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Shepard stared open-mouthed at the woman coming toward her—the woman who wore her face, spoke with her voice, stood with her stance. How was this possible?
"Who are you?" she asked, once she could manage to speak.
"You weren't the only Shepard that Cerberus brought back to life. But at least one of us will finally do something with it." The clone looked Shepard up and down with evident disgust.
"A clone," Liara said with chilly disapproval.
Cerberus. She should have known. Shepard felt a moment's frisson of the old fear, that Cerberus hadn't brought her back but rather had rebuilt her, as they clearly had built this thing in front of her. And then she thought of Thane, and his assurances, his certainty, that she was the real Shepard. She had believed him then; she would believe him now.
"A lot of people have thought they could do a better job than I could," she responded coldly to the clone's assertion.
"Yeah, they're dead now," Wrex put in.
"Where did you come from?" Kaidan asked, frowning at the clone, and Shepard felt a stronger frisson of fear—this time, that Kaidan's old fears about Cerberus would be back now, that he wouldn't be able to let this clone thing go, that everything they were trying to build together would be jeopardized by this event. But she couldn't solve that now; it would have to wait until later. She would choose to trust Kaidan, to trust them and what they felt for one another.
The clone glanced at him, briefly, dismissively, then looked back at Shepard. "The same DNA as you. Cerberus spared no expense resurrecting you. With me …" Her lip curled. "I was created for spare parts in case you needed another arm, or a lung … or a heart. Expendable."
"Where have you been this whole time?" Shepard asked.
"In a coma, until I woke up six months ago. While you were in a jail cell on Earth, I was learning to be human. Amazing what a person can do with enough neural implants."
Learning as well to be bitter and envious, it seemed. Not that Shepard blamed her entirely—she wouldn't have liked being side-lined in favor of a more genuine version of herself either. Still, J.R. Shepard had never wasted time feeling sorry for herself, and it sounded like this clone had elevated it to an art form.
However, she had no intention of allowing there to be any question here about who was who. "I don't care who you claim to be. The role of Commander Shepard is already filled."
The clone stood face-to-face with Shepard, hissing into her face, "The wrong woman. It's time the understudy had her day."
"Oh, yeah?" Kaidan asked. "How do you kill a Reaper?"
The clone ignored him.
Shepard was trying to figure out why now, where this clone had come from, who had awakened her. Someone had—she didn't wake up on her own and spend six months in secret learning to be a person without guidance. "Did the Illusive Man send you?"
"No. He abandoned me when he had what he wanted: You."
A person in her situation shouldn't have been so open about either the truth or her bitterness. Whoever had trained the clone had done a lousy job of it.
"So what's your point in trying to kill us?" Kaidan asked.
"Because I don't have her memories. I'd never fool her supposed friends … the ones who abandoned their duty to join the cult of Shepard." The clone's disdainful gaze encompassed the whole crew, from Cortez to Javik to Wrex to Tali, and Shepard's hackles rose. If she had ever accomplished anything, it was because of these people. They were her strength, and anyone who dismissed them had missed the picture entirely.
The clone turned her gaze on Kaidan. "Like you, Major Alenko. I would have picked the other one on Virmire. Ashley-something."
Kaidan's mouth set in a thin line. He was still sensitive about that day. "You're just a pale imitation of the real thing!"
"I'm the real thing perfected." She walked toward him, her hips swaying. "Don't you think?"
"Hardly."
The clone laughed and looked back at Shepard. "I'm you without the wear and tear, Shepard. The doubts, the failures. I'm the lone wolf you were always meant to be. Without the emotional baggage holding me back."
"You don't have any idea what you're saying. If I were a lone wolf, I'd be dead dozens of times over. My 'emotional baggage', as you call them, have saved my life in more ways, and more times, than I could possibly count. If you think you can do any of what I do alone, then your life will be very, very short."
"Don't waste your breath," Wrex said. "No one will ever believe she's Shepard."
The clone smiled. "They will when I'm flying her ship."
Shepard immediately clicked on her comm. "This is Shepard! Initiate Normandy lockdown. Transmitting command codes now!"
Before the codes could go through, the clone used Shepard's own override code. "Traynor, this is Shepard. Prep the Normandy for emergency departure. We're leaving. Sending the command codes now."
Looking up, Shepard could see a glance pass between Liara and EDI, and EDI's very slight nod. Traynor's voice came through the clone's comm. "Acknowledged. We'll get underway."
But of course, Traynor would know that Shepard would never have contacted her to get the ship underway—she would have contacted Joker. And if she understood the silent communication between EDI and Liara properly, Joker was likely already on the ship … and the clone hadn't done anything to sever EDI's connection with the Normandy, it seemed.
So Shepard put her worry about the ship aside to concentrate on what to do with the clone. "It'll be a cold day in hell before someone steals my ship."
"It's not stealing if I'm you."
Shepard held her gaze. "If you're me … then what's my name?"
"Commander Shepard."
"No. My first name." It wasn't in her files; she'd signed up with the Alliance under her initials. Kaidan knew, because she'd told him. Liara knew, she was certain. The others? It was hard to say.
The clone glanced quickly over her shoulder, and then looked back at Shepard. "I'll find out. Just wait."
"Yeah, good luck with that."
Narrowing her eyes, the clone barked at the mercs, "Execute them. The cult of Shepard ends today."
She disappeared into the depths of the Archives, and the mercs started shooting.