Talini watched from the door, one hand hovering. “Will you be okay?”
As long as the sergeant was there, the others probably wouldn’t attack—but they wouldn’t talk, either. Never mind that Talini wasn’t there to help Sloane at all. She was there to lock her supervisor up for mutiny.
Ironic as hell, isn’t it?
Still, the fact she waited long enough to watch Sloane’s back meant something. Sloane shot her a grim smile, intended as thanks, and a silent acknowledgement of everything she couldn’t say.
The asari didn’t smile back. With a hard set to her mouth, she turned around and shut the cell door behind her.
For a long moment, the only sounds in the crowded room were Nnebron’s labored breathing and the shuffling of people who couldn’t figure out what the next step would be. They were tired, bruised, bleeding where the hasty bandages hadn’t held. Like Sloane, they were hurt.
Unlike her, they didn’t have the sheer pride that kept them from showing it. Sloane let out a short sigh.
“Let’s get this over with. I’m not here to fight.”
Nnebron jerked, but his arm strained and he froze again.
“Then get off me,” he snarled.
“Not until you settle down.”
“Fuck you,” he gritted out. “Pig!”
Quaint. Sloane kept a wary eye on the indistinct shapes just in her peripheral, but they seemed content to hover. Without a strong leader, they’d lost their direction.
Without Calix, they’d lost their heart.
She was careful not to push the engineer’s arm any farther, not wanting to break it, but she didn’t let up, either.
“I’m not here as security,” she said tightly. “I’m in trouble just like you. Just like all of you,” she added, turning her head to nod at the others. At the flurry of suspicion and disbelief sent her way, she turned one way, then the other, so that they could see her sides. “Here for the same reasons you are. Calix believed in you. Will you let that go to waste?”
Sweat beaded her captive’s brow. His eyes screwed shut and he tugged at her grip, only to groan in mingled pain and anger when she didn’t ease up on his arm.
“Come on, Nnebron.” She spoke to them all. “You guys took up arms against an injustice and your side lost. There’s no getting out of that, for any of us.”
“But—”
“I helped as best I could to save your lives from the krogan,” Sloane cut in quietly. A knife’s edge. “I couldn’t save Calix, and for that I’m sorry. I really am. But he’s gone now, and you’re alive. I want to make sure you stay that way, you get me?”
“What about the rest of our crew?” For a man at a disadvantage, Nnebron managed fierce and determined admirably well. Sloane admired that much, at least. “What about Reg? He died. Ulrich, Calix…” He visibly flailed. “Reg’s husband is still out there, we can’t—”
“These are the choices we made.” Anger lifted her voice. Dragged audible claws through the crowd, and a grunt of surprise from Nnebron. “Get this through your head! I can’t do much for anyone else while locked in here, does this make fucking sense to you? We have to play the system now. Any opportunity out of this cell will be an opportunity to make new choices.”
Sloane had done nothing but trust the system since the moment the Scourge caused her crash-wake. She’d done her duty, followed the Initiative’s protocols. Tried to do right by everyone. And this is what it had gotten her.
Locked up and out of options. Even her fellow captives saw her as the enemy.
No more.
“Those who were too injured to be locked up here are under surveillance in the med-lab. Where they will get the care they need,” she added firmly. She had Talini’s promise on that. “Right now, what we have is us. You and me, Nnebron. The people in these cells. That is it. So what are you going to do?”
His wrist flexed in her hand, as if he intended to make a break for it, but when she braced, he didn’t move. He just scowled.
Maybe he got it. Time to find out. Taking a gamble, she eased her grip. Drew away just enough that he could peel himself off the wall, but she held onto his wrist. Pointedly.
“I’m not above kicking your ass until you drop,” she said flatly, “but I don’t want to. It’d defeat the point.”
The kid snatched his arm away, but only rolled his strained shoulder and glared at her feet. Sheepish, maybe. Or embarrassed.
Or just… lost.
Sloane backed away to give him space, but there wasn’t much room to go. She settled for leaving her back against the door, where she could watch the kid and the others. All of them looked anywhere but at her. Most at the ground.
The tension in the air wasn’t tight so much as it was heavy—a deeply rooted sense of despair. They’d given up. All of them, even scrappy Nnebron with his last flail for something that felt like victory.
Shit.
Sloane wanted to turn around and punch the door. Wanted to yell at the people who’d made the decisions that led them here. Waking Morda, that had been the worst of them all. The nuclear option when the opponent had only sticks. She wanted to wrap her hands around Tann’s skinny little pencil-neck and squeeze until he felt all the pain the krogan and her warriors had caused in that goddamned room.
Mostly, she wanted to stop replaying Calix’s death, the way his eyes widened, life abruptly snuffed out behind them.
She wanted a lot of things. What she had was the remains of a ragtag crew and the certainty, the bitter knowledge, that the leadership she’d worked for, advised, had betrayed her. Betrayed them all. She needed to make inroads somewhere. Calix had believed in this group.
Now Sloane needed them to believe in her. Like it or not.
She started from a footing she understood. “Here’s how it works. Contrary to popular rumor, there is no way that anyone will be okay with spacing us.” She regretted the time she had suggested exactly that. A moment of pure frustration, and the desire to actually solve one of the Nexus’s problems rather than kick it down the road. Now they were the problem. “At worst, they’ll want to make examples of us through some kind of public circus.”
A woman wrapped her singed arms around her waist, hugging herself with rounded shoulders. “Will we be executed?”
“No.” The woman flinched. Sloane gritted her teeth. “No,” she said again, firm but with less bite. She forced herself to remember who these people were. Technicians, engineers, laborers. Hard working and tough as nails, but not fighters. Seen combat, sure, of the worst possible kind. But they weren’t trained soldiers, not as far as she knew. Sloane wondered briefly how many of them were of the sort that left behind checkered pasts. Secrets left back home, scrubbed from official records. And then there were the sympathizers. Last-minute converts she knew next to nothing about. She set that aside for another time. “This mission is too precious for us to lose more lives. Even they know that. But there will be consequences. The question is, are you willing to deal with them?”
Feet shuffled. Eyes shifted.
Nnebron lifted his chin. “Are you?” he asked, a challenge in his stare. Accusation flickering somewhere behind. Just like before. You aren’t one of us.
Maybe that was true. Once. Sloane clasped her hands behind her back, met his gaze with unflinching resolve. “What do you want to hear, engineer? That nobody’ll care that you and yours sparked a mutiny that killed dozens of Nexus citizens and crew?” The kid grimaced. “That you’ll get off with a slap on the wrist and a wag of the finger? What about Reg’s husband?”