I don't own anything…including Mass Effect.
CITADEL NEWS NETWORK:
Alliance Military's SSV Normandy destroyed, Shepard listed as a casualty.
ARCTURUS STATION- Systems Alliance has confirmed that Commander Jane Shepard has been killed in action. Shepard's ship, the SSV Normandy came under fire from an unknown vessel whilst patrolling the Amada system in the Omega Nebula. Although most of the crew was able to evacuate Shepard and twenty-one other crew member reportedly went down with the ship. Among the casualties is Executive Officer Charles Pressly, a decorated Alliance navigator.
Shepard dominated galactic news headlines since her appointment as the first human Spectre (Special Tactics and Reconnaissance) by the Citadel Council. Spectres , elite agents endorsed by the Citadel Council, are charged to uphold their interests throughout the galaxy. Shepard's appointment was seen as a breakthrough victory for humans and led to humanity establishing themselves more firmly in galactic politics.
Recently Shepard was hailed a hero by the galactic community. During the Battle of the Citadel it was the actions of Shepard and her team that saved the Council and the eliminated rogue turian spectre Saren Arterius and his ship Sovereign. Because of the heroism of Shepard and the Alliance Military, Captain David Anderson was also appointed to the Citadel Council.
Councilor Anderson held a special press conference on the Citadel following the Alliance's announcement of Shepard's death.
" A bright star has gone out. Commander Shepard was a hero. Not only did she advance humanity's standing in galactic affairs but has done much to improve our image. She will be mourned and remembered throughout the galaxy as a friend and a soldier"- Councilor David Anderson
A funeral service will be held on earth next week with an international day of mourning to follow. The service will be broadcast live on the Citadel News Network.
Before it had been silent but now there was only sound. Her vision was black and her body numb- the beep of medical equipment was deafening.
It was happening again.
She knew she had tried to wake up before -maybe even more than once- no definitely more than once.
How many times had it been now?
All she wanted to do was open her eyes.
Commander Shepard willed her fogged and stuttering mind to consciousness. Finally she managed to crack open her eyelids and brightness flooded in. Her senses began to come back to her. The smell of antiseptic stung her nose and she tasted plastic and tubes and something chemical and foul in her mouth. As her vision focused she tried to order her thoughts. Her memories of the events subsequent to her losing consciousness were tattered. She did recall there being an attack of some kind, but any details about what had occurred were lost all she remembered was the panic.
She reassured herself that she'd been in some bad scrapes before and this wasn't the first time she'd woken disorientated in the med bay. However Dr Chakwa's face was not among the two that swam above her and so fear and confusion began to clench at her chest. Try as she might to move, her body was numb and her limbs were too heavy lift. She tried to speak but her mouth was dry and choked with tubes. The two strangers seemed to be alarmed by her attempts to wake and Shepard soon felt drug-induced lethargy slither through her limbs. She wanted to scream at them no more drugs and no more medicine, no more tubes and needles – to just leave her be. But like a child's nightmare her screams emerged as frail inaudible things. The sedative misted her consciousness, stifling her thoughts. She fell into a deep and dreamless sleep where all hopes of escape were lost and forgotten.
Miranda Lawson stared at Jane Shepard. Not for the first time she marveled at how months ago the woman on the gurney before her had been some few pounds of decaying meat. Now, her vital signs and physiology all pointed to Shepard being a healthy, very alive being. She would almost call it a miracle were it not for two years of work, frustration and millions of credits.
When Cerberus received news of the Normandy's destruction and the loss of Shepard she'd been in her lab. The Illusive Man had called her to a meeting- it was the closest she had ever seen him to panicked. At the time they still held out hope that Shepard had survived despite intel that reported Normandy pilot Jeff Moreau's statement saying he'd watched Shepard get spaced. Had she survived? She'd been wearing military grade armor which would have protected her from a fair amount of damage. Unlikely? Definitely. Impossible? Maybe. But Shepard had made her name courting the dangerous and impossible and narrowly escaping. They had hoped that this time would be no different.
From the time Cerberus heard of the Normandy's destruction to the moment they discovered her body, The Illusive Man's fervor for the recovery mission had been unwavering- even though the Alliance announced Shepard as KIA. Looking back, Miranda realized that the Lazarus Project had been his contingency plan even then. Alive or dead, the Illusive Man wanted Jane Shepard.
Despite Cerberus assembling a search team in a handful of hours, it had taken days for them to find her. First they had to wait for the Alliance ship to leave. They thought the Alliance's investigation of the site would take weeks but to her surprise they simply surveyed the Normandy crash site from orbit. Reports intercepted from their "investigation" stated the wreckage was so bad, the damage to the Normandy so extensive that along with the accounts of Moreau and the surviving crew they had to conclude there was no way the Commander could have survived.
The wreck was horrific. Miranda had been one of the first to see it personally. Half of it still burned in a spectrum of colors- evidence of the rare resources and chemicals that had gone into the build of the vessel. The rest of the once proud ship was mangled and broken beyond recognition. Hopes at finding Shepard alive began to trickle away.
Even if she hadn't been in the ship when it crashed, that close to Alchera, she would have succumbed to the planet's gravitational pull and likely burned up upon entering its atmosphere.
They had spent almost a day putting out the fires from the crash. Despite the danger, the Illusive Man ordered them to go ahead and start the search immediately without making sure it was safe or the remaining wreckage structurally sound. Even Alchera itself was icy, treacherous and grim which affected the morale of her team along with the macabre nature of their task. It had been a miserable few days and all seemed hopeless. Witnessing the extent of damage to the Normandy had been the first blow. The second came when they recovered Shepard's helmet.
It was early in the third day when one of the team yelled over the comm channel at his discovery. They cleared the area surrounding the helmet of debris and crowded around it in a small circle. No one would touch it or move it. It was a monument to their failure and dashed hopes.
Unaware of his plans then, Miranda had been frustrated when the order came down from the Illusive Man that the body of Jane Shepard was to be recovered at all costs. And so the search continued.
Miserably, finally, it was found under a large pile of debris and junk. Like her beloved ship, Shepard's body was burnt and mangled in such a way that when Miranda looked upon it revulsion and hopelessness unfurled in her stomach.
They had carted the sad pile of meat and broken bones and placed it into an optimized stasis pod.
Then, outfitted with a space station, a team of brilliant doctors and scientists and the best technology available- the Lazarus Project began.
The council had long ruled that as with cloning, bringing dead sentient creatures back to life was definitely not on. Although they had the technology for it, re-animating a dead human body had never been done by humans before, rather it had been achieved by an obscure salarian doctor called Selarid. His findings, however, were dismissed due to his rigorous tests and procedures and the questionable ethics behind bringing the dead back to life. More than that, in order to obtain dead bodies to work on in the first place Selarid had euthanized his patients.
As usual, council regulations and questionable ethics didn't deter the Illusive Man. It was only after months of building on Selarid's research and testing that Shepard's corpse was taken out of stasis and operated upon. Even, then, as Miranda recalled, it was touch and go. Although the conditions of Alchera had help in the way of preserving the corpse from decomposition, it was still more degraded than anything Selarid had successfully brought back. They concluded that Shepard was to be rebuilt with a combination of organic tissue force grown from her DNA as well as substantial cybernetic implants.
And here she was, thought Miranda, checking that none of the many tubes attached to Shepard had detached during her recent episode. After her numerous attempts at awakening they had been steadily increasingly her sedatives to keep her under. The Illusive Man thought Miranda was delaying waking Shepard. But it wasn't all that simple. Although she and the doctors had gotten Shepard's body back to peak condition no one could comment on her mental state. Muscles and tissue were one thing, regenerating and revitalizing dead brain matter was infinitely more complex. The margin for error was infinitesimal.
After all this time, money and effort, if they were to wake her now and discover she was a drooling lunatic, well, Miranda didn't know what she would do. Rather the corpse had just been unsalvageable from the beginning then.
Wilson shuffled around the room checking machines and recording findings. He was more highly strung than usual.
"Wilson" She said firmly, " If you have something on your mind then rather leave that to me. This is a crucial stage, I won't tolerate mistakes". Wilson tensed as she took the datapad from his hands.
" You've been saying that for months. When are you going to do it?" He asked tightly.
" Soon," she said and dismissed him. It was only a matter of time. She was running out of excuses. Internally everything was fine but Miranda, ever the perfectionist she had insisted that if the Illusive Man wanted Shepard "complete"- exactly as she was before, then he would have to wait for her scarring to heal too. It would take a few days she concluded as she scrolled through the datapad of the latest test results. Neural activity was good, but the brain was always tricky. There was no way to predict if Shepard really would be the same person upon awakening.
And even on the off chance that Shepard was herself when she woke up there were no guarantees that she would be loyal to Cerberus. Miranda had worn out the argument of implanting a neural chip into Shepard's brain - the Illusive man wouldn't hear of it.
The lab was quiet and empty besides Miranda and Shepard. She made some last minute alterations to her sedative dosages.
"Won't be long now" Miranda said, regarding the comatose Commander, " You better be ready to save the galaxy again"
Hello, hello. Well this story had been on hiatus for a number of reasons- mostly to do with the fact that I was trying my best not to play Mass Effect until the ending DLC had been released. Well that's over now and let's say no more on the subject of the canon ending.
I read back what I had written recently and really, liked it but there were a few problems. I had originally planned this story as an in-depth (somewhat AU) look at the Shepard's turmoil at the beginning of ME2. I found her reaction to everything that had happened in the game extremely…flat. It annoyed me. She'd been brought back from the dead after two years without being asked and stuffed full of cybernetics, everyone she'd cared about had moved on with their lives, the people she'd worked for (council and alliance) had abandoned her as well as her findings (reapers) and then pretty much called her crazy. I know Shepard is supposed to be amazing etc but I don't think it's possible for anyone with any emotional depth not to react to all that.
So this fic was largely to remedy that for me. I'd planned to follow the game as closely as possible with a few exceptions. This plan has been scrapped.
I'd written a few chapters ahead and found that I was skipping out some of the most plot essential scenes because the "reader" already knew what had happened (as it happened in the game). Attempting to write theses scenes in, however, felt incredibly tedious, futile and time-consuming as I had to youtube cutescenes so I could remember details (sigh)…The result was that there was the inbetween moments of drama and emotions etc but very little plot kinda like all meat but no sandwich to hold it together.
So I'll be keeping the emotional turmoil stuff but a lot of the contents will be AU (the original collectors etc stuff will remain tho). Mostly in the form of plot that involves Shepard's past as well as existing elements in the game. It was planned originally as a sort of tangential chapter or two but will now make up most of the story. This isn't something I shoe-horned in…I put in a huge amount of effort to make it run streamline together with the canon plot without significantly altering it or its outcome.
so, yeah. Please enjoy