Chapter 34: Lady Lazarus

Miranda could still recall the scent of the champagne in the glass.

The taste of the carbonation against her nose. The feel of it. The tingle, almost pain. An evening that had passed a year before struck across her eyelids in ringing clarity. That selective memory which stole her from sleep, as it did then, came with a familiar sharpened ache. There with her, swimming in the cold skin beneath her sheets were the finely crafted genes that held all the privileges of her youth. Beauty. Reflex. Intelligence. The efforts of the tutors. The rain slicked English boarding schools steeped in good names and tradition. The tactical carbine courses that came with every birthday. Her strength. Her resilience. Every battle she had ever won, every strategy she had ever thought, all laid bare in those moments between dreams that she preferred to spend alone. The quiet of the night and the slow, low rumbling knowledge of a manifest destiny that was never hers. The guilt.

A dossier, a body on a gurney, a nanochip glistening beneath a microscope. No, said the man in the 10,000 credit suit. No. Her choices are what rally them, flawed as they may be. Deny them that, and her symbolism means nothing.

Jane. Jane of Arc. Jane Eyre. Plain Jane. Jane Doe. Plain Jane Shepard. Shepard.

She saw the silhouette of her father standing before the fire place of their ancestral home with a scotch in his hand. Her eyes opened, awaking from the dream only to drift to a memory. The man in her mind changed before her tightly closed eyes. The figure became a suit standing before a burning star. She could see him so clearly, carved into her mind. The tailored clothes, the expensive, tightly maintained hair. The perfumed cigarette. The slightest whisper of cologne. The silken lining of a gilded life. He stood in silhouette against the red star that filled every corner of her vision; the blinding light of his ambition. Overpowering. A force as insidious and beautiful as his cause. His power; an immeasurable wealth with no beginning and no end. His world.

Her world.

The champagne called to her, fizzing in its glass. Her eyes fell fixed on it, watching the flames of the red giant swim against the crystal. Fire.

Red. The color of that hair. A color impossible to match, but not for a lack of trying. No implant or synthetic keratin could match the timbre of that vermillion and it had been the bane of the past week of her research. How she hated it – despised it; that illusive, impossible hue. Even the commander's hair had antagonism woven through its core. She had to be a red head, she had to be difficult. She had to be the exact color that had been wiped out of 99 percent of the human population due to the wonders of natural selection. And Miranda had to get it right. The investors didn't want a copy. They didn't want a double, a clone, or a replicant with an AI construct. No. They wanted the 'real' thing. Real.

Real. Miranda could still recall watching the others gliding happily onto her father's shuttle. Seven of them in number, all shining raven hair, tartan uniforms and sweet sixteen skin. How they waved at her from the windows with the Earthen sun caught forever in their eyes. Up, up, smaller and smaller. Then gone. Gone. Oriana's hand in hers. Life, the reward for their perfection. Perfection. Reality. Two things never meant to coincide. Miranda Lawson became an expert on this cognitive dissonance. It went to define her life, her exodus, and her career at Cerberus. But lying on that table with those first few strands of hair fighting through the scar tissue was her greatest dissonance yet.

It had just begun to grow back, then but a peach fuzz on her skull. It was partially because of this seemingly insignificant thing that there was champagne that night, in that glass office with its secret location. It was the night the science team's report had come in. The night she had given the announcement that the skin weaves were working, that neurogenesis had not failed them as it did so many times before. That the famed commander's body had overcome her own immune system to accept the protein scaffolding – in fact, multiple proteins, even those alien to hers. Miranda had even managed to make her immune to the ravages of ingesting dextro based materials – in the far off case that the bulletproof soldier would be stranded one day far from levo rations, or at least so went the report. It was the day that the tattered body with its new skin laying atrophied on a table had a chance of being recognizable again. It was the night Miranda Lawson knew she was going to be promoted.

Even though she had succeeded at everything she had ever tried, the rush of winning was still the sweetest thing she had ever tasted. Miranda sipped her champagne. Just as she thought. There was no comparison to the taste of success.

It was better than an orgasm.

The man in the suit asked the woman in white,

"What's her condition?"

"Comatose."

"Obviously. I see you've been working on your sense of humor, Ms. Lawson."

Miranda set her glass down, focusing on the cloud of side stream smoke that lingered between them, staring straight into it.

"We are moving forward. It seems we've finally managed to push her beyond merely maintaining her circulatory system. Neuroimaging reports indicate our reconstruction of her cerebral cortex is currently at 60 percent. The neurologists have informed me of neural activity which may indicate the presence of dreams."

"Good." Said the man in the suit as he watched his star burn, "Dreams are born from memories. Memories are born from experience. And experience," He turned, smiling as he took a calculated drag from his cigarette, "...is what we need."

She watched him, considering whether or not she would bite.

"I don't follow."

He smiled, surveying his cigarette. Miranda Lawson's curiosity was indeed a rare occurrence.

"Have you ever read any of the reports published from the Genoa project?"

Miranda leaned back, watching him. She kept very careful control of her of expression, keeping it blank.

"The project partially inspired by the Pragia findings...No. I haven't had the pleasure."

"I highly encourage it." He said, beginning to gently pace as he began to reminisce, "Pragia was, admittedly, a nightmare. The subjects were far too young for clear cut psychological results – but that is the obstacle with working with biotics. The eezo-rich nerve nodules we believe are responsible for their ability only begin to mature in puberty. But, you already know that."

She watched him smoke.

"Psychological results? So we weren't just trying to optimize implants, I imagine."

"Well," said the man, sucking on his cigarette, "There was funding for that too. But the subjects on Pragia – we also interested in their perception of a cadre of abstract concepts. One of my favorites is 'choice'. We didn't leave them much in many cases, or at least, we didn't lead them to believe so."

He found her piercing gaze.

"We were interested to find a somewhat complex correlation between psychological trauma and biotic ability."

His cold eye narrowed on her from across the smoke.

"You would be amazed what humans are capable of when they are impassioned. When they believe that they are trapped."

Miranda drank just a little more, swallowing mechanically.

"My father always said that suffering begets passion, and passion begets strength. Strength paves the way for control, and control is power."

"Yes...but..." he said, still pacing, toying with the concept, "...what begets suffering?"

Miranda rolled her blue eye away indignantly as the words slithered across her lips.

"I don't know. I was never one for his musings."

The Illusive Man smiled in his knowing way, watching Miranda's sphinx-like expression from over the ember at his lips.

"The answer is choice."

Their eyes met.

"The Genoans had choice. The subjects on Pragia – they didn't. Their bodies were trapped because their minds were. And yet the body count of the Genoa project was so much higher, though we didn't control for sample groups in nearly the same ways...In many way the work was sloppy, not something possibly even repeatable...but indicatory nonetheless. It is as if – when faced with the inevitable, humans react in a completely binary way. They either see the light, or they do not. Many simply fold, but some...some stand against wind...even thrive. Belief, Miranda. Faith. Hope. These are all the things which trap the mind...and free it. Control. And control-"

"Is power."

"You've been listening."

"Your corporate speeches are very inspiring." She said with uncaring sarcasm.

"But there's a dichotomy."

"Really."

"Yes – there is in anything truly interesting. If control is power – who should wield it? Should be obvious?"

"No...Dictatorships never last, do they?"

"Not the careless ones." He drew against his cigarette. "Do you believe your actions have purpose?"

Her brow furrowed.

"What?"

He started again, slowly. The blood colored light washed down his face and onto his clothes.

"Do you believe that you are in control of your destiny? That the choices you have made have purpose?"

"Of course."

He nodded, assuredly, like he's just won a bet he'd fixed himself.

"That's what I like about you, Miranda. You know yourself so well. Anyone else would have thought for a minute, reconsidered their regrets, but not you."

Silence swept the room.

"The illusion of choice is the hand of power. Whoever is the architect of this illusion holds control by the throat. Your request for the T98 cognitive augmentation device for Ms. Shepard is denied."

He crushed his cigarette into ash as Miranda watched, glass in hand.

"I do not deal in false positives."

Miranda reached the office in the middle of the night. The interns, the scientists and doctors - all had returned to the labyrinths of which intellectuals and students are so fond. Perhaps there was a holiday - or weekend. She didn't have a family, she didn't care. She was more drunk than she had intended, but she was in solitude, and this alone satisfied her. Gliding in with reckless effortlessness, she slid into Shepard's chamber, turning off the lights after they had switched on to greet her. No. This would happen in the dark.

The whir of machines and the whisper of the respirator hummed like static through her thickened hearing. The uncomfortable, modernist chair aside the inclusive chamber that buffered the commander's raw flesh from the elements squeaked as the insolently beautiful woman sagged into it, disregarding her own Victorian expectations of posture. She turned her unsteady head towards the naked thing growing in the tube like a venomous plant in a terrarium. A dry laugh escaped her, saturated with ethanol.

"You win. Bet you think...that's pretty funny, don't you."

Silence rang and the frost shone in Miranda's eyes. Her head sank, her vision falling to her gleaming hands; crested with pristine moon-like nails.

"I know about you...I know...everything...about you...I know about your deceased teacher, I read his recommendations...I know prose so thick with violet metaphor could have only been written by someone who cared far too much for you, and far not enough for his own reputation...love leave...imagine that of all things is what gets a spectre executed...I know about your orphanage...I know about your disappearance, your petty crimes...your time on Omega living in the gutters...And...even more...do I know about your tryst with C-SEC turian...how utterly...crass..."

Miranda's lips sneered as she leaned into the glass, her inebriated breath frothing over it like ice.

"...Vulgar."

Her eyes traveled down the woman's body, eyeing her proportions - imagining it. Lingering on the thought.

"Did it hurt...Did you...your body...go into shock...pushed up against...a seven foot..."

Her lips searched for the correct word; her shuttered mind and bitterness not allowing her admit to herself the first that fell upon her tongue.

"Animal."

She listened to the machines breathing for the woman at her side, who would remain unaware of what was unfolding aside her.

"I...I don't need anybody...Did you know that? You - you surround yourself with people - aliens...strangers...All the reports say, you go out of your way to please them...get under their skin...get them...to like you...But I...I see this for what it truly is...And it's weakness..."

For a moment she saw Oriana's face reflected in her own within the glass.

"...Distraction."

As she expected, there came no reply, and once again there she sat, with only herself as a witness. Miranda sank back into her chair, staring into space as the room dissolved around her. Her memories consumed everything in sight. Her voice softened, a whisper punctuated with the all of the rejected emotions she never tended.

"Soon...it won't be a dream anymore...I know you're dreaming now...I used to dream as well...although I can't be certain of what anymore...I drank too much tonight...because they promoted me...for you...For all my work on bringing their fantasy to life...But...I know this isn't what you want...And when you open your eyes...it's going to be even less...and that is why I do not look forward to meeting you...I...don't trust you, Shepard...I don't trust anyone anymore."

One year later lay Miranda Lawson, cold inside her bed. Hearing her own voice echo back to her, with that selective memory.

These are my hands. My knees.

I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident. The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.

It's easy enough to do it and stay put.

It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day

To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout: 'A miracle!'

That knocks me out.

There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge

For the hearing of my heart- It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge

For a word or a touch

Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.

So, so, Herr Doktor.

So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus, I am your valuable,

The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.

I turn and burn.

Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash - You poke and stir.

Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-

A cake of soap,

A wedding ring,

A gold filling.

Herr God,

Herr Lucifer

Beware Beware.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair

And I eat men like air.

-Excerpt, Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, 1967