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Shepard had nodded off on the transport, but she was still tired. Yet she had no desire to sleep any longer. Not now. She had lost two years of her life in sleep already, if these people were to be believed—and she did believe them. She didn't trust them yet, but she was certain they were telling her the truth about what had happened and how long it had taken. Her last memories were of fighting the suit to get air, of drifting through space, of the wreckage around her. She had been injured in the blast—at least, she remembered pain—and no doubt suffered when she went through the atmosphere of the planet, as well. It was truly miraculous that she was alive at all, much less alive and functionally the same as she had been before. That kind of miracle didn't happen overnight. Truth be told, she couldn't imagine how they had done it in two years.

As soon as possible once they reached the Cerberus station, she said her good-nights to Miranda and Jacob—her keepers, or her crew? It was hard to tell at this point—and found the little room she'd been allotted here on the station.

The first thing she did once the door slid closed behind her was step inside the equally small bathroom and shut that door as well. She could practically feel the surveillance on her, tracking her movements and probably her vital signs. It was reasonable to assume that Cerberus had cameras and other tracking devices in the bathroom, too, but she hoped at least there would be fewer here than in the bedroom. More than anything else, she longed for privacy, to be able to be certain she was entirely alone. Having lost two whole years of her life, having lost her command and her companions, and everything that ever mattered to her … it was a lot to deal with. Her training had gotten her through it so far, kept her from making a fool of herself, but she needed to take a moment to reorient herself in her new life, to mourn the lost years and everything gone with them. And she couldn't give way to emotion if she thought someone was watching.

She covered her face with her hands. Everything felt the same—there was no sensation in her body that seemed alien, other than twinges of pain. However they had put her back together, they had done a good job. And she felt the same to herself: She was still J.R. Shepard on the outside, Juniper inside. And that was all she needed, wasn't it? It was all she'd ever had, since Mindoir. Herself. She could make it as long as she knew who she was.

Taking her hands down, she leaned forward to study her face in the mirror. Without knowing exactly what condition she'd been in when they'd found her, she didn't know how extensive the rebuilding process had been—but they'd done a good job there, as well. It was recognizably her face, perfect in every detail. There were breaks in the skin here and there, odd-looking cracks with something glowing inside them. Not scars, exactly, so she hoped maybe they would heal over time. And the skin itself was paler than usual, waxen. But the detail was perfect, down to the familiar freckles scattered here and there.

Miranda had said Shepard wasn't "ready" when Wilson had attacked the lab facility; maybe these cracks in the skin were what she meant. Shepard had certainly jumped back into action straightaway, finding everything in her body so far working to her command, the familiar adrenaline of battle, the movements through the facility, the finger on the trigger, the focus in aiming. Maybe all that had been more than her still-recovering body was meant to take yet. But it felt good—some aches and pains here and there, but nothing alarming.

Stripping off her armor, she stepped into the shower, feeling the fine needles of the hot water run down her skin. How much of this was actually her skin? Probably very little. The skin would have been damaged extensively by the fire and the atmosphere. The real question was how much of it was skin at all. Was everything in her organic, or was she now some kind of machine/human hybrid? She had been tempted multiple times to ask Miranda exactly what had gone into her "recreation", but she thought it unlikely that the other woman would tell her the truth at this point. They didn't know each other well enough.

Leaning her forehead against the smooth tile of the shower wall, Juniper let her thoughts fly in the direction she had carefully kept closed off all this time: Kaidan. What must he have felt when she wasn't in that escape pod, when he realized she was gone and wasn't coming back? She could only imagine the hell he had gone through, the grief he must have felt. What would it be like for him to hear that she was alive? It would be a big adjustment.

He would need to know as soon as possible. The last thing Shepard wanted was for Kaidan to hear about her … revival from someone else, from some kind of rumor. She hastily shut off the shower and reached for her towel. She needed to try to contact him right now.

And after Kaidan—Joker. Had he survived? Was he all right? She knew he had broken his arm when she hauled him out of his seat, and probably a leg as he fell into the escape pod. Had he survived the landing? Had the others? Wrex. Had he ever gone home to his people? Garrus—had he returned to C-Sec, or struck out on his own? Her team, so painstakingly assembled, so much a part of her life. She couldn't have defeated Saren without them. Had Tali gone home with her information about the geth, had she completed her pilgrimage? What had Liara done? Where was she? Shepard imagined her on Ilos, combing through the last of what the Protheans had left behind.

She was going to need them back now, if she had another task in front of her. She couldn't imagine facing down whatever was to come without Kaidan at her side, Wrex and Liara and Garrus and Tali at her back.

What would Cerberus think? So far, she had only met humans working for them, and they were a human-focused group in general. She hoped they didn't expect her to work with a human-only crew—that wasn't the way J. R. Shepard got things done, and she hoped they had learned that in their research on her, which had apparently been extensive.

Pulling on the uniform she found laid out on a bureau, a difficult task tugging stretchy fabric over still-damp skin, she left the bathroom and searched the room for a vid station, feeling in her clothes for a comm link. Any means of communication with the outside world. She wasn't particularly surprised when she found nothing.

Well, then. She left the room, refusing to be thwarted so easily. Almost immediately, a crew member, a pretty girl with red hair, wandered into sight. "Commander Shepard. So good to see you up and about. Can I help you find something?"

"I'm looking for a vid station."

"Oh, I'm sorry, they're all down for maintenance."

A patently false statement and delivered badly. This girl couldn't lie to save her life.

A smile pasted itself on the girl's face. "I know they were looking for you in the command center—I can direct you there if you like?"

It wasn't really a question, more an order couched in such a way that she could have imagined it was only a request if she had been another kind of person. "Sure. Thanks."

"Oh, my pleasure," the girl chirped brightly.

Shepard took her directions and followed them to the command center, entirely too aware of the limitations of her new life, and frustrated by them. If this team-up between herself and Cerberus was going to work, they were going to have to ease up on the controls, and she intended to tell them so.