The dark haired, tall and slender, Australian woman, but with the perfect amount of curves stalked the, by now, very familiar hallways with a datapad in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Her destination was her private chambers after yet another long and extensive surgery on her subject. It was an exhausting and tedious amount of work, but her mind for perfection didn't allow her to make mistakes, so she made slow but immaculate process. She wouldn't allow anyone else to do the delicate work, no one else in the organization would be able to recreate what she did, thanks to her genetic altering from 'birth'. So far her subject was nothing more than meat and bones barely kept together by the suit it was found in. Almost every bone broken in some way, skin pale and cold, no oxygen left in the body, but the vacuum of space wasn't the thing that eventually offed her subject. It was hitting the atmosphere of a smaller rock, luckily with water similar to what could be found on earth, slightly higher in ph-values but it was a minor thing.
"I can't believe she is even in one piece, getting vented in to space with a tear in your suit is one thing. Entering atmo is another, but crashing into water at such velocities should have torn her body apart, not break her bones and rupture every organ in her body. And they want me to bring her back? This project is ridiculous, but nonetheless if funding is virtually unlimited it will just be a matter of time. I hope"
Three weeks had passed since her boss gave her this assignment, and for three weeks she at been carefully cutting and prying open the suit one piece at the time, slowly revealing the extension of her subjects injuries, multiple fatal ones, fragments of ribs had punctured lungs in multiple places, major blood vessels had been torn to shreds, the skull was fractured and even dented inwards on the right side, her jaw and teeth on the right side had likewise been crushed and broken beyond repair. And that's only some of it, the lack of oxygen had destroyed most of the sensitive nerve endings, her eyes was beyond repair, the temperature changes she must have experienced, first the burning cold from space, then the scorching heat from reentry. Not a single piece of skin was spared from the harsh environmental fluctuations.
"Thank god I'm not squeamish, Wilson couldn't even stay for longer than 2.8 minutes before he got all white and sweaty, incompetent fool."
As she reached her temporary domicile the door hissed open upon recognizing her DNA, and hissed again on closing behind her. She went over to her desk in the middle on the furthest wall of the room she entered, sat the datapad and her coffee mug on the left side on the desk, and gently lowered herself into the chair on her right. An orange holographic screen popped up with all the relevant info on her subject, she hadn't bothered looking at it until now, seeing as she have barely even gotten the subject out of the armor. She would have to read up on the slab of meat, she would need to know what it is she's working on, how she had looked before, she would have to imprint the visage of her subject to be able to fully recreate the symbol of hope. She opened the first folder called "Project Lazarus: Subject One" and swiped through a couple of the videos taken from the armor camera. She brought up the first one on the list. It was a long video, so she leaned back in the chair and pressed play. She reached for her coffee and got comfortable.
"Scalpel" she commanded, Wilson was surprisingly efficient these days. For six months the darkhaired bombshell had been removing and grafting on new skin. Organs had been taken out and replaced with temporary machines, the organs that were beyond recovery was replaced by permanent machines. The entire right arm was worse than initially thought. this extraordinary woman had been through hell, and yet here she was a new heart, handmade by her surgeon/doctor, the tall and beautiful one, not the bald weasel. In that arm only the shoulder was recoverable. The rest was now machine too. Both feet had been wrecked too, now also machine.
The woman on the table was currently 65% rebuilt. The head was the final big hurdle, most procedures on the body was done. But the head? It was only freed from the helmet last month. Scans upon scans showed the extensive damage. But seeing it was an entirely different thing. Where eyes should have been there was dark pits. The cave-in on the right side was her jaw, crushed bone and gravity had made it fall like a curtain, shutting off airways.
They had raised the jaw with clamps and cut out the fragments of bone lodged in the tissue, after that they put in a replica made from high density carbon nanotubes, the same as the rest of the body was replaced with. How The Illusive Man managed to get his hands on this material was a mystery, but it was incredibly resilient. Fitting, considering who it went in to.
Another month of work passed, and it was finally time to get to work on the skull. The dome was too brittle to leave as it was. So that too was replaced, so many parts of the subjects body was now manmade and not natural. The virtual tests revealed that this new Commander would be stronger, faster, better at handling information, deadlier. The Australian shot up from bed and grabbed her hexagon patterned white bodysuit, slipped it on and went straight for communications. She passed Wilson on the way bit she was in no mood to talk to him. The Illusive Man wasn't thinking straight, he couldn't let all this funding go to waste on a subject that wouldn't comply with his orders. As she reached the array she tuned in to hos frequency.
"Miranda, a pleasure to see you, it's been a while. How is the Commander holding up?" he asked in his usual confident and authoritative voice.
"With all due respect sir. I think you're making a mistake." She said concerned, "And what might warrant a mistake with this project. I put my best operative on it, surely it should be going just fine." He left no indication that he was concerned about billions of credits being used on one person, he clearly saw something in the Commander that Miranda didn't.
"I believe a control chip should be placed while we are operating on her brain" Miranda said in equal confidence.
"That is not up for discussion Ms. Lawson, I want the commander, the real commander. I don't want a tool, I want the image she represents, she needs to be the same as she was." He finalized but didn't terminate the call.
"Sir. She's gonna be stronger, smarter. When she wakes up she'll see the Cerberus logos and snap. You know her history with the company. I'm concerned about the facility's safety and the people in it."
"They are expendable, humanity needs Shepard. More than you know." He looked down in sorrow, for the first time since Miranda had first been introduced to him, he displayed emotion.
I know she's an icon to humanity, she's even a bloody icon to me. Embodying a will stronger than an element zero bomb. A tenacity more ferocious then a vessel in hyperdrive. She's all I wanted to be. But she's still a liability to the people in the facility, while he just sits on his chair in his remote base.
"I understand sir. Sorry for troubling you." She apologized.
"It's fine Miranda. I appreciate you coming directly to me with your concerns, I always admired your lack of fear. Most people wouldn't dare speak against me. It's nice having someone with backbone. Goodnight, Ms. Lawson." He said and terminated the call.
Miranda sighed and went back to her home. Another day tomorrow, another 8 hours of medical stuff. She needed the sleep, no matter how perfect she was made, exhaustion was still a thing. The last image she saw as she fell asleep was a portrait of Shepard on her bedside table. A portrait she had spent hours upon hours looking at. Memorizing all the details on Shepard's face. The barely there freckles, the red shoulder length hair. The beautiful green eyes. Softly tinted pink lips that curved a bit down at the corner, giving her a hard expression when resting her face. Miranda fell asleep to that picture once again. And soon enough, she was in her dream world, where Shepard showed up again. She did so more often than not these days.
Alright. Phew, Big fan of ME here, for newcomers to the universe, don't worry all technical terms will be explained, for my fellow fans, this is familiar I hope. My initial reason to write this was the amount of mislabeled FemShepXMiranda. I read the few rightly labeled ones and got inspired. Mostly canon, but it will diverge from the games, as I don't intend to rewrite that story, but places and characters will not be altered. I will however send them to planets unexplored in the games. I really hope I can capture some of the feel from the mass effect universe, but I'm still a beginner in writing so have that in mind. Other than that, I hope you enjoy this draft that I'll build on later.