Engineering was a mess.

It had somehow slipped Shepard's mind, in the midst of all the ship hijacking and evil cloning and flip-flopping of loyalties, that the Normandy's repairs would logically be centered in engineering. She winced, picking her way over the loose panels and wiring that had been yanked out of place by the rough shaking of Cerberus's attack.

"Nice ship," Tia said.

"Oh, shut up."

Brooks was walking ahead, very pointedly keeping her hands visible at all times, acting like a model prisoner. The pantomime had the effect of being incredibly distracting, which Shepard supposed was the entire point. After a couple minutes of catching herself glancing over to make sure Brooks was still keeping up the act, Shepard ordered her over to work with Tia on clearing a path to the CBT's power source.

"Looks like we're one minute to engagement up here," Ash said, her voice a little hushed over the comm. Shepard felt a weird pang of anxiety at the mental picture of the three of them hidden in the crawlspace, waiting for who knew how many Cerberus soldiers to come pouring through the airlock. It was the control-freak side of her command style, she supposed. Ash was a Spectre. She'd do fine. Of course, she's got a history of getting stuck following bad orders from incompetent COs...

"I swear those proxy mines are set up properly," Marshall said. "That'll buy us some time."

Tia snorted, helping Brooks drag a panel out of the way. "Wouldn't factor that into your planning."

"Aw, now that just isn't-"

"The moment of death is upon us all," Smith said, softly, in the same deadpan tone of voice he'd used in the shuttle bay.

Dead silence echoed over the line for a long moment.

"Uh," Marshall said, "is it too late to switch teams?"

"Ah, CAT6," Tia said, brightly. "Best of the dregs!"

"Can it," Ash said. "They're boarding. We're in position, Skipper."

"Garrus?"

"Yeah, we're here," he said, distractedly, and Shepard had to hide a grin. That was a much more comforting mental picture, Garrus moving from console to console, trying to figure out what the hell someone had done this time to mess up his calibrations. Mind you, the addition of the evil clone does make it a little less warm and fuzzy.

"How about you, uh." She paused, realizing for the first time that she'd successfully avoided calling the clone by name until now. Calling her 'Clone' wouldn't do much to engender the level of trust she was hoping for, and no way in hell was she going to call her 'Shepard'. Cloney? Mini-me? "Uh. You."

"Me?" the clone said. "I'm here. Helping the turian figure this stuff out. Nice gun."

"Don't get too comfortable," Garrus muttered.

An explosion echoed over the comm, and Shepard froze, raising a hand automatically to the side of her head as she waited for her HUD to update, cursing the slight between-decks lag induced by the proximity to the ship's Silaris armor. "Ash?"

Static flared over the line for a second, and then Ashley's voice came through, shaking a bit with an adrenaline rush. "Oh, man. That was beautiful! We're going to have some cosmetic cleanup to do up here. Two down, and you'd better believe the rest are thinking twice about coming aboard just now."

"I fucking told you!" Marshall crowed.

"Yeah, yeah," Tia muttered, finally pushing past the last fallen panel to reach a console. "Jerk off on your own time, Marshall."

"Death waits for us all," Smith intoned. This time, everyone managed to ignore him with minimal effort.

Shepard had just pulled up Tia's calculations on her own console when Garrus's voice snapped across the comm like a whip. "Damn it. Shepard, something's wrong. The targeting array's cycling randomly."

"What, like, modulating? Isn't that how it's supposed to work against cyclonic shields?"

"No, I mean it's setting random targets. The Cerberus ship, fifty thousand miles from the Cerberus ship. At this rate, it's probably got Palaven somewhere in the list!"

Shepard pursed her lips, pulling up a schedule on her omnitool. "Weapons maintenance wasn't supposed to be until tomorrow. Far as I can tell, nobody's been in the battery since we left. Is it because EDI's down?"

"Can't be." A short snap signalled the switch from public to private comm channels. "Shepard, I think this is deliberate."

"Whoever signalled the Cerberus ship, you mean?" Shepard cast a sidelong glance toward Brooks, who caught the motion and raised her hands, waggling her fingers to show they were empty, just as she had done the last twenty times Shepard had looked over at her. "Okay, I really don't like this. Anything you can do?"

"I'll look into it. Just don't pop up those shields until we're ready here, or Cerberus will take them down again."

"You got it. Anything to avoid getting back to square one."

"Well, that silence seemed nice and secretive," Brooks drawled. "So much for keeping trust."

Shepard swapped back to the public comm channel. "Hit the button by accident," she deadpanned. "It happens. Tia, how are things on your end?"

She flashed a thumbs-up. "Surprisingly? Not that bad. That's the advantage with thinking outside the box, I guess. No need to wait for someone to unpack it."

"Nice work," Shepard said, vaguely, and opened a subroutine to run a trace on any signals originating from the gunnery systems. "Ash?"

"Still waiting here, Commander. We've pulled back a bit in case they got any bright ideas from the proxy mines."

"Nah, they wouldn't use explosives," Marshall said. "They want to take the CIC intact, right?"

"In my experience," Ash said, "Cerberus isn't really known for forward-thinking."

"Oh."

Shepard's omnitool pinged, and she glanced down to see the results of the scan for anomalous activity in the targeting system. "Garrus, are you on targeting controls right now?"

"Yeah, we're both resetting the algorithm. Should be... hm. Are you seeing this spike?"

A long pause. Eventually, the clone said, "Huh?"

"The spike," Garrus said. "In the power readings. Console's in front of you."

"Readings?" The clone's voice was low, dazed. "I, uh. Hang on. What?"

This time, when Shepard shot a glance at Brooks, she caught a startled, concerned expression flicking across her face, though it was quickly replaced by the usual sardonic smile.

"Are you okay?" Garrus managed to ask the question without the faintest hint of warmth, but Shepard caught the quaver of uncertainty in his subvocals. "Uh, Shepard, I think your clone might be defective. She's looking really confused."

"No, I'm fine," the clone said, and took a deep breath that echoed over the line. "I'm fine. I don't know what that was. I'm-"

A loud blast echoed over the comm, making them all jump. "Ash?"

Ashley took a second to come in. "I-no, Commander, that wasn't us. They're still hanging back. I don't-"

Shepard's heart clenched in her chest as her HUD belatedly registered a flicker in Garrus's kinetic barriers. "Garrus? What the hell was that?"

Long moments passed, and then the clone said, "Ow. Um. Something overloaded here."

Garrus's voice was raspy, but his vitals still read strong on her HUD. "Okay, this is not good. Some sort of pocket explosive was in here, Shepard. Had to be planted."

"You okay?" Shepard saw Brooks smirk at the question, but couldn't resist asking. She needed to hear it from him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just got the wind knocked out of me." Another click back to private comms, and his voice sank to a whisper. "Shepard, I don't like this. I'm pretty sure that device wasn't there when we came in."

"You're saying the clone planted it."

"I'm saying it definitely wasn't me."

Shepard balled her hand into a fist and narrowly stopped herself from slamming it on the console in front of her. "And I guess this means we're out one cannon."

"It'll take hours to get it up and running, assuming we don't need extra parts. We need a new plan, Shepard."

She raised a hand to her face, forgetting for the tenth time that her helmet was in the way of her aching head. "This is bad."

"Well, it's certainly not good."

She lowered her hand to see Brooks and Tia watching her curiously. "Okay. You bring the clone back here. Try not to confront her until she's given up her weapon and there are more of us around. Be subtle."

He snorted. "I'm always subtle."

Shepard didn't particularly feel like lightening the mood. "Just don't underestimate her because she's wearing a familiar face."

"If I just pause meaningfully for a few seconds, will you get the point I'm trying to make?"

That did make her crack a faint grin. "Okay. I get it. Very clever."

"Subtle, right?"

"Incredibly subtle."

Switching to the open comm, she said, "Okay. We've had a setback in the main battery. Garrus's team is pulling back here. Again, strike team, don't hesitate to retreat if you need to."

"Still no sign of anyone else here," Ashley said. "It's actually really quiet. No chatter on their end or anything."

"Do we even know if there are any other people in the shuttle?" Marshall asked. "I didn't see anyone other than those first two."

"Come to think of it," Ash said, sounding a little sheepish, "I don't remember seeing anyone else. If it really is just a scouting party... huh. Could be. I say we move in closer."

Shepard considered, but it seemed safe enough with the airlock to act as bottleneck. "We could use the good news. Be careful."

"We are, after all, alone in the end," Smith said. Everyone ignored him.

"And hey, what kind of setback are we talking about here?" Brooks chimed in. "A minor-adjustments-are-necessary setback or an everyone-dies-horribly setback? Because I've had my fair share of the latter and they never end well."

"It might be a problem," Shepard said. "We need to find a-"

She heard nothing over the comms but a sharp intake of breath and faint clatter, but it was enough to make her pause. A moment later, in the next update of her HUD's readouts, Garrus's kinetic barriers dropped away entirely and his vitals flared.

Shepard's SMG was in her hand a split-second later, and a full-body shiver and bitter taste in her mouth signalled a positively massive jolt of adrenaline. With tremendous effort, she kept herself rooted to the spot, watching Tia and Brooks carefully for any sign of movement, in case this was the first wave of some sort of attack. Hell, the readout could easily be a malfunction. They hadn't done much testing of the combat comm system within the ship, and with so much experimental technology to muddy the signal...

She could hold her position, but she sure as hell couldn't keep her voice steady. "Garrus! What the hell was that?"

He was breathing, at least, harsh wavering gasps. "Shepard? I'm okay. I'm fine. I-" Another clatter. This one she recognized with a chill as armor against deckplates. "The clone's gone. She attacked me, brought out an omniblade from nowhere." He paused for a moment, but finally spoke up again, his voice fainter. "You need to stop her. She was raving, talking about ramming us into the Cerberus ship. I think she's going to try to pilot us from the console you opened in engineering."

"She doesn't have authorization," Shepard said, functioning mostly on autopilot while the rest of her mind helpfully insisted on playing a vivid slideshow of memories of Garrus downed and bleeding to death on a dirty Omega floor, but then it clicked. "No, she does, doesn't she? She's got authorization."

"We're clear up here," Ash cut in, sharply. "Shepard, I'm coming down. You need to get to the shuttle bay."

"I'm fine," Garrus said. "Looks worse than it is."

Now Shepard's feet felt positively rooted to the spot. She didn't bother switching the channel to private. "You've said that before," she said.

"She tried to slit my throat," Garrus said, bluntly, but his voice was still wavering, his subvocals distorted. "I'm awake and talking to you, Shepard. It's not that bad."

"I'll get to him in a second," Ash said, and now she was the one who flicked her channel to private. "Shepard, you need to move. You can't freeze up now."

Shepard moved.

She'd made a point of learning the alternative between-deck routes in case of elevator malfunction – after the Citadel, she'd always been a little wary of elevators – and the series of ladders and passages connecting engineering to the shuttle bay passed in a blur. Once she reached the door nearest the side of the bay that housed the control panel, she made herself pause before going in, then activated a combat drone and rounded the corner, weapon raised.

There was nobody at the console.

She exhaled harshly, letting her arms drop as another wave of adrenaline crashed uselessly against her body. "Dammit."

"Oh, God," Ashley murmured, over the comm, and Shepard blocked it out, she had to block it out, she had to focus.

She moved again, dodging mechanically through the maze of crates, clearing the room according to standard Alliance protocol, reducing everything to lines of sight, geometry. She'd made it about halfway across the room when a familiar voice came over the comm.

"Is he okay?" the clone said.

Shepard was, on the whole, a reasonably controlled person. She rarely raised her voice, avoided violence as much as her line of work permitted, and even before the destruction of the SR-1, she'd maintained decidedly low blood pressure for someone who ran around almost getting killed for a living. She kept a firm rein on destructive stress, transformed it into something productive. Something optimistic.

If the clone had been standing in front of her right now, unarmed and helpless, Shepard wouldn't have hesitated to shoot her in the gut and watch her bleed out. Black and white. Fuck grey.

"You," she said, "don't get to ask that question."

"I'm sorry," the clone said, hollow, echoing. "I should have seen it sooner. I thought I was free, but you don't get that when you're a thing built for a purpose. You don't get to be free. Did they do it to you, I wonder? How deep did it go? I tried digging beneath the skin and I can't find it, I can't find it."

Shepard didn't rise to the bait, moving through the next line of crates. She didn't hear any audio doubling, which made it unlikely that the clone was anywhere nearby. Had she somehow made it back to the CIC? Surely someone would have seen her. Surely-

"The turian. They wanted me to kill him. Take my gun and shoot. I fought it as best I could. I didn't shoot."

Shepard's feet stumbled to a halt almost of their own volition. "What?"

"The control chip." The clone inhaled sharply, choking down what sounded like a sob. Hearing herself cry was downright eerie. "They implanted me with a control chip, right from the start. Brooks didn't know. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe she was part of it. It doesn't matter. It's Cerberus. They play the long game. They didn't need me anymore, but they played me all the same, because they knew I'd get to you, eventually. I'd have to. I didn't have anything else."

Now Shepard's heart was pounding so hard she could feel the throbbing in her fingertips, and her injured knee wobbled, forcing her to reach out for a crate to catch her balance. "You signalled the ship? Brought them here?"

"I don't remember doing it. I lost minutes, sometimes. I figured it was stress, trying to pull off this big heist." She laughed, and in place of bitterness it was tinged with something darker, something empty. "I thought I'd done it, made something that was mine. One fucked-up plan. One ship. One crew. A future. But we don't get futures. We're something that's built. Something that's made. A weapon to be fired, sooner or later. Both of us, just weapons. No, not even. We're bullets. Bullets."

Shepard took a breath, kept moving. "So they're telling you to ram the ship. Why?" She rounded another corner, and stumbled.

The shuttle bay door was opening, the remaining shuttle rising slowly off the deck.

"No," the clone said. "No, this one's all me."

"Uh, Commander," Tia said, over the comm, sounding oddly subdued. "The Cerberus ship just lost shields."

"Shepard," Brooks said, and Shepard realized she was addressing the clone, her voice cool and controlled with something strained just below the surface. "You read that in one of your books?"

The clone gave a choked laugh. "Yeah," she said. "Kept a manual of Cerberus encryption and security protocols under my pillow each night. You should try it sometime."

The shuttle's engines flared, near enough that the blast of heat made Shepard stumble back a pace, and then the shuttle had passed through the protective bay shielding and moved out into the starscape beyond. "Wow," the clone said, softly. "Top speed on this thing's pretty great. Twenty seconds to impact."

"You-"

"It's okay," the clone said. "You and me, we do what we're made for. Someone else is always pointing the gun. No future in it." She breathed twice over the line, slowly, like she was savoring it. "But thanks for trying."

Static. Silence.

"Holy hell," Marshall said. "Holy fucking hell. Ship's gone. Shuttle's gone. They just, holy hell."

Shepard turned, in a daze, and stumbled through grey corridors, grey rooms, everything faint and faded around the edges. She knew she was due for one hell of an adrenaline crash. She didn't much care.

She saw Ash first, crouched at the entrance to the main battery, her blue armor bright and foreboding, and then she moved closer and saw the splashes of deeper blue on the ground, no fast-growing pool like Omega, just streaks of blood, bright, angular. Arterial spray, her brain said, and then stuttered to a halt.

Garrus was huddled on his side, eyes half-closed, but his chest was rising and falling, and a thick smear of medigel was slathered across his throat. Ash glanced up and smiled faintly, and Shepard realized for the first time that she'd removed one of her gauntlets and that her right hand was completely covered in blue blood.

"Hey," she said. "He's okay. Nicked an artery, but I managed to pinch it off until the medigel closed it for me. Turians have three redundant arteries supplying blood to their brain, you know that? You can clamp one off and he'll be fine for days." She seemed to realize she was rambling and snapped her mouth shut, but the nervous, adrenaline-fuelled grin kept creeping back to the surface. "Never thought I'd paid much attention in xenobio. Just popped back into my head. He's a little groggy from the meds and blood loss, but he'll be okay, Shepard."

Shepard summoned up something approximating a returning smile, though it probably just looked sick, and slumped to her knees beside them, dragging off her helmet. Garrus's helmet, she noticed, was still carefully placed on a console not far away. At this rate, he should probably start wearing it to bed, given how often horrible things seemed to happen when he took it off.

"Hey," she said, amazed at how steady her voice sounded. She touched the side of his face, and his mandibles fluttered, eyes flickering fully open.

"Hi," he said, and made as though to push himself up, then paused when both Shepard and Ashley moved to restrain him. "What... what happened?"

"My clone almost tore your throat out. Ring any bells?"

Garrus blinked, then exhaled slowly. "Ah. Right. That."

Her questing hand found his, squeezed reassuringly. "How're you feeling?"

He thought about it. "Remarkably like a clone almost tore my throat out."

She snorted a laugh that was a little shakier than she would've liked. "Are you going to stop doing this to me?"

He made a show of pondering her question, although the effect was spoiled somewhat by the way his eyes kept drifting shut. "I'll give it due consideration."

Squeezing his hand a little tighter, she contorted herself enough to press her forehead awkwardly against his. "Mm. And are you going to rest a bit now?"

"Mm," he echoed, and this time his eyes stayed shut. His breathing evened out again, slow and strong and reassuring.

Shepard leaned back, managed another quavering smile for Ashley. "Thanks. I needed that push back there."

"Sure. God knows you've been my wakeup call enough times over the years." She paused for a moment, tilted her head to one side. "You okay, Shepard? That was... well, that was a lot of bad stuff to hear. All that absolute bullshit."

Shepard watched Garrus's chest rise and fall, rise and fall, and thought about too-sad eyes in familiar faces, about reflections and mirrors and the lessons they held.

"Yeah," she said. "Absolute bullshit."