Alright, next chapter, coming up! Not very much to say now, but the afternote is extensive and more than makes up for it.

The theme for this chapter is Tonight we Ride by Unleash the Archers.


Chapter 2: An Illusive Man


"What the hell are you doing?!" Jacob exclaimed, reeling backwards but not lifting his gun as he recognised the woman on the far side of the door way at whom Shepard drew his own weapon.

"My job" she answered coldly and lowered her own gun. "Wilson betrayed us all". She looked to Shepard again, her eyes narrowing once more as she looked him up and down, seeing his clothes and weaponry and not being very surprised. "Commander Shepard. So you did make it all the way here. I was monitoring your progress until I was forced to" she shot a disgusted look at the dead man "multitask".

"You should have taken him alive" Shepard shot back, not lowering the gun, keeping it steadily pointing at her head until… what the hell was she wearing? "This your idea of due process? Even if he was your traitor, did he deserve that welcome?" She was wearing a white cat-suit, reinforced with thicker black over the shoulders and arms and integrated black boots over the shins and feet, but other than that it was pure white and seemingly plastic mesh, fitting her skin so snugly on her amply curved body that it must have been impossible to move. But move she did, and gracefully so, as she turned her cold blue eyes at Shepard and laid her head slightly to the side.

"He sabotaged the security system, killed my staff, and he would have killed us". So she was Miranda. She looked familiar… had he seen her when he woke up during his coma-or-whatever-it-was? And her Australian accent, so rare in this day and age – except for that damn stupid Hannigan who had used to tag him in the back all the time with her shotgun back in Hammer Squad – it must have been she who had woken him up and kept him alive.

"You sure about that, Miranda?" Jacob questioned even as her gaze was fixed on Shepard, examining him, appraising his appearance and the weakened paleness of his face from being understandably dead. "We worked with Wilson for years. What if you are wrong?"

"I'm never wrong" her gaze shot to Jacob for an instant before settling back on Shepard. "I'd thought you had learnt that by now, Jacob". Her hair was long. Shepard reacted immediately to that, as it was a rare sight in that day and age. All Alliance military officers were required to keep their hair short or in shortening buns to fit it beneath their helmets, and most people in the civilian sector had gone along with that fashion with all the exposure Alliance marines and navymen had gotten in the media during the thirty years since Shanxi and the First Contact War. But she wore her hair long, long and silky and black as sinful midnights, wavy down to her upper back, and it was… remarkable.

"You really think Wilson's capable of that?" Jacob went, his tone subdued as he went to Shepard and silently urging him to lower his weapon.

"Not anymore". She narrowed her eyes again, at Shepard's pistol this time. "Commander, this is getting ridiculous. I am Miranda Lawson, director of the Lazarus Project, and I am intending on taking you out of here to see my boss".

"The Illusive Man?" he didn't even consider going along with the wishes of those two and kept the barrels of his M-3 levelled at her head, ready to shoot at even the slightest hint of threatening movement. "I know you work for Cerberus".

"Jacob" Miranda admonished half-heartedly, though she didn't seem to be surprised. "Your conscience got the best of you again, I see. You really should have gotten rid of it by now".

"Lying to the Commander isn't going to get him to join our cause" Jacob defended his actions in an almost subdued manner, but she had more pressing matters on her mind.

"Lying and not telling the truth are not the same things, Taylor. Well, since we are getting everything out in the open now, could we have this discussion aboard the shuttle out of here? And could you please lower your pistol, Commander? I will answer any questions you have with complete honesty". She didn't even bother to hide the fact that she was obviously lying, Shepard reflected.

"I've had enough of this station for a lifetime" he grudgingly admitted as he lowered the gun to his side, knowing that they all needed each other for now and so could not afford to shoot each other just for the fun of it all.

"Or two, in your case. We are the only survivors left on this station according to my scans. Come on" she jerked her head at the shuttle doors.

"Convenient that you show up as we are leaving" Shepard questioned her timing as she opened the doors to that shuttle and showed him and Jacob in with little ceremony, closing the airlocked doors after them before she headed for the commanding console and pilot's chair, taking the helm by both. "Where were you during the attack?"

"Besides saving your life?" she mused without even a shred of amusement as she activated launching protocol and headed the shuttle for the hangar doors while Shepard and Jacob strapped themselves into the hard seats, the shuttle a repurposed and repainted Alliance Kodiak that was intimately familiar to the both of them. "Wilson figured out I was helping you and sent an army of mechs to take me out. You and Jacob dealt with the stragglers – I crushed the main force. I got to you as soon as I could". As the shuttle began speeding through the mass effect field blocking the hangar entrance and out into the starry void of space the faintest of smiles curved her lips ever so slightly. "Probably a little too soon if you'd ask Wilson".

"It's about three hours with shuttle to the relay, then another for blueshift and the way to Minuteman" Jacob said as he went to the far couches in the corner and rummaged around into one of the retractable compartments. "There should be some… aha! Jackpot!" In triumph he pulled out a heavy box of protein energy bars flavoured either chocolate or strawberry or both, showing it to the two other biotics as Miranda punched in the auto-pilot and then went to take a seat on the shuttle couch opposite where Shepard had slid down. All of them were biotics, so no one batted an eye when they all took a couple of bars each from the packet and downed them quickly. To Shepard's dry and battered throat and unyielding and stiff tongue there had nothing that tasted as sweet, and he kept on eating even when Miranda and Jacob were finished and they set about doing their job – which was taking care of him, it seemed.

"Your body is not rejecting the implants. Good" Miranda noted as she scanned him over with her Omni-tool, scowling at the data she got as Shepard happily munched away and Jacob handed him a bottle of water out of some hidden compartment. "And that's the only thing that's even in the same star system as 'good'. Your vitals are out of bounds, your heart-rate is in the yellow, and… did you take a stim-pack?"

"It was either that or have Wilson and Jacob shoulder all my weight" Shepard commented and sipped the water that was luke-warm, stale, tasted of plastic –and lay as gentle as the nectar of the gods upon his tongue. "Did I turn all of the stats in the red or something?"

"Nearly" her frown deepened. "But with rest and a proper diet and regular exercise your body should return to its original state… more or less. It's not your physical condition that worries me. It's your mental state. Your new biotic amps were not fully integrated with your skull before you started to rage about the station. We need to run some tests-"

"Come on, Miranda, don't you think the guy's had enough excitement for today?" Jacob questioned.

"Before you meet with the Illusive Man we need to ask a few questions to evaluate your condition" Miranda thoroughly ignored Jacob. "It's been two years since the attack. The Illusive Man needs to know that Shepard's mental faculties and personality are intact".

"Yeah, sure. Ask your questions" Shepard gruffed as he clutched his head, the stimpack wearing off and his physical state suddenly feeling very, very poor. "Just get over it quickly. If I'm stuck with you lot I'd like a bit of shut-eye before seeing your boss".

"Of course, Commander" she remarked as she activated her Omni-tool's datapad function and began to cycle through the standardised questions they had prepared for this very occasion. "You were born on Earth into poverty, with no record of your family. You enlisted into the Alliance navy at age eighteen" he smirked every so slightly at that, but she dismissed it as the antics of a confused man and Jacob didn't notice. "You earned much commendation fighting Batarians during the Skyllian blitz. You remember that, Commander?"

"Elysium?" He'd rather not think on it. Those were days of blood and fire, and the memory of them still shook him awake at times, sweating and panting and wondering when the next Batarian charge might end his life or when the bombs would start falling again, but everyone else didn't see the smoke of Elysium burning or the soot that was all the remnants of the dead left behind in a broken city. "I did what I have to do to stay alive and keep as many people as I could out of the hands of the slavers. That's all it was".

"Your dossier does mention that you tend towards needless humility" Miranda noted and punched some data into her files.

"Whatever you say it was damn impressive, sir" Jacob commented from aside.

"Your service history says that you partook in the counter-attack on Torfan" Miranda went onto the next question. "You had an altercation with one Major Kyle. Can you remember what it was about?"

"Kyle… Rider Kyle? Leader of the ground assault after Major Styles was injured and shipped off to the medics? Yeah". He remembered it well, that day only four years into his military service when he had been told to do the unthinkable. "Major Kyle told me to lead a squad down into a Batarian bunker complex and eliminate all resistance by any means necessary. Going down into that pit was suicide. I'd lose three fourths of my men on a meaningless charge. I punched him in the jaw and placed my troops around the entrances, starving the hostiles out instead. They tried to court-martial me for it, but Admiral Hackett had my back and had Kyle dishonourably discharged for his bloodthirsty orders".

"You saved a lot of people's lives, Commander. I had friends who were there". Jacob looked then to his director and boss with flinty eyes. "Satisfied, Miranda?"

"Almost. Let's try something more recent". So his memories seemed to be whole and his recollection unmarred by his death. Good. It was time to see if his moral compass had strayed after the shock of dying and then being resurrected. "Virmire, where you destroyed Saren's cloning facility: you had to leave one of your squad behind to die in the blast. Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko was killed in action. It was your call. Why did you leave him behind?"

Kaidan… Ashley was the one of them with any experience in a command position, so he had her running with Kirrahe, the Salarian STG commander they had run in to on Virmire. It made sense, as she could best correlate and coordinate their actions while Shepard laid the rear assault and Kaidan was stuck on bomb-duty. And saving her made sense too, as saving her meant saving the Salarian operatives too. The ruthless arithmetic of war… no, those were just hollow justifications he made to himself. "I let a friend die that day, and I didn't do it casually… but I had to save as many people as I could. Kaidan gave his life for the rest of the team. He died a hero". Which, he did not doubt, was no consolation to the victorious dead. "Without him, I couldn't have stopped Saren".

"I understand, Commander" Miranda nodded as she noted his reply in her data. "You did what you had to do to win that day. No one at Cerberus would begrudge your decision". He flinched at that, as she had expected, but it was important that he saw his own actions in the same light as theirs to make him more sympathetic to their cause and more pliable to the Illusive Man's suggestions. "Shepard, think back on the Citadel, after the Alliance saved the Destiny Ascension and the Council from Saren and the Reaper, Sovereign. What happened next?"

"Humanity was offered a spot on the Citadel Council. I recommended Captain Anderson, whom I served with and knew for a long time, for the position. He's a good man, stalwart in his principles, and I could think of no better man for the job".

"Yes" Miranda noted. "Captain Anderson is now Councillor Anderson… though I hear he preferred life in the military to politics".

"Still, it's good to know that the human representative on the Council isn't going to put politics ahead of defence" Jacob commented, to which Shepard made an internal note about Jacob having some conviction in the Cerberus xenophobic agenda. Defence against aliens was the only kind of defence one could prioritise when on the Council, and Shepard would much rather have a representative that would be there to vouchsafe peace, understanding and scientific and cultural achievement in cooperation with the other species. Well, he wasn't going to argue politics, not when he was that tired and dizzy and suddenly nauseous. "Is that enough, Miranda?" Jacob questioned his superior.

"I suppose it will have to do" Miranda, on her own hand, could tell that Shepard was bone weary and needed his rest. "You just rest, Commander. We'll look after you". He shot her a long look. He trusted her just about as far as he could throw her, and in his current state he judged that he was about as physically capable as a Salarian dying from old age, but… he was very tired, and nature took its course.

"Sure" he gruffed back at the two of them as he settled back against the corner of the shuttle, leaving the two to converse as he soon fell into a dreamless sleep. Hours seemed to pass in an instant, just like when he was dead, until he was awoken with bleary eyes when the shuttle doors opened and they were greeted by an entire battalion of a Cerberus escort. Half asleep and barely able to stand Jacob shouldered his weight as they exited the shuttle, most of the people expressing joy at Jacob's survival but kept a cold fear and healthy distance from Miranda.

"Report" she looked to one researcher who followed her along with Jacob and Shepard as the former Alliance soldier carried the Commander through the lofty metal halls of Minuteman Station, the main and much larger but also much easier to find Lazarus Cell facility. "How many people did we lose?"

"Thirty-one people, director Lawson, as we received kill-signals from all. Only you three and a… Wilson? – were unaccounted for" came the rapt reply by the smaller woman who was looking through her Omni-tool data.

"Wilson's dead" Miranda went with a nod as she showed Shepard and Jacob down a long corridor going down one wing of the station that seemed to be hardly inhabited though meticulously cleaned and maintained.

"Oh… I'm sad to hear that, ma'am" came the answer insincerely before she went to the next topic. "Ma'am, as your personnel officer I'm required to inform you that engineer Donnelly, who was recruited for phase two of the project, have been spreading rumours about Collectors being behind the disappearances of human colonies – and that they are working with the Reapers".

"He's not saying anything that isn't true" Jacob commented from beside the sleepy and barely conscious but still listening Commander.

"He isn't – but an operative who talks and spreads our secrets around is a poor operative" Miranda noted until they came to a fork in the road and stopped, turning to Jacob. "Take Shepard down to hallway seventeen and his cabin. The Illusive Man is busy according to the coms chatter, so we'll wake him when we need him".

"Aye aye" Jacob nodded and did as he was bid like the good little soldier he was, and Shepard wondered if there was anything more to him than that as he was helped down another hallway and then into a small suite to the right, a room dominated by a bed, a small table and a few chairs and a door leading to a rudimentary bathroom – a customary crew cabin of an Alliance space station. Cerberus must have built it after Alliance designs or bought it or otherwise acquired it from the Alliance. How deep pockets did these people have? "Get some shut-eye, Commander" Jacob gave his advice in a firm tone. "The Illusive Man will want to speak with you soon, but you need your rest. We'll be monitoring your vitals while you're out of commission".

"You're a good man, Jacob" Shepard noted and settled down on the corner of the bed with a grunt at his aching muscles.

"Sir…?"

"You're a good man, but I think you're with a bad crowd" he qualified at the former marine, who swallowed and looked away, turning his back on the Commander and heading for the door. He stopped in the doorway, and his final words were so quiet that Shepard almost thought he had imagined them.

"I think so too sometimes, sir" Jacob said before he left the room, leaving Shepard alone with his thoughts. Given the time in silence he examined the temporary cabin he had been given, looking for hidden weapons and bugs planted to spy on him. Of the former he found none, of the later he found many, one hidden in the frame of that picture framed and hanging on the far and otherwise spartan wall…

As he stared at its frozen wastes and icy spires rising from a black and uncaring rock he couldn't help but remember one such place he had gone to, long ago, before he was Commander Shepard, before Saren and the Normandy, before all of it. So long ago…

"Shepard!" Carmine snapped her fingers in front of his face, trying to get him to wake up before she threw subtlety to hell and shoved him hard over the armoured shoulder. "Shepard, wake up!"

"We're approaching the LZ, newbie" said Berger, sitting on the other side of the shuttle bench to Shepard's left while Carmine and Ryder were sitting to the right, the rest of hammer squad sitting directly opposite them with Chandra in the middle and Hannigan and Takaeda on the flanks. All of them were armoured in black and blue, their suites marked with the N7 logo. Shepard's was the newest member of their squad, and at the age of twenty three also the youngest. The year was 2179, and they were approaching their mission objective on the planet Jarla, a small frozen rock of a place in the arse-end of the Skyllian Verge.

"You should've woken me sooner" he complained and dragged his hand over his eyes as the rest of the team readied their weapons and checked their equipment one last time before they went in for the assault on the pirate base. In response to his grumbling Carmine winked at him.

"Don't be such a butter buster, newbie" she drawled with a chuckle, to which he grinned back. She was hot – he had to give her that, as young as he was – with stalwart and bright eyes and dark hair cut short at the nape of her neck. He had just been stationed aboard the SSV Everest a week earlier, and this was his first mission with the Assault Directive of the 103rd Marine regiment, so his mind was a little jumbled from all the recent changes. One week he had been graduating N7 training out of ICT in Rio on Earth, the next he was surrounded by strangers on classified missions. Well, sort of classified. When the other directives screwed up their missions they called the Assault Directive for backup, and of all the nine squads in the AD the Hammer Squad was the most brutal. And granted his service record Lieutenant Shepard's attachment to Hammer Squad was all but a forgone conclusion. "Nerves of steel, though. Sleeping before your first op with the 103rd – now I've seen everything!"

"Not so, ma'am" he shook his head at the second in command of the squad and reached for his helmet, showing it onto his head until it connected to the rest of his armour with a click, and then grasped for his shotgun. "Since Elysium the sound of explosions always lull me to sleep!"

"Hah!" she enjoyed his jest and showed it by slapping him fondly over the back of the helmet as she stood and put her helmet on too. "Hammer squad! Line up!" she barked as the first in command and her immediate superior entered the back of the shuttle as they formed up in two lines after seniority, Shepard being the last.

"Listen up, you maggots!" Major Briana Campbell had served some time as a drill sergeant on Arcturus Station's fort, and the experience showed in her constant cursing and barking and ordering them about despite the fact that even Corporal Chandra, the second shortest person in the squad, towered several inches over her as she posed herself before them, assault rifle in hand. "The Bats're all crawling over this sector like fangirls over Shepard-"

"Hey!" he protested to the amusement of the rest of the squad, the Major rolling her cybernetics-enhanced red eyes beneath the screen of her visor.

"Zip it, Ajax!" That was his call sign, as Carmine's was Siren, Chandra's was Kaboom, Berger's was Blades, Ryder's was Smiles, Tekaeda's was Hellfire and Hannigan's was Rodeo. The Major herself, in an instant of profound ironic humour given her tiny stature compared to the others, went by the name Titan. "Okay, shit-heads – here's the sit-rep! At eleven hundred hours this morning a frigate was shot down three klicks out of the LZ! The Bats promptly scooped them up and the crew's in hostile custody! Apparently they were sitting on some vital intel that could make the four-eyed freaks declare war on the Alliance – and if we let any of that intel escape this facility we can shove our heads between our legs and kiss our asses goodbye!"

"They're just Bats, ma'am" Chandra protested from his little corner of the formation. "We beat them on Elysium and Torfan. The fight's beaten out of them. We're fighting pirates, not military!"

"Shut your pie-hole, Chandra, before I fill it with my fist! Ever heard about the sleeping goddamned giant? No? Well, I damn well thought so! Now keep that dick-socket shut before you embarrass yourself further! We come in from the south, breach the bastards and kick their scaly asses back to Khar'shan! Attack formation Alessia!" Suddenly an explosion rocked the shuttle and sent all of them scrambling to stay upright. "Dammit, Carsen!" Campbell shouted into her earpiece at their shuttle pilot. "Where the hell did you learn to steer?!"

"LZ's hot, Major!" came the shout back over the intercom. "Taking fire! Bats're tagging us good!" Two other shuttles were flying interference along with Hammer Squad's, softening up the pirates' artillery so that their landing assault could become all the more impactful.

"Not as good as I tagged your mom last night, Carsen!" she snapped back before she looked to her squad. "Okay, change of plans! We go in hot, attack formation Fraustadt while Ajax and Hellfire does what they do best! Come on! Let's show those scaly sons of bitches who owns this galaxy! Earth Ascendant!"

"What's the time?!" Carmine barked at the rest of the squad, to which they, as one, lifted their guns and raised their voices.

"Hammer time!"

Shepard shook off his remembrances as he looked away from that planet, and headed for his bed. That moon, Jarla, had looked just like that, all ice and gravel, and the blood had flown in what had felt like rivers that night and seeped through the cracks of the planetary surface to strike icy veins far beneath that killing rock. There had been nearly a hundred hostile pirates at that stronghold, but none of them escaped for the shuttles that were attempting to leave were run aground by the Alliance war machines from the air. They had fewer people, but they had air superiority and the initiative, and in the end all but three Batarians were killed that night.

No one had counted the kills or confirmed them. They were Special Forces and their operations were classified anyway. It was enough for the admirals who directed them to know that the target had been eliminated with extreme prejudice.

Those days it had been simple, though, despite the gruesomeness of their work. Clear orders, clear mission objective, clear directives and an established chain of command to go through if you hadn't a clue of what to do. None of this Spectre or Cerberus ambiguity. It was nice being beholden only to yourself, of course it was, but when the faecal matter hit the carbon dioxide scrubbers there was always a sense of comfort in knowing that someone with a whole lot more experience than you had your back. Now there was no one. If things were as Miranda said they just point him to what needed doing and give him a firm slap on the ass to get him going. No regs, no chain of command, no clear objectives: just go and kill what needs killing. He wondered if anyone man should have all that power – and he wondered if he had a choice in the matter. The Reapers were coming, and in these Collectors were in cahoots with them…

It was on that dour note that Shepard finally fell asleep in that too soft bed. He was fearing for the future… but tomorrow would always come regardless.


He woke only a few hours later, rejuvenated but restless, and more or less sprang from his bed and into the shower connected to his cabin, taking the time to take a shower and get used to how his body looked now after he had been dead for a long time. His muscles had slackened, his skin rough with scars he didn't recognise, and there was a large knot in the skin just beneath the nape of his neck. Most distressing of it all though was the slight shine he could tell was in his eyes, a metallic glimpse in the deep of the lush green. Cybernetics, no doubt. He didn't notice it if he didn't think about it, but now that he knew it was present there was no way he could unsee it ever again.

No. He shook his head under the warm water of the shower and let his aching limps warm at the notion. Idle thinking like that lead nowhere and was nothing but unproductive. He was what he was now. He just hoped they hadn't installed some control chip or something into his brain. That'd just suck on so many levels.

After pulling on his new fatigue trousers but remaining shirtless he began his customary morning exercise that he always did unless he was called into an op or was in the middle of an active warzone: push ups, sit ups, crunches, leg folds and back raises before some stretching and shadow boxing. But to his disappointment it didn't go so well. Instead of his customary one hundred push-ups his arms trembled and gave out after eighteen, making him swear savagely over the incompetence of fate. But he forced himself through the entire set, even though he had to go to the bathroom and violently throw up by the end of it, and cooled himself down with trying to get his body to become accustomed to the old moves he had used to pull in hand-to-hand combat. His hips were stiff, his knees unyielding, his shoulders trembling from his previous exercise, but he forced himself through the practices.

It was in the middle of a roundhouse kick that Miranda entered his cabin unbid, but as she saw that he was intensely focused on getting his body back in shape she guessed that her message could wait a little. She settled back against the wall beside the door and watched him practice his kicks and his strikes and his combinations, thinking that his body, now glistening with sweat and muscles beneath his skin stretching it as they slowly began to return to their old elasticity, looked entirely different from when she had worked over his unconscious form only a few months ago, all haggard and pale and sunken. She watched him with… she guessed that sensation was pride over a job done well? And she had to admit, now that he was awake, that he was quite attractive.

"Something you wanted, Lawson?" he asked as he finished and settled back onto his cot, legs and arms trembling with the strain. "We're moving out soon, I hope?"

"You've decided to join us, Commander?" she wondered at his words, to which he shook his head and gestured to the room.

"This place… it could easily be turned into a cell. And I guess you had a point to bringing me back to life in the first place, so I'm willing to hear you out". Her previous words – no one at Cerberus would begrudge your decision – echoed in his head and made his hackles rise but still rang despicably true.

"Good. Shower and get dressed. The Illusive Man wants to speak with you" she informed but made no attempt to leave even when he stood and gave her a meaningful look. "I've relieved the guard at your door, and I will be the one to escort you to the mess hall and then to the Illusive Man. I will wait here until you are done".

He narrowed his eyes at her. "As long as you don't spy on me in the shower" he warned.

"Commander, please. I've spent the last two years and eleven days rebuilding you from naught. I have seen every single inch of your skin-" she gasped and averted her eyes when he, in a bout of spiteful childishness, pulled down his trousers almost pointedly, and a… point he certainly made. "Do hurry" she then implored him and went out the door, wondering what was going through the head of that damn infuriating man. Doubtlessly the same thing as went through the head of most people and aliens of a certain persuasion and orientation when they saw her dressed in her standard uniform. That was the point of her clothes and uniform, after all. Her looks were just another tool in her extensive arsenal of weapons… but she supposed either gender could weaponise their sexuality.

Almost twenty minutes later she led him, still holding a strawberry flavoured energy bar in one hand while happily munching on the caramel flavoured one he held in the other, both of which he had picked up from the station-side cantina, up a flight of metal stairs towards a small, featureless chamber. "Please stand on this dais, Commander" she indicated a small upraised circle of metal in the floor of the room, and confused he did as he was bid. "The Illusive Man will see you momentarily. If you would hand me your-"

"Shepard doesn't share food" he muttered back and shoved the rest of one energy bar whole into his mouth and the other down his pocket, to which she nodded curtly and then stepped from the room, leaving him all alone on the daise. "Wait-" with a mechanical hiss and the whirring of holographic machines firing up a screen rose from the edges of that dais, a scanner device meant to display his three dimensional image to a far-off location. Suddenly he found himself standing in a virtual representation of a massive office before a burning blue son just outside a panorama window, a man sitting in a throne-like chair in the centre of a great mirrored floor with his back surrounded by computerised holograms of a constant encrypted datastream.

"Commander Shepard" the Illusive Man was… surprisingly ordinary. He was well dressed, a little short, obviously affluent by the cut of his clothes and the way he carried himself, his hair greying so gracefully that Shepard was convinced it was either a wig or dyed. His only remarkable feature was his blue eyes, made even further striking by the cybernetic implants in them, just like those Shepard now had but much less obvious.

"Illusive Man. I'd thought we'd be meeting face to face". At the sight of the man responsible for so much destruction and carnage and senseless death Shepard supported his weight on his rear-most leg and crossed his arms before his chest, a pre-emptive glare directed the head of Cerberus's way.

"A necessary precaution. Not unusual for people who know what you and I know". The Illusive Man's voice, on the other hand, was entirely unordinary: smooth and authoritive, his every word a dagger coated in honey and silk, but there was a steely intelligence within it possessed of ruthless efficiency. What was going on with that, anyway? Shepard wondered. Was a voice like you did vid-trailers or audio books on a professional level a job requirement for becoming a Cerberus top-shot?

"You might be the reason I'm still alive, but that doesn't mean I trust you". No matter the voice, no matter the intelligence and the civil appearance despite the cigarette held in the Illusive Man's hand, he resolved to never trust the man. The devil kept a civilised appearance only to trick mortals into going along with his plans, after all. And Shepard would never work with terrorists.

"You need to put your personal feelings aside". At that Shepard couldn't help but arc his lips in a wry smile, scoffing in a low tone.

"Coming from the man who runs an entire organisation of xenophobic idealists, forgive me if that sounds insincere". Against his shrewd retort the Illusive Man narrowed his robotic, inhumanly cold eyes, cold enough to make Miranda's iciest glare seem like a heated begging for a romp in the hay.

"Humanity is up against the greatest threat of our brief existence" he spoke then, tapping his cigarette to get rid of some of the ash clinging to the embers on it's end like blood onto the hands of a mass murderer, his tone making no dispute as to what threat he was referring.

"The Reapers".

"Good to see your memory is still intact. How are you feeling?" He was making conversation, but… it was perfunctory, level and distant, as if fulfilling an obligation. He didn't care, not really. All he wanted was a soldier to fight for him.

"You need to earn the right to ask me those kinds of questions" Shepard wasn't politically inclined and thus had no patience for circular crap like that. He was a soldier, and Cerberus were terrorists. If the situation had been just a little different there there would have been nothing stopping him from pulling out shotgun and assault rifle and start wrecking the entire station – N7 style.

"Cerberus isn't evil. You and I are on the same side. We just have different methods". Yeah… but the surest sign of evil there was would be your own insistence that evil didn't exist. Once you had compromised yourself beyond the level of rationalisation by simple dichotomies, this wounding your own moral cornerstone irrevocably; that was when you started to espouse such practices. Things in the universe were hardly simple, Shepard had to say that – but there was such a thing as right and wrong. But he hadn't been brought back from the dead to argue moral philosophy.

"Cut to the chase" he snapped at the Illusive Man, who stiffened just a hint in his seat at the Commander's tone. "What were the Reapers doing that made you decide to bring me back?"

"We're at war" spoke the Illusive Man as he rose from his seat, stubbing out his cigarette and leaving the embers dying behind him. "No one wants to admit it, but humanity is under attack. While you've been sleeping entire colonies have been disappearing. Human colonies, all over the Terminus systems". So that was why they had brought him back, and why the Alliance wasn't doing anything to help contain the situation, leaving it in the hands of scum like Cerberus. "We believe that someone is working for the Reapers – just as Saren and the Geth aided Sovereign. You've seen it yourself. You bested all of them. That's just one reason we chose you".

"Nothing you say is going to convince me to trust you. I need more than words". After all, he talked a good game – but so did ambassador Udina, and Shepard absolutely loathed that man.

"I'd be disappointed if I could persuade you that easily. Go and see for yourself. I have a shuttle waiting to take you to Freedom's Progress: the latest colony to be abducted". The leader of Cerberus flicked out with one finger to bring up two screens to hover in the air on either side of him: dossiers with pictures of the two that had followed Shepard from Lazarus Station. "Miranda and Jacob will brief you".

"Is this a volunteer mission, or am I being volunteered?" This was all very lineal, and he was starting to feel cornered by Cerberus on one side and his own principles on the other.

"You always have a choice, Shepard. If you don't find the evidence we're both looking for, we can part ways amicably. But first, go to Freedom's Progress" said the Illusive Man as he sat back down upon his tone, his stare so intent that even Shepard had to look away, something not even a Reaper had been able to do. "Do you agree?"

"There was this dog once, back on Earth" Shepard spoke slowly, weighing every word carefully. "He was patchy, stank something horrible, and he thought he was better than us urchins. Used to chase us, and if he caught you he'd maul you something terrible. Thought he was just protecting his territory, being all noble and stuff. Actually he was a mad beast, a crazy dog kept up with nothing but hatred and bloodlust". Shepard looked the Illusive Man's impassive stare for the longest time. "We called him Cerberus".

"Did you, now?" the leader of "Humanity's vanguard" raised a calculating eyebrow. Such allegations were commonly levelled at him by those who he considered small-minded and simple.

"No" came the answer, making the Illusive Man smirk.

"That was very low of you, Commander".

"I'm officially KIA and working with terrorists" he grumbled back and crossed his arms before him before he cleared his throat. "I'll work with you" he grudgingly spoke as he felt like he was signing away soul to a demon. "People are disappearing, and the Alliance won't do anything about it. If it's connected to the Reapers-"... Well, if so they would just have to see.

"Good" came the nod. "I'm glad, Commander. We will have you shipped out ASAP. Your new ship and crew will be meeting you on Freedom's Progress. Miranda and Jacob will be joining you for the mission. Find out why our people are disappearing. Illusive Man out". And with that the holographic interface was switched off, leaving Shepard once more alone in a small and featureless room with nothing but his thoughts. As he stood there he barred his teeth for the faintest of instants.

He had been brought back from the dead by a shadowy cabal bent on subjugation and human advancement. And now, with not as much as a pause to breathe, he was being sent back to war. But he was a soldier, and fighting was what he did best.

So he had no idea if he bared his teeth in a resigned grimace or a battle-hungry snarl.

Most likely it was both.


"Why do you need all that armour, Commander?" Jacob wondered as they headed for the shuttle of Minuteman Station, Jacob and Miranda in their sleek and skin-tight uniforms making Shepard look decidedly out of place in his newly procured heavy ceramic and kevlar plating. "You're a biotic like us, sir. Why would you even need armour and kinetic shields when you can substitute it with biotic barriers?"

"You know what a cataphract is, Taylor?" Shepard asked back, rolling his armoured shoulders with a satisfied grin. It felt good being encased in plate again, and the rattling clamour caused by him stomping down the hallways in full armour was a joy to his ears. Of course he was just making noise for noise's sake, but if it pissed off those Cerberus terrorist dicks...

"Is it Ike a Turian thing, sir?" Jacob probed as he and Miranda both examined that suit of plate. The Commander had been given a suit like theirs with integrated Omni-tool and medi-gel dispensers and a VI-integrated visor, but he had taken one look at it, shrugged, frowned pensively, pulled out his pistol and shot it through the midsection, inspecting the hole burned through the suit before nodding and stomping off to find an armoury.

Ten minutes later he had emerged in black marine armour, modular plating and angular lines and all, the prototype of another few suits being loaded onto his Cerberus-supplied frigate as they went on the mission, the Cerberus logo on its shoulder covered with children's band aids in navy blue and butcher pink with little cartoon elephants on them stolen from the medbay aboard the station. The Cerberus medical officer who had been on duty at the hour of their arrival had been terrified when a full-armoured goliath of a Commander Shepard stomped into her med-bay and asked for the most twee band aids she had. Miranda had gotten a very stimulating call about that. She sighed internally at how much mouthing off she'd get during the next Cerberus Council session.

"A cataphract is a type of cavalry, Jacob" she informed while she internally sighed over how this would look in her report to the Illusive Man. "During the primitive wars on Earth two thousand years ago-"

"The elite Persian and then, later on, eastern Roman cavalry" Shepard interrupted with nary a glance at Miranda, the woman having done nothing to earn his trust so far. "They were the most skilled and ruthlessly trained warriors of their time, but their strength lay in their armour. Not just the protection it offered - the weight of their armour made their charge almost unstoppable. It's physics 101: velocity times mass equals net force on impact". Also, the fact that this new armour had a reinforced and raised neck-piece was quite comforting given how he had died the last time.

"Permission to say that you are insane, sir?" Jacob went, to which Shepard chuckled.

"Permission granted, officer" Shepard went, and Miranda snorted at the antics of the two. "Something on your mind, Lawson?"

"Relentless assault is nothing but suicidal when you are up against someone stronger or nastier than yourself" she espoused the experience she had gained over the years working for Cerberus as a project leader, administrator, spy, enforcer and sometimes assassin.

"Luckily I've never met anyone nastier than me who wasn't a Reaper" he made as if to dryly joke with her, but she merely shrugged it off. "There's all kinds of combat doctrines, Lawson - and I try to follow the one I know best" he answered her criticism readily as they descended the stairs into the shuttle bay, the odd Cerberus personnel giving them long looks but little else. It was odd, Shepard thought. They were in a military installation - or something that at least tried to look like one - so where were all the call signs, the Whiskey Tango Foxtrots and the salutes? He had probably just spent too much time on an Alliance warship.

As they boarded the shuttle to the nearby colony of Freedom's Progress Miranda gave her new commander the longest of looks, staring at his back as he climbed into a seat opposite from where she and Jacob sat down and the shuttle pilot, a man named Meyers who long since had his tongue ripped out by Turian pirates before he joined Cerberus and thus had to rely on a voice modulator to speak. He was wearing what seemed like an entire arsenal – a pistol, a submachine gun, one at each hip, a shotgun on the small of his back, and an assault rifle and a sniper rifle on his back on each side of a grenade launcher – and as the shuttle took off for deep space and Freedom's Progress he took out each weapon and one by one checked their status while he spoke to her and Jacob.

"If I'm going to be serving with you two from now on I need to know a little about you" he spoke while he checked the pistol slung from his right hip and the submachine gun hanging from his left. "Jacob, you talk like an Alliance soldier. Where did you train?"

"Utopia Relay boot camp, sir. Trained as biotic support officer - used to call us 'Vanguards of the Alliance Marines' - and Z-G certified at the Elysium Gates Station. Sir, if I may ask - what's the point of carrying both an assault rifle and a submachine gun?"

"The first one's for suppressive fire and formation assault" Shepard answered as he pointed to the assault rifle slung side by side with the grenade launcher they had picked up on Lazarus station and a sniper-rifle he had purloined from the armoury. "The second one's for when you need to take down shields with sustained fire at close range and use your other hand for biotics. If you trained out of Elysium you've must have been there during the blitz if you served for five years".

"Yeah. We were still cadets, away on field ops out in the Verge, when the Bats hit Elysium. Training was suspended and we were moved to Arcturus Station until the counter-push in 77, when we were sent in. I was assigned to a cruiser… the SSV Cairo. After Torfan some hot shot in charge noticed the way I made my pistol sing and that my dad used to be civilian spacer and transferred me to the Corsairs".

"I remember the Cairo" Shepard nodded, electing a glint of the eye from Jacob. "You laid down fire on the Batarian capital so that we could roll in the Grizzly tanks after and take out the resistance. I was on the ground, under Major Styles-"

"Styles? Like Major 'No Styles', from the SSV Buttplug?" At Miranda's long look at the two Jacob turned to her and began to explain. "The SSV Beirut. Styles was one mean SOB, and admiral Hackett wasn't much for the man – or so I heard. He and his ship were stuck on the rear guard during all deployments. That's why we called it the Buttplug: it was in the rear and full of shit. And 'Bats' is short for-"

"Batarians" she noted dryly before waving them on. "I figured as much. Don't let me interrupt your military reminiscence".

"ETA to Freedom's Progress?" Shepard inquired.

"Five hours, Commander" answered the synthesiser voice of the tongueless pilot, and Shepard shivered at the mechanical sound. Too much like Sovereign for his liking.

"Did we have to go from colony to colony in a tiny shuttle?" he asked Miranda and Jacob, and the latter shrug while the first only gave him a long look that told him that he had better things to do than complain. "I just mean… oh, never mind. So, Jacob – vanguard training out of Utopia. Fought with a guy from there once who had such training. We called him 'Kaboom'. Got himself blown to kingdom come in an op in Terminus space, so it was a little more appropriate than we thought. So… you specialise in pulling the enemy out of cover with tech and biotics, allowing people like me to close in and get the job done".

"That's one way of putting it, sir" Jacob nodded, surprised at the Commander's intimate knowledge of the fighting traditions of the Alliance to such a point that he could pin-point one's skills using only one's boot camp.

"Right. I need folk like that, you should know. You might've noticed, but I'm pretty hit-or-miss when it comes to my personal combat doctrine. How about you, Lawson?"

"If this is about qualifications you have nothing to worry about" she replied levelly as she tapped the edge of her seat with her fingers in an annoyed gesture. "I can crush a mech with my biotics or shoot its head off from a hundred yards – take your pick".

"You got a pretty advanced Omni-tool" he indicated her right forearm with a nod. "Custom stuff. Speaking of that, I noticed you only had the standard combat adapted ones in the armoury at Minuteman. It's not really like the ones they have at the ICT".

"I do have some tech and hacking expertise. Your point being?" Miranda wondered.

"Quite simply: where is my Omni-blade? I might be a biotic but amps overheat or break if you get as much as a fractured skull, and then what you have are guns and bombs and blades. Since you guys didn't have any grenades at the armoury I'm stuck with hitting things with the butt of my rifle like a vorcha construction worker if any hostiles come close enough to snuggle with me".

"Your new ship will meet up with us on Freedom's Progress – if you come to your senses and start working with us properly" Miranda admonished then, speaking firmly as if to a troublesome child… which she was starting to think that Shepard was being. "Aboard that ship is a state of the art armoury and weapons fabrication unit. You will have your heavy ordinance, don't you worry-"

"If I decide to join you?" his eyes became flinty hard as he stared back at her, fierce and unshaken.

"If you agree to work with us" she emphasised the differing words in that sentence from his original version as if it made all the difference in the world – which it very might well have done.

"Giving you a ship, a crew, resources and telling you to go nuts and raise hell?" Jacob went, ever trustworthy, defining the situation in short broad strokes. "It's one mighty fine sale's pitch, sir".

"It ain't about the sale's pitch, Jacob" Shepard looked to the slightly younger soldier with a heavy and contemplative look. "It's about saving people. It's about doing what's right. It's about helping one's people survive. There's a darkness coming – and I'll be damned if I let this galaxy go quietly into that good night".

"'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'" Miranda mused in response to his unintended quote of that old Earth poem, cocking her head to the side as Shepard slung back his pistol and submachine gun and took out to examine the sniper rifle. Maybe he wasn't just a dumb grunt that had gotten lucky after all. Maybe there was actually some usefulness and substance within him – though she would believe it when she saw it.

"You know, most people other than snipers and infiltrators don't bother with sniper rifles, Commander" Jacob went as Shepard extended the rifle to its full length and calibrated the sight for firing from more than two hundred yards but less than five hundred. "You got sniper training too?"

"Jack of all trades, master of none" he shrugged back. "I spent a lot of time with my crew when chasing Saren, and I made sure to learn at least a little from all of them. I don't have the patience or the head for advanced hacking and engineering, but… Tali showed me how to jury-rig a pistol into a makeshift bomb, and Garrus taught me a thing or two about sniping – though with him it was a little of a mutual exchange. I'm not the combat sniper he is, but I am easily as good as him in calm conditions".

"Is there anything you can't do, sir?" Jacob asked, clearly in awe, and the tone in his voice sickened Miranda. At his words Shepard grew a little flushed in the cheeks from embarrassment.

"I've been told that my dancing isn't… the greatest. Also, I couldn't tell you anything about colony development or financial regs if you put a gun to my head. I'm a soldier. It's all I am, and all I've ever wanted to be".

And now they were counting on him to save the entirety of humanity, Miranda reflected as silence settled around them, the man in question moving from examining his sniper rifle to his assault rifle to a heavy combat shotgun, muttering all the while about the poor quality of Terminus System's gear. Was he the warrior they needed to face the coming darkness?

She supposed that time would tell.


And time did tell – and brutally so.

Not six hours later they were hunkered down behind a blown apart concrete wall in what had used to be the central business district of Freedom's Progress, hiding from two YMIR mechs who, as opposed to the one Jacob and Shepard had taken down on Lazarus Station, were not too shy about using their built-in rocket launchers. Landing on Freedom's Progress had been an eerie thing: the small city was silent, silent as the grave, a ghost town from which it seemed the people had been as plucked out of existence by a sudden and merciless hand, leaving the homes and ways of the colony empty but still warm. Tables set to diners, ovens still heated, water taps in bathrooms still running – every single citizen of the colony seemed to have just winked out of existence.

But the peace hadn't lasted. As the three of them stalked through the walkways of the colony a rustling could be heard and then, from out of nowhere, service machines, both humanoid LOKI mechs and more rudimentary serving bots – everything from turrets and support mechs to hulking construction behemoths. They had blasted their way through the colony, wondering where all the machines had come from and why mechs were trying to murder Shepard wherever they went. Miranda had to give it to Shepard, though: he was indispensable in a firefight. Quickly they had settled into a rhythm under his command, a command he seized so readily and naturally that it was actually a little bizarre, with she and Jacob holding back on the flanks as support and holding the advancing machines back with suppressive fire while Shepard charged in, a flurry of biotic fire as he smashed the resistance to pieces.

But then… they had come across the Quarians.

In front of them, despite her protests and her presence, he disavowed Cerberus and all but dismissed them as xenophobes and terrorists when faced with someone from his old life appeared. Fool – Cerberus was so much more than that. The Quarians, led by someone called Tali whom Shepard had seemed to help out on some sort of pilgrimage – undoubtedly some sort of alien custom she was unfamiliar with – had come to rescue one of their own. The Quarians didn't want to work with Shepard, or Cerberus for that matter given what had transpired during the Idenna incident – she resolved to reading through the mission reports from that particular chain of events again when she had the time – but Shepard had somehow managed to convince them that more hands on deck meant a larger chance for them to find their wayward son.

But the Quarian commanders had proved unreliable, as Miranda had suspected. Aliens often did in her experience. They had charged recklessly ahead and into the main quarter of the colony while Shepard's squad took another route, and so it led to the current situation and their current predicament: Shepard had, out of some strange sense of altruism, gone to the aliens' rescue, and when finding that the Quarian landing party was under the assault of a pair of YMIR mechs going berserk.

Another thing Miranda noted about Shepard was the near-constant cursing, something certainly not in the dossier about his stats that had been complied for her when she was given the reins to the Lazarus project. It seemed to be a tool to help him work through a pressured situation, as when he did he began barking orders seconds later. Coping mechanism to the stresses of command under fire? Perhaps. He was very effective at controlling the situation despite his tendency to press the attack recklessly.

"Tali!" Shepard barked into the communicator as they dashed for another piece of cover when the closest YMIR mech fired a rocket their way, blowing up the steel crates behind them and blasting their contents into oblivion. "How's your people doing?! Any chance we might get some assistance over here?!"

"I've got five with suit raptures and one marine who won't wake up no matter what I try!" came the response, forcefully but a little shaken in her words as if she was close to crying. "If we draw their fire we'll be shredded, Shepard! I can't do that to the people under my command!"

"I understand, Tali" Shepard replied in a surprisingly gentle voice as he, Jacob and Miranda ducked in behind a discarded length of concrete walling on the edge of the small square around which the shops and businesses of Freedom's Progress once had stood vibrant with patrons and business. "Okay, squad!" Shepard snapped away from her, all business again, to look to Jacob and Miranda. "Jacob! I need you and Miranda to stall the YMIR closest to us! Can you two manage that?!"

"Sure, sir! Without it turning us into mincemeat?! Not very likely, sir!" Jacob quipped back, and Miranda shot him an iron look. This was not the time for jokes and jests.

"We will draw its fire, Commander" she replied at him, level and ice cold, her ability to keep her head clear in any situation one of her strongest points – and she had plenty of strong points and skills. "What will you do? This is going to be one thought son of a bitch to take down".

"Whatever comes natural, Miss Lawson" he drawled with a smirk as biotic power began to whirl around him, pooling at his feet and his fists in particular. "Just keep one of the uglies off me while I take care of the other one, okay?"

"All on your own, Shepard?" she wondered, just like Jacob, if bringing him back had somehow damaged his faculties and reduced him to insanity. "Are you sure-?"

"Just watch me, Lawson" his smirk grew to a full-on grin before he leapt out of cover and began springing in an arch to the left, staying out of the field of view of the mech that had been firing on them and sliding over the snow-covered frozen ground of that winter planet when ducking under a fired rocket even as he went. He slung back his shotgun and traded it for his assault rifle, firing wildly at the rear-most of the mechs while Miranda and Jacob fired at the foremost, dividing their attention and halving their effectiveness.

And that was the whole guiding principle, and one he had to live with as they were out of grenades for the launcher on his back. Dividae et impera – divide and conquer. One of the oldest and most useful pieces of tactical advice in human history.

Slinging out his assault rifle Shepard fired in the direction of the mech as his ran across the frozen streets of Freedom's Progress, not aiming as he ran but still making sure that he was at least hitting the giant mech in the general vicinity of its midriff. His fire wasn't meant to take it down, just meant to wear down its shields until he could actually hit it once the kinetic barriers had been short-circuited and depowered. He fired again and again – until he heard a low click and hiss and noted that his M-8 Avenger, a rudimentary model used by what felt like literally everyone in the entire galaxy and their cat, was overheated, the thermal clip in it spent and so hot to the touch that they smouldered when he ejected it and tossed the rifle aside.

Oh well. How was it they did on the vids again? He pulled one gun from each hip, pistol in one hand and submachine gun in the other as he turned on the mech and gathered as much biotic power into his legs as he dared with the tell-tale migraine of overheating amps making itself known in his head. Rushing right at it as it began to charge up it's accelerator cannon Shepard leapt high into the air the instant before it began firing, landing on the roof of a low building and sprinting along it while the mech gunned after him with machine relentlessness. He was making his way back to Jacob and Miranda – the comschatter was non-descript and fairly monotone, which was more than likely not a very good sign in his experience – leading the machine after him in a game of mecha cat-and-mouse.

In the end he decided the battle not with biotic power, which he was trying to save up on, or with the other weapons, which jammed or overheated or otherwise made him yearn for the guns he had been training with back in ICT, but with the sniper rifle. After having depleted the machine's barriers with pistol and submachine gun he used a shotgun to blast apart its armour while he landed on the ground not too far of a distance from where Miranda and Jacob were presumably holding the line – Major Kirrahe style – against the other YMIR mech. He had shot the legs out from under it using his shotgun before one shot it fired ruined it as the poorly optimised rifle all but exploded when heat from the internal emission sinks didn't get routed to the thermal clip as it should have been, and so he had to fall back some ways and bring out the only gun he had left, the sniper rifle. Calmly, meticulously, standing still as a few stray shots grazed his barriers, he lined up the mech's optics with barrel and scope until he breathed in, breathed out and then, in the breathless state between exhalation and inhalation, fired one shot through its metal bucket of a head that made it violently and rudely self-destruct. At last!

A fine shot, he remarked as he lowered the rifle with a smirk. Garrus would have been proud if he'd seen that.

Panting, internally celebrating he turned around – only to find himself standing face to face with the other giant mech, the destruction of its peer prioritising its vendetta protocol and making it hell bent on charging on Shepard. And Shepard, who only had a sniper rifle in his hands, could do very little as a rocket blasted from out of its arm cannon and came speeding towards him. He threw himself down and away, losing grip on the grip of the sniper rifle in the process, but it didn't matter much as the rocket missed him only to strike the concrete wall behind where he had been standing before, and large piece of shrapnel blasted off from its shell to pierce his armour through the back, not going all the way through the metal but enough the short-change the last of his kinetic barriers. Rising, dazed and wary, Shepard turned to climb onto his knees while the YMIR mech clanked its booming steps towards him, and when he did manage to look up at it was a mere couple of feet away.

Well, he was done for. That was what was going through his mind when that mech levelled its mass accelerator cannon at him. Quite anticlimactic, really. Being killed after people spent so much time rebuilding him –

But Miranda had other ideas.

Launching herself infront of the man by way of a running leap that would have been impossible for anyone but her to perform in the high heels of her cat-suit she rolled up in front of the downed Commander. With both hands stretched out before her as she pushed her barriers to the max and charged up a powerful dark energy field, a shield over her and Shepard against which the shots of that soon roaring machine gun bounced off harmlessly while she buckled under the strain of the relentless assault. Struggling to remain standing she braced that barrier on one forearm, holding her bulwark up with a trembling arm while her other, armed with Omni-tool whirring and active and shining brightly bronze-gold with terrible intent, activated an overload protocol. Suddenly the machine knelt over and twitched horribly as the static data and peaks in its power system rendered it incapable of firing anymore, at least for an instant of respite for Shepard and his squad.

Ripped from the cusp of certain death Shepard couldn't help but stare in disbelieving awe as Miranda turned to him, reaching out a slender and, to his eyes right then, perfectly slender hand for him to take.

"Come on, Commander" she panted as she pulled him to his feet as the giant mech shuddered and sputtered. "I've spent too much time on rebuilding you to have you die on me now". As she took his hand, her grip surprisingly strong despite the apparent thinness of her arms, he couldn't help but think… maybe it was because of the explosions or the near-death experience, maybe it was all the adrenalin hammering through his system, but he thought that she looked extremely beautiful right them. All dark hair and bright blue eyes and curves all over – he shook those inappropriate thoughts from his head as they both turned back to the fighting ahead. "Any thoughts on how to deal with this?"

"You're the one who was right about the suicidal charge-thing" he muttered and brushed the dust from his shoulders. "I need some better weapons for this crap".

"Or a better squad" Miranda noted and took a stance, readying biotics with one hand and lifting her gun with the other. "A suggestion, Commander – the shock is wearing off. We should decide on how to deal with it before it regains its upper edge!"

"Right!" he barked back and hunkered down, making a snap decision. "How're your barriers, Lawson?!"

"The best ones in the squad" she qualified, to which he scoffed.

"Like that says a lot – there's three of us!" he snapped with wide eyes to find her smiling ever so slightly, the first time he had seen her emit any sort of emotion besides the quickly vanished rage she had shown after killing Wilson. "Alright then, Miranda – juice me up! I need to be nice and covered before this! Jacob! Get your fat ass over here!"

"Aye aye, sir!" Jacob hurriedly obeyed and sprinted closer while internally making a note of adding another five hundred to his crunches count for his regular exercise as Miranda hit the mech with another overload protocol to keep it on its knees while she charged up her barriers around Shepard, keeping him encased in a heavy biotic field.

"Jacob, Lawson" Shepard grunted as he gathered his own biotic power as he began to levitate slightly off the ground at the behest of a now strained and panting Miranda. "Imagine that I'm the cannon ball and you're the cannon. On my mark you give me your best throw power square in the back!" The machine before them slowly stopped twitching and its optics lit up as it resumed its rocket launcher targeting protocol. "Now!"

And, fittingly enough, as if launched out of a cannon Shepard flew when Jacob and Miranda hit him in full tandem with their biotic throwing power, sending him hurtling through the air at almost rocket speed. This, of course, was just what he was counting on. Moving too fast for the mech to react to but too slow for its kinetic barriers to absorb the force of the strike he slammed into its upper midriff with tremendous force, sending it reeling backwards, and using all of his massed biotic power, gathered into his fist, he smashed into its optics, hoping for a result like the last one he had taken down on Lazarus Station.

However, as soon as his arm went through its skull he could hear a timer counting downwards, and he knew that he had made a slight mistake in presuming all version of the YMIR mechs were constructed the same. He had just about managed to retract his arm and his squadmates jumped into cover when the shell of that machine exploded.

Rising warily from being knocked down by the blast Miranda gathered her wits about her and tried to clear away the ringing in her ear, helping Jacob to her feet and wondering if she, cell director and one of the top nine members of Cerberus, would be resigned to picking up the slack after a whole bunch of thundering mercenary dickheads in the coming months. Dazed and grinning and looking a little like a bobble-head with its head not screwed on right Shepard came stumbling through the smoke and the dust, a grin on his face so stupid that Miranda had to struggle not to sock him right in the jaw right then and there. "That was awesome!" he exclaimed excitedly, a little too loudly to hear himself over his sudden deafness. "That one goes into the tactics manual! Whoa!"

"Ass" she growled at him before she managed to regain control over her emotions and her countenance and drew the mask of civility over her frustration. Had the substance she had perceived in him earlier been nothing but the golden light reflecting off a stream of stale urine, a precious shine imagined in an unpolished and unrefined surface?

"Walk it off, Lawson" he said more than a little smugly as he reached back and moved to roll his shoulders before his face changed abruptly from smugness to pained. "Damn shoulder" he muttered with a grunt and then moved to one wall of the city centre still standing, slamming said part of his anatomy into it until, even through the armour, a loud pop could be heard as his shoulder popped back into its socket. "Agh! Let's not put that in the tactics manual, after all. Damn that hurts!"

"What's the orders, Commander?" Jacob wondered as he supported himself by leaning onto his knees with his hands, dead tired and worn down to the bone next to the Titan of Elysium and the most skilled human this side of the universe.

"You and Lawson search the area. Check for any evidence on who's behind these abductions" he reached for the lump of scar-tissue on his neck behind the reinforced and raised collar and rubbed it with a gauntleted hand, frowning slightly. "I'll check on Tali and her people. I want checkups every five minutes, and if you run into trouble you call for backup – got it?" Nodding the three of them split off, Miranda heading west and further into the financial district while Jacob went east towards the warehouses and residential area. After some twenty minutes of searching Miranda's eye was caught by something that was amiss in such a small colony – an electronics' store.

Moving up along the wall to that electronics' store Miranda narrowed her eyes as she brought up her Omni-tool, nodding as she scanned for active datastreams and found just such emissions coming from a room in the back of the store. Moving through the shop, past whirring machinery seemingly set up as some sort of rudimentary proximity alarm which she disabled with a single sweep of her Omni-tool and a few applied hacking Vis. One to the far door to what once had been an office she overrode the locks with a simple manoeuvre and went inside, only to hear low and confused gibberish on the air. "Monsters come" a voice spoke from out of the mask of a Quarian in a white and red exo-suit perched before a whole wall of computer screens, hissing and spitting and obviously perched on the brink of insanity if not pushed off it already. "Monsters coming back. Mechs will protect. Safe from swarms. Have to hide. No monsters. No swarms. No-no-no-no-no".

"Commander?" Miranda asked softly into her communicator, receiving a signal of copying in return. "I've found your missing Quarian – and the source of our troubles here".

Shepard hurried over, the Quarian Tali and Jacob in tow, and what followed made Miranda once again amazed at the perceptive capabilities of the Illusive Man. She had complete and utter faith in his visions – and as he kept something very precious to her hostage under the purview of safety she had best remain so loyal – but even she had to admit that his suspicions of Collector intervention in the Reaper agenda seemed a little far-fetched. But in this, as the recordings kept by that Quarian, called Veetor or something – she really didn't care – showed, he had been right, as he had been in many things. He was almost as rarely wrong as she was. As the rumours that had been going around Minuteman and Lazarus Stations were confirmed she was more concerned with extracting the information that wasn't quite as obvious.

But Shepard, as always, would not have it.

"The information he possess might save lives – human lives, Commander" she protested coldly as she and Jacob followed Shepard out of the central district, heading back towards their shuttle and their way off Freedom's Progress, their feet making blank impressions in the thin layer of settled snow upon the ground. "You should have brought him back with us. If he knew anything else-"

"You say that as if there's a difference between the value of alien life and human life" Shepard noted darkly, not amused by her and Jacob's protests at him handing over the Quarian Veetor to his people instead of going into a Cerberus containment and interrogation chamber like he should've. "He was sick, frightened, alone and delirious. Veetor needs his home and his family now, not your tender mercies".

"If we lose any more human colonists because of your conscience getting the better of you, Commander, their lives are on your head" Miranda informed him in a tone as icy as the air around them, and Shepard turned in a flash, eyes set hard on hers in a manner most confrontational.

"That's a whole lot more of maybes based on mayhaps, Lawson" he rumbled. "I'm not letting fear compromise who I am. Never had, never will".

"Yeah, you two better chill the hell out before someone get shot" Jacob came to the rescue and gently pried the two apart, turning chiefly at the Commander as he pulled out his Omni-tool and pulled up a single image. "You're ship's in orbit around the planet, sir" he showed that image to Shepard, whose irritation was swept away before a charging tide of mournful yet jubilant nostalgia. "I thought you wanted to know that we rebuilt-"

"The Normandy" Shepard stared in awe at that image.

It seemed he wasn't the only one to have risen from the dead.


… And scene!

A/N: So… avid readers of my stuff might have noticed that I often include theme-songs to my writings. This is because I listen to music to get the creative juices flowing – so to speak – and I usually let one specific song decide the theme of the chapter. In this story I do that too, but I've also had a theme for each of the characters in Shepard's squad in mind. I include them here, mostly for my own reference, but in case anyone is curious you can read it too. To clarify – these are the songs I listen to when writing these characters. I own none of these songs, but I do like them.

Garrus: Nightwish's Kinslayer. 'Nuff said.

Grunt: Ensiferum - One Man Army. Perfect. Absolutely bloody perfect. Heh heh heh.

Jack: Arch Enemy's War Eternal suits her personality, while Stolen Life from the same band is perfect for her loyalty mission. In the third game it becomes Arch Enemy's Under Black Flags we March.

Jacob: Creedence Clearwater Revival's song Fortunate Son, one of my dad's old favourites.

Legion: The Enigma TNG's Vaden. Who needs words or lyrics when you are a machine and capable of instant communication and mechanic consensus?

Miranda: Amaranthe's Amaranthine for her romance with Sheppy, and Disturbed's Stricken for her loyalty mission. Somehow it's just what I imagine her relationship with her father and her sister being. In the Mass Effect 3 arc that themesong shifts to become Sabaton's To Hell and Back.

Mordin: the Higgs-Boson Songification. My two favourite things in the universe – science and heavy metal – uniting to become something glorious.

Samara: Hammerfall's Bushido for her character, and Miracle of Sound's Road Rage for her loyalty mission and her quest to end her beloved daughter.

Tali: Butcher Babies' Never Go Back for the abuse she suffers from all over in Mass Effect 2.

Thane: Breathe Life by Killswitch Engage. The title was just way too apropos to pass up on.

Zaeed: The Pretty Reckless' Messed Up World – the uncensored version. Money and cynicism in the extreme, as well as curses, fitting Zaeed to a tee.

And Sheppy's, good old Commander Shepard's, theme is Blood Bound by Hammerfall. Listen to it… you'll see why. Also the music video is so much awesome.

One last reflection: Miranda's power-set is very much like the Sentinel Shepard's – both biotic and tech abilities and wielding a heavy pistol and a submachine gun. I was wondering… she wears her cat suit per default, but maybe she gets that alternate appearance pack armour later on, and it just so happens to be tech armour like the Sentinel's? I like the idea of all of the characters in Sheppy's squad becoming more powerful, better armed and armoured in tandem with their story-wise ability.

And one last note: Miranda and Sheppy dislike and mistrust each other at first rather than the near-instantaneous camaraderie that occurs in the game, only to then grow closer until the point that they are almost stomach-churningly sweet with each other by the end. That's my head-Canon, anyway.

Now, question: should I change the rating of this fic to M, for Mature? I'll have to censor Jack's and Zaeed's dialogue otherwise, and I kind of don't want to do that. Let me know what you think by leaving a review! Until then…

DFTBA!