A person stood in the middle of the entrance, his features shrouded by the light behind him, giving him the appearance of a ghostly silhouette striding towards her.

The light in her cell turned on, each bulb flickering before illuminating the room in full. She recognized the aging chiseled features, regardless of the wrinkles crisscrossing old scars, lining his sad, tired blue eye. Painful memories shot through her mind, the pain of innocence gone long past. The pain of what could have been, and the pain of what wasn’t.

“risoner 2187… Ingrid.” Captain Garlock said, his voice deep as a brass drum, a droll tone to it.

Ingrid III looked at him behind a curtain of frayed black bangs. She neglected using her voice for what seemed like forever so the grating, hardened, and wheezy quality as she spoke surprised her.

“What do you want, Shepard?” she demanded.

A haze of regret crossed over Garlock’s expression as he replied, “Does it have to be like this? It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other. Ever since…”

His gaze flickered. Ingrid’s gaze blazed indignant.
She coughed once, hacked twice, and said, “Save it, Shepard. I don’t need your pity.”

In the blink of an eye, the sadness left his face, replaced by stone-cold resolve. He motioned with his hand, snapping his fingers in the air. Ingrid blinked in surprise as guards, clad in black, streamed into the room, marching in time, their tazer-batons swinging by their side. She remained silent, watching them in fascination. One of the guards moved to put his hand on her shoulder. Her fascination turned into dread, then boiled into a blinding torrent of rage.

The guard clutched a handle on her straightjacket, yanking her off her feet. Another moved in, his expression deceptively kind and gentle. But his hands… her eyes were fixed on his hands, only his hands, and the closer they got, the redder her vision became. She fought back as best as she could. She bit. She swore. She kicked and raved against the soldiers as they pinned her down, bucking her feet into someone’s knees, head-butting another before receiving a shock to her calves, numbing her legs to submission.

She fell, her jacket clanking to the floor, making her feel ridiculously like a tin man. The rest of the guards dog-piled her, pinning her down. They roughly pulled her to her feet to face Garlock. Scowling, she spat at him, and missed. Garlock regarded her with the same set expression on his face, watching calmly as they grabbed her clenched legs, set them apart, sitting her down on her bunk.

“Can’t call me Shepard anymore, Ingrid. Those days’re gone. Got it? Starting now, you address me as Captain Garlock.”

Even with all that energy she used to fight back, she still couldn’t move her fingers or feel her arms. They propped her up between two guards, the rest forming a protective circle around them, dragging her out of the room. Garlock walked in front of her, calm and serene, just an everyday occurrence.

Ingrid never let her guard down.