She walked down the stairs toward Liara. She had straight, jaw-length red hair and fair skin. Wide, almond-shaped blue eyes. Her slightly pouting lips wore a broad smile. She held out her arms.

She stopped, as if she'd walked into a wall, when Liara raised her Tempest again. "Who are you?" Liara said. "Is this some kind of joke?" It was a bit much, even for Cerberus. Liara promised herself they would soon get a lesson in dark humor.

The woman held up her slender hands, palms out. "It's all right, Liara. It's me. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have surprised you like this." Seeing Liara's look of incomprehension, she added, "It's really me. Kate."

Liara stepped forward, every nerve in her body seemingly focused on her gun. The woman took a step back. "Shepard is dead," Liara said. "I saw her body."

The woman looked down. "I know. They told me about that. But you have to understand, it's me. The same person, the same memories." She folded her arms - which Kate did when she was nervous. "The same feelings, Liara."

Liara's gun lowered, just a little. "Who told you? Cerberus?"

The woman nodded.

"Did they say anything about - " Liara tried to remember what Feron had said - "Aquinas?"

Kate - Liara realized she was thinking of her as Kate - glanced away, thinking. "Not to me," she said slowly. "I think I overheard one of them say that. But then Lawson shut him up."

Liara's gun was pointed at the floor now. "What do you remember?"

Kate's smile was somehow full of sadness. "Everything except losing the Normandy. The night before Ilos. Kaidan's wake. Dover Beach."

Liara's mouth tightened. "This is...obscene. Those were her memories. Our memories. You - they stole them!"

Kate held her hands out. She always used her hands when she talked, Liara remembered, especially when she was upset. "They had to, Liara. How else could they bring me back?"

"They did not bring her back. You are a copy." Kate closed her eyes. Liara said, "How did they get the memories?"

Kate shook her head minutely. "I don't know." She took a step toward Liara. "I know this must seem very strange. I understand why you think these aren't my memories. But they're the only ones I have. Being Kate Shepard - and loving you - is all I know. Please believe me."

Liara looked at her a moment longer, then holstered her gun. "Whoever you are, you did not ask for this to happen to you."

Kate took another step closer. "Li...they told me we lost over twenty people with the Normandy. I woke up in a med-bay and found out everything I thought I knew was a lie, that I was...built by the same people who caused Akuze." She held her arms out again; there were tears in her eyes. "I haven't been able to talk to Ash, or Garrus, or anyone. You're the first one I - "

Then she was in Liara's arms. She buried her face in Liara's shoulder, and Liara felt strands of red hair tickling her neck. Her hair even smelled the same; it had the faintest scent of ginger. It all became real, and months of heartache were swept away as though they'd never been.

"It is all right," Liara heard herself say. Her fingers ran up and down Kate's back, though the other woman wore armor and couldn't feel it. But she felt Kate smile and knew she had noticed.

Kate let out an immense sigh that tickled Liara's head-tails. "I love you."

Liara found herself smiling and tears flooding her eyes at the same time. "I..."

"It's all right," Kate said. Her tone was wey. "It'll take some getting used to."

"Shep - Kate," Liara said. "Cerberus has the - the body. They are going to infest it with a virus from this laboratory, and use it to commit genocide."

Kate stepped back. Her mouth was a thin line. "I thought it was something like that. Who is it? The batarians?"

Liara shook her head. "It does not matter. We must leave. This place - all of Peak 15 - is about to be destroyed."

"And then what?" Kate said.

"What do you mean?"

"What happens when they can't use the body for this - plan?"

"I - " Liara stopped.

Kate nodded. "Then they'll try to fix it, instead. That's what you hope, at least." She folded her arms. "And what happens to me?"

Liara shook her head, feeling as though she were wading into dark water, unable to see the bottom. "Nothing. You will not be hurt."

"Nothing. Maybe I get donated to the organ bank. Who cares? You and Kate - the real Kate," she said, making quotes in the air, "get to go on with your lives."

Liara put her hands on her hips, an angry flush of indigo rising up her neck and into her face. "I would not just do that," she said.

"No?"

"No. If you think - " Liara stopped herself.

But Kate finished for her. "Maybe they screwed up, is that it? Didn't get the memories right after all? Well, I'm just the dry run. I'm sure they'll do better when they rebuild this precious corpse of yours."

"Stop!" It was a cry of pain.

Kate did, at once. She looked down and shook her head. "I'm sorry." She made herself look up at Liara. "I'm sorry."

"No, I am sorry," Liara said. "I spoke without thinking. I...somehow, we will work this out. Ka - " she stopped and raised her hands - "the other Kate will understand." A smile tugged at her mouth. "You should know."

Kate laughed, the way she used to. She shook her head. "Well, it'll be interesting."

Liara held out her hand. Kate took it. They walked like that, just as they had to Kaidan's wake, to the hatch.

And nearly walked into it. Liara frowned and touched the hatch control, but it only flashed red.

Kate brought up her omni-tool. "I shut down the security systems when I saw it was you. Must have missed something."

While Kate worked, Liara brought up her omni-tool as well. She scanned for something else. Her display flashed red.

"It will not open," Liara heard herself say, "because unrecognized pathogens are not allowed out of the laboratory without Privileged access."

Kate stopped and turned to her.

Liara held out her hand. "Give me the virus, Kate."

Kate took a breath. "I can't, Liara."

"Why?"

Kate lifted her right hand to her temple.

Liara's voice was numb with horror. "They put in a control chip."

Kate nodded. "I'm sorry, Liara. I have to give it to them. That's why they sent me here."

"That is why you killed the team Gianna sent."

"Yes," Kate said. "They wouldn't let me in."

"Kate," Liara said, feeling as though she were drowning and flailing for something solid to hold on to, "Cerberus must not get the virus. You know this."

"I...I - " Kate's face twisted, as if in pain. Her hand started to come up to her head again. Then it stopped. Her face cleared. "Don't try to stop me. Please."

Goddess, Liara thought, just like Benezia. I cannot watch this again. But she said, "I must and I will."

"Li..." Shepard's upraised right arm was wreathed in white flame. That was all the warning Liara got. She dove to one side, the biotic bolt missing her head so narrowly she could feel it tug at her head-tails. It struck a railing behind her; the metal snapped and twisted like a piece of wet string.

Liara's barriers were up now, her Tempest out and aimed. But still she could not bring herself to pull the trigger, not even at the woman who had just tried to kill her.

Biotics, Liara thought. Kate was no biotic. And control chips. And cybernetics? And what else? The person in front of her wasn't Kate. She was a prototype. If she succeeded, there would be more of her, thousands more. The real Kate would be forgotten. Instead of the galaxy's savior, she would become the face of its enslavement to Cerberus. That was what convinced Liara of what she had to do.

She slipped her finger through the trigger guard and pulled. The Tempest spewed flame. Shepard's barriers flared with the impacts. But then she moved, so quickly that Liara's stream of bullets couldn't follow her. She leapt, backward, onto a catwalk, unslinging and expanding her Widow as she did so.

Liara knew, barriers or no, she would be lucky to survive a single round from that thing. She ducked behind a pillar, just seeing with her peripheral vision the bloom of flame from the Widow. A few inches from her face, there was a shower of sparks. Bits of smoking metal clattered to the floor.

Now, while she is reloading. Liara leaned out of cover and hurled a biotic attack of her own up at the catwalk. Shepard was crouched behind a solid metal railing, and Liara didn't try to go around it. The biotic field struck it squarely, crumpling it like paper and knocking Shepard to her hands and knees.

Liara swept up a biotic field that lifted her onto the catwalk beside Shepard, landing as gently as if she had wings. Her foot lashed out just as Shepard came up to one knee and aimed again. The Widow roared as she kicked it. Its tongue of flame blackened the armor on her outer left thigh. Shepard sat down, planted one foot against a jagged outcropping of metal from the damaged railing, and pushed, her armor scraping on the grating beneath her as she slid back, out of reach. Her left hand came off the rifle's forestock, reaching for the lever to chamber another round.

At that instant, Liara wrapped another biotic field around the rifle and ripped it out of Shepard's right hand with such force that it flew over Liara's shoulder and disappeared from sight.

Shepard didn't even watch it fly away. She tucked up and rolled backward, ending up in a forward-leaning crouch, her whole body alight. There was no cover on the narrow catwalk, nowhere to dodge. Liara started to summon another biotic bolt, to interrupt what she knew was coming, but the constant effort had begun to tell on her, and she was too slow.

Shepard's biotic charge hit her like a runaway skycar, forcing her right through the railing. They fell, entwined, in a windmilling of arms and legs, and landed on a lower catwalk with a clatter of ceramic against metal.

The world spun around Liara, tinged with darkness. When she was able to focus, she found Shepard kneeling atop her. She giggled. She'd been here before.

Shepard's right arm was raised in the air, the air swirling and crackling around her gloved fist, which opened and closed, again and again. Liara's eyes struggled to stay open. When the blow fell, she would barely feel it.

Shepard's mouth moved, but no sound came out. Her teeth came together with a click, her lips skimming back from them. Sweat rolled down her face, and a vein stood out on her neck. Her right arm was still raised, a fiery axe waiting to drop.

"What?" Liara asked, her voice far away.

"Hurts," Shepard said. "It...hurts...when I...try to...Li..."

Shepard was supporting herself with her left hand, pressed against Liara's midsection, forgotten. Slowly, Liara's right hand came up and closed around Shepard's left wrist. Liara smiled.

Shepard's face spasmed as if she'd been stabbed. "I...won't...I..." Her whole body was shaking. The white corona around her raised hand broke apart, became wisps that curled away. Her eyes rolled up. Blood trickled from her nose, and then from the corner of her mouth. She collapsed atop Liara.

Thanks to Gianna's sabotage, the tram was out, but there was still an antigrav maintenance car. Liara shoved the stasis crate into the cargo bin, then slid into the seat and kicked the car to life. As she careened down the tunnel, she saw, in her mind's eye, the ionization trails of the antimatter warheads as they screamed down from the sky.

She drove the car out of the tunnel, across the tram terminal, down the long, narrow corridors, through the cafeteria. There was no one there to object. She didn't know whether Shepard was still alive, or could live, and didn't care. Her world had narrowed to a twisting path in a gloomy wood - or the deck of a burning ship - though which she would carry Shepard to safety.

The tiny craft in which Shepard arrived was designed for stealth. It would never survive the storm. Liara took the shuttle. Even flying that in the narrow Aleutsk Valley right now was suicide - unless she pointed it almost straight upward.

She was perhaps two kilometers up, still enveloped in the endless sea of snow, when the first warhead reached its target.

The shock wave struck the shuttle like a kick from a giant. The shields collapsed, the mass effect fields died, and half the displays winked out. The emergency antigravs hummed to life as Liara's hands flew over the console, fighting to keep aloft. By the time the other warheads began landing, she was out of danger, and had a moment to bring up the aft sensors. Only one was still working, but it was enough.

The blast had swept back the storm like the broom of a god. Peak 15 was no longer a mountain, but a blasted stump almost hidden in its own smoke. The snow and earth were stripped away for kilometers around, leaving only bare rock. The trees were burnt to pointed sticks, all lying down, pointing outward from ground zero in eerie concentric circles.

Then the hellscape whitened and vanished as the shuttle burst through the top of the cloud layer, and there were only stars above her. The console flashed a warning that the shuttle was not rated for non-atmospheric travel. Then a call came in.

"Shuttle AA-642, this is Port Hanshan, do you copy?"

Liara keyed the comm. "It is me, Gianna." She would have smiled, but she was too tired to feel anything. "I need you to meet me up here, in the Aryera."

Land for a burial plot on crowded Earth wasn't easy to come by, even in this remote place, but Anderson pulled some strings. Shepard's name was left out of it, and Udina quieted any rumors about the unusual grant by issuing a request for submission of proposals for the Shepard Memorial - to be built on Akuze. Anyway, the Battle of the Citadel was already fading in the public's always short memory.

Shuttles weren't allowed to land here, due to the pollution regulations. Liara landed at the trail head, miles below, the same one Kate took her to. She was alone for this trip, and yet she wasn't. The casket, on an antigrav sled, went ahead of her, up the winding dirt path, over grassy hills and then moss-covered rocks, across logs over white rivers.

It was the chance to say good-bye that she had not had. The open wound she had carried since waking up in the hospital, months ago, was healing. It was one thing to have Kate suddenly stolen from her, but now Liara had done everything she could to save her. If she had failed, at least she had tried and failed. She still dreamt about her, of course, every night. But the dreams were all on Earth, in the autumn, never on the burning Normandy.

Sunlight shone on her from a low angle when she finally put the casket into the stony earth. It was beside the lake where Kate's father took her fishing, where she and Liara came on their - honeymoon, Liara supposed was the word. It was the only one she might ever have. It would have to be enough.

She knelt in front of the gravestone, resting her arm on it, and her head on her arm. It wasn't for Kate, she knew now, just as Kaidan's wake wasn't for him. It was for her, for those left behind, so they could go on.

The lake lit to a sea of fire as the last of the sunlight blazed on it. Liara sat beside the grave, watching the fish jump and listening to the new leaves sigh in the wind, until the light was gone, then she lay back and looked up at the stars. She'd intended to pitch a tent, but the spring night was warm and she found she didn't need it, just her blanket to soften the ground, and her pack for a pillow. Sleep came easily.

The hatch hissed open and Lawson walked in. "There's been word?" she said.

The boss sat facing away from her, toward his dying star. The ashes of his cigar dropped unnoticed to the floor. That answered her questions.

"I'll proceed with Lazarus, then," she said. Unlike the loss of the original Shepard, there was no shame in this admission. She'd argued that the problems with Aquinas had been solved - at least, more so than the problems with Lazarus were likely to be. That the new Shepard would be better, thanks to the enhancements she'd made. She'd also argued for the control chip. The boss had agreed. It simply hadn't worked.

The boss just nodded. He knew, without looking at her, what she thought. No words were needed. She turned and walked out, her mind already on the task ahead. As she always did, she channeled the failure into a newfound determination. She would redeem herself with Lazarus. Shepard would be brought back just as she was when she died.

After she left, he continued to look at his star, unseeing. The message had come in on Shepard's special channel. It was only a few words. It wasn't from Shepard.

He wasn't intimidated, of course. Liara T'Soni couldn't touch him, not without the backing of either the Broker or the Alliance. She would hardly ask for the former, and she wouldn't get the latter, not as a nonhuman. Still, he knew when it made more sense to have someone as a friend than an enemy. And, after all, she'd told him what he needed to know.

Dr. Chakwas keyed off her omni-tool. "The control chip overloaded. She's as stubborn as Shepard, at least. Anyone else would be dead, or comatose for life. As it is..." She shook her head. "I repaired the worst damage, but the rest will take time. The basic functions are unimpaired, but much of the learning will be missing. Maybe all of it."

"That may be a blessing," Shiala said. "She can become her own person. Make her own way in the universe."

Shepard's chest rose and fell, the sheet that covered her moving with it. Her eyes were closed. Her face was more pale than fair, but smooth, clear of pain and fear now. Her red hair made a halo on the pillow beneath her head.

As Liara was burying the empty casket, Gianna went to Feros, bringing a stasis crate that, according to the manifest, contained experimental drugs, compliments of Binary Helix, for the survivors of the Thorian spores. With Shiala vouching for her, inspection was waived. The actual contents of the crate now lay in Shiala's spare bedroom.

At the same time, by order of Admiral Hackett, the Belleau Wood was detached from patrol duties for a brief stop at Zhu's Hope, where the chief medical officer could conduct follow-up tests on the colonists. The captain didn't quite buy that, but she was used to the Admiral's terse and sometimes mysterious demands, and the crew wasn't sorry to have the unscheduled shore leave. So she kept quiet.

"Should the chip be removed?" Liara said. She spoke to them over an encrypted channel from the cargo ship on which she had hitched a ride to Ilium.

Chakwas shook her head. "The power supply is drained. It's dead. Unless it causes problems, it's safer to leave it in than remove it."

"Thank you, Doctor," Liara said. "I would take care of her, but..."

"Forget it," Chakwas said. "Memory or no, she's a loose end. If they find her..." She shook her head. "She needs facial surgery, at a minimum. Change her retinal patterns, fingerprints, vocal chords. Re-seed her hair. Hell, make her wear nail polish. And she can't go anywhere near you."

"She will stay with me," Shiala said. "She will be safe here. Anonymous."

"She might not even know who she is when she wakes up, anyway," Chakwas said. "She'll be confused, and frightened."

Shiala put her hand on Chakwas' arm. "It is all right," she said. "I will take care of her." Half her mouth lifted in a smile. "I have learned something about overcoming trauma. I would like someone else to benefit from my experience."

The sun came over the window sill. A ray slipped through the curtains and lit Shepard's face, and her mouth twitched. She smiled in her sleep.

Liara closed the channel. On the datapad in front of her were reports, from the Citadel, from Omega, from a dozen other places. And from Cerberus, keeping their promise to help her hunt down the Broker.

She gazed, unseeing, out the viewport for a moment, then hid the reports and brought up the holo. It was blurry, out of focus, from Kaidan's wake. Liara, Kate, and Ashley were leaning together, arms around one another, smiling.

Liara smiled back at the holo, then closed it and began reading the reports.

Author's Note: I intended to have a sequel posted before ME3, but real life has gotten in the way of writing. I have several ME1/ME2 story ideas I want to work on before they are rendered non-canon by the Word of God, so I will not be playing or watching ME3 until I'm done with all of them. I'll just set my unopened copy here on the desk to remind me to keep going back to them when I have time. As always, my humble thanks to everyone who has read and reviewed.