The room had a table, two chairs, a wall panel with a recording indicator that had been green since Mei-Lin sat down, and a viewport looking out on the colony's central square. The morning market was setting up outside. A Bolian vendor was arranging produce in neat rows. A child was running between the stalls while an adult called after it. Ordinary Tuesday morning. Nobody out there knew she was in here and that gap felt specific in a way she had not been prepared for.

Lieutenant Commander Harris sat across from her with her file open on his PADD. He had looked at it more than he had looked at her since she sat down.

"Ensign Zhao" he said. "Thank you for coming in."

She had not had a choice about coming in. "Of course" she said.

"This is a preliminary review. No determination has been made. This conversation is part of the information gathering process." He folded his hands on the table. "You understand that."

"I understand that" she said.

"Walk me through the events of the evening of stardate 51847.3 in your own words."

She had been going over it since 0300. She knew exactly what she was going to say. She had also understood at 0300 that accurate was not going to be the same as useful in this room.

"A group of us went into the civilian settlement for the evening" she said. "Myself, Lieutenant Okafor, Ensign Drescher, and two civilian contractors, Maren Solis and Dev Prasad. We went to a bar in the commercial district called the Anchor. We were there for approximately two hours."

"You were off duty."

"Yes."

"Was the group drinking?"

"Some of them. I had one drink over two hours."

He made a note. She watched him make it.

"When did the situation develop?"

"Approximately 2130. Prasad got into a verbal exchange with a group of locals at the adjacent table. I did not hear how it started. By the time I registered it the exchange had already moved past verbal."

"Where were you when the physical altercation began?"

"At the bar. I had gone to get water. I heard raised voices behind me and turned around. By the time I turned it had already become physical."

"What did you do?"

"I assessed the situation" she said. "Prasad and one of the locals were already in contact. Okafor was trying to pull Prasad back. Drescher had moved away from the table. Solis was between two of the other locals with her hands up trying to de-escalate."

"And you?" Harris said.

"I stayed at the bar. I did not participate. I assessed that inserting myself would escalate rather than de-escalate and that the most effective action was to call security, which I did."

Harris made another note. She watched his stylus move and thought that the note was not about her assessment. It was about the bar.

"You did not attempt to intervene" he said.

"I assessed that intervention would not help" she said. She could hear it landing wrong as she said it.

"Ensign Zhao" he said, and something in his tone shifted entirely. He set the PADD down and looked at her directly for the first time since the interview began. "I want to make sure you understand the full picture of what we are discussing here." He opened a secondary file and turned the PADD toward her.

She looked at it.

The medical report was detailed and she was an engineer not a doctor but she did not need medical training to understand what she was reading. The first individual had sustained a shattered orbital socket requiring reconstructive surgery, four broken ribs of which two had displaced and punctured the lung, a broken jaw, lacerations to the face and scalp requiring the equivalent of over sixty sutures from a dermal regenerator, and both hands broken in multiple places consistent with defensive injuries, meaning he had been on the ground trying to protect his head while someone continued. The second individual had been transported unconscious with a severe cerebral contusion, bleeding on the brain, and a fractured vertebra in the cervical spine. He had been in surgery for six hours. He was currently in a medically induced coma. His prognosis was uncertain.

She set the PADD down carefully and looked at the table for a moment before she looked back at Harris.

"I understand the picture" she said. Her voice came out level which took more than she had expected it to take.

"These are not injuries sustained in a bar fight that got out of hand" Harris said. "These are injuries consistent with a sustained and deliberate assault. The individuals involved did not stop when the other party was incapacitated. They continued."

She thought about the forty five seconds. She thought about what was happening during those forty five seconds that she had not seen because she had been at the bar reaching for the comm panel. She thought about the man who was now in a medically induced coma with a fractured vertebra and bleeding on his brain and she thought that forty five seconds was a very long time and a very short time simultaneously depending on which end of it you were on.