears, couldn't feel anything beyond the warmth in her chest. It was as if her heart stopped working and plummeted to the pit of her stomach.

Sara shoved her way past the envoy and didn't slow her sprint until she reached the Hyperion's med bay.