Chapter 8: Third Circle, Canto Six

First, she heard a scraping sound. Second, the voices.

"What did I tell you?" Deadly calm, almost disappointed.

"You heard her." Anxious, ferrety. "She said 'three-headed dog'. This whole thing is blown-"

"You goddamn idiot. You think we didn't guess she'd know? She's not a total moron, unlike her father. If we don't tell you shit, it's because we don't trust you with it. Which is why Tennessee said, 'don't do anything unless I say so'." A woman's voice, the sense of shifting from darkness to light, the scraping noise. "Tennessee, I hate to say I told you so…"

"Get the amp off her, Ada, and then shut up." Another man. Tired and furious.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Angry whispers.

"We gotta go." Level but approaching urgency. "We gotta get to the shuttle and leave."

"Thanks, Dr. Moore, I was totally lost without your advice." A gasp of air, billiards rattling as a pool table shook. "Where are you going, Park? You think you're gonna step out on us now? No way. Pick her up."

"Why me?"
"You're her father, dumbass," the woman again, "nobody'll care if you're carrying her-oh, Jesus!"

"What now?" The tired, angry voice again.

"She's still awake! Park, what the hell did you do wrong?" The woman.
"I-I used it like you showed me! Don't blame me!" Ferrety.

"Hey, Jane?" Snap-snap-snap. Snapping at her ear, too loud, like bones cracking in her head. "She's harmless…or she will be when you take her amp off."

"Alright!" A sliding feeling at her neck a weight missing from the top of her spine. A pit in her stomach. That was bad. Why was that bad? "It's out. She couldn't move a paperclip. Happy?"

"Overjoyed. Park, pick her up."

"Gotta go, man. We gotta get to the shuttle."

"Ok, noted, doc. Now go call the elevator." Rising upwards, slipping away from another body as it struggled to hold her. Fingers around a handful, prying, prying, prying. She clenched her fist. They couldn't have it. They couldn't take anything else from her.

"What is the problem?"

"It's the cueball," ferrety voice in her ear, hot breath puffing at her hair, "she crushed it! Now she won't let the pieces go! Shit, she's bleeding…"

"Park, leave it and get her outside. And try not wet yourself."

"Up yours, Nashville! I better get an extra pay-out for this!"

Kal'Reegar vas Neema stared straight ahead at one of the Turians guarding the hangar door. He traced the pale lavender colony markings, lines in trios on either mandible, to avoid looking at the humans.

"The uh, last hostile I k-killed, er, neutralized," that was a better word, "with a knife thrust. In self-defense." He added 'self-defense' probably seven times to the last conversation. That was enough, he hoped, to convince the humans.

"About the leader of this squad of pirates," the male human Ambassador, he'd given up trying to remember names in his haze of anxiety, spoke up, "Jan Roper, was it?"

"Yes." Here it comes, he thought, now one of them will stand up and scream 'that was my cousin's best friend, you murdered, someone take him away!' Quarians had intricate networks of relationship as a result of their small population. It was partly why violence was such a rarity within the Migrant Fleet. To say nothing of the outrage his people would express if one of their own was killed, for whatever reason, by an alien.

"I just want to make sure I have the name right," the Ambassador hardly looked up, "'Yan' was his pronunciation, correct. Not 'Jon'?" It was like the death of his own people was utterly meaningless to him. In fact, as he braved a glance at the other humans at the table, he realized none of them seemed particularly angry with him.

Is every human this cold? He shivered, nervous for an entirely new reason.

"'Yan'," Kal'Reegar said, "definitely 'Yan'." The Ambassador gave him a smile that Kal still couldn't read properly. "Uh, did you find them all?"

"Kal'Reegar vas Neema," Shala'Rann's voice was humiliatingly maternal, "again, you are here to answer their questions. Not ask your own."

"We found nothing," the armored human said. Kal actually felt better for that one's presence, the mask and voice modulator were familiar to him. Funny that the rest of the humans seemed put off by it. "No corpses or wreckage. Some signs of a crash-landing in the flatlands beyond the mountain range closest to the settlement, but that's all so far."

"Whoever they were," the human Admiral said, rubbing one thumb anxiously on the blue tablecloth, "if they came out of FTL we could be looking at a long search of local systems."

"They won't be there," Hana'Nur and the armored human spoke in unison, then looked at each other's hidden faces. The Admiral stared at Kal for a long moment, nearly making him squirm in place.

"The name 'Mara Singh' came up," Hackett said, "and her ship."

"The Hoo-'…no, uh," Kal wracked his brain, "the Huno…Hoon-oo-Gee?"

"'This is Captain Mara Singh of the Honno-Ji'," Kal whirled around to see Yun'Razi fiddling with her omnitool. Without the adrenaline he'd had back in orbit around Mindoir, Kal felt a shiver run up his back at the dead tone of the human's voice.

Keelah, he thought, she really would've killed us all…

Admiral Hackett's eyes narrowed.

"That…that just can't be," he said.

"It's her," the armored one, the N7 or whatever he was called, stepped away from the wall, "that's her voice."

"Who's?"

"Kal," Shala'Rann chided.

"Do you have any visuals of the ship you encountered?" Hackett's attention never even passed his way. Kal thanked the Ancestors. This was not what he'd trained for at all. Sure, he'd hoped the Heavy Fleet would give him a chance to see the galaxy a little, find adventure, and maybe leave a mark on the universe…but standing around while all these important folks chattered on was nauseating. Too much to consider at once, to his mind. Fighting was enough work.

"Unfortunately, not much outside the silhouette and what measurements our warfare suite could get during rapid targeting," Yun'Razi said, "the size and shape matches the parameters of an Alliance Frigate. By what information we have, at least."

"Hey, kid," the N7 said, "what kind of-" Kal's translator had half-finished the sentence when he erupted.

"I'm no kid!" Kal snapped. "I finished my Pilgrimage, and I won't put up with that…" his brain caught up to him, "respectfully…sir."

"Ancestors, give me strength," he heard Zaal'Koris grumble, "apologies, Ambassadors, our young folk can be," he turned his visor on Kal, speaking sharply, "far too sensitive."

"Sorry, Kal'Reegar vas Neema," the N7 said, "you're a soldier. And more than that you helped get Jane away from those strangers. I was going to ask you if you'd gotten a good look at the shuttles they flew."

"Oh!" Kal perked up. "Yeah. Uh. Newish. Definitely."

"Five or six seaters," Hana added, "seemed like standard Kodiak Shuttles. Military models. No distinguishing marks or symbols."

"Human military shuttles," the human Admiral said, "and a ship matching human parameters." He took off his hat and swiped a hand through his hair, wiping sweat off his forehead in such a simple way. No VI program needed, the lucky bastard. "Small wonder you thought you'd kicked a war off with us."

"If it wasn't an Alliance ship-" Zaal'Koris said.

"It was," the N7 said, something cold entering his voice.

"I beg your pardon?" The male human Ambassador took off his glasses and squinted at the N7. "What on Earth are you talking about?"

"Mara Singh was the younger cousin of a Captain in the Third Fleet. Nitesh Singh. Golden child," Hackett said, "good prospects. It was a tragedy what happened." The man sounded very tired. "Accident on a routine patrol run in Aysur. Her frigate was lost with all hands."

"And her frigate," the female Ambassador groaned, "was, let me guess, the Honno-Ji?"

"It's impossible," Hackett muttered, "utterly impossible."

"All evidence to the contrary," the male Ambassador said.

"I saw the wreckage," Hackett said, "the serial numbers match up on everything large enough to identify. Even the little bits of drive core. That ship is dead."

"But this ship lives," Hana'Nur said, "perhaps a reconstruction?"

"Could a shipyard in the Terminus crank out a halfway decent mock-up of one of ours?" The male Ambassador asked the female Ambassador.

"They do you say you can find anything out there," she said, "and what you can't find hasn't been invented yet."
"Unlikely," Shala'Rann said, "I saw some of those shipyards on my Pilgrimage. They cut and solder, but they don't build. Far more likely to find old Batarian ships out that way. Turian too, private ones, at least, stolen from their previous owners. Human ships aren't quite so common yet."

"So, either the Honno-Ji was never destroyed-"

"It was," Hackett said.

"-or a group of unknown pirates have the resources to reconstruct a replica?" The N7 gave no emotion to color his words. It was pure fact and that scared Kal bone-deep.

"We only have the measurements," Hackett said, "let's not just jump straight to the most extreme explanation. Occam's razor, remember?"

"Is that a ship?" Kal asked, regretting it instantly when everyone looked at him. "It just…sounds kinda like one of those old Krogan warships. Shiagur's Last Howl. Drang's Hammer." He tapped his heel on the floor as he pondered. "Or was that one Drang's Quad?"

"Kal'Reegar," Admiral Koris said sharply, "perhaps you might step outside the hangar for a short rest? You've been regaling us for some time."

"I can keep going," Kal straightened up, eager to meet the challenge, "and I just remembered! It was Drang's Quad and Hammer. The Hammer was probably a euphemism, I'm realizing-"

"Reegar!" snapped Yun'Razi.

"Sorry!" Kal spun on his heel and marched rapidly out of the hangar, the constriction around his lungs easing once he was in the main corridor of the cruiser. He blew out a heavy sigh, making a little semi-circle of fog grow on the very bottom of his visor.

"I like your head-wrap." Kal turned to find a young woman crouched next to a frictionless dolly. Her skin was dark brown, and her hair buzzed short against her head, she offered him a smile, showing off a silver ring pierced through her lower lip. Three studs ran along her left eyebrow to compliment it.

"Huh?" Kal said with all the wit of a bulkhead. The woman pointed a finger at the side of her head.

"I don't know the word for it. That cloth?"

"Oh, my talrin," Kal said, "thanks." He shuffled in place. "Uh, do you know what the symbols on it mean?" The woman shook her head, slightly amused. "Right-right. Of course, you wouldn't. Not that-ah, never mind. They're my clan markings." He drew a line across the material. Diagonals of gold crossing dark copper. "They're called raham-ananu. 'Little thunder clouds.' The Reegar clan comes from this place on Rannoch…you…you don't care about this, probably."

"No," the human stood up, "it's interesting. My family is from a place called Savannah, Georgia." She extended a hand. "Name's Nina." He engaged in the odd human 'handshake' ritual, so suspicious and distant compared to traditional Quarian greetings, and affected a casual confidence.

"Kal'Reegar vas Neema," at her visible confusion he tacked on, "but 'Kal' is fine."

"Well, Kal," Nina smiled, "it's nice to meet you."

"You too," Kal resisted the urge to adjust his stance. Shoulders back and chest out, his dad used to tell him, ladies like a vessel with a strong bow. "I'm a Marine of the Heavy Fleet Maqebet Division." That would've been very impressive to a young Quarian lady. The Maqebets were the 'Heavies of the Heavy'. Nina, at least, was polite about it.

"That's cool. How long you in for?"

"How long where? Here on your cruiser?"

"I mean how long are you in the corps for," Nina said, tapping uselessly at the frictionless-dolly pad, "I've got about two years left then I'm outta here."

"Two years?" Kal was confused. "Are you…sorry, not to get personal but is there some kind of medical issue you have or something?" Nina arched an eyebrow. Damn. Another weird facial tick he didn't know.

"No," she shrugged, "that's just when my deployment is up. Going to college after that. Main reason I joined was for the financial aid."

"Financial aid for school?" Kal'Reegar was very confused. "You're not in for life?"

"Noooo," Nina shook her head, grimacing, "not for me, man. Can't even imagine."

"I mean," Kal said, slightly defensive, "I'm in for life."

"That's good if that's what you want," Nina nodded, looking around for an avenue of escape, "my folks just…don't like the major I'm interested in, and they won't help me out. So, y'know…er, maybe you don't."

Her family drove her into the military because they wouldn't help her pay for school. No. Kal had no idea what that was like. Kal would die happy if he never understood what that was like. That, to his mind, sounded like shit.

'Pilgrimage teaches you what we have. Not what we don't.' He recalled his father saying.

"Well," Kal looked at the dolly, "you having trouble with that? Can I help?"

"Ah," Nina shrugged, "sure, I guess. It was working a second ago. Gotta call about new lightbulbs needed in the starboard hangar." Kal crouched down to examine the holo-panel at the side.

"Oh, it's not even a real problem," he said, "you just to need to re-calibrate the weight is all." He swiped his finger over the panel and watched the light glow as it cycled. It bleeped green and the dolly hovered a few inches off the ground. The box on top was a steel crate with a very functional description of its contents. Lightbulbs, a great number of them, as Nina had said.

"That's crazy," Nina said, "those things shouldn't be more than a few pounds."

"Maybe the crate?" Kal said. Nina took the handles and began making her way down the long hall. "Uh, sorry, if I was rude earlier. On the Fleet you tend not to serve unless it's for a long run. It's hard enough to get completely healthy soldiers into the ranks so…the process can be pretty heartbreaking."

"I got you," Nina smiled, "sorry if I came off kinda crappy about all this." She nodded at the Alliance symbol on a bulkhead. "Kind of a yokel. Never left Earth before like three months ago."

"Never left the Fleet til last year." Kal felt a little better. This he could relate to, enough that he almost ignored the hazard warning his suit VI popped up as they passed the elevator. It was a toxicity perimeter, and those could go off like crazy on a non-Quarian ship, but the nature of the warning caught his eye.

"Blood?" He said, looking down. "Oh, blood!" Droplets ran up the hallway.

"Ew," Nina said, "God, if that's from Ricky Matson trying to shotgun a beer again our duty commander is gonna kick his ass."

"Oh, Ancestors," Kal breathed, "oh, damn it!"

"What? Kal? Hey, what's up!" Nina's concern shot right past him, because his VI had a memory function still active from Pilgrimage, which recognized previously encountered hazards. That blood belonged to Jane Shepard.

Zaal'Korris spoke through a suit-to-suit channel to Shala'Rann.

"We've reached the limits of what we can tell them," he kept his faceplate turned towards Ambassdor Udina, giving all the impression that he was listening, "we might try to gently disentangle from the discussion."

"We don't want to look like we're running out on them," Rann replied, "but this is rather tedious."

"Careful Admonition: Ambassadors," the elcor representative, Calyn, began, "Alliance ships in the Terminus Systems will not be under the Citadel's protection."

"There are other resources," Udina said, "more…clandestine options?"

"Spectres." The masked N7 agent said. "That's a bit overkill wouldn't you say?"

"And not nearly enough in the Alliance's control for Arcturus to accept," Ambassador Goyle leaned back in her chair, "so, it's a theoretical question."

"Tentative: Perhaps more information could help narrow the search? The Council might consider certain steps then."

"The Council will help us if we do all the work for them, is that it?" Admiral Hackett said.

"Soothing: Not at all, Admiral. We all seek the same goal. Justice for Mindoir and answers for the Alliance."

"We're in for another hour," Zaal said, "let's see what we can do. Better relations can't hurt."

"This seat is hurting my backside," Shala'Rann muttered, "how do they sit comfortably with those odd knees of theirs?"

"Three-headed dog." The N7 stepped away from the wall suddenly. "My God. It's been staring us in the face this whole time." The diplomats turned their attention to him.

"Some information about this call sign?" Zaal'Korris asked. "It's nonsense to us. A dog is a domestic creature on Earth, yes? Is three heads a kind of mutation with some significance?"

"God damn it," Ambassador Goyle hissed suddenly, "I see it too." Udina caught on as well those his reaction was mirthless laugh.

"Oh, be serious," he said to the N7, "it's a coincidence. If the girl's memory is even reliable-"

"Jane's memory," Hana'Nur spoke up from behind them all, "is the best evidence you have, Ambassador. Don't write it off."

"Admiral Koris?" Zaal turned to the N7. "Might I borrow our cultural exchange back briefly?" Zaal handed back the human mythological codex. He was too perplexed to hide the hesitation in his movements. The N7 flipped the book open and began to circle the table, his black matte armor swallowed the light and reflected it back along the blood red strips.

"Dante's Inferno," he announced, "a spiritual journey through the human afterlife. Third Circle, Canto Six." The Ambassadors glared at him, but he read on. "Through his wide threefold throat barks as a dog/Over the multitude immers'd beneath./His eyes glare crimson, black his unctuous beard/his belly large, and claw'd the hands, with which/He tears the spirits, flays them, and their limbs/ Piecemeal disparts." He snapped the book shut. "Demon Cerberus, who thundering stuns the spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain."

"That's…what is that you just read?" Zaal'Koris felt a little shiver running up his spine.

"A myth," the N7 returned the book, "Cerberus. A monster who guards the gates of Hell or Tartarus. A place of torment for the souls of the wicked. Most often depicted as a giant dog with three monstruous heads who keeps the dead from spilling out into the world of the living."

"Keelah," Shala'Rann said, "what a grotesque thing."

The N7 shrugged. "If you believe that stuff. Ambassadors, I think it's best if we give our friends from the Migrant Fleet a fair warning who they might be dealing with."

"Absolutely no proof," Udina muttered. Goyle ignored him.

"'Through Charon's Gate will spill the new monsters of the new age,'" Goyle recited, "'and they will, from their malice for us and fear of us, engulf the Earth in fire. This is not rhetoric. It is logic. Humanity must secure its future. Only one side of the gate can open unto Tartarus and, if humanity is to survive, we need a Cerberus to guard us.'"

"More myths?" Shala'Rann asked.

"A manifesto," Goyle shrugged at that fact like it was nothing she could help, "published anonymously after the end of the First Contact War." For all their discipline, Zaal'Koris caught the slightest twitch in one of the Turian C-Sec officers at their door.

"Bastards didn't even give us chance a mourn before they started howling for blood," Hackett's tone had gone stony. "Co-opting the dead."

"It is a piece of survivalist, racist dreck!" Udina raised his voice. "There is nothing in it that you don't see in any random grammatically unstable comment on an extranet forum. Cerberus does not exist!" Calyn stirred ponderously.

"With Respect: Ambassador, Citadel Security did add the name 'Cerberus' to an Organized Crime Watchlist in the last two years."

"As they do with every Terminus mercenary company or any gang of hoodlums that starts graffitiing the Presidium," Udina drew himself up. "I am familiar with this 'threat' as is everyone in the System Alliance Diplomatic Division. Despite the obvious vitriol behind it, it simply doesn't manifest in the real world." He scowled at the N7. "Fear-mongering over it simply gives the phrase power."

"The power to launch an attack on a Migrant Fleet Trade Mission?" The N7 asked. Udina, however, did not back down from his argument.

"Cerberus exists, certainly." He began count off the fingers on his left hand, Zaal recognized the gesture from a primer on human mannerisms. It was sarcasm. "Some disgruntled employee brings a gun into his workplace and claims to be 'the Cerberus'. A group of drunken college students on Earth go out and get three-headed dogs tattooed on their arms because they're 'Cerberus'. Some teenager with access to the extranet makes a video in a dark room claiming to be 'the Cerberus'! It's a word! A word the lonely and delusional throw around to scare people."

"It's a dangerous word," the N7 said, "one that implies that the genocide of humanity by another species is simply a matter of time."

'Genocide'. Zaal'Koris felt a surge of indignation. Who could kill off the humans? They humbled the Turians at Shanxi. They spread across the Skyillian Verge. There are billions of them! What could they possibly know about genocide? About the slow death of your people? The loss of everything that was and the struggle for what could be?

His bitterness paused as he remembered how he came to be present on the human ship, speaking to the human ambassadors. A child had been left all alone in the universe by the cruel fact of chance and hatred. Jane might understand, in her own way, exactly what constituted genocide.

"This extremist group…" Zaal began.

"We have no reason to believe it is anything so organized."

"These 'pirates' then," Zaal offered, "could they have been motivated by this manifesto?"

"Kal'Reegar mentioned something," Hana'Nur spoke up, "that Jane's biotics instructor said. Something about working for a group that wasn't the Systems Alliance and…'securing humanity's future'. It sounds almost word-for-word."

"Disturbing, yes," Udina said, "but it defies all reasoning that Mindoir, prosperous a colony as it was and we hope it will be again, would warrant such a considerable force. This reeks of opportunism. Scavengers." Zaal could practically feel his fellow Quarians tense as one at the word.

"Suggestion: The tragedy that befell it may answer that question, Ambassador Udina. Statement: The Verge is a contentious place for settlement." Calyn's head turned ponderously to look at Goyle. "Interrogative: Have any significant efforts been made by the Alliance to curtail the activities of Cerberus?"

"Implying that there even is a 'Cerberus' to curtail," Goyle said, "Ambassador Udina might be overly optimistic, but the facts are on his side. Cerberus has never been more than a rallying cry for a vocal minority of humanity. There's no structure or hierarchy to it. No headquarters."

"Besides which," Udina leapt on Goyle's support, "there is still no reason suggest that such a group should take special interest in Mindoir-"

"They were after Jane." The N7 said. "Once again we find ourselves under the blade of Occam's Razor. They didn't move in until long after the colony fell. Their deep cover agent was directly in contact with Jane and prioritized saving her."

"They engaged in open combat with us," Yun'Razi said, "and sacrificed several lives to take custody of her."

"They sent a frigate to find one child," Hana'Nur shook her head, "Keelah. I've been so blind. It seems obvious now."

"Why?" Udina looked between them all as if the disagreement physically trapped him. "Why? Why all this over one little girl?"

"Her biotics!" Uli'Rann shouted, the first words he'd spoken since returning from the lower decks. He flicked the side of his helmet. "Hana, it's her biotics, isn't it?"

"Occam's Razor," Hana responded, "handy little phrase that. What's it mean precisely?"

"Simplest explanation," the N7 said, "is usually the right one."

"The pirates were after Jane," Hana said, "that much is obvious. But what if they were planning to take her anyway and the batarians were an unlucky interruption?"

"What possible use," Udina took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, "could an eleven-year-old child be to group of extremists? Whatever her biotic ability?"

"Vivisection," Hana's voice took all warmth from the hangar, "experimentation. Research." She flexed her hands once. "Maybe a program to 'breed' new biotics?"

"Jesus Christ," Hackett breathed. Zaal felt ill at the very suggestion.

"Maybe make her into a god," Hana shrugged, "I've seen that before. Or maybe sell her to the Collectors. They like rare things. A human biotic prodigy would certainly be of interest to them."

"'Collectors'," Udina said, shifting in his seat, "and Cerberus. All of it is too fantastical to be real."

"I've seen what happens in the dark places of the galaxy," Hana'Nur said, "I spent five years on my Pilgrimage. All of it conducting deep research into biotics. I've become very familiar with what lengths people will go to for a bit of that power."

"And you?" Zaal looked up to find that the N7 had spoken. "What lengths did you go to?" Hana met the man, hidden stare for hidden stare.

"Perhaps we might move back to practical discussion," Zaal took a slight cue from Shala'Rann to rein in the conversation. The doors to the hangar hissed open and the whole table turned at the sound of hurried footsteps.

"There's blood!" Zaal was on his feet, hand reaching for a pistol that wasn't there.

"What?" Udina asked.

"Blood in the hallway! Jane's blood!"

The turian C-Sec escort and the Alliance Security personnel displayed an oddly similar series of movements as they looked between themselves and then at Kal'Reegar. Goyle and Udina took the exclamation with cool curiosity.

"Jane's blood?" Uli'Rann asked. Zaal'Koris stood up from his chair and excused himself with a sound closer to a growl than a word.

"Admiral, there's-"

He all but dragged Kal'Reegar out into the hallway.

"What are you thinking running in there like a damned lunatic! What is this about blood?"

"Admiral, Jane's blood is on the floor just down the hallway-"

"How can you possibly know that?" Zaal'Koris hissed.

"Toxin Recognition Software, sir," Kal said. The Admiral's next invective died in his throat at solid evidence like that. Blood. On the ground. The amount of inattention and danger such a thing posed on a Quarian ship made him instinctually tense. He grabbed at the first question that came to mind.

"A great deal or a little bit?" He felt utterly ridiculous, but Kal'Reegar answered with all the dutiful crispness he'd come to expect from the young marine.

"Exactly 4.5 milliliters, sir, fresh."

"Not a worrying amount," Zaal'Koris said, then quickly added at Kal's visible surprise, "for a human, Kal, remember they don't have our medical needs." Despite the gut instinct screaming at him to investigate, panic wouldn't help. Rational thought would work this out. He opened his mouth at the same time the door opened to admit the N7.

"Everything alright, gentlemen?" Zaal felt oddly annoyed by the question.

"Kal'Reegar became concerned by," he sighed, "a perfectly valid worry. His suit recognized a bit of Jane's blood on the hall floor and, for our people, the implications of such are concerning." He warmed to the argument and prepared to end the distraction. "Jane might've hurt herself; it certainly happens with our children but because of their envirosuits-"

"Here? In this hallway?"

"Just down that way, sir, er, human, er, N7. Sir." Kal'Reegar nodded in the direction mentioned. The N7 looked between them, uncomfortably hard to predict. He was dressed to such an obscuring degree and mannered with such alienness that Zaal'Koris couldn't help treating him like a particularly suspicious Quarian. One adept at hiding their motivations.

One, oddly enough, like Hana'Nur vas Shepherd.

"Shall we check this out?" There was no mocking timbre to his voice that Zaal could hear. Kal'Reegar was eager to follow anyone into any situation. Zaal'Koris, as he found himself woefully often, landed somewhere in the middle.

"I know Jane Shepard grew on some of your folks," the N7 said, "I can see that." It was the reminder of the little, red-haired child he'd been trying to help that decided him.

"I suppose there's no harm in making sure. But, like your Razor, the simplest explanation is likely the answer."

"Only 'likely', Admiral, only 'likely." Perhaps it was the way the man's voice crackled through his helmet speakers, but Zaal'Koris couldn't help wishing for a sidearm as the three of them fell into step down the long hallway. The N7 briefly spoke into his omni-tool, alerting the assembly that he would be returning in a few minutes, and that reminded Zaal he should do likewise.

"Is there trouble?" Shala'Rann asked.

"Likely not," Zaal said, "more for Kal's benefit than anything. Let Uli'Rann, Yun'Razi, and Hana'Nur know they've nothing to worry about."

"Hana'Nur is not with you?" Zaal paused and glanced behind him.

"Should she be?"

"She left a moment ago," Shala'Rann said, "perhaps she got lost?"

"Someone will point her back the way-"

"Uh," Kal spoke up awkwardly as they marched, "that was the blood spot just there. By the way."

"Another one there," The N7 replied, gesturing briefly to a spot on the ground that set off a toxicity warning from Zaal's VI. "They're headed to the hangar."

"Is it time for Jane to leave?" Zaal'Koris asked. He had a strong suspicion of the answer even before the N7 said it.

"No."

Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. Too bright. The material under her bare arms was too rough. Her shoulder ached from the odd positioning.

"Jesus, you're pathetic, look at her arm, Park."

"You need me to call the fucking fire department, Ada," ferrety voice, Park's voice, her father's voice, "or can you get off my back without a ladder? Christ, I'm on edge."

"Big surprise," Ada snapped, ungently fixing Jane's arm so it wasn't jammed the wrong way, "is she awake?"

"Barely," the third voice from earlier, "that works for us. Get a blanket over her or something. And…oh, you're fucking kidding me." Distantly she heard the sound of a door hissing open. Voices speaking elsewhere.

Mom? She wanted her mom. Is that you?

"What the fuck…"

"Park," the third voice said, "stay here and look after her. Play it cool. Understand me?"

"Alright, Nashville. You're the boss."

Mom? She remembered with a groggy suddenness that her mother was dead.

"Ready at Last Supper. We go on Good Friday. I am the only one here who makes that call."

"Kal'Reegar," Nina was leaning on the handle of her empty dolly, "my hero! What are you doing here?" Her easy smile fell as she saw the odd trio of two Quarians and the N7. A man next to her in Alliance blues looked up from a datapad and mimicked her confusion.

"Uh, long story," Kal said.

"Have anything to do with you running off earlier?" Nina asked. Kal gave her an awkward nod and a downright mortifying 'nice seeing you again' as he hurried to keep up with the N7. This human was stone cold unreadable. The hangar was crowded by several ships, including the Shepherd, and the object of their search appeared to have to ended up at a sleek, economy-luxury shuttle painted blue and white, bearing the words 'Systems Alliance Diplomatic Service'.

No sign of Jane yet.

"Everything alright, gentlemen?" A blonde-haired human offered a smile that, even to Kal'Reegar's eyes, seemed apologetic. "You all seem like you're on a mission."

"I'm with the Ambassadors," the N7 said shortly, "this is Admiral Zaal'Koris of the Migrant Fleet." Kal was fine with being ignored, he was starting feel like an idiot for making such a fuss. Still, instinct had him twitchy. "They were concerned about Jane Shepard."

"There was blood in the hallway," Kal spoke up, "I found it. Is Jane ok?"

"Blood?" The man was perplexed. "Uh, Mr. Park?"

"Yeah," a thin man with red hair leaned out of the small shuttle as he adjusted the end of a blanket, "what's up? Uh, Jane's sleeping right now, can we, maybe take this over to the doors or something?"

"Is Jane bleeding?" The N7 turned his mask to face the man, looking terribly implacable compared to Park's slim frame.

"Not that I noticed," Park said, "uh, Matt Park. I'm Jane's father."

"Well, sorry guys," the blonde human shrugged, "maybe someone else-"

"It wasn't," Kal cut in, "it wasn't somebody else's blood."

"I…I don't know what to tell ya," Park said, then, as if he was remembering his sleeping daughter lowered his voice, "she was fine. Just dozed off on one of the couches downstairs and I thought we might head up while she's out."

"No cuts or injuries?" Zaal'Koris asked. "Kal'Reegar, you're certain that your VI identified it correctly?"

"VI? What VI?" Matt Park said, his voice rose slightly.

"Mr. Park," the blonde human raised a hand, "please, sir, just look after Jane."

"Our envirosuits come equipped with certain technology to help us avoid toxins," Zaal'Koris explained genially, like a tour guide, "they are rarely in error."

"Well, they're wrong," Park said, "this time anyway."

No. Kal thought. They aren't.

"You're certain Jane's not bleeding," the N7 took a step further into Park's space, not quite looming yet. "You're certain?"

"I didn't get your name," the blonde human stepped in from the side, "but mine is Tennessee Miller. Sir, I think it'd be best if we didn't crowd Mr. Park. He and his daughter have had a long day."

"Is your daughter bleeding, Park, yes or no? That seems like a pretty easy question to answer." The N7 did not even look at the blonde man.

"Sir," Kal turned to find a human with officer's bars approaching, backed up by two marines in armor, "is there a problem here?"
"Not currently, deck officer," the N7 had not turned his slim glass visor from Park's face, "do me a personal favor, and check on your daughter."

"She's sleeping," Park said, almost pressed to the side of the shuttle by the N7's size.

"I can check," the N7 offered, "without waking her up."

"I really have to insist you take a step back, sir," Tennessee said, seeming remarkably cool, "this can all be resolved with a conversation. Maybe you outrank everybody else on this ship, but I got orders of my own through Colonial Affairs."

"Admiral," Kal said softly, "what's our play here, sir?"

"Stand down, Kal'Reegar," Zaal'Koris said, "nothing is going to happen. This is fine. Mr. Park." Attention turned to Zaal'Koris. Kal tried to look stalwart by his shoulder, like anyone who objected would have to answer to him. He ignored the nausea. He ignored the memory of the ship on Pilgrimage just before the Salat Customs Officers had burst in, when a hundred small oddities in the form of silences, unfamiliar noises, and displaced air had acted like a sixth sense blaring 'danger, danger, danger'.

"Yeah?" Matthew Park nodded at the Admiral.

"I am Zaal'Koris of the Migrant Fleet," the Admiral approached amicably, gesturing at Kal to hang back. "We've all come to care a great deal for your daughter. We're very happy she's been returned to you." He indicated Kal'Reegar. "This young man, Kal'Reegar vas Neema, was one of the marines to bring your daughter back safely from Mindoir. He's also very glad to see her home."

"Yes, sir," Kal said, his voice flat to his own ears, "absolutely delighted."

"Thanks," Park said, not bothering to look at Kal for more than a second, "I appreciate it. Really."

"While he was there," the Admiral went on, with the care of a bomb defusal expert, "his suit VI recorded Jane's blood automatically. He seems to have come across it again in the hall." Koris stepped forward slowly. "I do not wish to disturb your daughter or yourself, we simply wanted to pass along the information." Kal bit back the urge to insist on checking the girl over for injuries.

"Which we appreciate," Tennessee, the human leader, prompted the nervous man, "and can handle ourselves. Mr. Park, will you please check on your daughter? To soothe certain nerves."

"Alright," Matthew Park sighed heavily, "Jesus, you guys are pushy."

"Just concerned," Zaal'Koris said gently, "and gravely apologetic for the disturbance." The twitchy man ducked into the shuttle and gave a soft laugh.

"How bout that," he said, "yeah, she's got herself a little cut on the palm. Damn, didn't notice. Anybody got bandaids or something?" One of the shuttle crew made an affirmative noise and joined Park at the shuttle door. Kal'Reegar released the breath he'd been holding, feeling slightly ridiculous for the fuss he'd kicked up.

"There," the Admiral said, "no harm done, I trust?"

"We'll be extra vigilant," Tennessee said, smiling wryly, "otherwise you three might be taking our jobs next time." Zaal'Koris allowed a perfunctory chuckle and fell into a conversation with the captain about Jane's prospects. Kal wanted to get closer to the shuttle, propriety held him back.

"She wasn't cleared to leave yet," the N7 said, stealing the attention of the gathering, "in fact she's not due to go at all."

"Unless," Tennessee Miller said, still calm, "Matthew Park, as her legal guardian decided otherwise. Parent has to look out for his child, sir, and not even the SA can get in the way of that." He turned to face the N7 fully, displaying no visible intimidation. "You know where we're taking her. You can ask questions when she's had a rest."

"Do I?" Tennessee frowned at that.

"Excuse me?"

"Do I know where you're taking her?"

"I'm trying ok!" Kal's head snapped towards a hissing exclamation from Matthew Park.

"Uh, is everything-?" his next words were cut off by Admiral Koris.

"Far be it from me to involve myself," the Admiral glanced at the N7, "but I hardly think the growing tension here is necessary."

"Jane Shepard's last supper was nutrient paste or something, right? Think she wants to eat her next meal in a mess hall of soldiers?" Tennessee sighed. "Sir, we'd just like to get this girl safely planetside so she can, maybe, start to believe the universe isn't ending."

"Do you know a woman named Dinah Calvert?" The N7's question caught Tennessee off-guard.

"Who?"

"Biotic. Phys Ed Teacher for Elementary and Middle-School students at the Hakkonson Educational Center. On Mindoir. Before everyone there was wiped out with a single exception." The blonde human pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Can't say I do?" He rubbed at his eyes. "Is that the answer you're looking for, sir, or should I be thinking of having a lawyer present?"

"No?" The N7 strode forward so he was face to faceplate with the man. "Mara Singh. Commanding Officer of the SSV Honno-Ji. Are you familiar with her?"

"She's an Alliance military servicewoman? I'm guessing." Tennessee's demeanor was starting to make Kal feel slightly embarrassed. "Sir, I really don't understand the line of questioning. Are we in trouble or something?"

"Three-Headed Dog," Kal's shoulder blades itched at the N7's words, "does that mean anything to you?"

"Should it?" Tennessee asked. "Because I really am just here to drive the shuttle."

"Jane Shepard," the N7 raised his voice, "this is the Captain. If you can hear me, speak up now."

"She's sleeping," the woman next to Tennessee said, "we just told you that."

"Wake her up." The N7's armored body was far too motionless. He was holding himself ready to spring into action.

"Admiral," Kal'Reegar said, "sir, it's time for you get behind me."

"There is no reason for this to end in violence," Zaal'Koris said, "surely, there is a misunderstanding here."

"Only insofar as this man," the N7's visor reflected Tennessee's stare, "misunderstanding what to do when I tell him to show me that Jane Shepard is awake and under her own free will."

"You haven't called security on us yet, sir," was Tennessee's dry response, "so I'm assuming you're not a hundred percent certain of our guilt? Fine. Mr. Park? Wake your daughter up."

"Alright, in a minute," Park snapped, "she's bleeding here. Jesus, always something." Tennessee cocked his head and considered the N7.

"That good enough?" The N7's visor had turned towards the shuttle door. "I'll be honest, sir, I don't appreciate the treatment here." The N7 kept his silence. "You got me feeling like a Nazarene on Good Friday."

"What's a Nazarene?" Kal'Reegar thought out loud.

And that was when the killing started.

"Oh, Jesus!" A body fell on top of Jane, squirming and cursing.

"Head down, Park! Don't fuck this up any worse!"

Gunfire popped nearby. Jane's groggy mind cleared. The Batarians had found her, they were killing everyone. She had to move. She had to hide. Miss Calvert told her to hide.

"Aah!" A warbling voice in static. "Unhand me this instant!"

"Easy!" A man's voice. The word 'Nashville' bubbled up in her mind. "Easy, friend. Just take a step back."

"I'm giving you exactly three seconds to let him go!" A young voice, swaddled in static. Fierce. Brave. Familiar. A voice she trusted.

Kal'Reegar.

"Stay back," a deep voice, behind a helmet too, but different than the others, grimmer, "let the Admiral go. You've got no way out."

The Captain.

"Forget me," the first warbling voice returned, "shoot us and secure Jane!"

"No," Kal barked, "N7, human, or whatever-do not do that!"

"No Admiral of the Migrant has ever been used as a bargaining chip, Kal'Reegar, and I will not go down in history as the first!" Admiral Zaal'Koris. She remembered his funny, buttoned-up way of speaking. She remembered how nice he could be too.

Admiral…

A gunshot. The wheezing noise of a projectile sliding off metal.

"The next one goes in the back of his leg," Nashville said, "I don't make idle threats, gentlemen."

"You're all dead if you don't let the Admiral go this minute!" Kal was angry. Scared too.

Kal. Help. The words wouldn't form in her throat. She only managed to groan.

"Let me up!" Her father's voice.

"Stay. Down."

Help…

"However you think this will benefit you, I warn you that you're risking the enmity of an entire species," Zaal'Koris growled, caught between outrage at the sudden violence and humiliation at being so easily captured. The man, Tennessee, had his arm pinned at the shoulder and one knee tapping the back of Zaal's. These men knew how to fight Quarians and Zaal breathed a nearly silent command to suit VI. Something touched his lower back and his world exploded into convulsive agony. A stunner, pressed to the thinnest part of his envirosuit.

"Admiral," his captor said, "I don't wanna have to compromise your suit. So whatever program you just started running, shut it off." Zaal formed a denial on the edge of his tongue when the stunner hit him again. "Admiral, please."

"Rescind command," he gasped. The VI politely informed him that the command had been rescinded before asking if a complaint or error log was needed. "You bastards. What have you done to that child? Where is she?" His VI asked if more information was forthcoming in his report.

"Right in the shuttle where we said," Tennessee dragged him backwards, Zaal sputtered indignantly at being so manhandled, Kal'Reegar, unarmed as he was, jolted forward but was snatched back by the N7 at the last second. The human's visor remained locked to Tennessee's face, just past Zaal's shoulder.

"Assaulting a diplomat on board of an Alliance ship is gonna be at least life, Tennessee. What information can you give me so that you even make it to the courtroom?"

"I'd be real careful with threats just now, sir," Tennessee said, "you might make me desperate." Zaal took note of the deck crew behind Kal and the N7. A half-dozen of them rushing over to stare, dumbfounded at the goings-on. One of them turned, saying something rapidly to their leader, a bald human with an officer's mark on the breast of his blue shirt.

Zaal was as unpracticed at reading humans as any Quarian, but something in the officer's face made him realize how totally they'd been trapped. The dampened gunfire that came from off to his right was not a shock so much as a disappoint.

The VI in his suit shrieked as the air filled with dangerous levo-amino particles. The efficiency of it made Zaal want to vomit. It categorized each bit of gore. Bones, blood, gray matter. Stomach acid where the line of fire ripped through a young man's belly. Marrow where a leg came apart. A group of sons and daughters stood there one moment, a pile of corpses took their place.

Keelah. He thought. They are your own people.

The N7 spun with an animal grace, hurling Kal'Reegar across a crate as he fired blindly toward the massacre. His shields flared as he followed the young Migrant Fleet Marine into cover. One of his captor's henchmen and a treacherous, blue-suited Alliance soldier converged on either side of the crate. Their small machine guns chattered. A single gunshot responded. The traitor in blue cried out and stumbled backwards as Kal'Reegar rushed her with an enormous Khelish war cry.

"Goddamn it," Tennessee sighed, "there just had to be an N7 on board." The woman firing around the cover of the crate darted out and advanced. The gunfire halted all at once, replaced but unseen combat. The woman screamed, the N7 appeared in a flash of black armor at the edge of the crate, chased off into the hangar by a spray of gunfire.

"Ada? You still among the living?" Tennessee kept a tight grip on Zaal, not giving him even a slight chance to escape.

"Fugger!" The woman clutched her face. "Brog my fuggin nobe!"

"Why!" Kal pressed his arm against the throat of his opponent. "Tell me why!" Tennessee raised his weapon and fired once over Zaal's cry of protest. Kal'Reegar was punched off the traitor from the force of the gunshot. She scrambled onto him, swung the butt of her small firearm into the underside of his vocalizer. There was a static crunch and a cut-off yelp of pain from the young Quarian. White-noise shivered around brief, half-formed moans as the audio output system short-circuited.

"Oh, keelah," Zaal's blood ran icy cold.

"You know," Tennessee said, "Krogans aren't much good for researching the higher sciences, but damn if they aren't the authorities on killing any race out there. They probably know these suits better than some of your own do, Admiral. For instance, I know that, right about here," the Admiral growled as the pistol pressed in a space outside his right thigh, "there's a space for waste collection. Going septic is a bad way to die. Am I wrong?"

"What is it that you want?" Koris trembled with rage and no small amount of fear.

"Don't worry, Admiral," the man said, "all you gotta do is what I say. Easy-peasy. Nia, you got the other one?"

"Yeah," the young traitor dragged Kal onto his stomach, cuffing him with efficiency, "he's wily."

"Just wily enough to go nuts in the hangar?" Tennessee nodded to the door. "Take him to the security checkpoint when we get an opening."

"Ok," the woman stood, wiping at a bleeding cut on her face, "we're…doing it all?"

"Yeah," her leader said with a wry smile in his voice, "yeah, we're doing it all. See ya in hell, kid."

"I'll save a drink for you, sir," she jerked Kal to his feet, punching him hard in the soft spot under his armor, "c'mon, Kal, let's take a walk." Koris cried out at the young marine's suffering.

"If you harm him, you'll all pay with your lives!"

"Hold that thought," Tennessee had turned his attention to the bald leader of the Alliance traitors, "you look kinda mad, Hank."

"I need to talk to you," the bald man growled, "now." Tennessee blew out a puff of frustrated air.

"Right now?" Hank brandished a gun. "Oh, my god, pull the stick out of your ass, Hank. Please?" Zaal was shoved to the ground. "Hey, Park, you can stop being the world's number one dad. Keep an eye on this guy here." Zaal turned in time to see Jane's father jittering into place above him, handling a stunner nervously. Tennessee knelt and tapped one of his ears.

"Go ahead and shut your intakes off, Admiral," his small smile carried an unspoken threat.

"You're all dead men," Zaal spat even as he obeyed. Tennessee's muted comment in response burned him all the same.

Jane cracked open one eye and slammed it shut as two strangers piled in, the door hissed shut. Her stomach clenched as she waited for the ship to move.

"Welcome to my office." Tennessee the lying, smiling man.

"You and your goddamn jokes," a stranger. An angry stranger. Something moved against her hair, and it took all her effort to keep still as someone snapped their fingers sharply right in her ear. "What the fuck were you thinking stunning her?"

"Thank Papa bear," Tennessee sighed, "we put a few things on him to avoid the initial security search. He wanted a stunner for himself." He cut off the stranger's next words. "And don't give me any grief for that, ok? That's basic infiltration procedure. Scumbag, deadbeat junkie out to reform himself for the little girl who just lost her mom? Hell, yeah you load him down with all the concealed shit. They're not going search him and they didn't."

"Mara's gonna have your ass over this," the stranger snapped, "and that's if he doesn't get you first."

He?

"And I'm sure you'll be very sad at my funeral, Hank," Tennessee said before someone moved, "they're suiting up outside. Can we wrap this? We've got an N7 loose in the hangar."

"Door was locked after they came in," Hank said, "comms are off, local network is frozen. This hangar doesn't exist for the next ten minutes."

"My man. So. Why are we arguing in the car where the kids can still see us fighting? It's bad for them to pretend everything is fine."

"Make another joke and you're dead." Hank's voice became a hiss. "Ten years of deep cover. Ten years. That's just me. I've got people who've dedicated more than time to get on this ship."

"Jane, you getting all this, honey?"

Don't move. Don't move. Don't move. Like she had when the Batarians had prowled around the house while she was hidden, Jane Shepard stayed absolutely silent, absolutely still. She waited to be grabbed. Or shot. Or worse.

"She's out," Tennessee said, "just like to be sure."

"What does he know about this?"

He. Who?

"You think he talks to me?"

"What did Mara tell him?"

"Enough."

"I want proof this is sanctioned," something clicked, Tennessee laughed softly, "before I paste that fucking smile of yours across the window."

"Can't give you what I wasn't authorized to have." He grunted and bodies moved quickly. When he spoke again, his voice was strained. "Hank, think about this."

"Tennessee," the stranger said, voice hollow, "I'm doing nothing but thinking. Thinking of a reason not to blow your brains out and kill your crew outside. Cut the problems down and salvage something from this. You're rogue."

"You missed your chance for that."

"This is not how it's done, Miller. You've overstepped. You have fucked up."

"Fine," Tennessee grunted, "let's go resurrect the kids you wasted outside and try again tomorrow! Hank, we can still do this."

"Do what? There's a goddamn Citadel-sanctioned conference happening down the hallway. This is it, you idiot. This is the end of your stupid life."

"You're not making Valhalla with that attitude, Hank, it's why they trust guys like me for the lateral ops and you cool your heels in deep cover."

"Thirty seconds, Tennessee, and that includes what I'm saying right now."

"You've got no choice."

"You know what, just for you, Miller, I'll make it ten seconds."

Please. Jane's fingernails dug into the hard, leather cushions underneath her. Please-please-please.

"You'd have to kill the N7, the Admiral, and the girl," Tennessee said, "so what do you have to lose?" The unseen gun rattled, and Tennessee grunted. "Compared to what you gain."

Silence. Jane held her breath, hoping she could cover her ears in time for the gunshot.

"…gain?"

"I fucked up," Tennessee laughed as he spoke, panting with relief, "that must make you pretty happy to hear said out loud. I'd be happy if I was you. I fucked up. You need to save my ass. I need your help, Hank. Now how many years have you been waiting to hear that?"

"Miller-"

"You know what the best part of a messy op is, Hank? The chance to be the guy who cleans it all up. The man? He is gonna be pissed. Royally pissed. Imagine how much better he'll feel when you get to hand him the girl, a Quarian Admiral, and an N7."

The man?

"Tennessee, you're making a lot of assumptions here-"

"Hank, you saved the op, you pulled me out of the fire, and you snagged up two extra prizes along the way." Tennessee's voice was jittery. Excited in a way that made Jane's skin crawl. "You can ask him to put you anywhere. On anything. You could ask to retire."

"And you?"

"Firing squad, I guess," she could see him shrugging in her mind, "mom always warned me I come to a bad end."

Kill him. Kill him and I promise I won't tell anyone what you did. She wanted to say it. Maybe it would tip the man over the edge into helping her. Maybe it would work.

"The N7 won't go quietly."

"Lots of things they can do with the corpse and the armor," Tennessee said, "remember, Hank, you don't need to have the imagination, just the can-do spirit."

"One more thing," Hank said, "I get to lead the firing squad."

Tennessee brayed with laughter and Jane peeked to see him embracing the bald man with a roar of triumph. She shut her eye before they noticed.

"Yes! Ok, Nia's gonna handle checkpoint security."

"Gotta take the bridge out," Hank cut it, "that's gotta be first or instantaneous."

"I'm covering it," Tennessee was electrified, almost shaking, "but now that you're on board can I get two of your more dedicated boys to make a big sacrifice? I got a plan."

"Get the girl out," Hank said, "then tell me."

"She's fine here."

"Too vulnerable," Hank snapped, "I put a black bear on the repair block as an emergency prep. Nothing that can be tracked, easy as moving a few pieces."

"I could kiss you on your big shiny head, Hank, now let's get to it."

The door slid open. The men moved.

She flexed her toes, they moved. She flexed her fingers, they moved. Her arms and legs should move too. She wasn't going anywhere with these men. She waited for the hand on her leg, stayed still as rough fingers pinched her calf sharply.

"Damn it," Hank said, she waited, heard his voice shift as he spoke over his shoulder, "how long is she gonna-"

Jane kicked as hard as she could. She pushed backwards, her t-shirt bunched up against her chin as she slid off the seat and stumbled against the man. She felt her sneakers hit the hangar floor and she ran. Her eyes opened to blinding, burning lights and a cacophony of noise. Her legs simply stopped working and she fell onto someone's lap.

"Jane!" Admiral Zaal'Koris squawked. Three fingered hands gathered her against the tempered softness of his envirosuit. "Just leave her with me! I'll do as you say! But leave her-aagh!" Something hard impacted against glass.

"Waste of time, you won't crack that fishbowl with anything," Nashville's voice approached, "thanks for your help, Park, you saved the day." He was being sarcastic. Jane's mom always told her not to be sarcastic with people.

"No!" Jane squealed when the hard hands grabbed her. "No!"

"Look after your hellspawn, Park, for one second?" She was tossed against the slim, twitching frame of her father. He grabbed her. Harder than her mom had ever grabbed Jane, even when she'd first dragged her down from the pre-fab roof. She'd been grounded for a whole three weeks.

Jane wanted to cry. Jane wanted her mom.

"Jane," the wheedling, weaselly voice made her clench her teeth.

"Why did you come here," she growled, "you didn't want me! And I never needed you!"

"Money," Tennessee's voice cut in. Jane froze, her eyes opened, adjusted to the bright hangar lights now. She turned her face up, past the ill-fitting shirt, to a thin, blank face.

"What?" She was going to cry. Why? Why would she cry about this? Why should she care?

"Kid…I…it's not something you'd understand."

Nashville, Tennessee Miller, clapped slowly from behind her, and Jane realized how much she wanted to make him hurt.

"Class act," Nashville sighed, "feels good, doesn't it, Park? Telling the truth? Her knowing what a piece of shit you are? Sold you, kid. Sold you to us. Didn't even sell you. Agreed to help us acquire you."

"Nashville-"

"You shut your mouth," Nashville's voice changed, became sharper, "and don't even think of a way to finish that sentence, Park. I'm this close to leaving you here and taking the consequences." Jane shoved her father away from her and spun around to face the horrible, smirking man. "Sold you, kid. Hate to tell you. Didn't have go down like this."

"You utter waste of air," they all turned to Admiral Koris. His soft, glowing eyes stared at Jane's father; his voice was disbelieving. "You had a child. You were lucky enough to have a healthy, strong little girl. And-and you sold her?" The Quarian's vocal light flared as he screamed. "What is wrong with you?!"

"Somebody turned their audio intakes back on without permission," Nashville winked at Jane, turned, and kicked the Admiral hard in his chest. Jane's hands lashed out, curling inwards. She remembered the varren. The horrible, alien monster with its piranha teeth and it's black bubble eyes. With a too-red tongue and nightmare claws. She remembered how it felt when the varren chased her, the way she'd let her instincts and Miss Calvert's training take over.

Her shoulders burned and her fingers ached as she curled them. The horrible man spread his arms wide, smiling at her.

"Do it," he said, "rip me into little pieces, tear off my arms, squish me into a ball. Kill me, kiddo." Jane's teeth hurt from clenching together, her eyes stung from furious tears. The man pulled a small metal object from his pocket, waved it at her. "Without this? You'd be lucky to ruffle my hair." Her biotic amp.

Admiral Zaal'Koris sprang.

Nashville's easy smile changed as the Quarian's deceptively strong hands grasped his knee and his belt to slam him to the floor. Her amp fell, bounced off the smooth metal of the hangar and skittered to a halt not two feet from her.

Jane couldn't move.

Nashville wrestled the Admiral to the ground, punched him hard. Two more figures, dressed head-to-heel in Alliance blue battle armor, took over the beating for their leader. There was a dozen of them, dressed like the men she'd seen in vids about the military.

'We Answer the Call'. That was the motto they always said. But that was lie. They'd never come to Mindoir. They'd never save her here either. She needed her amp.

She stared at the slim object, not much bulkier than a credit chit, thinking of all the ways she could rip Nashville apart. All the awful ways he'd suggested. All the ways she'd killed the varren on Mindoir. All the ways she could save her friends.

She couldn't move.

Blue light shimmered in front of her.

"Now that is heartbreaking," Nashville said. A woman, with dark hair and a bloody rag pressed to her nose, entered her field of vision, one hand extended and glowing biotic blue. Nashville knelt in front of Jane, locked eyes with her, and slowly pushed her amp across the floor with one finger until it tapped Jane's shoe. "That must be spooky, huh? Man, I'd be scared if I was in stasis like that." He slipped the amp between Jane's fingers, holding it within her grasp.

Jane couldn't move.

"Wonder if that's how our friend Roza felt on Mindoir when you held her place," Nashville pulled his gun, pressed it Jane's nose, "just like this."

Admiral Zaal'Koris reached out from between the legs stomping on him. He croaked her name.

"You let that alien blow her face off," Nashville's smile was long gone, "I hope whatever they got planned for you hurts, kid. I hope it hurts bad." He pocketed the amp. The biotic woman opened her hand and a heavy force pinched Jane's shoulder. Darkness rushed in from the edges of her eyes.

"No," Zaal groaned. The child's face slackened, and she slumped to the floor as the biotic released her. "No."

"Aren't you ashamed?" The leader, that horrid, terrible bastard, was speaking to the worse, horrible, wretched bastard that was poor Jane Shepard's father. "This thing? This weird creature with the backwards legs? He gives a damn about your daughter, Park, but you? Wow. You are scum."

The pathetic man looked between the men kicking Admiral Koris and his unconscious daughter. Park stared at his shoes and turned quickly away to get lost amongst crates in the cluttered hangar. The leader shook his head and turned on the men beating the Admiral.

"Enough, don't kill him." He pointed at the Admiral and the girl. "Get them inside the carrier. The rest of you establish a perimeter. Doc, get to work on the doors, get it done. You finished the extranet stuff?"

Doors?

"Almost," a squat little man looked up from an omni-tool.

"Do I need to say 'hurry up'?"

"I'm doing the best-"

"Hurry up. Hank, get over here, bring two of your guys. The bigger the better."

A traitor in Alliance blue scooped Jane off the ground. Another cuffed the Civilian Fleet Admiral and dragged him along.

The child was limp in her captor's arms, looking peaceful, looking dead. Her head turned slightly, her innocent face unmoving. That strange, beautiful, red hair a mess, in need of a brushing. A dangling, pale hand, fingers open.

As they passed her, Hana'Nur had to force herself not to reach out.

Doors. Doors are important. She hated herself. Hated her training. Hated that she couldn't take the wild, desperate risk of snatching Jane from the stranger's arms. Holding her. Keeping her safe. Daring the universe to take her again.

That child was no one's to torment any longer.

Doors. She followed the squat little man. He weaved through the enemy, Hana an arm's length behind him. The traitors and the infiltrators strapped on armor, readied weapons. Many, many people were going to die today.

Jane, she resolved, would not be among them.

A part of her screamed to alert the conference, but she could not risk being exposed while Jane was here, in the clutches of the enemy. So, she stalked, invisible, like a gorach shadowing a low-belly that was approaching her sleeping young.

Dream, Jane. I'll get you out before you wake up.

"Hurry up," the squat man muttered as he stepped over a corpse, "get the turrets set up, send the manifestos to upload, work on the doors. Hurry up."

Hana'Nur's teeth unsheathed with a hidden smile. Poor little man didn't know he had no time for any of it. Doc, or so he'd been called, stopped at a manual control panel for the hangar doors.

I see. Hana'Nur turned, considering the slow chaos of the assembling enemy. Kal'Reegar lay propped against the far wall, half-conscious and overseen by a treacherous young woman. Nothing to do for him. Too far, too exposed. Three armed and armored soldiers stalked a corner of the hangar, hunting the human in black armor. He could handle himself and, for Hana'Nur vas Shepherd nar Adeli, was not a priority.

Brave Admiral Koris vanished into a Blackbear model troop carrier. Jane was carried in next. Someone jogged over towards her, stopped inches from where she stood. Hana leaned in to examine his armor for weakpoints.

"Doc, can you-"

"I'm busy!" The soldier muttered something and turned away. Hana'Nur spun back around, curling about Doc's body, just barely touching him, as he fiddled with a corner of the cover. Her knife whispered free of its hip sheathe, cloaked like she was. She twirled it in one hand so that the sharp teeth of its serrated edge faced his sweaty throat. Her free hand extended like the mouth of a sinuous animal.

She waited for him to glance up and then struck.

"If the human hell exists," she whispered, clutching his mouth shut as he tried to scream with shredded vocal cords, blood unfurling down his front, "may that three-headed dog in it devour your soul, bosh'tet." He clung to life, his eyes enormous behind his glasses. Hana'Nur hissed. "Hurry up."

She dragged the corpse behind some crates. The hangar entrance slid open and Kal'Reegar was shoved forward by the traitor girl as four armored men split into two small groups and preceded off in opposite directions. The doors closed with a hiss and Hana'Nur took stock of her remaining enemies. Three hunting the N7. One unseen guarding Jane and the Admiral. The two leaders were donning armor of their own, watched over by their biotic.

The biotic. Hana'Nur's experience provided her with the obvious next target.

Neutralize the most dangerous opponent and she'd take the rest at will. She decloaked before moving in and out of cover, careful of taxing her omnitool too much at once. The woman, Ada, had staunched the bloody nose the N7 had dealt her, and was forcing a battle helmet onto her head, light and flexible like the body suit she wore beneath it.

There was a long-knife at her side, stylized in the fashion of Asari swords. So, she was a studied warrior in biotics. Fair enough. Hana'Nur understood biotics better than any Quarian alive.

"Doc?" The leader wandered around the area she'd hid the body. "Doc, where the hell are you?"

She had a minute. Maybe only a few seconds. The biotic vanished in and out of sight, working her wrist, cracking her knuckles. Hana curled her knife underhand, ready to plunge it deep into the places the armor creased. She stepped between two crates, cutting across the space. The biotic walked past her hiding spot and Hana'Nur stepped out.

Matthew Park stood before the biotic, facing Hana's direction.

Damn it.

"Get back to the ship, Park, before you become a liability." Hana'Nur froze a second too long and Park's red-rimmed eyes found her.

He didn't even get out a warning before the biotic spun in place, reacting to the small movements in his face. Hana lunged, scoring a shallow cut against the shoulder of her opponent, doing nothing to harm her. She grasped at the sword hilt, wrenching the blade free with a single tug. The biotic grabbed at her hands, instincts overriding her. Keep them off-balance, never let them remember they can crush you with their brains.

She turned, sharply, dragged her opponent across her foot and tossed her into a somersault. Hana'Nur leapt on Matthew Park, grabbing his hand that reached for the stunner at his hip, twisting it to the point of breaking.

"I would cut your heart out, you bastard," she hissed, "if I thought you had one inside your chest." It took all her self-control not to gut him where he stood. He'd sold his child to these monsters. Sold her for money.

The biotic shot to her feet, Hana tossed Park at her, and was running for the far side of the hangar as the leader yelled that their comrade, Doc, was a cooling corpse with an open throat.

Voices behind her. Voices before her. Someone yelling at the hidden N7. Threats. Promises. Challenges. She saw one as she vaulted through the cab of a forklift, and he saw her too. Gunfire scoured the far wall. She turned a corner.

An armored hand seized her. She spun, pulled into a tight space. Her faceplate clinked against metal. Her assailant twisted to slam her against a wall. Chest to chest, eyes to eyes. She'd not been this close to anyone in a very long time.

"Thought you might be one of the hostages," the N7's voice whispered.

"Get off of me this instant." He moved accordingly, releasing his hold on her wrists. They were in a nearly impossible space between a pair of large cranes. Exactly where she'd look for someone if she was searching for them.

"Sorry." The N7 sounded only a little amused.

"I don't appreciate being manhandled."

"Not trying to get fresh, ma'am," the black glass hid his eyes, as surely as her silver visor hid her own. Two faceless creatures of the shadows conspiring. "How many?"

Outside the searchers called on their allies for an explanation.

"Six, or seven counting the bastard who sold his own child," she sheathed her knife, "one of them is a biotic, they're all dressed in battle armor. We have maybe a minute before they find this place."

"Doors?"

"Closed, perhaps sealed by now."

"Take a long time to cut through them in that case," the N7 tensed at a loud order, "we need back-up."

"Maybe you do," Hana hissed, "but I won't leave Jane or the Admiral here. They've been moved into a carrier." The N7's visor met her eyes with eerie precision.

"That is going to be the most fortified position in this entire hangar. No getting in there undetected unless you're inside it already."

"I can cloak."

"Do they know that?" They both turned at a sound from the right, back the way they'd entered. "If they don't know yet, you can't waste that trying to pull Jane and the Admiral out."

"I don't take orders from you, human."

"Check the door first, at least," the N7 said, calm as ever, "we need an exit." Hana was struck with an idea.

"How old is this ship? They have escape pods set into the hangars? This is pre-Moscow Regulations, isn't it?" The N7 nodded.

"You know your history. Hyderabad was an early model. They still put escape pods near thin areas in the hull, rally points. Should be about five. Along the wall opposite the one we're next to here." He paused for a moment. "Can't auto-launch those older models. It's a manual jettison procedure inside each pod."

"I'm familiar with it. That's our exit if things go wrong." The shouting had stopped. The N7 breathed a soft, amused 'if things go wrong' to himself. "They're hunting us now."

"Just what I was thinking," the N7 slipped away from her, sidling down towards the light, "I'll keep playing distraction, you check the door. Alarms don't work. We're on our own for now."

"I'm getting Jane and the Admiral if the door is open," Hana said, "don't count on me being able to come back for you." The N7 drew a pair of pistols and breathed deep.

"Good," he said. The N7 burst from cover, guns blazing.

Uli'Rann was nervous.

"Uli," Shala's voice broke in through his personal comms, "try not to look too distracted, cousin."

"Sorry," he said, absent-mindedly. Udina paused mid-sentence.

"Excuse me?" The human looked up from some papers he'd been reading to his Elcor counterpart. Ambassador Goyle glanced at him, her eyes leaving the door to the conference hangar for the first time since Koris, Reegar, and Hana'Nur had all left.

"I said," Uli stammered, "'sorry'. I…uh, thought I was distracting you all." The silence that followed made him consider faking a seizure out of embarrassment. It was broken mercifully by a commotion at the door. A pair of armored Alliance soldiers hustled inside, weighed down by large AR Wraith machine guns.

"What on Earth?" Udina plucked off his glasses as the men approached the Alliance side of the hangar. One briskly bypassed the nearest officer and the other began to call out to Admiral Hackett. The grizzled human rose uncertainly from his seat, offering an apology to the diplomats.

"What's the trouble? Why the heavy gear, marine?"

"Hostiles on board, sir," the armored man said through a droning speaker, "we're about to clear them out." Whatever the human Admiral read in the other man's tone or body language, Uli couldn't figure out, but it saved humanity a search for a new fleet commander.

The rifle snapped up, poised to blast the heart and lungs out of Admiral Hackett, but the old soldier grabbed and yanked on the shoulder strap of the enormous weapon. Gunfire arced upwards to rip a diagonal line across the flags of the Alliance, Citadel, and Migrant Fleet.

Light and noise followed, popping across the hangar as the second Marine set off flashbangs that blinded everyone, of every species, for a long ten seconds. Uli's VI stabilized his senses even as he pulled Shala'Rann to the ground, instincts directing him to save his distant cousin and commander. Yun'Razi, cursing to make a Marine blush, scuttled on top of the Scouting Fleet Admiral to protect her from any stray rounds.

Across the table, Donnel Udina had done much the same for the Human Ambassador Goyle. The woman's arch calmness flickered for a moment in the chaos but reasserted itself in a rapid, prone crawl that spoke of a military background. Udina followed her lead underneath the table. Uli tugged his large body into the dubious safety the wood afforded.

Smoke filled the room, choking those who did not wear envirosuits. Uli's visor turned red, and he glimpsed the human Admiral wrestling with his attacker, muscles bulging through his dress uniform. The second traitor was calmly firing into the C-Sec side of the hangar. The returning fire from the Turians, Uli saw with horror, did not distinguish between the lone gunman and the other Alliance personnel.

"Keelah," he breathed, "it's turning into a massacre out there!" Lightly armored Alliance Marines dropped to the hangar floor as their betrayer paused to lay fire deeper into the smoke.

Hackett's assailant broke free momentarily, but a well-placed kick to his knee made his rifle swing wild as it erupted.

A deep, thrumming noise shook the air above the cacophony of gunfire. It was deafening and seemed nearly endless. Uli's dampeners kicked on automatically and the human Ambassadors clapped their hands to their ears. The floor shivered as an enormous weight settled next to the table.

A drawn out, softer repetition of the noise drew Uli's eyes to a hillock of gray skin shivering a few feet away. Ambassdor Calyn's aide, Uli felt a pang of guilt at not remembering their name, breathed enormously with the pain of their wounds.

Suddenly, through the noise, bloodshed, and adrenaline rush, Uli had only one thought in his mind.

"Where's Jane?!" Jane. Little red-haired Jane Shepard who'd remember that Elcor's name and everything else she'd asked. Jane who was just starting to emerge from the armor she'd donned after her mother's death. Jane who'd clung to her own spirit with a hero's strength. Jane who deserved to be protected. Jane who needed Uli'Rann.

"Uli, I need you here!" Yun'Razi's hand grasped him. "Run out there and you die!"

Stay here, he thought, and Jane dies.

"Give me a hand here!" Nina had his arm in a bad, painful angle against his back and Kal'Reegar wanted to fall asleep desperately. Probably not a good sign. The small security checkpoint was manned by five dressed-down humans who were the picture of surprise. The nearest and, from his brief glimpse of an officer's insignia, highest in rank shot up from her desk.

"Nia, what the fuck?"

"This crazy bastard just shot someone in the hangar!"

"Don't listen to her! She's a traitor!" Kal's voice echoed inside his own helmet and his VI informed him that not even half his words were being translated through his damaged mic. He was cuffed in short order, and he could only mutely gabble at the frightened, doomed men as they ushered him to the corner of the room. A big fellow held him in place, gently enough for the supposed disturbance, and kept glancing over his shoulder to follow the rapid explanation behind him.

"Hey," Kal tried again, "you gotta cuff her now!"

"Someone call the bridge," the officer was saying, "Jesus Christ, what the hell happened in there?" Kal saw Nina move to an odd place far from the main door. Kal surged up, struggling against the big man, and screamed at everyone in the room to take cover as he realized the significance. The doors slid up; a pair of rifle barrels leveled. The room filled with gunfire.

Grains of sand projected by tiny mass effect fields inside each weapon eviscerated everything they touched. Thick, red viscera splattered across his visor as the man in front of him was blown nearly in half. Kal's shields sparked at the through-and-throughs perforating the center mass. As the dying human bore him to the ground, the young Migrant Fleet Marine was too horror-stricken to react.

If the Doctor could've seen it, doubtless, he'd acknowledge the cold efficiency of the surprise attack. Kal tried to think what the wily Salarian would recommend and couldn't remember a word of it. His VI, the stupid thing that he cursed one hundred times a day, warned him of a lifescan being conducted nearby. He whispered the activation for a play-dead program. Quarian tactics this time, then.

His visor flickered to produce a display that would fool most aliens into thinking he was staring dead-eyed at the ceiling. The chest sections of his suit loosened a few centimeters to let him breath without visible evidence. A dozen small ports connecting him to his suit stilled the minute twitches he could experience to give himself away.

"We got a live one."

If they come over here, I'm taking one of them with me. The small, defiant plan kept him from screaming in surprise when a human voice coughed wetly. Someone made an agonized sound that he didn't want to hear and a voice choked out to the room.

"Medic," it wheezed, "Nina…N-nina, call a mmmedic. Oh, god, is John ok?" A single gunshot. The voice spoke no more.

"Way to miss every vital organ," one armored trooper said to the other.

"I'll make up for it. We gotta hit the bridge, Nina. You good down here?"

Such casual banter for the murders they'd just committed.

"Yeah," Nina said, almost perturbed, "get going already, this hallway will be swarming in a second. I'll see what I can do about the response team." Kal lay absolutely still until the heavy boots clanked out of earshot. His visor had a pink tinge from the dead man laying atop him and he felt bile rising in his throat.

The room was silent save for the rapid mutterings of the woman he'd been chatting with…what? Ten minutes ago? He was going to be sick.

"Combat stabilizer," he said. One of his ancestor-ghosts hated him. His buzzing mic managed to pick that up loud and clear. He could see Nina whirling around in his mind's eye to accompany the squeak of her boots. The drugs were fed into his system to quicken his pulse tense his muscles to marathon readiness.

"Kal?" she said softly. "You still alive?" The man on top of him was his single advantage. His hands were cuffed, he had no weapons, and she had to be pointing the gun at him or she wasn't the kind of hard caliber soldier needed to for a slaughter like this.

Breathe, Reegar, breathe and think.

"Kal?" Closer now, damn she could move quiet. "Kal, I'm sorry you got caught up in this. If you're alive under there, move around, ok? I'll get you some help."

Use whatever means necessary. Survival imperative to completing mission. Self-sacrifice pointless.

Kal had been miffed by the Doctor's advice that time and argued that all good soldiers sacrifice for their people if necessary. The Doctor had been frowning but suddenly, without an obvious in-between emotion, grinned broadly.

Assume you are last person who can complete mission.

He'd started this on Mindoir. He'd drawn first blood. Every dead human in this room was his fault. And if Jane Shepard died, that would be his fault too. The combat stabilizer hummed inside his veins. His vision blurred and then became razor sharp. A foot touched his own tentatively.

"Kal?"

War cry effective when frozen. Prefer silence, myself, but to each their own!

His own scream deafened him as he rose, snapping a kick to topple her. Gunshots, three in rapid succession, he was falling, the dead man was between them. He saw her face, eyes huge, piercings gleaming in the fluorescents.

The first headbutt was instinct, the second was desperation.

The ten that followed were halfway survival and halfway revenge. A rhythm developed as he smashed a faceplate made to withstand a shotgun blast into cartilage and bare skin. There was the crunching sound, the drunken arching backwards, the heady plunge forward, the dead man's shoulder jabbing him in the stomach, and Kal screamed 'die'.

It was on the twelfth scream that his suit VI sent a reminder that his mic was spotty and should be examined for repair. Kal's head weaved in the air his talrin flapped in his peripheral vision. One of the pins was loose, which was as embarrassing to a grown Quarian as leaving a fly down was to a human adult. He cursed his luck.

He looked down.

He didn't mean it. That was the first thing in his head. He didn't mean to do what he'd done to Nina's face. It was flattened, had sunken grotesquely on one cheek, he thought for a terrible moment her eyes had burst but realized they were shut behind two enormous swells of horrific bruising. One leaked blood. Her mouth was a pair of bloody lips around bloody gums with no more teeth.

Her colors were changing here and there. Yellows and blacks and purples blooming. Kal gagged suddenly; his stomach squeezed itself.

"Combat stabilizer," he said, a second dose was given, accompanied by a warning that he might suffer adverse effects. Nina coughed and Kal couldn't believe anything that looked like she did could still be alive. He watched in a daze as her pistol rose shaking into the air, barrel hovering right in front of his faceplate.

"Don't bother," his voice was thin and trembling, "it-it won't work." The hand went limp momentarily then pressed the muzzle to the side of her temple. Kal's mind cleared and he reached for gun, he could get it in time. His shoulders burned, his wrists screamed against the cuffs, the gun spoke once, and Nina's head bucked.

She did it to avoid capture. She did it to avoid capture. She did it to avoid capture. It was die or be captured. Die or be captured. She did it to avoid capture.

And what you did to her face probably made that decision easy.

"C-combat…c-c-combat…st…stable…stay…"

Kal slumped onto knees that were begging for him to slide out from under the dead man. He had to move. Had to stay limber. The Doctor would say stay limber. His dad would say stay limber. His dad…his dad would tell him he did right the thing.

Nina's head was haloed by a pool of blood. Why couldn't he hate her?

"C-combat stable…combat…," he tried. It just needed to make him focus even if he'd already taken too much of it. His eyes roved over the room, taking in carnage that he'd never dreamed of in training. Mindoir had been bad. Worse than this. The worst thing he'd ever seen. He'd nearly died on Mindoir.

But why did he feel like he died in this room too? He was alone. How did he know he was alive, really? If no one could look at him, speak to him, and say 'Kal'Reegar, you are a living thing' then how did he really know?

What if he'd be here forever?

"Combat stabilize-"

He retched enormously and his whole body shook, and he was sobbing. He was sobbing so loud the mic sent the static echo out into the room of dead people.

"Hello? Hello?!"

The room didn't answer.

"Jane? Jane, say something. Please!"

Jane Shepard woke up in a daze for what felt like the millionth time in one day. Zaal'Koris' bright eyes widened; his talking-light flickered with a hissed word in Khelish that she didn't know. She'd like to ask him what it meant.

She was in handcuffs.

"Jane, I don't have long," the Admiral was whispering, "along the back of my belt there's a tool compartment. I need to you open it for me, they cuffed your hands in front."

Why? She always asked questions. It was her problem. That was what one of her old teachers said anyway. That Jane couldn't sit down, be quiet, and stop bothering people with stupid questions.

'Never apologize for wanting to know why.' Her mom had said that once. She said that asking questions is the best way to learn. That seemed so obvious to Jane. Had she said that? What had she said?

I hate you!

Her heart squeezed inside her chest. No. That wasn't it. That was the last thing Jane had to her mom before she'd left home the day the Batarians attacked. Her eyes watered and she didn't want to be awake anymore, she wanted to go back to sleep.

"Jane!" Admiral Zaal'Koris made her jump with the sudden, intense anger in his voice. It was gone in a flash. "I'm sorry, but you must pay attention. The tool I need is long and skinny. But it's not the longest one. And I-"

Light came into the world like a giant mouth was opening and something walked out of it.

"Groggy, kiddo?" Jane's mind was suddenly very clear and brimming with hatred. She turned her face up towards the man called Nashville and tried to flare her biotics at him. "Can't keep you down, huh, Jane?" He opened his smart, smug mouth to say something else she'd want to punch him for. Red lights began to flash outside the ship-a ship, that's where she was, she remembered-and alarms screamed.

"You two behave yourselves," he glanced at Admiral Zaal'Koris, "I'm checking your cuffs when I get back in here and if you did anything to them, I'll break your arm, Admiral." The Admiral kept his head down and the dangling talrin wrap made him look so sad. The door closed, returning them to the darkness, and Jane settled back into herself.

"Jane!" She jumped when Admiral Koris yelled. "Really, child, you must do as I say!"

"B-but he said-"

"Jane," he spoke at volume now, "you are going to listen to me, am I understood?"

"Y-yes, sir!" She fiddled with his belt, the cuffs making her movements awkward. She popped something and a bunch of tools spilled out. "I'm sorry!"

"It's fine, I said that would happen-ugh, of course, no one listens to me," he managed to laugh in a way that sounded slightly crazy, "Jane, find the tool."

"It's dark," she said.

"It's there, you'll find it," after a few seconds of shifting through the tiny, hard to see bits of metal, he flexed a hand at her, "pick up a few put them in my hand."

"How can you-?"

"Every Quarian knows their tools by touch alone! Now do it!"

"Ok-ok!" Jane huffed a little. "I'm not trying to be stupid." She shoved a few tools into his hands, most of them, she thought. She hoped.

"You aren't stupid, Jane," the Admiral sighed, "it's not here. The rest." He let the tools tinkle to the ground and Jane groaned in frustration as a few mixed in with the others. She shoved them into his hand, and he paused. "It's there. A long one but not too long." She felt along the sharp objects and picked at random. "Yes…yes that's it! Give me a little space."

Jane scooted away, gathering up the other tools in an effort to be helpful that the Admiral interrupted an instant later. She wasn't even able to babble her amazement at his speedy work before her own hands were free. He instructed her to sit like she was still handcuffed and then gave a rapid explanation of what was going on outside.

Jane perked up when she heard gunfire and whimpered quietly when it stopped abruptly.

"We can only hope help will arrive soon," Zaal said, "and when it does you must go directly to them, you understand?"

"What about you?"

"Jane," Zaal's voice was stern again, "I am quite capable of taking care of myself." Jane bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying that plenty of people on Mindoir had been capable of taking care of themselves too.

"Is Hana coming?"

"I doubt anyone could stop Hana'Nur vas Shepherd, Jane," the Admiral said, "she's always been a very driven woman though I can't say I know her-"

The hiss of the opening door made them both still. Jane wanted to yell with frustration as she saw Miller's bare head, he'd probably get in her face again, and if she'd held onto the tool she could've stabbed him in the eye or something. Though that desperate idea went out as a second soldier marched in smartly to train his gun on Admiral Zaal.

"Show me your hands, both of you," Miller leaned against the far wall, giving his friend a clear line of fire. Zaal raised his uncuffed hands and Jane had no choice but to follow his lead. Miller's smug smile faltered into a brief mask of terrible anger.

"You are really getting under my skin, the both of you," he nodded at Jane, "Admiral, put the cuffs back on her. Slowly." Zaal obeyed without a word of protest, coaxing Jane to stand so he could kneel and re-cuff her. "Slowly, Admiral, or I'll break both your arms."

He had no real plan to speak of, but one was forming. Death terrified him, of course, even for a man who'd lost all that he had, the way he had. Zaal'Koris had never intended to be an Admiral, hadn't really intended to pursue the military outside of required service. He'd wanted to follow his mother, aunts, and grandmother into envirosuit crafting.

The work was calming, artistic, and made an impact on the lives and future of his people in a real, tangible way. He'd trained in the workshops on the Masseketh at seventeen, returned from Pilgrimage with a factory-fresh set of material recyclers two years later, and met Hagar'Shalfa there.

His family had caught on before even he did to the feelings they developed for each other. The stitching Hagar'Shalfa made were the most intricate. The most beautiful. The talrin he wore now, burnt orange lines emerging from a gray weave that blurred at the edges in a way no one else could emulate. Her last gift to him, when she was in the quiet rooms, after the surgery had failed. After the miscarriage.

'Tikkun shuva'. 'The sun returns.' It was the only talrin of its design in the entire Fleet. In their entire species. Some people weren't meant to have children, that was what the doctors had said.

His right side faced his enemies and that, he knew, meant that he had a slim chance to save Jane Shepard from whatever horrible fate these men intended. For the right side of nearly all envirosuits was fortified, to provide protection for a Quarian's dominant arm. A burst of machine gun fire, at point blank range, with no shield was almost certainly suicide.

Admiral Zaal'Koris vas Qwib-Qwib knew that he should value his own life more than he did, but in moments like this, found it useful. It was no different than his growing certainty that Rannoch must be forgotten until a far distant future generation reclaimed it from the Geth. Great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren. Not his own, of course, never any descendants of his own.

He let the anger that loss lit inside him burn hot and spoke, with all the quiet fury of a man who'd drunk too often of bitterness, one word.

"Run."

His body carried him toward his enemy, he roared in triumph when the machine gun fired too late. The leader swore as his shield flared from the stray shot and swore louder as Jane Shepard fled into the light. The Admiral snapped one cuff shut on the gunman's wrist and shoved him into the leader. In the tangle of limbs, he cuffed the two humans together.

A pistol fired; a bright line burned along his talrin. Zaal screamed with hatred and wrestled the machine gun out of the soldier's hands. The leader pulled his subordinate in front of himself, using his body as a shield from the point-blank fire.

Zaal was shrieking wordlessly, his vision bright red as the unarmed, helpless human in front of him first struggled and then, as his shield burst apart, writhed under the gunfire. The armor held for a few seconds and then yielded to the vicious onslaught. The blue metal exploded outwards in a red mist.

The glowing gun stalled as the heatsink reached its threshold. The pistol reappeared over the dead man's shoulder and chased the Admiral out of the ship with a scattering reply of blind fire. Zaal'Koris stumbled against someone as he backed away and slammed the rifle into their stomach as they tried to recapture him.

"Admiral!" Hana'Nur was inside his ears suddenly, via a helmet-to-helmet communication. "Rally to stern and starboard!" No Quarian ever lost their orientation aboard a ship and Zaal'Koris could've, and very nearly did, run there with his eyes closed. The horror of his actions dripped sourly into his heart.

Keelah, he had killed an unarmed man. Whatever the circumstances had been, he'd rendered that human harmless and then put him down like an animal.

Running feet pursued him, though no-one dared to fire. He skidded around a blind corner made by an enormous crate to find Captain Hana'Nur vas Shepherd halfway into an old escape pod, the hatch wrenched partially open.

He took a single breath to get her attention and it rushed out of him as he was tackled against the wall. The gun made a rickety barrier between him and his assailant. Two more of the armored humans approached to assist him.

"Admiral!" Hana'Nur's voice turned away from him and shouted. "Jane, I'm sorry, but you have to go alone, launch the pod as I told you. Someone will pick you up." The hatch slammed shut and Zaal'Koris snarled at the man attacking him.

"You've failed, rek, the girl is beyond you!" The soldier's fingers tightened against his bicep and the top of the gun.

"Release him!" Hana'Nur brandished a pistol at all three of the soldiers. "The Admiral is under my protection. Your lives are forfeit if he comes to any harm!" And that suddenly, the chaos ground to a halt as a terrible stalemate settled in. Zaal glanced at the glowing barrel of his stolen weapon.

Still red.

"Sir!" The Lance Corporal's voice was tight and frustrated but Hackett moved him aside all the same. The half-dozen Marines he'd just put behind him tensed as one, like a pack of animals. Like one, single animal. Their senior officer was exposed, and centuries of human tactics said that the vulnerable head of their small force was under threat.

Steven Hackett was breaking formation to assume the style of a Turian leader. Like the young woman facing him down. Hackett had met enough Turians to know the differences that most humans did not. Her youth was obvious in the skin around her red clan markings. Softer and smoother than that of the dead C-Sec Sergeant sprawled a few paces behind the wedge of gun barrels aimed at Hackett's chest.

He noted the way her mandibles were snapped tight to her face, how her pupils were slim black lines at the center of her ruby eyes, and the way her backfoot shook slightly where she braced her toe-talons against the hangar floor.

He knew enough about Turians to read that she was scared shitless.

"Your arm alright?" Her left arm hung limp and she'd braced the shotgun hard against her shoulder. A stupid question but a safer one than any request that they stand down. They'd formed a defensive formation around the wounded Elcor and Ambassdor Calyn, who had tried, unsuccessfully, to beg his escort to lower their weapons. The traitors, or whatever they were, had been killed in what couldn't have been more than twenty seconds of sudden pandemonium.

Two men. And the score they'd achieved was five Marines and three C-Sec personnel, not counting the injuries.

"My arm is fine," her voice was half-muffled by her mandibles.
"You know I'm Admiral Steven Hackett," the new rank felt even more venomous on his tongue, "but I don't know you."

"Officer Canina Vibrius," she rattled off.

"Officer Vibrius," he said, keeping his hands in sight, "under what circumstances can we end this without further bloodshed?"

"The Ambassadors," Canina said after a moment, her voice a little stronger, "I have to get them safely back to the Citadel." Her posture straightened. "I will get them back to the Citadel."

"Tentative Interjection: Cynay Brogaan has been grievously injured and requires swift medical attention on Dekunna."

"That include Ambassador Goyle?" He wasn't trying to ignore Calyn's concerns but he prioritized the immediate danger of another gunfight. Canina blinked rapidly, taken aback by the statement before giving an affirmative flare of her mandibles.

"Yes, sir," she said, "that it would."

Hackett then raised his voice slightly to be heard by those underneath the table.

"Ambassador Goyle? Could you come out slowly please?"

"I'm unarmed, Officer," Anita Goyle rose with a cool, easy grace, "and I would appreciate being escorted safely off the Hyderabad." There was a ripple of suspicion through the Turian ranks, but the nature of their mission soothed their understandable distrust. Officer Vibrius, thrust into command, took the Turian equivalent of a deep breath by flaring her nostrils and straightening out of a defensive posture.

"Stand down," she said, her voice a clipped twang, "and prepare to transport the wounded. And the dead." The turians broke apart reluctantly,

"Marines," Hackett said, "I want two of you guarding Colonial Ambassador Udina. The rest will accompany me. Someone raise the bridge." He nodded towards the door. "Lance Corporal you will inform anyone who might be outside that the situation in here is resolved. We need a medical team."

"Sir," the LC said, his relief at having orders to follow painfully clear. The C-Sec detachment, along with their charges, assembled towards their original position one the bowside of the hangar. They were not totally relaxed but neither was anybody waving their guns around and Hackett would take that as a victory.

He settled himself into a chair and felt the cracked rib he'd sustained in his laughably one-sided tussle with his armored assassin. He'd stared up the barrel of his Wraith AR and seen his own death in the small, black pinhole. A marine had saved him at the cost of her own life, tackling the man down before he fired into her stomach at point-blank.

How the man ended up dead and Hackett alive, he was still piecing together. The hangar door opened to admit a medical team and a harried gunnery-sergeant. Hackett felt the dread before the blonde-haired woman finished jogging over to him.

"We can't raise the bridge, sir," she said, "starboard hangar is locked down, and there's five dead in the security checkpoint closest to it." Hackett winced. Without waiting, she went on. "Captain Yudindrah and Commander Frost were on the bridge, sir. We don't even know whether to beat to quarters at this point." Because he was the Admiral, and they didn't dare take attention away from him at this glorified photo-op.

Assuming command of another person's ship sat very badly with Steven Hackett, but he had little choice.

"Jesus!" Hackett turned to the voice so quickly his sore rib nearly doubled him over. A marine had unmasked the attackers. "It's fucking Klipper and Henries! Klipper and Henries attacked us! What the fuck!"

"Who told you to touch those bodies?" The young man shot to a shaky attention. The gunnery-sergeant stared slackjawed at the corpses, unable or unwilling to realize that her crewmates had tried to attack the assembly.

"Issue mutiny procedures," the gunnery-sergeant froze at the words. Hackett's temper flared. "Do you know what that means, gunnery-sergeant?"

"Sir, with respect-"

"Lockdown the elevators," Hackett said, letting the barest touch of anger into his voice, "put Masters-At-Arms on alert at each armory, and-"

He paused. Protocol demanded confining the majority of the crew to their quarters but that would be a disastrous blow to the morale of the entire Hyderabad. Not to mention rob him of considerable strength for a response of some kind. The bridge was not answering and that required an assumption that the ship was all but the hostage of the mutineers.

"Confine crew," the gunnery-sergeant finished for him, her tone at once obedient and furious, "yes, sir." She turned about face and was out of the door before he could realize he never asked her name.

"Admiral?" he found Donnel Udina looking awkward and out of place between the two marines assigned to guard him. "Forgive me. The Quarian Ambassador and the two others who went with him-"

"Goddamn it," Hackett slammed a fist onto the gunfire-scorched wood, "Admiral Shala'Rann, are you alright?" The three aliens emerged with a surprisingly equal level of caution. The big one in blue, Uli'Rann, immediately started to babble about Jane Shepard.

"It can't be about her, can it?" Udina asked it more for reassurance than out of any conviction.

"I'll shoot the next person who says Occam's Razor," Steven Hackett growled to himself.

Hana'Nur was calm in the knowledge that Jane Shepard was sealed inside the escape pod and, perhaps even at that moment, floating in space outside the Hyderabad, waiting for a rescue team. It pained her to send the girl off alone, but the captain knew her own limits and could not have defended both herself, the Admiral, and the child.

Zaal'Koris was matching his strength in an uneven contest with the human pinning him to the wall. Two more traitors in blue armor had her rooted to the spot with a pair of submachine guns and advanced two steps in her moment of distraction. They had battle armor and shields while she had a pistol and a knife.

The N7, if he wasn't dead, could make up the difference, if he had the sense not to emerge too soon. The human leader, Nashville, came around the corner to take in the scene. No one blocked her escape into the hangar behind to avoid potential crossfire. She risked a step backwards and two of her enemies advanced to match her.

"Move them further," Zaal's voice hissed in her ear through their shared audio, "a little further down."

"Admiral-"

"I will not be a hostage!" Hana moved and the troopers moved. Their footsteps were overloud in the silent hangar. They moved past the first of the escape hatches and Hana'Nur was already diving for cover as the machine gun ripped the air and made their shields shimmer into sight.

It was a desperate, yet effective, distraction that lost Admiral Zaal his means of defense. The gun rattled straight out of his hands without a shoulder to take the kickback. His attacker punched him hard in the stomach, folding Zaal at the waist. Hana dashed out of the line of fire into the crates nearby.

She stumbled over the cowering form of Matthew Park, who raised his hands to show he'd be no threat. Hana'Nur banked hard and sidled between two crates, springing out upon the human trying to capture the Admiral. Her knife found a soft, flexible place in between the hardshell. It did not wound deeply but it gave Zaal'Koris the purchase he needed to throw his attacker to the floor. Hana tossed the Admiral into the nearest open escape pod before diving in herself. It was a scramble getting back up and gunfire scraped close to her hand as she pulled the hatch shut.

"Will they open that?" Admiral Koris was already strapping himself into a seat.

"Not in time," Hana'Nur, following the three step instructions she'd given to Jane, first securing the air-tight doors with a hard yank on the standing lever. She half-turned to the ancient priming panel and was relieved to see an instructional sign next to it. Jane wouldn't need to rely on 'Girl Rode Bunnies Yesterday' to understand the button sequence. A timer gave her forty-five seconds to double check the secured doors.

"Has Jane launched?" Zaal'Koris wedged into one of the awkward seats designed prior to humanity's introduction to the Standard Dimensions Manual of the greater universe. He babbled on before she could answer. "Stupid question. Of course, we can't know that yet. Keelah, my hips are killing me! How can they fit in these things?"

Hana'Nur forwent the basic life-support protocol in an effort to save time against the rapid banging overhead. Their envirosuits were better proof against suffocation or freezing than any human could yet hope to engineer. There was no alert procedure, these pods had been designed for use only if the ship was lost or trapped in a gravity well.

A distant bang signaled old packets of explosives blasting a circle the exact circumference of the pod out into the endless void of space. Another eternal voyager already lost beyond hope of recovery.

Hana turned back to the priming panel, twisted a stubborn dial downwards. 'Grandmas Yield Red Brownies'. Jane had made a face at 'Yield' but had repeated it dutifully. The timer now warned of a two-minute interval for final passenger prep. She growled deep in her chest at the overcompensation but dared not fiddle further. The small battery inside the priming panel could be killed by a failsafe pin slicing its thin looping wires in half to deny the ejection payload a spark.

She watched the red numbers like a glimpse of movement in tall grass. Her own seating and securing an afterthought action as her mind focused on the pod next to theirs. A few scant feet away, but each centimeter was thick, spacefaring metal. Her right foot was arched, her toes spread wide in an old gesture common amongst Quarians. Ready to spring from loose soil in attack or flight.

"She'll be alright," Zaal'Koris offered.

One minute. Her fingers danced against the shoulder straps forcing her into a seat not made for her frame, making worrying pressure points that could shatter her bones.

Their enemies ceased banging with a final, furious blow.

Thirty seconds. Her heartrate was treading close to a VI warning, her breathing was audible inside the silver light of her faceplate.

"You're owed a medal for this, Hana," the Admiral broke the silence again, "a Bokqer Ridge at least." The highest combat honor in the Patrol Fleet. Memorializing the scouts who reported in last from the Mass Evacuation and declared, in essence, the utter loss of Rannoch.

Bokqer Ridge. The last place any Quarian had walked the homeworld for three hundred years.

What a stupid medal. Hana'Nur thought. Is defeat all we have left to cherish?

The spark reached its payload, and the pod was blasted outward at a speed of 300 knots into the dubious freedom of space. The timer blanked. Hana'Nur counted thirty-five seconds before reaching to twist a central, cylindrical object that slid down into the heart of the pod.

Outside, she knew, lost between the lights of Dekunna and the Hyderabad, a small flare of mass-effect fields would blink into existence as an emergency drive activated to keep the pod from flying off into space in obedience to physics.

'See how easy?' She'd asked Jane quickly in the stolen moment before the enemy had found them. If she was a Quarian child she'd have learned this all years ago as soon as she was able. How could any species let these things go? Did they all expect to be ready when danger struck?

Zaal was fussing with something nearby and Hana'Nur's head twisted at the sudden interruption of Ivo'Solda's clipped, confused voice.

"Who is hailing this ship?"

"This is Admiral Zaal'Koris," the Admiral fell very naturally into his normal tone, "requesting pickup by-"

Human voices cut in.

"Hyderabad to Pod, please respond."

"In a moment!" Zaal snapped. Hana'Nur lunged against the seatbelts to shout over him.

"Pod here," the straps bit at her suit, "can you read a second launch? From pod-bay three?" No chance to identify or detail anything, trusting blindly that this human voice was friendly, Hana'Nur hissed Ivo'Solda's confused response into silence.

Yes. She thought. Say 'yes'. Only say 'yes' and I don't care how long we have to wait-

"Uh," the human cleared their throat, "no, sorry, no other pod launches. Who is this-"

Hana'Nur was not listening. She was already shouting for immediate pick-up by the humans and demanding a full complement of engineers who had experience with external ship repair.

She remembered all of it. Every last bit from the first step down to the cylinder. Jane had the funny phrases down perfectly and knew she'd never have mixed them up. Jane Shepard could've launched her pod on memory, of that, she was sure.

But Jane was too little, too scrawny, to secure the blast doors by hand and even though her arms hurt, her wrists were sore, and her fingers were numb, the lever wouldn't budge.

"Come on!" She kicked a sneaker against the hard-leather seat she was bracing against. "Come on! Come on! Pleeeeeeease!"

There was a metal bang and then light filled the dark pod. She was not going to let them see her cry. She wasn't.

"You don't want me to come get you, little girl," the woman with the biotics said. Jane rubbed at her face and wiped her nose. They would not see her cry. Jane Shepard was done crying.

She pulled herself up the small ladder and into the blinding lights of the hangar. She was alone now, with nobody to come save her anymore. Like before. Like on Mindoir in those awful days before the Quarians had landed.

"No more bullshit," Tennessee said, then, snapping his fingers in her face, "you understand me, kiddo?"

"Yes," Jane muttered. She had her biotics, weak as they were without her amp, and that was an advantage. Maybe if she got a gun, she could fight back against them. Jane Shepard wanted to start thinking like the soldiers who'd helped her. Like Hana and Uli. They wouldn't get caught like this.

"You even blink in a way I don't like," the man went on, "and you get sealed in a little box with just enough air to breath." Jane's skin ran with goosebumps. "Am I clear?"

"Yes."

"Stay with your piece of shit father and don't make trouble," Tennessee turned to the others, "search the hangar and find out if the N7 is still hiding. I want him dead and stretched out somewhere they can see if they get in here."

Trembling, thin fingers grasped Jane's shoulders.

"Just do what they say," Matthew Park whispered, "ok, Jane?"

"I wish I didn't even know you existed."

"…your mom-"

"I'll kill you if you talk about her," Jane spat, refusing to even look at the man's horrible, ferrety face. She never wanted to see it again, not even a picture of it. She didn't want to remember he was her dad. She'd pretend he wasn't.

The man who wasn't her father didn't dare speak to her again. Jane locked eyes with the biotic woman, leaning idly against the crates as she guarded them. Jane would kill her first, she just needed a weapon. If only she had her amp.

If only they'd hadn't gotten her with that stupid stunner.

Jane's eyes widened.

"What are you glaring at?" The woman snapped.

Jane turned around and hugged Matthew Park, burying her face in his stomach, a scared little girl seeking comfort. But, hidden against the man's button-up shirt, she was starting to grin. Her encircling hands felt along the back of his belt and found the hard plastic rectangle of the stunner.

She headbutted Park in the stomach and spun around to meet the biotic woman's reacting charge with the crackling fangs of the stunner. The woman drew back on instinct, just long enough for Jane to shove Park against the crates and run for her life.

Uli'Rann tried not to dance in place like a suitling trying to figure out how to use the bathroom before he wet himself. The hangar doors were shut tight, even a two-way eye-slot set into it at about average height had been left alone initially for fear of enemy attack.

And for all the busy activity of humans establishing a command point in the hallway Uli could not helping feeling like nothing was actually happening.

It made his inactivity feel worse, despite Yun'Razi's insistence that he stay back. His Captain was guarding Shala'Rann's right side, as Uli guarded her left, and casting her one baleful eye over the progress.

"What a mess." Her mutterings were lost in the chaotic preparation. The response team was made up of two parts security, one part hangar crews, and a final part mixed together from those people who remained on their deck before the ship had been locked down. No one was exempt from helping if they served under Alliance Command.

The Human Admiral Hackett had shed his blue jacket and hat to assist a man in a mess-sergeant's uniform lift barricades into the ready position. A comms officer dictated to one of the embassy assistants who'd survived the massacre at the meeting, his neat clothes splashed with someone else's blood.

An old, one-handed boatswain commanded two of his mates, young people with janitor's clothing on, stained with all-purpose cleaners that Uli's VI noted, as they assisted Marines into their assault armor.

The small medical staff that had been gathered recognized as their senior officer a urologist on loan from Arcturus Station. His second-in-command was an intern from the Aleen Clinic on the Citadel, brought on board by C-Sec in case of any emergencies amongst the ambassadors. None of the available staff, save the urologist, had served aboard a ship engaged in active combat. The urologist had no experience with repelling boarders.

'Repelling boarders'. Uli had heard the phrase once or twice in the last few frantic minutes since they'd emerged from meeting. It was how these sailors chose to view this terrible attack. Mutiny, Uli imagined, was as much a shame to this navy as the Fleet.

Hackett refused to the lift the lockdown and Uli'Rann could respect the need to avoid further chaos but, with Jane's life hanging in the balance alongside Hana'Nur and Zaal'Koris, he still found himself frustrated.

"Uli," Shala'Rann said, exasperation touching her voice, "go sit with Kal'Reegar. It's obvious you're distracted." Yun'Razi wasn't pleased to lose the only other able-bodied guard Shala'Rann had but she could not supersede the Admiral's orders.

Poor Kal. The young marine had been discovered hand-cuffed and stumbling down the hall, muttering over needing to return to the fight inside the hangar. Yun'Razi had diagnosed him with stabilizer-abuse almost at once.

The human medics had barely started to ask after how they might assist when Shala'Rann sat the dazed youngster down and calmly talked him into enough coherence to flood his system with a purging chem.

The most the humans had done was uncuff him. That and, as he found out when approaching the space past the barricade, provide basic comfort. The human Ambassador Udina had refused all orders to leave the ship. The man's white jacket was balled up to provide Kal with a kind of improvised pillow.

"-and I'm certain we have you to thank for any number of lives," the man was saying, "I'll make sure you receive all the credit you're due for your bravery and commitment. We owe your people a great debt already…ah, but I see someone has come for you."

The human offered a polite nod and stepped away to give them privacy. After a moment of brief confusion, he hurried over to assist the medical team with their preparations. One couldn't fault him for lacking in action.

"Hej," Uli crouched to the red-suited Marine, "still awake?"

"Yeah," Kal'Reegar's voice had exchanged its breathless panic for a flat near-silence.

"Kal?"

"I…I failed them," Kal's eyes glimmered sadly behind his visor when he looked up, "the Admiral, Jane, and the others. I failed them, Uli."

"You survived," Uli insisted, "and they haven't gotten away yet."

"I fell apart," Kal went on like Uli hadn't spoken, "I fell right to pieces back in that security room and…oh, Keelah, I'm sitting here waiting to piss myself because I over stabilized." He slammed his fist against one thigh. "I'm a fucking disgrace."

"You're still riding the drugs," Uli said, "this is normal. Your head will clear in time."

"I have…I have to offer my resignation," Kal's voice became watery, "damn it…my dad is gonna-Damn it!"

"Kal."

"A Reegar. Totally useless in a fight."

"Kal'Reegar."

"Should've just let her shoot me-"

"Kal," Uli put his hand over the young man's visor, putting him in the dark, "you're alive and a lot of other people aren't, right now. I understand that's terrifying, but it is not your fault." He moved his hand away, pleased to see the moment where the younger man's eyes adjusted to the change of light. Amongst Quarians it was the closest thing they could approximate to breathing fresh air.

It clicked something inside their brains, a memory of their star Tikkun, that worked well to reorient them.

"Damn it," Kal said again. "I'm sorry-"

A frantic banging came from the hangar door, just beneath the eye slot. All movement in the hall came to a sudden halt. The eye slot shuddered and slid open to admit a few small, grasping fingers.

"Hello!?" Uli left Kal trying to struggle to his feet and outpaced any of a half-dozen people in slamming himself against the hangar door.

"Jane!"

"Uli!" Tears slid free under his mask at the sheer relief in her voice. If he had a Krogan's strength he'd have torn the metal apart then and there. Instead, he slid a finger around his visor to touch the back of her hand. She stood on tip-toes to peek over the edge of the slot. "Open the doors! Quick! Hurry!"

"Get these doors open!" Uli hardly turned away to shout over his shoulder. "Jane, are you alright?"

"The Admiral got away!" Hackett appeared at Uli's shoulder and firmly pressed in for space. "Hana did too! They're in an escape pod!" Hackett barked over his shoulder.

"Someone find that pod and establish communication. Let's scrape a skeleton recovery team together. Get them inside now." He turned back. "Jane, I need you to think hard and tell me how many-"

"There's six!" Jane gasped. "Hana told me to tell anybody who found me! Six people. They've got armor and guns. Except one has a sword, she's a biotic!" A flurry of activity greeted those words as the military apparatus reacted to first-hand information. A new energy followed. "Hana killed one and Admiral Zaal'Koris killed another. But there's still six of them left in here."

"Narru Rannoch," Kal'Reegar intoned grimly as he arrived at the crush by the eye slot. Jane squealed with delight.

"Kal, you're ok! Yes!"

"We're too tough for them, Miss Jane," Kal said, coming suddenly back to life from his torpor, "Jane, can you open the doors from your side?"

Hackett spoke quickly. "Don't bother. Jane, I need to see past you," he glanced into the space the hangar and swore, "they're setting up turrets. Goddamn it. Jane." The girl's face appeared again. "Jane, you need to go hide."
"Can't you just let me out?"

"There has to be a way," Uli said.

"If there was she'd be out here by now," Hackett was clearly, even to a Quarian, barely holding back his temper, "so for now, Jane, get yourself hidden."

"Wait!" Her hand appeared at the eye slot. "Give me a gun or something!" Uli almost laughed at the request. "I only have a stunner!"

"Jane," Hackett's voice touched with command, "just do as your told and get behind something-"

Hackett's eyes flicked upwards and widened. He threw himself backwards at the same moment the gunshot bellowed inside the hangar. Everyone hit the deck in the hall, even as the shot pinged off the hangar door far from the eye-slot.

"Please!" Jane yelled. "Just open the door!"

Another shot. No ricochet. Jane gasped. And a small thud sounded below the eye slot. Silence gripped the hallway hard enough to make Uli'Rann stop breathing.

"No," he heard himself say once and then, louder and louder, he repeated it. "No. No. No! No!" He hammered against the door around the eye slot. "Jane!? Jane! Jane, are you alright?"

Footsteps approached the hangar door, enormous in the quiet.

"If we could put a gun up there, we could get him," Kal'Reegar suggested at a whisper. Yun'Razi was gesturing them both back over to where she had Shala'Rann in cover behind the barricades. Uli pretended not to see.

Someone sighed heavily beyond the eyeslot.

"I'm tempted to just give her back," the man's voice was familiar, "honestly she's been the biggest pain in the ass."

"You think this is funny, bosh'tet?" Uli'Rann said. "You think I'll laugh?"

"Who the hell?" The unseen man snapped his fingers. "The big Quarian who dropped off Jane. You left right before things got interesting downstairs. Right, Jane?" The girl was alive and that was the one good thing about the muffled shriek Uli heard.

"This is not a good way to convince me you're worth taking alive," Hackett snarled from the far side of the eyeslot.

"And who is that?"

"Admiral Steven Hackett." The older man said his name like a death sentence. "Who am I speaking too?"

"His name is Tennessee Miller!" Jane's voice was filled with anger and pain, passing between clenched teeth. "And he just shot me!"

"A graze," Miller said, "it's bleeding but it'll just leave a nice scar. A reminder."

Uli reached out to pound the space where he guessed Tennessee stood beyond the door and was gratified by a soft curse of surprise.

"There are planets only we Quarians have discovered," Uli hissed, "where dark things lurk in deep waters. There are places where microscopic insects swarm and devour flesh while pumping you full of enzymes to keep you alive the whole time. Desert biomes where near-sapients will drain you of every drop of water. Each one can support you, human, long enough to die."

"And I'll go there if I don't give you Jane, right?"

"You're going there already," Uli said, "give us Jane and I might leave you knife so you can try to open your own throat before something else kills you."

"Your Admiral might not like how I respond to that threat-"

"Our Admiral isn't in there," Kal'Reegar yelled, "Jane told us!" Uli held back from punching the stupid young Marine by the barest effort. Jane screamed again and Kal, suddenly understanding his error, began his own threats. Hackett got in front of the discussion this time.

"Enough," he said, "enough showing off and acting tough, Miller. What is it that you want?"

"My men in the bridge haven't contacted me," he was causal and unconcerned, every word made Uli'Rann want to skin him alive, "and I'm guessing they're not dead yet so that means someone probably managed to lock down the ship systems."

"A real shame," Hackett rolled his eyes, "what were they attempting?"

"What do you think, Admiral?" The impertinence was getting to Hackett, but he stayed calmer than Uli would've.

"You want off the ship?"

"Of course."

"Send Jane Shepard out in an escape pod and you'll get your way."

"Jane comes with us."

"That's simply not going to happen, Miller. That's off the table."

"Why?" Miller laughed. "You think getting her back will make up for the things we've already done? How many we kill so far, Admiral?"

"I'm not in the habit of leaving children in the hands of murderers," Hackett replied, "and you'll be disappointed to know that you're two friends didn't even make it inside the meeting room before security gunned them down."

"That's a lie," Miller scoffed, "and it's a bad one, Admiral. Here's a better one." Miller cleared his throat. "There are over fifty people still on this ship that are waiting for my signal to start really messing up your day."

"They'd be here," Hackett growled.

"They would," Miller said, "but then, that's cuz there's only twenty. So, save a few lives, and tell my guys on the bridge how to unlock the systems." Miller blew air like he was bored. "Or, make me perform a manual exit. We'll be here all day and Jane won't get medical attention for her wound until later but I still get what I want."

"You don't want your men on the bridge?"

"Those two? No. Take them alive if you can, there's nothing they can tell you that I'm worried about."

"Like the fact that you're Cerberus?" If Hackett hoped the blow would land, he was mistaken.

"Sure," Miller chuckled. "Cerberus. Three-Headed Dog. All that stuff. Look, Admiral, I'm here trying to make a dollar. That's all. So, one working man to another? Do as I tell you."

"Mr. Miller," Ambassador Udina suddenly spoke up. He was anxiously smoothing out creases in his rumpled jacket and he approached a few steps, nearly in the line of the eyeslot. "Mr. Tennessee Miller, this is Ambassador Udina." Hackett was issuing a quiet order via hand gesture to his marines. They moved in, ready to pile atop the civilian in case of gunfire.

"Hey, boss," Miller said, "sorry to cause you so much trouble. If it makes you feel better, I really intended to do this differently."

"Mr. Miller," Udina said, "that girl surely doesn't deserve to suffer. Please. Release her and let's settle this without further bloodshed."

"This kid?" Jane whimpered.

"Whatever you keep doing to her," Uli shouted, "if you don't stop, I will kill everything you love!"

"Just tapping her with my foot," Miller said, "shame I keep tapping her arm."

"Mr. Miller!" Udina regained his confidence. "If you are not careful, I cannot guarantee your safety." Udina took a deep breath. "I'm prepared to offer myself as an exchange."

"Absolutely not," Hackett interrupted, "that is not an option."

"It is and I am offering it," Udina insisted, "and I can guarantee you a higher payout or greater safety than any twelve-year-old child can provide." Udina sighed and, revealing an iron spine Uli had not expected, stepped fully into view of the eye slot. "Let's exchange hostages, Mr. Miller. You know it's the best chance you have of escape." The silence from the far side of the hangar door was deafening. "A fair exchange." Udina shifted from foot to foot. "Jane Shepard, unharmed and alive."

"It's not a fair exchange," Miller said, "see, as Jane here already pointed out-"

The gun moved into view and the Marines were not nearly quick enough to react.

"-she's been shot."

Donnel Udina crumpled. Chaos erupted.

Uli'Rann called out to Jane as the eye slot slammed shut.

Jane Shepard had been in pain before, and she prided herself on taking it like a champ. Skinned knees when she was little? No problem. Twisting her ankle jumping off the roof of the pre-fab? Piece of cake. All the aches and pains, the full body spasms that she had in the weeks after the operations on Earth? Tough but not tougher than her.

Getting shot? Getting shot was the second worst pain of her life.

Miller stepping on the long bleeding cut across her left bicep? That was number one.

"Stop!" She shoved at his boot with her right hand. "Stop it!"

"Ah, Jane, you didn't stop giving me trouble when I asked you," he raised his voice over her whimpering, "why should I stop for you?" His boot, incongruously, left her arm. "Get up. No one is gonna help you walk." He whistled sharply to the hangar. "Gather up. Everyone!"

The remaining Cerberus trickled in, and the man called Hank, bald head hidden behind a helmet, confronted Nashville.

"You fucking shoot her?" He sounded exhausted rather than angry. "This is way out of control, Miller."

"It's fine, Hank," Miller snapped, "and we're fine." He gestured the others into a loose circle around the three of them. "We still have the upperhand."

"What was the plan if we didn't?"

"Russia in winter," Miller's voice dipped down to a whisper as he said it, "how else you think it would happen?"

"Would the…" Hank glanced down at Jane, who glared up through eyes bleary with the throbbing in her arm. "Would he understand that?"

"Who's he?" Jane growled. "What's he want with me?"

"Shut up or you're gonna get hurt, Jane," Miller didn't even look at her as he spoke.

Hank repeated his question.

"He won't see us alive again in that case, Hank," Miller lightly punched the Hank's shoulder, "so loosen up, get comfy. Worst that's gonna happen is we die."

"All this because Mara got her ass kicked by the Quarians," Hank snorted. Miller's face distorted with sudden anger.

"They fucking butchered Jan Roper's men," he snarled quietly, "like animals. This is not about pride, Hank, it's about what we actually believe. Aliens do not kill humans with impunity. They do not take what is ours." Miller directed a sneer over his shoulder at Matthew Park, who was hanging back outside the circle. "The Alliance is no better than that goddamn junkie. They bought her from the Quarians."

"That's not true," Jane hissed.

"Oh my God," Miller rolled his eyes, "did they break something inside your head when they hooked up those amps, kid?" Miller kicked her arm hard, and Jane screamed. "Or were you this stupid all the time? Shut up."

"I'm gonna kill you," Jane whimpered, "I'm gonna kill all of you!"

"Park, this is your last chance to watch this kid or I'm gonna shoot you and cuff your corpse to her so that, at least, you'll slow her down."

"Jesus," Matthew Park said, "calm down." Jane had no fight left in her when the man came to her side. "She's bleeding a lot." Someone threw a first-aid kit at him.

"Fix it then," Miller snapped, "pretend you're tying off her arm so she can mainline like dear old daddy."

"Fuck you," Park said, though not until after Miller was out of earshot.

Jane wouldn't cry. She would not let them see her cry. But the tears of pain wouldn't stop.