Wednesday afternoon
The shuttle rattles into life, and the door screeches its repeating siren as it closes.
The mole on the back of my neck is itching, and I feel almost unnaturally hot and sweaty and clammy. We've spent the last three days docked at the Citadel, refuelling, carrying out final repairs and upgrades in preparation for the assault on the Cerberus headquarters.
We arrive at the Normandy's shuttle bay in less than five minutes, and I head straight to the bridge.
"Just two unread mails at your private terminal, Commander."
"Thank you." I authenticate at the terminal and find two new mails. Personal-injury spam, and something from Miranda Lawson.
There's something wrong here, too. Something wrong again—the mails I looked up yesterday, all the other me's one line mails to Kaidan, are gone. There's a few between me and him, but they're all business-related, asking about his attempts to track down Biotics Division.
I feel my blood run cold. It's happened again? Is there something going on that's altering my past?
"Is there something wrong, Shepard?" Traynor asks, looking over from her own terminal.
"No," I lie. I open the last mail from Miranda.
Shepard,
I'd just like to thank you again for your help on Horizon. Whatever my father was thinking, Sanctuary was cold, even by his standards. Whatever monster masterminded this, I want a word with that. I know you're headed for Cronos station now, so you have my permission to blast the Illusive Man and his cronies to hell and back.
Maybe, when you win this war, we can retire to a little house somewhere and be happy. You've earned that. I hope we get the chance.
Yours, Miranda
"The plot thickens," I mutter under my breath, without realising I'm saying it out loud.
"Something wrong, Commander?"
"No, it's fine." I lock the terminal. "Specialist, is there anything I should know?"
"Lieutenant Cortez said he'd like a word. Something about Major Alenko, I think. In confidence."
"Of course. I'll head down to the shuttle bay now."
The doors still make a chiming noise, but it's different, a semitone higher in pitch and it only plays when the doors are sliding shut. The privacy of the elevator gives me a few moments to compose myself.
Something's happening to me. Either I'm going mad, or someone—or something—is messing with my past, transferring me to alternate realities. I'm roughly acquainted with the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which says that every possible outcome of any random event results in a parallel universe, but this still makes no sense.
"Shuttle bay—doors opening," the lift announces, in a male voice (it was female.) I can hear a guitar, and out-of-tune singing, a melody that I can roughly identify as You Are My Sunshine.
"Don't give up your day job, James," Steve calls from the Kodiak, a screwdriver between his teeth as he fiddles with an allen key. "Commander," he says, dropping the screwdriver and looking up, "do you have a moment?"
"Of course."
"Not here," he says, placing his tools in the box and locking them, "somewhere discreet."
Somewhere discreet? This was about Kaidan, so why…
"Traditionally," I say, "it's the server room."
Steve nods, locks his terminal and dusts off his hands.
"Have fun, try not to bugger each other!" Vega calls from across the room.
"Shut up, James," Steve snaps, as we enter the elevator and the doors close. "Sorry. He's got something up his ass lately."
"I didn't even realise he had a guitar."
Steve's eyebrows slide up his forehead. "Well, you've seen it before. You were the one who banned him from playing it on the crew deck."
I want to ask, was I? but I don't. We head to the AI core quietly, and I put a three-minute lock on the door. "OK, Steve. Shoot."
"I think Kaidan may be having trouble with his implant," Steve says, in a tone that's matter-of-fact and straightforward, but instinctively hushed.
I give myself a few seconds to process this information. Suspect he may be having trouble with his implant. I remember what Kaidan—the other Kaidan—told me: Chakwas had discovered a brain tumour, and remembering the way he'd broken that news makes my stomach churn.
"OK," I say, slowly. "Why are you coming to me about this?"
"Because I've spoken to him about it," Steve said, leaning against a handrail, "but he keeps fobbing me off. A sort of 'I can handle it, leave me alone' attitude."
"Alright." I try to forget that as I remember last night, Kaidan was in my bed, whispering affection into my ear as he clung to me. "And what makes you say this?"
"You must have noticed that his migraines are getting worse." Steve's face is drawn with genuine concern, and it's difficult to have to hold back the truth from him—the truth that I know Kaidan's dying, and there's a fifty-fifty (well, forty-sixty) chance that it won't matter if he survives this war or not, because the operation to save his life might well kill him.
I daren't, because I doubt Kaidan himself knows yet.
"I have noticed," I bluff. "Thanks for bringing this up, Steve. I'll do as you suggested, I'll ask Dr Chakwas to invite him in—"
"You mean Dr Michel."
"Yeah, Michel. I'll have a word with her, see if she can do anything about it. Thanks again, Steve." Michel? How is Dr Michel on the ship? I peer into the cupboard in the medical bay, and Dr Chakwas's ice brandy has vanished. Just a few bags of coffee beans in its place.
I head out into the mess, and sit for a while, breathing, trying to wrap this new world around my head. I am (or the other me—the third me is) in a relationship with Miranda, or was. Ash is still dead (my heart sinks as I remember that little detail, even though it seems distant by now, as if I've numbed myself to it) and Kaidan doesn't even know he's dying yet.
I flick up the war assets monitor on my omni-tool. The index stands at 3295. Forty-eight hours ago, I remember it being 5574. Maybe I'm using a different algorithm in this world, but—
My train of thought is interrupted by a pulsing light, the blue of a new mail notification. Diana Allers, with a one-liner marked urgent.
Ugh.
Remember our meeting for an interview. Five minutes, your quarters. Tart yourself up, you're going on camera. x
Sounds like her. It certainly reads like that short-sighted, naïve hack who I threw off my ship after she interviewed Ashley—and had the gall to suggest that I'd let Kaidan die so that we could keep our relationship going. (Extremely un-flattering footage of me in a skin-tight combat undersuit appeared on the next Battlespace, sent from Feros.)
Dreading more time in front of the camera, I adjust my leather jacket and my belt as the elevator glides to the loft. The doors slide open, and I enter my quarters.
She's already there.
On my bunk.
In a négligée.
"What's this?" I demand, my breath catching in my throat. Eyes front, soldier, I tell myself—she's not attractive, not pretty in any way, but it's impossible to avoid at least glancing at her breasts.
"Like I said," she says, smiling, "an interview. One on one, you and me."
No. No, this can't be real. She's sprawled, on my bed, legs slightly apart, and there's a camera hovering above the fish tank's control panel. This can't be real, it's like something out of a bad porn vid from the bowels of the extranet—but she's real, alright.
"You expect me to have sex with you," I say, blankly, actively averting my eyes from her cleavage.
"You did accept my offer to do an exclusive spread on you," she grins, with a sultry lick of the lips.
She didn't just say that. Did she? My mouth's dropped open and I snap it shut. "Do a spread on me. You…"
I take note of the camera again. Camera. She… no. Just, no.
"I think you should leave," I snap.
"I what?"
"I think you should leave," I repeat. "Now."
"Commander—"
"Ms Allers," I say, heading up to her and grasping her in the most appropriate way I can, "get out of my cabin."
"Get off me!" she protests as I lead her towards the threshold. "You can't just—"
"Yes I can," I interrupt, pushing her into the vestibule and pushing at the door control.
It's impossible to suppress a smirk as she vanishes behind the closing doors, but I feel a pang of worry in my stomach. Have I jumped between realities yet again without even noticing?
There's a gentle hum from Allers's camera, and I use Tali's overload app on my omni-tool to send it crashing to the floor in a puff of sparks and smoke, before retrieving the memory core from the slot on its side and flushing it down the toilet.
The mails are still the same when I check my terminal: there's still that message from Miranda, so I haven't gone time-hopping again. I notice that the me of this world has made heavy use of the notes application on the terminal: there's thousands of them, stretching back right to his entry to service. There's no references to Mindoir, or to Akuze—does this Shepard have an entirely different history? What are the odds of that happening by chance?
I find my finger drifting to my forehead, to the scar I've had for seven years at my hairline. It was the acid secretion of the thresher maw that caused that, and it's been a constant reminder of what happened on Akuze that's plagued me every time I've looked in the mirror.
It feels different, though. I examine it in the bathroom mirror: it looks substantially different, at a different angle, as if the cause was mechanical and not chemical. I've got plenty of physical wounds, and this looks like it happened from some kind of slashing action: a knife, or some other cutting tool.
I had asked Miranda why Cerberus had bothered to restore that scar to how it was, and she'd said that because of its prominence, if I were to lose it they'd feared I might not feel like the same man. I do now feel certain that I'm in someone else's skin: these scars aren't my scars, and my face is not my own.
I sit back at the terminal and open up my own dossier. SPECTRE SHEPARD John 5923-AC-2826. COMMANDER. IN SERVICE, SSV-SR-2, DEPLOYED: 12 FEBRUARY 2186. My date of birth is the same, but the location has moved to a hospital in Chicago, on Earth. And I'm no longer a refugee of the raid on Mindoir, but a former street rat turned good at eighteen, a war hero, a zero-to-hero icon. There's even a section here on endorsements: the other me has given an endorsement to what seems like every store on the Citadel.
Have I fallen into some kind of mirror universe? Am I standing in the skin of an evil twin? A double?
The other Shepard (the third Shepard—I really should be keeping count) has used the notes application on the computer as a de facto journal, but he's kept his notes concise, and to the point. They rarely discuss his personal life: there's the odd snide observation about a fellow crewman or a superior during a meeting, occasional musings on Liara, on the Eden Prime beacon, on Virmire (I skip over that, knowing it'll be too painful for me to read.)
One says:
I think Allers is making a play at me. It's lonely up here without Miranda.
Another, dated around five days later, reads:
I regret letting that damn hack on this boat. She's got me under her thumb like an insect.
An affair? For a moment, I muse that I didn't think I had it in me. Rather than get bogged down in semantics and metaphysics, I create a new note and flag it urgent.
Unfortunately I have had to terminate Ms Allers's exclusive deal. —A Friend
I sit back and chuckle, laughing for the first time in forty-eight hours. Part of me feels sorry that the other man with my face, with my name, with my skin has been driven into such loneliness that he'll have sex with a narcissistic gonzo-reporter. The other part enjoys the childish fun of a noble prank that I can tell myself has done him a favour.
The high doesn't last long, though. I'm still confused, and I still want answers. And I haven't spoken to anyone about this.
I can't speak to the whole crew, less still to the Council. They're not going to believe me if I go to them warning of some some nebulous threat in my own mind again.
Garrus.
I zip up my jacket, feeling cold all of a sudden, and march from my quarters into the elevator, down to the weapon battery.
"Shepard. I'm a little busy, anything you need?"
"I need to talk. Urgently. In confidence."
Garrus puts a three-minute lock on the door, and I lean as comfortably as I can against a safety rail. His mandibles are clenched tightly against his face: that's a turian's way of expressing surprise, given that they don't have eyebrows.
"Shoot," he says.
I open my mouth, and gulp down the words I was going to say because when I think them through they make no sense. "Something's happening to me," I blurt, "I'm not sure what, but something—or someone—seems to be changing events in my past. I'm not the same Commander Shepard that you know. My past is completely different, it's as if this is some kind of alternate reality—"
"Stop," Garrus says, mandibles firmly clenched. "I don't have a clue what you're talking about."
"For god's sake, Garrus," I plead, "believe in me, for now—"
"I do believe you, Shepard. I'd trust you to the end of the universe. Just start from the beginning, go slowly. We've got time," he says, re-configuring the door lock to ten minutes.
I take a deep breath, and try and explain everything: the way I remember my history, being born on Mindoir and nearly being killed by a thresher maw; how I remember Kaidan sacrificing himself on Virmire; how I came home one night to find he'd suddenly replaced Ash as squadmate, friend and lover. I spit out scores of disjointed theories involving quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the many-worlds interpretation; I confess the other-other Shepard's affair with Allers without even stopping to consider the ramifications.
"Garrus," I say, quickly, catching my breath, "even I don't know what's going on… for all I know, I could just be a brain in a jar."
"Well, in that case," he says, "I don't have much to add." He looks as baffled as I am. "I know you haven't been yourself, lately, but this…"
"Yeah." I feel ill, and there's sweat dripping down the back of my neck.
"Do you think it could be Cerberus?"
"Possibly. I—"
I'm interrupted by a chime of the intercom as EDI announces herself over the speaker. "Shepard. You may wish to go down to the starboard cargo bay. Ms Allers—"
"I'm on it." I don't need her to finish the sentence to know something's wrong. "We'll talk later," I tell Garrus, releasing the door.
I find Allers questioning Kaidan in the starboard cargo bay, and he's shifting on his feet, clearly uncomfortable.
"So you're not denying that you have had romantic relationships with men in the past."
"No, I'm not! I'm saying—" Kaidan begins.
"And you're not denying that you and Commander Shepard may, therefore, have had some kind of relationship going prior to the mission on Virmire?"
"I am categorically and absolutely denying—"
"Major Alenko," Allers interrupts, "do you feel that any sexual attraction between you and Commander Shepard may have—" and I can see where this is going and physically separate them, step before Allers, and glare into her eyes, too angry to even think about subconsciously staring at her breasts.
"Diana," I spit, "get off my ship."
"What?"
"Get off my ship. I'm ordering you to leave the Normandy at our next stop, and take all of your equipment, and your tabloid journalism with you! Is that understood?"
She pauses for a moment, her unnaturally shiny cheeks (enhanced with surgery? possibly) pouting. "You don't want the public to know the truth," she growls.
"I won't have the people I love turned into puppets for a hit piece. It's called friendship."
"And you seriously want to maroon me on Cronos Station," she hisses, accusingly, "and become known as the man who left a journalist to die behind enemy lines in a war zone?" For a moment, I think I can see genuine fear in her eyes.
"Yes. You're right. Change of plan." I call up a radio channel to the shuttle bay. "Cortez, do you think we can spare a lifeboat?"
"Of course!" Steve says, "anything for you, Commander."
"Good." I shut off my omni-tool. "Allers, pack your things and report to the shuttle bay. You'll go into a lifeboat and within five hours you'll be back on the Citadel."
There's a frown, a furious, vicious frown forming on her lips. "This is like something out of Soviet Russia. You're silencing someone who's trying to seek out the truth."
"Bullshit. You've got ninety minutes until we hit the first mass relay," I announce, checking my omni-tool. "Best get back to the playground, Diana. Enjoy your Pulitzer prize while it lasts."
"You can't do this," she bellows, storming towards the crew mess.
"I'm Commander Shepard," I call after her, "and this is my ship. I can do what I damn like."
There's a moment of silence as Allers vanishes around the corner. Kaidan looks at me, a smirk stuck behind his lips, unable to form fully.
"You enjoyed that, didn't you?"
"Damn straight I did," I say. "What did she want?"
"She was… um." Kaidan shuffled on his feet again. "She was trying to… insinuate that you rescued me on Virmire and let Ash die because we were fraternising."
Extraordinary. "That's callous," I say, "even by her standards."
"I don't know how you put up with her for so long," he says, his voice becoming slightly faint.
"Don't let it get to you, Kaidan," I say, gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. "The only reason I…"
I pause for a moment, wondering if the events on Virmire were different in this world. Of course they were: Kaidan was alive and Ash was dead and all I wanted, more than anything, was to fall back into her arms and tell her I loved her.
"The only reason I rescued you on Virmire is because the HUD said you were closer," I say, reversing the events as I remember them happening. "And it's… it's not something I'm proud of."
He breaks into a forlorn smile. "Yeah. Well… thanks, Shepard." He takes a deep breath and squeezes his eyes open and shut. Migraine.
"You don't look well, Major," I say, remembering Steve's conversation and my 'insider' knowledge.
"I'm fine, Shepard. I just… I need a couple of minutes." He places his fingers at his temples and averts his eyes, looking away from Allers's lighting rig.
"Go to the observation deck," I tell him, sending a message on my omni-tool to Michel (Michel, remember, not Chakwas.) "I'll get the doc to meet you there with some pain meds."
Kaidan smiles again, and breathes a deep sigh (I'd forgotten, in his two-year absence, how much he did that.) "Thanks, Shepard. I, uh… I owe you."
I can read behind the smile: he's clearly infatuated with me (with the third Shepard, I remind myself.) This Kaidan doesn't have me, like the other Kaidan did, but he still wants me. There's a twist of heartbreak in his eyes, the lines of his face, and I remember that the only romantic relationship Kaidan had ever mentioned was his teenage crush on Rahna.
Did he feel like that about me on the first Normandy, before Virmire? In my world? Stop it.
Whatever happens, I do hope, beyond anything, that Kaidan—this Kaidan—finds happiness in the end. He was and is a good soldier, and a good friend, and he deserves better than to stare down death with an unrequited love in the back of his mind.
As I head back to my quarters, I wonder what happened to the other alternate realities. What's happening to the Kaidan who was madly in love with the other me last night? What's happening to Ash? How many mes are there? What's happening to the Shepards I've displaced? Do they even exist?
Am I just a brain in a jar?
I'm thinking too much, I decide, and I'm exhausted. This Shepard has rum in his private refrigerator, rather than whiskey, but it'll do.
I spend the next thirty minutes or so swilling rum around in a glass, drowning my sorrows and thinking about how much I want Ash back. I contemplate my pity for the Shepard of this world, for Kaidan, and I even feel a little guilt for how I treated Allers.
It's not enough to stop me drifting to sleep before long.
REM
"Shepard!"
I'm not in the forest this time. I'm on the Citadel, at Huerta Memorial, and the mole on the back of my neck is itching.
BOOM.
Kaidan's lying on a gurney, hooked up to a million monitors, the colour drained from his bare torso, his hair tousled into unattractive curls, and he's dying. Dying like Ash was, except he's actually dying, I can see his ECG flatlining, and—
BOOM.
I'm chasing the boy again, through the streets and stairwells of the Citadel, vaulting over barriers and barging through crowds of people, tossing an elcor to the side, as Sovereign's terrible silhouette eclipses the artificial sunlight.
BOOM.
And he's running from an elevator, running into Ash's arms, and this is like the coup attempt, and I'm pointing my gun at Ash and— and—
BOOM.
The bullet tears through her armour and hits her straight in the stomach, and I rush towards her, holding her as she screams "you bastard! You monster! How could you—" and Sovereign is joined by Harbinger, and scores more Reapers, as the boy runs perfectly into the focal point of their fire and all the Old Machines exalt.
BOOM.
Thursday morning
It takes a while for the confusion of the cold sweat to wear off, but I can sense there's something different already.
The tinge of the lights is redder, and the Normandy's machinery seems to be growling more ferociously. My fatigues seem to be itching, starchier, cheaper, tighter, and—
I've grown breasts.
I blink. They're still there. Two bumps on my chest, which behave like breasts do when I prod them to check they're there.
"Shit," I mutter, and realise my voice has become higher-pitched, smoother, less bassy—that of a woman. Gently, afraid as to what I'll find, I lift up the waistband of my fatigue pants.
I'm a woman.
That's enough to bring a wave of nausea over me, and I rush for the bathroom and spew violently into the toilet. God, this is sick…
I rinse out my mouth and peer at my new face (or the face I've ended up with) in the mirror. As female faces go, it's not bad: I have chin-length auburn hair, a strong nose and green eyes. On the other hand, the scars from Cerberus's reconstruction are still there, sticking out like a sore thumb, glowing bright orange. I don't like them.
But whatever's happening, this is crazy. And I want it to stop. Now.
There's a squeal of an alarm from my private terminal. Incoming message from the bridge.
"Commander Shepard," EDI announces, "we are six hours from Cronos Station. Mister Moreau is running the simulations on our final approach as we speak."
"Good," I say, still not used to the sound of this Shepard's voice, "I'll be down in a moment."
This Shepard has no coffee in his—in her cabin: only boxes and boxes of earl grey tea pods. It's no substitute, but it wakes me up enough to slink down to the bridge and groggily check the assets list in the war room.
The index is 1846. The quarian fleet isn't present, neither is the ANN, neither are most of Aria's merc contracts.
"Shit, shit, shit shit shit shit shit," I mutter under my breath, paging through the asset history. Geth saved at the cost of a massacre of the quarian flotilla, many asari fleets lost completely. Grissom Academy gone, the second human Spectre, Ash Williams, dead in circumstances I don't have the will nor the stomach to read about. The other Shepard, the woman whose body I now occupy, has ordered that the pressure is to be kept on the Reapers at every opportunity.
Not my policy, but for now, I hope to god that it pays off.
"Looks grim, doesn't it?"
I look over my shoulder: it's Garrus, in a suit of armour I don't recognise. "Yeah."
"It's now or never, though. And I'd trust you to lead me through this more than anyone, Shepard," he says, clapping his hand on my shoulder and resting it there for a while. It's as if we never had our conversation yesterday: I'm afraid to ask if we did.
I spend five minutes or so speaking to Admiral Hackett on vid-comm. The Crucible is nominally complete apart from the Catalyst, and we still have no idea exactly what this enormous weapon is actually supposed to do. But if we leave it any longer, we risk losing the element of surprise, Hackett agrees: now's our best shot.
"After this," he declares, "it's one final push to Earth, and then we can smash the Reapers to hell."
"Assuming we're successful," I say.
"With all due respect, Shepard, now isn't the time to play devil's advocate."
I pause for a moment, feeling more than a little hopeless. "You're right."
"I understand the numbers look pretty grim, but in the end, it's boots on the ground that matter. Remember Torfan, you of all people understand that."
"Yes, sir," I say, not remembering anything about Torfan at all.
"Good. I'll leave you to prepare, send us a ping when you're ready," Hackett's hologram says, flickering. "Hackett, out."
His image disintegrates into red particles, and I lean against the handrail. I take a deep breath—I can't afford to let this time-travelling, many-worlds crap get in the way of the assault, or there won't be any worlds left at all.
"Ma'am," Traynor's voice comes over the intercom, "your mother is available on vid-comm."
I do a double-take. "My mother?"
"Yes, ma'am," Traynor says. "She's available from the Orziba. Shall I patch her through?"
What—how? My mother's been dead for eighteen years, slaughtered by Batarians on Mindoir, but—I touch the control apprehensively, and a hologram forms in the booth.
She's in an Alliance uniform with the rank insignia of a Rear Admiral on her epaulettes, slimmer than I remember her, her hair grey and neatly curled, but—
"Mom," I whisper, faintly.
"Darling," she begins, and the sound of her voice (it's got a harder edge, the voice of a navy shipmaster, but it's certainly her) stabs at my heart like a Prothean memory shard, "I'm not sure what to say. I doubt many mothers would be proud to send their own daughter to war, but…"
"But what?" I feel myself smiling.
"I'm proud of you," she says. "Whatever happens, I'm proud of you, and we're all trusting you to win this war."
"No pressure," I smile, forlornly, weakly.
"I know you can do it, dear."
"Thank you."
"Just… be brave," she says, clearly steeling herself from tears welling behind her eyes, "and do your mom and dad proud."
This is—this is—
"I love you, mom," I whisper.
"We love you too, darling. Stay safe," Mom smiles, and stands to attention. "Shepard Senior, out."
The hologram fades too soon, and I find myself reaching over the handrail and into the booth as the image of my mother disintegrates into glowing particles.
I watched my mom get shot by a Batarian on Mindoir, I heard her sobs as she lay, dying, screaming at me to leave her, to run for the caves, to use my OmniComp to signal for help. The last words I ever heard her say were forever etched, excruciatingly, into my mind, flashing before my eyes every time I saw a photograph, or remembered her voice.
"I love you, darling. Stay safe."
And, for one moment, I forget that I'm Commander Shepard with the weight of the galaxy on my shoulders, and weep unashamedly at the vid-comm terminal.
After what feels like forever, I hear the wailing of a klaxon as the door slides open, and footsteps. I don't care who it is, and I don't care that they're seeing me in a moment of weakness. I've lost my mom and I've lost Ash and I've lost Kaidan and I want her back, and I want her back, and I want him back, and I want a fairytale ending that'll never happen.
"Can I get you anything, Shepard?" It's Liara, and she places her hand on my shoulder as I continue sobbing.
"No," I snap, and immediately feel bad and allow more tears to fall.
"You're exhausted," Liara says, gently. "You need some rest."
"I can't rest," I say, sniffing, "I've got to press on."
"We don't arrive at Cronos Station for another five hours." She places her hand on my face, and I forget the now-perpetual feeling of guilt and betrayal. It feels nice, comforting. "A few minutes R&R won't hurt you."
She wipes the tears from my eyes, and kisses me on the cheek.
"Perhaps you're right," I concede, falling into her embrace.
Sex with an asari isn't like sex with another human. It's purely electrical in nature, the melding of consciousnesses via nervous impulses. I'm glad not to have to learn how to use my new genitals yet, but afterwards, Liara gives me a look of hard, pensive thought.
She knows. She knows everything. Of course she does, she doesn't need to ask me about my experiences, and knowing Liara, she's probably already formulated a hundred and one separate theories about it and discounted half of them to boot.
She cups my cheek in her hands, and kisses me on the nose with a single, resolute statement.
"We have to stop this."
Thursday afternoon
The other Shepard likes her guns.
I've always treated them like tools, keeping no more than six in my locker at once and taking good care of them: before the first Normandy was sunk I'd kept hold of my old Banshee assault rifle for years. I'm cautious about taking too many out into battle, knowing that there's a real risk of the extra weight putting a drain on the hardsuit's performance.
This Shepard, however, has two lockers filled with all manner of weapons. I recognise a Batarian shotgun, something I've always refused to carry on principle: it was a Batarian shotgun that fired the bullet that killed my father, and another that critically wounded my mother.
Things were clearly different in this world. Mom was still alive, and I remember seeing a Batarian grouping on the war terminal.
"This is it, isn't it?"
Liara is stood by the door to the shuttle, fiddling with the chin controls on her hardsuit.
"Yeah. No turning back, now."
"It's funny," she says, "the proper you—the other you, I mean—she'd spend this time doing target practice."
I'm not sure what to make of that. "I just want it over with."
"It must be an outside force," Liara says. "It's hard not to suspect that Cerberus is involved, somehow."
I've toyed with the idea myself. "But how?"
"I have no idea."
We load ourselves into the shuttle, and Cortez starts the engines. He doesn't try to make any small-talk, and I can see in the reflection of the screen that he doesn't have a goatee.
I wonder for a while if his story's different in this world. If he lost his husband here, too, and if he's coping with it.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and then I feel it pull away. A look of guilt is painted on Liara's face, and pain: she misses her Shepard, and instinctively wants to hold me, a man in a woman's skin, but knows she must not.
"It's OK," I whisper, glad to have her at least as a friend, and take her hand in mine.
She clasps my fingers between hers, and smiles as the shuttle pops and hisses its way towards Cronos Station.
