Shepard woke up with her head full of half-remembered dreams — she'd been somewhere cold, trying to comfort somebody crying, even though they kept turning from her. She couldn't remember who the person was, but the chill of the dream lingered until halfway through her morning physical therapy session.

"Nice work today," said Lara brightly, as Shepard stretched out her aching legs.

"Thanks," she said. "Hey, is there any way I could get an omni-tool?"

"Hm?" Lara looked up from her datapad. "Oh, do you not have yours?"

"No, I guess maybe it was damaged?"

"Maybe." Lara activated her own 'tool. "I'll put in an order."

"Thanks," Shepard said again. She needed intel. She didn't know nearly enough, and she was fed up with having the same questions itching at her brain.

The omni-tool that eventually arrived late in the afternoon was a very basic, slightly battered Bluewire model. Shepard didn't care. It would get the job done. The extranet connection, she was told, wasn't very reliable; too great a demand, considering the number of personnel in-system. She could send messages out of system, but they'd be queued and might not send immediately.

All Shepard really needed at this point, though, was to access Alliance internal records. Especially the personnel database.

Shepard waited until she was alone before she brought up the omni-tool's holographic interface. It flickered at first, but soon steadied. She didn't remember her password — or, more likely, the one associated with her Alliance login wasn't the one she remembered — but she was able to get through the password restoration process and into the system.

Her memories didn't match her circumstances. For now, she could put aside the question of delusion, hallucination, or something fucking with her, and focus on her research. She needed to know: If she wasn't... herself, wasn't the Commander Shepard, then who the hell was she? She searched for her own record: Shepard, V.

She found it easily. Valentina Shepard. Daughter of Daniel and Anna Shepard. Born on Earth, 11 April 2154, raised and educated on Mindoir. Not orphaned at the age of sixteen. She'd attended the Systems Alliance Academy starting at eighteen. Graduated in the top quarter of her class.

Val frowned. She remembered graduating in the top tenth, and that was after her scores had slipped in her final year.

But after that, everything looked different. Her first assignment was different. She hadn't been on shore leave on Elysium, as a freshly minted lieutenant. Had the Skyllian Blitz even happened the way she remembered it? She frowned and started a separate search, waiting for a few minutes until she got lucky with the local info systems. A quick cross-referencing made her frown deepen. The colony on Elysium had been decimated. Alliance reprisals had been swift and harsh, and there had been a concerted effort to rebuild the colony, but its population, at the time of the Reaper invasion, had still not been up to pre-Blitz levels.

When Shepard closed her eyes, she could still remember that day. She could even visualize the layout of the colony's main city, the rubble she'd clambered over, even the faces of those she fought beside— but not clearly. The details were hazy and indistinct. Of course, it would have been a decade ago now, so there wasn't anything unusual about her memories being hazy. Was there? She remembered people calling her the Hero of the Blitz. She'd played her part, with the smiles and the interviews and the recruitment vids and posters, the publicity tour of the major colonies and Earth, the medal and the commendation. She'd never really believed in the label, though. It hadn't made sense to her that her presence on Elysium on that crucial day could have made such a difference.

But the bland information on her screen told a different story. No hero of the day, more civilian casualties, even harsher reprisals, as if the battle of Torfan she remembered hadn't been bad enough. It made her feel a little light-headed, almost nauseous. Could one marine have made that much of a difference? Wasn't it downright egotistical of her to think so? Did she want so badly to be a hero that her imagination had made herself into some kind of hero? If so, how could her brain conjure up false memories that vivid?

But on the other hand... how could everything around her be a lie? And wasn't it even more self-important to think that someone would go to this much trouble to trick her, or to feed her some kind of illusion?

She shook her head. Thoughts like that weren't getting her anywhere. Focus on the intel, she told herself, and see where it led.

She resumed scrolling through text on the 'tool. As she flicked from one story to another, reading about the various skirmishes that had taken place after the Blitz, John Shepard's name caught her eye. She stopped and backed up to read the story more closely. What she saw made her breath catch: the truly staggering death toll at Torfan, the majority of his own squad wiped out, along with the enemy. That was the event that had sealed his reputation, the way Elysium had — could have — should have? — formed hers. That was the other Commander Shepard, the famous one: a man who had sacrificed his own people, in great numbers.

Shepard leaned back against her pillows to think. She shouldn't be too quick to judge, without having been there herself. Hell, after Bahak, she didn't have much right to judge anyone, did she? And rooting out an entrenched encampment, one that had had ample time to prepare its defenses, that was a tough prospect.

Still... even so... the facts, as described, made her squirm. She took care of her people, or at least she tried to. Sacrificing your own marines like that...

Frowning, she returned to the personnel files. Now the assignments after 2176 matched up with the reports she'd been reading. She'd participated in several of those mopping-up actions after the Blitz, although not the attack on Torfan. She scanned through the rest of the file's details quickly, feeling increasingly fidgety.

It was... it was a solid career. She'd been tapped for ICT at age 25, three years later than she remembered. She'd never made N7, though, unless the file was corrupt or incomplete, but it looked as though she'd topped out at N5. The whole file was like that. There was just... something missing. Some spark. It was excellent — a record any marine could be proud of — and yet — Val's teeth ground together. She couldn't explain why this perfectly honorable and acceptable military record made her so angry.

Except that it could have been more. She could have done more, been more. Couldn't she? She remembered being more. She wanted to shake herself. Her other self. Her stomach lurched as she imagined a younger version of herself looking back at her, the way her clone had, wide-eyed and baffled and resentful. Valentina Shepard had been good, very good, and yet not quite good enough, not as good as she could have been. What had she been missing? She'd never served with David Anderson in any capacity; had it been the lack of mentoring that had held Valentina Shepard back? Or... Shepard rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache starting to throb behind her eyes. Maybe instead of doing the work toward the career she wanted, she'd manufactured an elaborate delusion in which she had all the glory anyone could have wanted. But no. No. If she were making it up, would she have made up her death? Would she have made up the smearing of her reputation, her endless fight to prove the Reapers were real? Why? Did she have some kind of persecution complex, to go with a hero complex and a martyr complex? What was wrong with her?

It was easier when her mother was there, when she had somebody else to talk to. Even though things weren't right, at least she knew they weren't right. When she was alone, like now, just sitting in her hospital bed, uncertainty sank thin claws into her mind and heart. Was this real? How could she have invented a person like Samara, or Thane, or Jack? How could she remember, in such vivid detail, precisely the heat and texture of Garrus' skin? How could she not remember her own mother, how could she fabricate such a terrible demise for her entire family? But if those memories were true, then what? Was she surrounded by an elaborate, tedious Cerberus illusion, complete with a fake mother? Was she somehow still unconscious, dreaming a world in which her family lived and she didn't matter? But if her mind had invented all of this, why did she hate it so much?

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. In and out, once, then twice. She counted to ten, reminding herself again that all she needed right now was to gather information.

When she opened her eyes, she glanced down to the bottom of the file, her most recent assignment. When the war broke out, she'd been...

She blinked. She'd been second-in-command of the 1st Special Operations Biotic Company. Second, that was, to Major Kaidan Alenko.

A dry, strange sensation bubbled up in her throat and she couldn't help herself: she laughed until tears streamed from her eyes and her healing abdomen ached. Kaidan could be an able enough commander, she had no doubt of it, but the idea of their positions reversed that way — of him being in charge of her — there was something unimaginably incongruous about that. Their relationship had simply never worked that way, even though he was older than she by a couple of years. He was a smart, dedicated officer, but he'd always deferred to her. Even during the war, when he'd outranked her, he'd accepted her command, followed her lead. They hadn't discussed it much. Probably not as much as they should have. When they'd both found themselves on the Normandy, evacuating Earth in the wake of the Reaper invasion, she had taken charge before it even occurred to her that Kaidan was the ranking officer, and he'd let her do it without objecting.

Unless all his talk about Cerberus on Mars had been a way of complaining. Her smile faded as she pressed a hand to her healing side. No, if he'd wanted command, he could have asserted it more directly, and he hadn't. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be his subordinate officer. She'd always respected his abilities, but the two of them had never quite clicked the way she had with Wrex or Tali or Garrus. As her lieutenant, he'd had a way of expressing concerns in particularly circuitous ways that set her teeth on edge.

She looked down and read a little further. She'd had command of the unit when the Reapers attacked, and had retained command throughout the war. They'd served with distinction in the Battle of London. There had been a considerable number of casualties. She sighed, her throat tightening. These were people she should have known. If there were survivors, she should be trying to find them and see how they were. The ones who had died — that meant there were letters that it was her charge to write, about people she didn't remember.

The casing of the omni-tool had a small crack. She picked at it with a fingernail, uneasy. There would be no good way to do that, no real path to writing anything but a terse, official note. The database might have their official records, which would help, but it wouldn't put reality to those memories. She'd written the letters for Williams and Jenkins so carefully, giving due praise to her lost subordinates. It wasn't much comfort to their families, she'd wager, but at least it was something. If she belonged here, if she was really this Shepard, she'd know these people, instead of having elaborate delusions about other people.

Other people.

Before the thought truly registered, she was entering Moreau, J into the database.

Moreau, Jeffrey. Current rank: flight lieutenant, reinstated [data corrupt]. Current assignment: Normandy SR-2, under command of Lieutenant Commander John Shepard.

All the breath went out of her lungs in a rush. Joker was where he was supposed to be. John Shepard had ended up in this hospital, so Mama said. Where was the Normandy? Everything in the record, in fact, looked the same, as far as she could recall. The scores, the assignments, the unexplained gap in service between 2184 and 2186. It hadn't been updated since before the war ended.

Almost feverish, she searched on other names: Vega, Traynor, Cortez.

The results were the same. Nothing looked out of order. To be honest with herself, she had to admit that she'd barely looked as Steve and Samantha's records when the war started. They were on her ship, they seemed competent enough, EDI vouched for them, so she had trusted them to rise to the occasion. She hadn't been disappointed. They'd both talked about their background and experience, though. There was Steve's stint flying Tridents; there was Samantha's education at Oxford and long spell in the lab. And Vega... there was the deployment on Fehl Prime, there was his leave afterward, there were the assignments to Vancouver and the Normandy. They had the same careers she remembered them having. How could she possibly have hallucinated mundane details about the background of Normandy crew members?

She knew where Kaidan had been, but what about Ashley?

KIA. Same date and place of death, same posthumous honors.

Shepard chewed on her lip, hand wavering over the interface before trying out something different.

Lawson, M.

Error: File not found.

She wasn't really surprised. A quick check on Jacob Taylor had, she thought, the right dates for Jacob's service, or close enough.

Nothing on any of the alien crew. She wasn't too surprised about that, either, though it still chafed. She tried to run an extranet search instead, but the connection icon spun idly for a minute before informing her that the extranet was unavailable, and would she like to try again later?

She looked back at the files she'd saved from the Normandy crew. It didn't matter, really, that the Alliance personnel database couldn't tell her anything about her non-Alliance crew. She had the evidence, the files that matched her memories, when they were memories she shouldn't have had. She was the thing that didn't fit.

She was the thing that didn't fit.

Why? What kind of explanation could there possibly be for what she was experiencing?

Maybe she'd really lost it this time.

She almost put the omni-tool away, before realizing she had another name to try.

Shepard, John.

There he was. She pursed her lips at the picture. He didn't look like the ruthless commander who'd lost his unit on Torfan. Born on Earth. Parents unknown. He and she were the same age. He hadn't attended the Academy; he'd enlisted and been pulled into officer training later, after David Anderson took an interest in him. Her lips tightened. Anderson had recommended him for ICT, too. She already knew about his involvement in the Torfan raid. A lot of his record past that point was classified beyond her ability to access. Then, his posting to the Normandy and Spectre appointment, both in 2183. There was, as with Joker, a conspicuous gap, though the record didn't seem to contain any reference to his death.

So she wasn't the only thing different. He was different, too. She couldn't recall ever hearing of a John Shepard serving in the Alliance, but there could have been one. Shepard wasn't that uncommon a name. Somehow they'd... switched places?

Impossible.

You've made a career of doing the impossible. Or had she? Maybe he was the one who'd had that career.

Who or what could have done this? Scrambled her head, so that she had memories that weren't hers? Or scrambled reality, so that she had a life that wasn't hers?

Was it the Reapers? Had they somehow — had they tricked her? Had their Catalyst lied to her about the consequences of her actions? Here, they survived. That hadn't been her plan. She'd been prepared to die, as long as she took them with her. Had they somehow engineered an outcome that assured their own survival? Or... was it Cerberus? Was she even here at all? Could she be in some kind of elaborate simulation, another one of the Illusive Man's manipulative games?

Her breath was coming fast and hard. She could feel her pulse pounding. Her right hand was knotted around the blankets. She forced her fingers to relax, one by one, and deliberately breathed in and out, nice and slow, until her heart rate calmed down. She wanted a gun. Or her amp. Either would do. She wanted to hit something. The Illusive Man, maybe. Hit him again and again until his pale skin cracked to show the corruption beneath.

It was unlikely, though, that whoever or whatever had put her here would do her the courtesy of marching into her hospital room, alone and unarmed, so she could beat it into submission.

She lifted her hand. Without her amp, it took a monumental effort of will to make a faint blue aura crackle around her hand. Her back and shoulders ached with the effort, and she could feel sweat starting on her neck. She let the flare die.

"Val? Everything all right?"

It was Mama in the door, with a smile on her face and her bag of knitting in her arms. So innocuous. So impossible.

For a wild moment, Shepard contemplated the possibility that this... this facsimile of her mother was set to keep an eye on her. She ought to be at least sixty; could Shepard overpower her, even weakened and recovering, as she was?

Even the thought made her feel guilty, summoning up memories of her mother's sternest stare. But she remembered, too, the woman's reactions over the last few days, which seemed entirely genuine. How she'd offered comfort. How she hadn't asked too many questions. Was Shepard just as much a puzzle for her to deal with as she was for Shepard?

No, whatever was going on, Shepard would be better served by biding her time. She should wait until she was stronger, until she had her amp back. Wait and watch and gather information and see if she could put the pieces together. If what was around her was some kind of illusion or simulation, there should be a crack in it eventually. She just needed to keep her eyes open.

This kind of waiting didn't come easily to her, but she'd done it before, when she'd been surrounded by a Cerberus crew. She could do it again.

"Yeah," she said. "Everything's fine."