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Shepard's clone had gone, deeper into the archives, but her mercs had been left behind, and they opened fire on Shepard's people.

She wished the clone had stayed to watch what happened next, when a whole room full of people, without needing orders, drew their concealed weapons and turned the fire back on the mercs. It was so easy to fall into familiar routines; they had all fought together so often.

"You guys are the best!" she called out, taking cover behind a desk in the midst of a volley of fire from the upper level.

Garrus picked off a merc with a clean head shot. "Just one big happy family, Shepard!"

Vega crowed as his shot landed. "One big happy ass-kicking family," he agreed. "See that, Brooks? That's how legends do it."

After being thrown off the upper level by the clone, Brooks had hidden under a set of cabinets while she applied medigel to her injuries. For someone who claimed she'd never been in combat before, she seemed to carry a lot of medigel, Shepard thought—and to be remarkably unphased by the hail of bullets around her. She didn't respond to Vega's comment, and Shepard was relieved. While she'd like to see Vega find someone who made him happy, Ann Bryson was a much more stable choice.

Wrex's voice rang out over the din. "You talkin' about legends, kid? I'll show you a legend." There was the unmistakable sound of a krogan body impacting on another body, and a groan of pain from the impactee.

"They've got a krogan. I didn't sign up to fight krogans," the merc managed to wheeze before Wrex finished him off.

"That's right, princesses. Uncle Urdnot's back in town, and he's brought the boom!"

"Uncle Urdnot?" Tali asked.

"Yeah, it's something I'm trying. What do you think?"

Liara executed a complicated maneuver across two desks to take out a merc sniper. "I think you go back to the drawing board."

"Yeah, yeah, everyone's a critic," Wrex grumbled, knocking two mercs' heads together to relieve his hurt feelings.

Shepard smiled at him. "You show him, Uncle Urdnot."

"You like it, Shepard?"

She shrugged. "It'll do."

"Uh-huh. I'll keep thinking."

The mercs were split up, unable to come up with a stable formation with Shepard's people between them. One of them tried to make a break for a few others who had formed a barricade with some furniture and leaped back just in time to avoid Javik's shot. "Hey," he called to his fellows, "that's a Prothean over there!"

Javik chuckled. "And that is a future corpse over there."

"Did we know they had a Prothean?" the merc called.

One of the guys behind the barricade shouted back, "I think that turian they've got is Archangel! How the hell are we going to kill him?"

Kaidan leaned over and muttered to Shepard, "There'll be no living with him now."

She smiled. Garrus really was quite proud of his nickname, for all that he tried to pretend he kept a low profile. She saw him now, at the edge of the upper level, popping a new heat sink into his gun and taking careful aim at the merc who had spoken his name. "I have news for you," he called down. "You're not."

"We've got 'em psyched out now," Vega chortled. "Hey, pendejos! Our Shepard is better than yours!"

There was no response from the mercs, but Shepard called back to him, "I'll thank you to remember there's only one Shepard, Lieutenant."

Silence. Even the shooting had stopped. Then Vega's response: "I think they know that now, Lola."

Shepard stood up, looking around. Next to her, Kaidan took stock of the situation as well. "That's all of them. Now where did that other you go?" She glared at him, and he shrugged. "What? What else do you want us to call her?"

"Never mind," she said to him. Then, more loudly, she called to the others, "Stay in your groups, fan out. She's pushing on into the archives. Let's not let her get any farther! Team Mako, you're on point!"

Brooks crawled out from under her cabinets. "Right," she said brightly. "What's a Mako?"

Liara chuckled. "Something we could use right about now … as long as Shepard's not driving."

For a moment, Shepard imagined herself behind the wheel of a Mako, smashing through walls and chasing down that thing wearing her face. It sounded damn good.

Kaidan nudged her, and she drew her thoughts back to the here and now. "Team Hammerhead, cover the flank!"

Cortez looked down from the upper level. "Got it! Also, the Mako's got nothing on the Hammerhead."

"Jeff says it doesn't matter what you drive, only whose hands are on the wheel," EDI put in. "Is that a double entendre?"

"If Joker said it, you can bet on it," Cortez replied, grinning. "And a lot he knows—he drives the best ship in the galaxy."

"So he does," she agreed.

Shepard shook her head, but she couldn't help smiling. To think that anyone could prefer being a lone wolf to having these crazy people by their side.

Kaidan nudged Shepard again. "You okay?"

"I am as long as you're all here."

"Good. Then let's go finish this, shall we?"

"Best idea I've heard all day."