He looked up at her, knowing well what she was driving at, and it was the truth. "I know..." he shook his head. "And I got the other angle of it; Lyra said she'd throw her out the airlock herself if we didn't get it straightened out. I don't think she's happy flying dark at the moment."<br/><br/>He brushed the papers aside, not using his workstation anymore. When the ship jumped, he wandered to the sofas he had in a corner near the display case of a few model ships, plopping himself down on it and offering for Shay to sit across or next to him. He stared at a miniature pine tree growing in a container placed in the center, fingering the leaves gently.<br/><br/>"I remember....before I met you. Probably a whole year before. Was a year from owning my handgun permit. Was still flying for Dex back at the time." Alyx leaned back on the couch, mindlessly tinkering with a pencil that had been lying on the same table. "One night, we got to Liberty Base somewhere near Draconis. He went to the bar for something, I was stuck gucking out grease from an engine nozzle. Was a pretty boring job, not fun at all."<br/><br/>"Girl came by. Wasn't pretty, apparently was an alien and maybe still in her teenage years. Had this wonderful but sad look on her face. Asked for a ride off the base, didn't say why. When I told her that Dex didn't carry strays, she then asked to do something to earn 5,000 creds so she could pay for the shuttle to get offbase. Dex didn't allow people to work on his stuff, either. I had to turn her away. At the time, it didn't bother me. I was just following rules."<br/><br/>Alyx stopped playing with the pencil, a different look on his face as he continued to recall his story. "Five days later, we come back to Liberty. I'm doing my thing, looking for commodities, upgrading chips in the flight system, that sort of junk. I somehow happen to read the news; the same girl that approached me was murdered due to some "ethnic cleansing" going on by another alien species on the station." The pencil fell to the desk as he was a bit more somber, finger incessantly pushing the edge of the immovable table. "All her kind had fled the station when the uprising happened, but she got left behind. The only way she could get off was to beg someone for a ride. She got turned down...and got killed."<br/><br/>Alyx was silent, not a word or emotion on is face. He didn't look at Shay for a few moments before he did, speaking again.<br/><br/>"That's what's in my head when I met all you guys. Marina, Panacea, Lyra, especially Setsuko. She was almost dead when we found her." He shook his head. "With this new girl? Her story was parallel, maybe, and emphasis on maybe that made me not turn her away. But she's probably thinking business right now, so we can play that angle. Honestly, I was just thinking of finding the authorities that she described, telling them the story, take her back to her flotilla, and get paid somehow. And if that falls through, we still have a solid job."<br/><br/>"Found a job posting on the base; Norris wants some supplies. Told Lyra to head to go pick up the supplies to take them there; if it works out, it'll foot most of the recent gas bill and we can get groceries and some ammo for the month." He was hoping this bit of news would make Shay a bit more relaxed. Alyx realized he took a big tour of telling memories then getting back to the matter at hand, but even if Shay didn't quite trust him, he trusted her, enough to know some of his backstory. For the time being, that was a unique thing on this ship.