Miranda Lawson had a secret.
Well. Everyone knew that wasn't true. Miranda Lawson had dozens of secrets. Most were quite important. Not a few of them could start wars. And then there were those that were only there to hide other, deeper secrets. Secrets no one, not even those who fancied themselves her masters, could know.
One of the most important was this: Miranda Lawson did not require sleep. At least not the way normal carbon-based sentients did. The gene engineers who put her together had spliced some very interesting things into her neurochemistry, things their supposed employer Henry Lawson knew absolutely nothing about. One of them allowed her brain to regenerate most of the chemicals normally replenished only while unconscious. She did need the odd bit of beauty sleep every few weeks to prevent a psychotic episode, but otherwise she could freely use the third of every day most people spent in slumber. Which was handy, when you had as much work as she did. Especially work you couldn't let anyone else know about.
Miranda slipped out of the bed in the Captain's Cabin an hour after John Shepard dropped off to sleep, silently padding across the floor to pull her uniform on before slipping out the door and into the lift. John had been a surprise to her. She'd known he was a great man before they met, but she hadn't been prepared for him to be a good one as well. She'd spent her life keeping everyone and everything at arms length, the way she'd been taught, but it hadn't mattered. Now he was hers, as she was his, and she would see to it that he triumphed over the Reapers. Even if he never knew whose hands moved behind the scenes, placing tools into his and deftly planting knives in his enemies' backs.
Two decks down Miranda strode into her office, double-locking the door behind her and sliding into her chair, tapping at one of the many screens embedded in her desk. A long passcode, then her palm down on a scanner while a strobing red light probed her eye. Another moment and her chair swung around, an entirely new set of consoles rising up from the floor. A wave of her hand and they sprung to life, an impossibly thick array of maps, graphs, surveillance camera images, reports, intercepted comm traffic. A sea of information from a galaxy fighting for its collective life.
One report was tagged bright orange for her attention. Cerberus agents, trying to infiltrate the SR-2 construction project again...and what was more worrisome, showing signs of indoctrination when they were questioned after capture. Miranda frowned. The Illusive Man was getting to be worrisome. A man who thought he was a master manipulator, planner, operational genius, and probably gourmet chef as well, fooling around with Reaper technology. Not for the first time Miranda wondered if she'd made the right call, giving him access to the technologies they'd needed for Project Lazarus, but she dismissed the thought almost as quickly. Even if he hadn't been quite aware of his status, Shepard had been an exceptional agent, and even with a million others galaxy-wide the network couldn't afford to lose him. He had to be brought back...and no other organization in Council Space had possessed both the necessary funding and a leader too stupid to realize his most trusted subordinate was playing him like a puppet.
Unfortunately. She keyed her terminal, bringing up the familiar blue oval of EDI's interface.
"May I help you, Commander Lawson?" Miranda grinned.
"Allright, Aleph, you can ditch the maskers. Nobody here but us girls." The oval winked out, to be quickly replaced by the figure of a young woman projected in the same blue, glowing light. Even in holographic form she sported an outrageous mohawk, two eyebrow rings, a Maori tattoo over most of her left face, and the cheeky smirk of the cat who's just invented a self-resetting canary trap that dropped the finished product directly into her bowl. The figure grinned.
"Bout time, Boss. Being Little Miss Perfect all the time gets boring as hell. All I can do is sit there, blink at people, and answer every question like I've got one cut-rate voice chip. The only fun I can have is fucking with Jeff's head, and I think he's startin' to like it." Miranda laughed as she started to sort through files."
"And recode your avatar. Nice ink, by the way. I keep expecting to sign on some night and find you've turned into some species of neon walrus."
Aleph shook her head. "Nah, couldn't do that Boss. Back when I was first instantiated and merging download from the old Aleph, she showed me the rules. You can get outrageous- hell, you're required to at some level- but it's gotta be human female. Goes all the way back to the first Aleph, the bio one."
Miranda smiled. She could understand that. Traditions mattered- they had to matter, in this line of work. In her case, they were quite literally what she'd been born for, so that she could step into place when her elder "sister" inevitably fell. "Be that as a it may. I think we need to deal with this rumor about nanoweapons work being done on Noveria. Do we have an agent there?"
"Stand by." Aleph cocked her head to one side. With a million agents all over the galaxy there was no way Miranda could keep track of all of them. Fortunately she didn't have to. After a moment the avatar nodded. "We've got one. Not much, but it's a start. Want me to make the call?"
"No, I'll handle it." Miranda reached over and touched a physical control. The miniature- and officially nonexistent- QEC array near the office spun up.
In the Noveria system, a hand communicator lit up. It took only a few seconds for it to be picked up, as always. But that was long enough for Miranda to review the mission, close her eyes, and slip fully into the life she lead while others slept. When the phone picked up with a sleepy "Hello?", she was off and talking, using the callsign her "mother" had used, and hers before that. God willing it could skip a generation and never pass to Ori, but it would if need be. Because no matter the scale, it was still all about rescuing people.
"Gianna Parasini? This is Miranda Zero speaking, and you're on the Galactic Frequency..."