A/N: Yet even more detrius salvaged from the waste land that is my flashdrive. This is the original "One Hundred and Four", but I forget the reason why I never went with this. Anyway, enjoy the unedited, error-rife ficlet!

This heart is not her heart. These lungs are not her lungs. Those veins are someone else's, and the thought makes Shepard sick to her stomach.

She is a crude amalgamation of what she fears to be a hundred different beings, synthesized into one who does not even wish to have them inside her. And she cannot help but wonder where Cerberus and Miranda had gotten the parts to rebuild her.

There is nothing of her new body that is truly Shepard's, save for her brain, and lately she has begun to wonder just how much hold she has even on her own mind.

But Shepard is too afraid to ask, to even enter the Operative's room for she knows she is nothing more than a test subject, something bred under harsh lab lights and burning scalpels. At least to her.

It took Shepard a week to work up the nerve to enter the uncomfortable room and its coldness.

Even then the woman observed her with a clinical fashion. Miranda is the scientist, and Shepard is the freak she brought back from the dead, a being she wrought with her genius and own two hands. Something for her to utilize and report on; examine and watch closely.

"What can I do for you, Shepard?" Miranda rested her chin on the top of her hands, a haughty smirk tugging at her wide mouth.

"I want to know how I was rebuilt." It was not a question the Cerberus Operative expected, and for a moment, Miranda was stupefied. Then her face hardened and she was all ice.

"That is highly classified information even you don't have the right to know." She began to tap her keyboard again, not even looking at Shepard. The report in front of Miranda was infinitely more interesting than the once-dead thing in front of her, and that once-dead thing had half a mind to close the distance between them and unplug the damn laptop.

"Why? Because Cerberus said so?" Anger, hot and unbidden, explodes from the pit of her being. She has not a single shred of patience for Cerberus bullshit.

"No, you don't have the clearance for the files." And Shepard was supposedly the Commander of the Normandy. Funny how this woman had more power than she.

"But you could give me the clearance."

"I don't have the authorization to do so." Annoyance leached into her educated voice, and her jaw clenched. Her fingers now jabbed at the keyboard viciously; mimicry, perhaps, of what Miranda wished to do to Shepard.

"Stop jerking me around, Miranda." There was something the older woman was not telling her, and Shepard would be damned if she left that god forsaken room empty handed.

With a heavy sigh, Miranda glanced momentarily at her, brow furrowed deeply in vexation at the pest still in her office. "I'm sorry, Shepard, there's nothing—"

Shepard crossed the room and slammed the laptop shut.

"Tell me. " Shepard growled. "Now."

Momentarily, Miranda recoiled. Shepard was convinced she saw fear flash briefly in her eyes, but it was fleeting and quickly replaced by ire of her own. Miranda rose to her feet, easily matching Shepard for height in her high heels.

"I've told you everything I know." Steely animosity contorted the perfect woman's face; a feral snarl.

"Bullshit, Miranda," Shepard spat. "fucking bullshit."

"What do you want from me, Shepard?" Miranda was caged between a wall and a horrible monster of her own creation. Her eyes darted from Shepard to the door and back again.

"I want answers." Her voice was low and dangerous and hard.

"Don't make me repeat myself."

"Then tell me what I want to know."

With a heavy sigh, Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes.
"Shepard," she said, as if she were talking to a five year old. "Must I tell you again?" And then in an exaggerated drawl, "I have told you everything I know."

Shepard did not want to believe it, for Miranda's dark eyes told a completely different story. "Then why do I get the feeling you're not telling me something?" She dared to draw herself closer to Miranda, in some silly attempt to seem imposing.

"Leave."

"Not until—"

"The door is behind you, Shepard."

She did not budge from her spot, and for a few seconds, the two of them just stared the other down.

Then, in a matter of moments, Miranda sat back down at her desk, started up her laptop. Again, whatever was underneath Miranda's nails were infinitely more fascinating than the Frankenstein that stood before her.

"I won't stand for this." Shepard said into the icy silence that formed. "I am your Commander, and I demand answers." She raised her chin, looked down at Miranda from her nose as if that would settle the matter.

"And once again, I have disclosed all that I can to you."

"Stop toying with me."

"You can always fire me if you're truly displeased." An infuriating ghost of a smile played upon Miranda's thin lips. It sat there, taunting. Daring.