A/N: Thanks for all the wonderful comments! You guys are awesome. Sorry about the short chapters; I seem to be constitutionally incapable of writing long ones...
A clarification: This is an AU, obviously, of both Mass Effect 2 and Halo: Reach. Some things are different in both universes from canon. In this Halo universe, the slipspace bomb that transports Jorge takes half the ship with him (rather than only the middle section as in canon); there's a reason for this. Also, at the point where Jorge comes into the ME2 story, while only Garrus and Mordin are around, Horizon and the "defunct" Collector ship mission have already passed. I'm fudging things, I know.
I hope you continue to enjoy my little story.
IV. Where There's Life
Shepard flipped another page of EDI's report. She'd printed out a hard copy, just in case Miranda decided to "lose" EDI's work.
Damn, EDI had gotten a lot out of him.
UNSC. Not much different from the Alliance Fleet she knew. This Office of Naval Intelligence, though - ONI. The Spartan program. Catherine Halsey. No wonder Jorge was so comfortable with Cerberus-he'd been raised by its spiritual cousin.
She stirred her coffee again. The spoon clinked, reminding her that she'd drained the cup hours ago. She flipped another page.
Humanity in Jorge's universe had been on the very brink of extinction, months away - if even that long - from the alien Covenant discovering the location of Earth and glassing its entire surface.
If something like that happened here, she thought, then shook herself. Something like that was happening here. Her species, all of Citadel space, whatever civilizations lay undocumented beyond dormant mass relays - everything and everyone would die.
Maybe Cerberus had a point.
Maybe the Spartan program had been necessary, for all that it had been started well before the alternate humanity had made contact with the Covenant. Maybe the threat of death on such a large scale did justify any excesses.
Shepard rubbed her eyes, remembering Kaidan's angry accusations on Horizon, her own equally angry defenses and hollow explanations. She wondered what Kaidan would have said about their giant.
Our giant. She didn't know when she had started thinking of Jorge that way, but it had slipped out in conversation with Chambers one day, and now the entire ship was calling Jorge that.
She yawned and stretched, got up to use the head. As she washed her hands, her eyes traced the barely visible lines that had once been livid, angry scars. Splashing her face to wake herself up, Shepard watched the water turn pink with blood.
The mirror was cracked and bleeding, little winking lights showing in the wounds where the Cerberus doctors and technicians had impaled her over and over again, until there was nothing left. She scratched at her skin, peeling it away, revealing the wires and tubes beneath.
She looked just like the Saren - thing, all her humanity replaced with a Cerberus husk.
She reminded him of Dr. Halsey.
Dr. Chakwas looked about the same age, kept her greying hair in a similar style, and was nothing like the icy tiger Jorge had grown up loving and fearing. Maybe this was what Dr. Halsey would have been, if there'd been no Insurrection, no Covenant, no need for Spartans like Jorge.
No. Halsey would have found a reason. Chakwas was no Halsey, but she reminded him of her all the same.
She took his vitals, murmuring notes to herself, then asked him to lay back beneath the scanner.
His feet hung off the end of the bed, but she didn't comment. After an eternity of the machine humming and buzzing around him, it finally stopped.
Dr. Chakwas sat at her terminal, her face in her hands.
"Doctor? Are you - ?"
"I'm fine, Jorge." She looked up, gave him a watery smile. "Do you have any idea how extraordinary you are?"
"Ma'am?"
The terminal screen showed two skeletal images. One was large, with nodes at the implant points; his own scan. The other showed bones riddled with fractures and painful-looking spurs.
"How would you like to help me save a life, Jorge?"
"Ma'am - it's what I'm made for, ma'am."
Shepard was drunk.
Somehow she found herself in the engineering sublevel, pacing back and forth, out of her mind with fury.
"The things those bastards did to him, Jack! He was six years old, and they took him away, and turned him into - "
"Into what?" Jack snapped. "A freak like me? That's what you really want to say, isn't it?"
"How many times do I have to tell you, you're not a freak! He's not a freak! The people who did these things - those are the real freaks. God, if I could just get my hands on those fucking Mengeles!"
Jack looked at her. "Which ones? ONI, or Cerberus?"
"Doesn't matter," Shepard sighed. "They're all the same."
"Will you do something for me, Shepard?" Jack crooned as she stalked forward. "Something for him?" She traced the line of a tear on Shepard's cheek, but Shepard slapped her hand away.
Jack licked her finger.
"What do you need?" Shepard asked.
"I need information. I need access to the cheerleader's files. You promised me, Jane."
"All right. Consider it done."
He called her 'ma'am,' or perhaps 'Mum' - with his accent, Dr. Chakwas couldn't tell the difference; and with his manner, she wasn't sure there was one. The boy had a sweet nature, for all his monstrous size, and though his face was a blank slate, Chakwas was sure she'd seen something good in him.
"How long would it take?" Joker asked. Chakwas blinked. Jorge had left half an hour ago, but she couldn't stop thinking about him. Extraordinary, she'd called him, because she had no other words.
"A week, best case," she told him. "Worst case - Jeff, you need to understand that this isn't some outpatient procedure. We should be doing this at a hospital, not on the Normandy."
"I'm not leaving the ship," Joker insisted. "If it takes, great. If not..."
"If not, it could kill you."
"Yeah, but at least I'd be with my baby. And I could haunt Garrus - that'd almost be worth it!"
There was something good in all her patients. That was why she'd become a doctor in the first place.
He sighed and struggled to his feet. "I don't know if I even want to do this. It sounds so... science fiction."
