"How long between the altercation beginning and your call to security?" Harris said.

"Approximately forty five seconds" she said.

He made a note. She did not watch him make it this time.

"Ensign Zhao." His tone had gone careful in a way that she recognized as the tone people used when they were about to say something that was going to change something. "Your record is exemplary. Your performance reviews are consistently strong. Your technical evaluations are among the highest in your cohort." He looked at her. "This review is not about your competence as an engineer."

She waited.

"It is about the colony's relationship with the civilian population in this settlement. The individuals who sustained injuries are members of the colony council's extended family. The council has filed a formal complaint with Starfleet Command requesting a review of the conduct of Starfleet personnel present at the incident."

She held very still.

"The complaint names all Starfleet personnel present at the Anchor that evening" he said. "Including yourself."

"I did not participate in the altercation" she said.

"That is noted in your statement."

"I called security."

"That is also noted."

"One of those men may not recover" she said, and she had not planned to say it but it came out and she did not take it back because it was true and because sitting in this room talking about complaints and reviews while a man was in a coma with a fractured spine felt like something that needed to be said out loud regardless of what it did to her statement.

Harris looked at her. "Yes" he said. "That is correct."

"I know what I saw when I turned around" she said. "I know what I assessed and I know why I made the call I made and I know that forty five seconds was the fastest I could get to the comm panel from where I was standing." She held his gaze. "I also know that I looked at that medical report and I have to live with what was happening during those forty five seconds. I am not asking you to factor that into your review. I am telling you that I am aware of it."

Harris held her gaze for a long moment and she could not read what was behind it.

"What happens next?" she said.

"The review board will assess all statements and available evidence and make a determination. You will be notified of the outcome."

"And if the determination is adverse to me specifically. Despite my non participation."

"Administrative separation is one of the available outcomes" he said. "Among others."

She nodded.

There was nothing else to say. She had given an accurate report. She had noted her non participation. She had documented the call and the timeline and every decision she had made inside forty five seconds and the man in the coma was still in the coma and the review board was going to weigh what she had said against the medical report Harris had shown her and she already knew which one was going to weigh more.

"Thank you for your time Ensign" Harris said.

"Thank you" she said, and stood up and walked out.

She found an empty section of corridor and stood there with her hands at her sides and looked at the wall and thought about sixty sutures and a fractured spine and hands broken from trying to protect a head that kept getting hit anyway and thought about forty five seconds and thought that she would make the same call again because it had been the right call and that the right call and the call that was going to save her career were not the same call and that she had known that since she became a Starfleet officer and had never expected to find out exactly what that gap looked like from the inside.

She had a shift in engineering in forty minutes.