It's after one of the exquisitely prepared mealtimes that York has a visitor by his bunk. The major's had time enough to process -- or at least compartmentalize -- his own change in circumstances. He'd heard the younger man's panicked voice in the middle of their arrival, and the parallels to Joker's frantic cries to EDI in the wake of the Crucible's blast front were all too clear. Now, seeing him curled in on himself like this, moving like an automaton when given direction, the parallels are too sharp to ignore.

(Shepard, he reflects, would probably already have the kid's life story and be busy with an impromptu side trip to get just the exact part to fix whatever's up with him.)

Still, Shepard's not here, and he is. The young man is some sort of military, he could piece together that much. He pulls up a chair, hunkers with his knees apart and his hands clasped between them, and musters up a little bit of Major Alenko, commander and babysitter of biotic spec ops and their complicated woes. "Ah, I'm guessing the last thing you want to do is talk about it," he says. "But I think you probably need to. I'll take a sitrep, if you're up to giving it."