I won't preface this by saying I'm proud of what I did. But let me be clear; those were desperate times. And as the saying goes, they called for desperate measures. The galaxy as we knew it was crumbling around us, and not just for humanity, but for every race, every man, every woman and every child. The leaders of our proud galaxy were blind to the greatest threat that any of us had ever faced; and the one woman who not only believed but had the drive and the ability to stop them had been lost. And so when the most important project of my life failed, it was not greed, shame or even ego that drove me to do what I did – it was necessity.
Explosions, fizzling electricity, twisted screams. Nowhere to run but the emergency shuttles. Jacob Taylor knew when to abandon ship.
Unfortunately, Miranda apparently did not. "This place is lost. Grab her, and let's go." He said, grabbing her shoulder before she could turn on her heel in pursuit of the labs, her pale face uncharacteristically stricken with panic. God only knows what she thought was so important that it was worth risking both their lives over, and he didn't intend on waiting to find out.
"I need to get to-" His grip tightened on her shoulder, pulling her toward him with enough force to stop her in her tracks.
"Miranda." An explosion to their left knocked her off her feet, and she felt a sharp pain shoot up her left arm.
"Fuck. Fine, grab her and let's head for the shuttle. Careful with her Jacob." She scowled, unscrewing the tube of medi-gel and hastily applying it to the deep wound, wincing as the cool solution stung the open skin. Jacob hastily emerged with the limp body hoisted over his shoulder like a rag doll, arms dangling down past his chest and her scowl intensified. "I said be careful with her. She's worth more than this entire station-"
"Yeah, yeah. It won't matter unless we get to the shuttles soon, in case you haven't noticed, this whole god damn place is coming apart." He extended an arm to help her up, struggling slightly under the weight of the billion credit body and the two of them stumbled in the direction of the shuttles, Miranda muttering profanities under her breath the entire way. The station was a wreck, pieces of the once sturdy walls strewn across the ground along with the undoubtedly precious data that they had no time to collect. At least they'd been able to salvage the one thing that actually mattered.
They scrambled into the nearest shuttle and he punched in the coordination's for the nearest secure Cerberus base. "Put it on auto-pilot. I might need some help back here." Miranda sighed, glancing over the lifeless body slumped in front of her on the opposite bench.
"You think she'll wake up?"
"She was heavily sedated in the lab, though she could wake up at any time."
"Great. And what are we supposed to say when she does?"
"Let me handle that. The project was mine, this is my failure." She flinched while tending to the open wound below her wrist.
"This was Wilson's failure, not yours."
"I was placed in charge of the Lazarus Project. A failure to see we had a traitor in our midst was a failure on my part, and my part only." She blinked up at him, face unusually distraught for a woman always so calm, expressionless and in control. He'd known her for years now, liked to think he knew her better than anyone. He'd only ever seen her this distraught once, and it had been a long, long time ago. He looked over at her, but she avoided eye contact. "Check her vitals."
"Vitals look good. Physically, she's fine. What do we know about her expected mental condition?" Miranda resisted the urge to nibble at her bottom lip, as the two of them looked over the slumped body anxiously, face not visible beneath the messy auburn hair. "Miranda?" There was an uncomfortable pause as it dawned on him that the destruction of the station might not be the worst of their failures.
"She won't know who she is. Who she's.. supposed to be." Another uncomfortable pause as her words rattled around the near silence of the shuttle.
"I thought-"
"Genetically, she's identical. But she will have no recollection of who she is, or where she came from."
"You said that you had implanted memories, rebuilt neural pathways-"
"I did. On Shepard." She nodded over at the body and sighed heavily. "That.. is not Shepard."
"Where's Shepard?" He asked, though as he felt his stomach sinking and watched Miranda's steel blue eyes close in frustration, he already knew. Through the tiny porthole in the whirring shuttle, he watched as the station – along with the two year long prodigy that might just have had it in her to save the galaxy – burst into a final explosion of hot white heat.
"Gone." She said.