Here there be spoilers. While I have altered things considerably, this is based on information in the leaked files.
Before the Collectors attacked the first Normandy, I'd never had any trouble telling what was alive and what wasn't. Then I died. Not "my heart stopped for a minute, and I was saved by modern medicine." Dead. Joined the choir invisible. Dr. Michel told me I was approximately eighty percent cybernetics. I tried not to think about whether that made me a man or a robot. Amazing how you could ignore existential questions by blowing up a bunch of husks. That was before the incident on Mars that had given my starship a body and more issues than Model Starships Today. Cerberus sent an android to infiltrate a research team. The android nearly killed Ash. Liara nearly scrapped the android. EDI decided to possess the android. I got drunk. Great story, isn't it?
EDI looked like a gorgeous human woman from a distance. Ample breasts, smooth skin, and a sculpted body straight out of my fantasies. It was only when I got close that the skin revealed itself to be nanofiber and her golden hair proved itself to be a single solid unit. The stories Dad had read me when he was on leave when I was a kid always warned against trusting things that looked human but weren't, and EDI made my skin crawl despite myself.
"Commander, I require your assistance with a personal matter." There was more inflection in her voice these days—a side effect of seizing control of the Cerberus infiltrator android—but still not quite enough. "I find myself thinking excessively about Jeff, particularly about the idea of kissing him and doing other things humans commonly term romantic." Her mechanical lips twisted into a mockery of a frown. "Romantic feelings are logical for organics as they help ensure continued reproduction. They provide no such benefit in my case. Why do I have them? They are intrusive."
A dull ache settled in my temples. I'd lost my mind. The Cat Six discharge I'd narrowly avoided after Torfan had finally caught up with me. That was the only possible explanation. "I need a drink." I turned on my heel to exit the AI core.
"You are agitated," EDI said placidly.
"My ship has just confessed to having the hots for my pilot, my human pilot. You're damn right I'm agitated." The ache intensified. "Any particular reason you're telling me this? I thought Cortez was helping you navigate human interaction?" The poor guy had volunteered, and I couldn't even blame it on her physique turning him into a gibbering idiot.
"He became very embarrassed. I believe he is shy when discussing personal matters. Given your romantic attachment to Operative Lawson before her death—"
Ice water flooded my veins the way it always did when someone mentioned Miranda's name. My heart beat faster. The sound of groaning metal filled my ears. Her death had given Miranda the power over me that she'd wanted so badly in life. I wondered if that control chip of hers would have screwed with me the way the sound of her name did now.
It took a second for my brain to come back to the real world. "Romantic attachment? You think Miranda and I—that we—"
"That you were involved in a romantic relationship," she said in the same calm tone. "I have been studying a great deal of human media in an attempt to understand my feelings for Jeff. The novels were very instructive. Your relationship with Operative Lawson shares several traits with that of the protagonists. The yelling, the cutting remarks, the coldness on her part and the hostility on yours."
I laughed. It was the kind of laugh you did when the world stopped making sense and you were trying not to go completely crazy. "You're getting advice from romance novels?"
"Would you suggest mysteries instead?"
"No, I—why are we even talking about this? Miranda and I hated each other." Or at least I had been pretty sure she had hated me. I still hated her. We had been mutually comprehensible and incompatible. I wouldn't play her little game and be buddies with Cerberus no matter how many nice toys she and her boss gave me. Nothing they did would ever make me forget Kahoku or that she had wanted to turn me into her personal slave. And then she'd decided to screw with me one last time on the Collector Base.
"Please, just regulate the oxygen flow or whatever it is you do." This time I did leave.
My muscles clenched and I felt like an assault rifle about to overheat. The sound of groaning metal grew louder, but this time there was a scream to go with it. Ever since Torfan, sometimes my brain wanted to remember things whether I did or not. I'd learned to pick my battles. If I fought it now, maybe I couldn't fight it later when I was under fire. So I let memory take over.
The Illusive Man was the only guy I knew who could look smug even in a hologram. "Shepard, you've done the impossible. The Collector Base is ours."
"Still have to blow it up." Behind me, Tali primed the charges.
"That won't be necessary. A radiation pulse could eliminate the Collectors but leave the base and its technology intact. This is our chance to use the Reapers technology against them. Think of the potential!"
"The potential to get indoctrinated or the potential to oppress other species? I know exactly what will happen if Cerberus gets its hands on this technology."
His eyes glowed a furious blue. "I didn't discard you. Don't be so quick to discard me. Only Cerberus can win this war and assure humanity's triumph."
"Domination, you mean. You want what you've always wanted. Power. Tali, activate the timer."
The Illusive Man rounded on Miranda, his movements jerky and wild. "Miranda, stop him!"
Tali and I exchanged a look, and my hand went to my sidearm. So this was how it ended. The Cerberus loyalist would finally stab me in the back. I could probably shoot her before she drew her gun. I'd certainly envisioned this day often enough, except she usually waited until after the mission was over before reminding me of her true loyalties. Not when I was bone tired and had just lost my crew and all but a handful of the ground team. You'd think even Miranda would have had enough death today.
She didn't answer. I tensed. She'd shoot me any minute now. Why wasn't she shooting?
"I gave you an order, Miranda."
She shook her head. For the first time, Miranda looked older than her age, not younger. "Consider this my resignation."
She'd died a few minutes later. I never did find out why Miranda had resigned rather than kill me that day. My brain kept conjuring her ghost to give an answer, but all I could do was relive the mission minute by agonizing minute. I thought I had her pegged, Cerberus loyalist to the last. But no, she chose me over them. Me.
The intercom sprang to life. "Shepard, it's Liara. I think I've got something."
Thank God, a sane person. Thank God, a person. Liara had done a better job exorcising Miranda's ghost than I had. There was no trace of her presence in the quarters now. The leather couches and chairs were gone, and the scent of jasmine had been replaced by the clean smell of pine. Banks of computers filled the room, the vast network of the Shadow Broker shrunk down to travel size. She looked tired, but we were all tired these days.
"Got a lead on our illusive friend?" I slouched against the bulkhead. The Illusive Man shouldn't have gotten under my skin like he did. I'd expected him to come after me, but working with the Reapers was a bit much even for him. I had believed him when he said he wanted to fight the Reapers; it was all the stuff he was planning to do in the meantime that I had a problem with. And thanks to EDI, I knew how essential he was to the smooth operation of Cerberus. Cerberus only had one head, not three. Eliminate him, and the organization would be directionless.
"I think so. Have you heard of Sanctuary?"
"The refugee camp set up on Horizon? There were ads all over the Citadel."
"Well, every week it receives medical supplies from New Dawn Pharmaceuticals and the Milky Way Foundation. Free supplies. There are also an unusually large number of transmissions coming in over a secure channel, though what that channel is changes frequently."
"So, we have a refugee camp getting free supplies from two Cerberus fronts and somebody there is sending out coded messages? Yep, that sounds suspicious. I'll tell Joker to set a course."
"There is one other thing." She swallowed. "I've traced the funding of Sanctuary. Henry Lawson is the primary benefactor."
"Miranda's father?" My voice came out in a croak. As much as I'd hated Miranda, we'd been in agreement about her dad. People like me got our hands dirty, so it was really important to know where to draw the line. I'd kidnapped people in the course of interrogations and assassinations, but never just so I could have control of them. "Something tells me he isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. Tell Joker to double-time it."
She looked at me, her gaze tinged with pity that she was trying and failing to hide. Liara might have been a badass information broker, but she was still crap at hiding her feelings. Or we'd linked brains once too often. "Are you okay with this?"
"With taking down a genuine scumbag and probably killing him? I live for these kinds of bright line cases."
"You know what I mean."
I did. "I'm okay. Now, try to get some sleep T'Soni. Big day tomorrow, and I'll want you groundside."
By the time I got to the captain's quarters, I was exhausted, but I knew I wouldn't go to sleep. When I was growing up, the station chaplain had made much of the communion of saints. The dead never truly left us and were active and involved in our lives, praying and interceding for us. Sometimes they even showed up as apparitions. My Catholicism was something I only trotted out for Easter and Christmas these days, but the idea stayed with me. Maybe it would explain why Miranda and all the rest of them kept bouncing around my head. They were ghosts that haunted me. Ashley, Kaidan, Miranda, all demanding something from me that I never gave them in life.
"If I kill him for you, will you leave me alone? I'm sorry I couldn't save you. My hand slipped and—" I shook my head. My ghosts had never cared about excuses.
Miranda
They called me the ghost of Cerberus past. I was an artifact, the relic of a time when Cerberus still believed in the defense and preservation of humanity. I was the only person on the station who wasn't indoctrinated. One of the few benefits of my current condition. A machine was immune to indoctrination. There were those who said I wasn't really Miranda Lawson at all, just an AI with all her memories until the end of the Lazarus Project. The closest thing I had to a body was a hologram projector. Blocks in my programming prevented me from acting against Cerberus.
The Illusive Man had never been one to quibble over metaphysics. He needed Miranda Lawson's expertise, and Cerberus had neither the time nor resources to commit to another Lazarus Project. A solution had been found. I couldn't blame him for that much. I had done the same to Shepard on his orders. I still thought. I still loved Oriana. My interior world was identical to the one I had had before my accident. Pondering anything else led to madness, if machines could go mad, and I had much larger concerns. Besides, there were those who said my genetics had made me inhuman even before my body had died.
No, the trouble wasn't the resurrection. The trouble was the helplessness. I'd seen the blue and silver metal that snaked around our soldiers' bodies. Saren had been similarly deformed. It was one thing to use Reaper technology, as we had with EDI. We had done more than that. We had become our enemy, indoctrinating soldiers for our use. Sometimes I feared it was even worse than that. Kai Leng had replaced me in the Illusive Man's favor, but I still heard of our operations. Killing a krogan female on Sur'Kesh. Assassinating Councilor Sparatus. Our every action seemed calculated not to advance humanity, but to divide and destabilize the galaxy. We were doing the Reapers work for them, and I could do nothing but watch.
The door opened, filling the station's AI core with a harsh light. Leng entered, nibbling on a nutrient bar. His favorite way of psychologically tormenting me. I remembered eating and drinking, of course, but they were no more than words. My senses had narrowed to sight and sound alone. I remembered loving coffee and even still had words to describe the taste, but I had no more a frame of reference than a blind man who said that the sky was blue. It was maddening. To only half-remember the sheer physicality of riding Jacob or the warmth of Oriana in my arms as I held her for the first and last time. I'd always considered myself cerebral, but the pleasures of the mind were empty without a body to anchor them. But I didn't need a body to be useful to Cerberus.
"Lawson," he said between bites, "your estimates were off. Gamma squad got wiped out by the Alliance. I thought you said the new enhancements would give them double the reaction time?"
"I said that reaction time would improve somewhere in the range of 40 to 100%. They performed within parameters. The technology is untested. It's not my fault that they performed at the low end of the scale." The truth was that 40% was closer to the average, and I'd manipulated a few of the samples specifically to create outliers. When your programming prevented you from lying, you got very good at manipulating the truth. "Maybe you should blame the leadership. It must be difficult transitioning from petty thug to squad leader.
Leng's eyes glowed behind the visor. It was Lazarus technology that had restored his sight and ability to walk after David Anderson left his body broken beyond repair. More proof, as if it was needed, that even the best technology can be twisted. "The boss thinks it's because the latest crop is defective. They don't make refugees like they used to. Should have known better than to hand something this important over to a Lawson."
"You're being more obscure than usual, Leng." I'd hated that about him on the rare occasions we have been forced to work together. He hardly ever came straight to a point. He enjoyed taunting and mockery too much. And I was everything he was sure Cerberus wasn't.
"Oh, that's right. You don't know." His lips curved into a faint smile, and I knew this was the real reason he'd come. "Henry Lawson is our newest cell leader."
"Preposterous. He despises you and has for twenty years."
"He did," Leng said lightly. "Amazing what handing over the long-lost daughter will do for a man's cooperation. Oriana should be settling in nicely on Sanctuary."
No, they wouldn't. They promised. Except of course they would. What was kidnapping and betrayal to an organization that indoctrinated its own members. And they had other ways of ensuring my loyalty. What was left of my world fractured into a thousand pieces. Rage, or what passed for it, overwhelmed me. I wished for the power to cry, to punch Leng, to do something. I'd kill them. I'd find a way to rescue Oriana. I opened my mouth to tell Leng that, but nothing came out. Threats were another thing beyond me now. "Go to hell, Leng."
"I'm being sent to scare Lawson into efficiency. Close enough." He finished the nutrient bar. "Wonder if that sister of yours would be willing to entertain me? Just as gorgeous as you were, and I hear she isn't nearly as bitchy."
I didn't dignify that with a response. Leng had never shown sexual or romantic interest in anyone or anything for all the years I'd known him. Oriana was safe from that particular terror. There were only millions of others she had to worry about. I had failed her. Utterly. And I could no longer even breathe properly. My little sister was in the clutches of the monster I had spent my entire life protecting her from. I had pledged my life to Cerberus to keep her safe. Only later had I come to believe in what I thought they were. And all that was for nothing. I had nothing anymore.
Nothing left to lose either. My processors supplied the thought with startling alacrity, Humans had an innate desire to live. AIs were created for a specific purpose. What had been my purpose when I was flesh and blood? To advance and protect humanity and to protect Oriana. Cerberus had betrayed the first, and I had failed in the second. Except… except I still had vengeance, didn't I? The basest of all human motivations, but still a motivation. I could hinder Cerberus. Leng had confirmed that much. What else would these blocks allow me to do? They were blunt instruments that only prevented me from doing or saying certain things. They didn't prevent me from thinking. And think I could. Perhaps more than think. The worst they could do was deactivate me, and that would only be mind catching up with body. I'd died on one suicide mission. One more made no difference.
For humanity. For Oriana. "Go. I have work to do."
I have changed things from the leak, as I said. Most notably, Sanctuary occurs just after the coup attempt on the Citadel. Structure will be similar to Shadow War, with every chapter a complete unit.