"Damn," Jo cursed, falling into a chair in the cafeteria at the same table where Karin, Garrus, Vega and Tali sat. "I shouldn't have put medigel on my foot. I think there's still a piece of glass under my skin."
Joker, who followed her closely and pulled a chair to sit right next to her, rolled his eyes:
"You shouldn't have walked around barefoot this morning. I told you so."
Jo, digging into her lunch, rolled her own eyes:
"Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't have spread so much chaos and destruction."
"You started it. And I still haven't forgiven you for my computer."
"You're the one who swept it right off the table with your bad aim!"
"You're the one who chose to hide behind my desk! Why couldn't you duck behind your own?"
"Why would I ever want to do that?" Jo gave him a shit-eating grin.
"What are you guys talking about?" Tali asked.
"Oh, the house is a minefield right now. It's not safe to navigate," Jo said casually.
"Yeah, it's totally trashed."
"It was perfectly fine and clean when we left last night!" Garrus exclaimed.
"Yeah, about that... One little pillow fight later most plants need new pots, several pictures need new frames, Joker needs a new computer, several table lamps need replacing and the ceiling lamp in the bedroom desperately needs fixing. Oh, and the pillows from the living room couch are dead."
Vega sniggered while Tali and Garrus both shook their heads. Karin was frowning:
"Jo, you have a glass shard in your foot? Why didn't you come to me sooner? Stop by in the med wing after lunch."
"Oh, I would have cut it out by myself with a knife or something," Jo shrugged. "No big deal."
"Sometimes you tough and bloodthirsty warrior types make me want to bang my head against a wall," Karin groaned. "I have anaesthetics and clean instruments. There's no need for your barbarism."
Jo stuck out her lower lip to Joker:
"She's being mean to me."
"Actually, I think she's being nicer to you than you are to yourself," he shrugged her off.
"So, guys," Vega began after everyone stopped laughing. "Are you coming to Seashell tonight?"
"What's that?" Jo asked.
"A turian bar downtown. Vakarian discovered it. We've been hanging out there on and off for the last month."
"Why haven't I heard about that until now?"
"Uh, maybe because you two are newlyweds and rush home at the first chance to be alone?" Tali suggested. "Seashell is slightly dingy, but they serve good drinks and couldn't care less who we are. They probably won't even flap a mandible at the former Commander Shepard."
"Wanna go?" Joker waggled his eyebrows at Jo.
"Body shots or dancing on the table?" She grinned back.
"Oh, for the love of...!" Vega groaned. "One of these days you two will be arrested for indecent exposure."
"I've always wanted to be arrested for indecent exposure with a hot piece of ass like Jo," Joker drawled dreamily. Vega rolled his whole head in frustration, while the others tried to hide their sniggers.
After lunch and a short visit to Karin's new med wing Jo was pinged by Dex, who wanted to talk to her privately in her office. She changed her course and went to meet him.
"Jo, I have something I want to run by you," the AI said through the speakers when she was finally in her chair. "I don't want Matty to know yet, so I disabled surveillance in here."
"All right," Jo knew that Dex was as anal about security as Matt and her. He would never have disabled the cameras anywhere if it wasn't extremely important.
"Remember when you picked us up from the home base on Earth? You and Matty talked about mobile platforms for me. You were the one who suggested using a human body. Did you mean it?"
"Yes," Jo drawled, wondering what Dex was cooking.
"I've started looking around and I think I've found something. Or rather someone. It's a young human man, seventeen years old..."
"Jesus, Dex!" Jo jerked.
"Just listen to me, please? He suffered from a severe brain trauma during birth on one of the smaller human colonies. He's been in coma for all those seventeen years. He hasn't been conscious even for a second of his life. The doctors recommended from the start to... let him go. But the parents clung to him with all they had, literally. They worked hard and sold everything they had to pay for the machinery and drugs that keep him alive. There are no other relatives. The mother died a year before the Reaper war, the father was killed by the husks shortly before the war ended. They had paid for his treatment until his eighteenth birthday, probably hoping to continue with the payments soon, but now they are gone. The boy has nobody to claim him. The doctors at the clinic are actually pretty devastated about it. If there was a hope for his recovery, they would have petitioned someone for help. Hell, I would have helped. But there is no hope he will ever wake up."
"Did you hack into his medical file? I want to see it."
"Of course." Jo's omnitool flashed and she looked at the young man's stats. True to Dex's word, the doctors recommended letting the boy die in peace from the day he was born, there was no way to get him to wake up, even with the power of modern medicine. The parents kept him alive, hardly out of hope, but more out of refusal to let their only child go. She could understand.
"Dex, if they couldn't fix him until now, what do you plan to do that would change his condition?"
"I've been running trillions of simulations and found a way to upgrade the geth technology that you used to interact with Legion, and I perfected the procedure Legion used to plant Link inside your brain. Also, I combined several decades of salarian scientists' research into brain tissue. Long story short, I believe I know how to fix his damage by replacing 43,6% of his brain tissue with implants. It's not a way to wake the boy up, though. It's only a way to make his body functional and accessible. The implants would make my interaction with the organic tissue easy and allow me to control it. But Jo, with so little of his own brain matter left after that surgery there is no way the boy would be able to function on his own. He would be an empty shell."
That was convenient. Modern medicine moved fast these days. Maybe in a few years there would be a chance to repair this boy's brain. But if he woke up, what would it be like for him? A newborn baby in an adult body. He would be condemned to a life of struggle and misery, without family, financial support and with nobody quite like him in the world.
She knew that letting Dex claim the body would be somewhat amoral, no matter how hopeless the boy's condition was and how horrible his potential awakening. She would show preferential treatment to a friend. She did that too often already, and didn't always have a good excuse.
Her motto in life was to never give up. Had she came across this boy in her travels, she would probably have put her own money into researching ways to help him. How could she justify making a different decision right now?
I'm going to hell for this, she thought to herself, looking at the picture of the boy on her omnitool. Dark brown hair, adorable nose, a tiny mole on his chin, bow-shaped lips, thick eyelashes. He sure was cute, even with his eyes closed, comatose in a hospital bed.
She thought of Matt. From the day they met she knew that despite his criminal record he was a good man struggling to keep his humanity. He deserved love, and if Dex was it for him, then...
Would she choose Matty and Dex over a boy somewhere out there? Jo bit her lips hard enough to draw blood. People always came to her with these decisions and trusted her to make them. Did everyone think that she wasn't affected by this? Whoever out there thought that she was a self-righteous bitch, had no idea what she was going through each time she was faced with this kind of a choice.
Damn it. The boy was about to die anyway. The doctors scheduled his disconnection from the machines for the day after his eighteenth birthday.
"Dex, I'll stand by you in this, if you promise me two things."
"Anything."
"First, I want you to let the boy die properly before you claim him. Let him stay dead for a few days. Give his soul a chance to leave the body for real. I don't know what would happen when you resurrect him - after all I came back. But at least give him a chance to move on."
"I can do that. And the second thing?"
"You will never, ever refer to that body as a mobile platform. Even when the boy is dead, it's still a proper human body. Not a platform."
"Understood. I will do as you wish. Does that mean you'll let me go through with it?"
"You didn't actually need my permission, Dex," she chuckled. "But if it's my blessing that you wanted, then you have it."
"Thank you, Jo," Dex's voice sounded thinner than usual. "You don't know what this means to me. It may not work, I haven't tested the procedure, but if it does..."
"Then you'll be like Link in many ways. The experiences you'll make in a human body will be beyond anything you can imagine right now."
Dex, recently reconnected to his memories and processors on the Red Boxes they'd brought from Earth, started arranging things. Quite honestly, Jo didn't know what an AI was capable of, once connected to the extranet. He could probably take over the galaxy.
After work Jo and Joker joined their friends at Seashell. Kolyat was still in the early stages of building his bar at the ICA, and in the meantime many recruits and staff members looked for drinks and entertainment planetside. The old Normandy crew chose the dark and plainly furnished bar as their new watering hole. Neither Jo nor Joker drank: Jo because of the baby and Joker because he needed to be completely sober when flying his wife and unborn child. By the time they returned home Tess and her mech (dubbed Mechie for shortness) had cleaned the entire mess, re-potted the flowers and fixed all the lights.
A few days later Project Retrofit was finally coming to its end. After four weeks of intense labour the station had gained a staggering amount of security measures. Dex had cameras everywhere. Missiles and rockets would meet any intruder into the solar system. Docks were secure to the point when nothing could get past, even a simple omnitool that didn't belong to the station's network.
Per Jo's request Liara and Matt had found many new contractors to make the finest weapons, armour and upgrades for the recruits. Matt also found most necessary off-station facilities: an uninhabited planet for survival training, a piece of an ocean for underwater training, several asteroid fields in the nearby systems for flight training and nice, isolated spots for team building exercises.
In early October Jo gathered everyone in Assembly to announce the end of the project. When everyone settled down, though, Vega came up to her on stage, five recruits in tow. The krogan among them was carrying a black box.
"Now what?" Jo wasn't prepared for an interruption.
"Commander Moreau," Vega started and everyone started smiling. Jo realised that the whole Academy had been up to something behind her back. "As your first class in the new Academy we'd like to give you something to remember us by. Yes, I count myself in this class, and it's an honour."
"Uhuh." Jo raised an eyebrow.
He pulled a knife from the sheath on his thigh and tossed it in the air:
"You gave me this. It's a shame that you've had no knife ever since."
"Vega, that thing was made for a woman's hand. Your fist is twice as big as mine, you should have gotten yourself a proper knife by now," Jo shrugged, slightly uncomfortable. She even felt a blush creeping up her face.
"I'll never get rid of this, Lola," Vega possessively slid it back into its sheath. "It was a gift from Commander Shepard herself. Well, the staff and the recruits have decided to give you a little present on this occasion. This is for you from all of us." He waved his hand and the recruits behind him stepped closer to Jo. They all grinned when the krogan opened the box to her.
Jo brought her hand to her mouth and bit hard on her knuckle, fighting tears with all she had. Gifts were rare in her life. Mostly they came from Joker. This, a thoughtful present from her first class, was something special indeed. The knife looked wicked. Expensive. A little girly with decorative inlay where the blade met the handle. Beautiful. The sheath next to it sported more inlay. Upon a closer inspection Jo realised it was handcrafted.
She reached into the box carefully. The handle fit perfectly in her hand, the whole piece was ideally balanced. It looked more than just pretty and expensive, it looked badass.
"It's beautiful," she finally said. "Thank you." She took the sheath and attached it to her hip. Then she slid the knife inside and shook hands with everyone who stood with her on stage. The audience began clapping enthusiastically and continued to do so until Jo really blushed.
Once she was alone on stage again, she needed a moment to remember what she was doing there in the first place.
"All right, the station is finished, secure and open for business. Your classes start tomorrow. However, we will test our new security system first. The first two rows to my left," she waved her hand at the front section of the audience, pointing out about twenty recruits who'd randomly chosen to sit there. "From now on you are a team. Tomorrow morning you will pack your things and move planetside. You have a month and unlimited funding, while you play a role playing game. You will be terrorists. Take all the knowledge you've gained of this station during your work here, and use it to try and infiltrate the station. Do what you need to do: buy tech and weapons, hire muscle, kidnap and torture, bribe, hack and blackmail. We all will be playing this game. For the next month you won't be part of this academy. If any of us see any of you anywhere in the city, we won't know you. Find any weaknesses in the station's security and exploit them to the fullest. We will continue our business as usual, as if we didn't know about your impending attack. By the end of the month you will all gain your N1 rank, depending on the result maybe even N2. I want you to be ruthless in this, completely unscrupulous. Go the distance. Make me proud."
"Can I join them?" Michael Portman asked lazily.
"Is there a reason other than that you hate my guts?" Jo raised an eyebrow.
"No."
"Then no, you stay. The rest of you are now free to apply for an examination date, if you feel confident that you can earn your next N rank. Check in with your instructors for details. Each recruit's examinations will take place on an individual schedule. You can stay here for five weeks or ten years. Once you have reached your potential and moved out to start your work as an agent, your spot will be filled with the next new recruit. This means that no class after you guys will start their training together, like you did. I'm looking forward to working with all of you," she finished the speech and dismissed the crowd.
Everyone was talking excitedly as they filed out of the room. Kolyat's bar was still not open, thus the recruits chose the cafeteria to celebrate. Jo watched them with a fond smile for a while.
Then her omnitool pinged. She read the message and quickly deleted it. When she spotted Joker in the crowd, she caught his eye and jerked her head towards the VIP dock. They needed to get home.
Joker didn't ask anything until they were safely inside their house. Always professional, he knew a situation when he saw one.
"Link just messaged," Jo explained. "His project is finished."
"You mean the clone is ready to be awakened?"
"Yes. I need to go to Earth and you need to stay here, train your recruits and tell everyone that I'm on a secret mission. I'll only stay on Earth for a week."
"Jo," he stepped into her personal space and put his hands on her pregnant belly. "Think about it one more time. What if she tries to take your place again? What if I can't tell the difference? No matter how well I know you, I can't guarantee anything. What if she comes to me and I sleep with her? Wouldn't that be creepy?"
"I won't hold it against you, if that happens. But I just know that it won't." Jo covered his hands with hers. "I love you and nobody can fake that. We will be fine."
"And what if she attacks you? Harms the baby?"
"I won't be wearing any weapons on me when I'm around her, so that she has no chance to grab anything off me. But if she tries to harm the baby, it won't matter if she's my sister or not. She's dead meat."
"I hate this."
"You'll see, it will be all right."
Joker didn't argue anymore. He knew it was pointless. Instead they spent hours loving each other with all the urgency and intensity they felt in the face of the upcoming two-week separation.
In the morning, before he put Jo in a Corvette, Joker made a point to tell her to take care of his baby and then rubbed his stubble over her belly, telling the baby to take care of the mama. Just that word - mama - sent Jo into another sobbing fit.
Hormones were a bitch.
Several days later she entered the Sol system. Joker, for whom it was the middle of the night, guided her approach over the com, leading her undetected through the fleets stationed nearby, defence drones, and satellites. The ship would be picked up on scanners, but nobody would know that it was Jo returning to Earth.
When Jo landed in Greenland, Link was waiting for her at the door. If geth could smile, he would be wearing an ear-to-ear grin.
"Welcome back, Jo," he said, returning her hug. "Everything is ready for you. I've cleared the facility after Grunt's limbs were grown and attached. Nobody will disturb you."
"That's wonderful. Link, would you synch with Dex, please? He might have another similar project that he'll need help with."
"It will be my pleasure."
Ever the thoughtful gentleman, Link went to his charging station and deactivated his body, linking his mind to the extranet. This left Jo and her sister alone in the entire facility.
The closer she came to the lab the weaker her legs got. This was it: the day she finally really met her sister. She'd been confident in the outcome of this reunion for so long, but now the sudden panic obliterated that confidence. What would she be like? What would she say? For fuck's sake, how would she feel about being resurrected? What if she hated Jo for it?
For a whole minute Jo stood in front of the lab door, unable to move a muscle. Opening that door would bring one of the most profound changes in her life.
Fuck it, she thought, as she'd done the day she jumped into the ocean in full gear without being able to swim. Que sera, sera.
She stepped through the door and approached the lab table. And there she was. Relaxed in her sleep, the young woman's features were peaceful. It was slightly eerie to see a perfect likeness of herself like this. But she wasn't entirely identical. Her hair was shorter, her skin paler, her hands were soft and gentle, unlike Jo's beaten knuckles that no plastic surgery could correct anymore.
The steady rise and fall of her chest tightened Jo's throat with emotion. The day she lost her sister something inside her died. Now she relaxed a little, hoping that that horrific moment in her life could be reversed.
"I hope you don't kill me for this," she said softly and stepped to the console to deactivate the flow of drugs. Now it was only a matter of time until the sleeping beauty regained consciousness.
When the machines signalled that the clone's body reacted well to the change and that it was out of danger, Jo disconnected all sensors and carried her sister to one of the bedrooms. She knew first hand the difference between waking up on a lab table and in a normal bed. She brought some water and a snack and sat down on the other half of the queen sized bed to wait as patiently as she could.
After several hours the sleeping woman started taking deeper and faster breaths. Jo could feel that her pulse beat skyrocketed. Suddenly she convulsively sucked in a breath and sat up, arms flailing. Jo reached out to touch her firmly, but gently:
"I'm here, baby, I'm here. Breathe. You're safe."
Disoriented, the woman thrashed around in agony, but Jo avoided her clawed fingers easily enough. When she saw that the flailing wasn't going to end soon, she grabbed the clone tighter, threw her on the bed and climbed on top of her, pinning her down.
"Look at me," she demanded.
The thrashing ended almost immediately and the newly awakened woman focused her eyes. It clearly took her a moment to realise that she was looking at another person, not in a mirror. When that sank in, she tried to throw Jo off but wasn't successful, weak after the long death and extensive surgery. A rainbow of emotions flipped on her face in quick succession: anger, fear, confusion, curiosity, more anger, resignation, malice.
"I died," she declared with gravel in her voice. "You brought me back."
"Want a drink?"
The other woman let her head fall back onto the pillow:
"Sure, why not?"
Jo got her a glass without climbing off her.
"I mean you no harm. I'll never use you or betray you. But first things first: you need a name. I can't always call you 'the other blondie'."
"I have a name. I'm Commander Johanna Shepard."
"Yeah, well, no. You're not. The way I see things, you're my twin sister. It's nature's way of cloning, and I'm willing to overlook the part where you're not made by nature. You can't be me. I'm already me. But you can be yourself. And that starts with your own name."
She earned silence.
"Naming yourself is a big deal, so I'll let you think about it. In the meantime, could you just please not try to kill me? I still want to enjoy your company."
"Where are we?" The clone asked, swallowing more water.
"Earth. Greenland. This is the facility where I was brought back to life for the second time."
"Huh?"
"Okay, let's start with the basics. It's been a year since you and I met, since you died. About a month after that day we engaged in the last battle against the Reapers and we won. I also died again. The galactic community put their heads together and resurrected me. Took them seven months. When I got back, I found your body that I kept stashed away, brought you here and had you restored as well. You were an easier job, only three months of work. Now the galaxy is recovering from the war and nobody knows you exist except me, my man and the geth unit that rebuilt you."
"Uhuh."
Jo smiled at the wary, almost fearful and yet defiant copy of her face.
"Well, you're alive. What now?"
"Yes, what now?" The other woman said, fixing her heavy glance on Jo. "You want your revenge? Information? I don't have the second, and I won't let you touch me for the first."
"Relax. You don't know anything that would warrant resurrection, and I was never mad at you. Please, let's just talk."
"Why did you bring me back?" The other one asked.
"Because you're the only blood family I've got. Family is not something I can just turn my back on."
"I'm not your sister. I'm you."
"Says who? You don't have my memories, my experiences. You're a different person, created out of my DNA. Which makes you my twin sister."
"I'm the better version of you. Free of inhibitions."
"Yeah, you already said that. Right before my inhibited foot kicked your uninhibited ass."
"Debatable. We were both hanging off that edge."
"And the difference came to save me. My friends. They are my strength, not yours. Find your own, live a life. You can do it now, find out for yourself who you really are, not live up to some twisted image Cerberus planted in your head."
"I bet you're planning to put some other image in my head."
"Look," Jo said calmly. "If you're anything like me, I know exactly how you feel. Mistrust, caution, betrayal would be topping that list. You don't want my help and you don't need it. But a year ago you came to me, trying to take away something I'm offering you for free right now. An identity. Your own identity, not mine. I know I can't force you, nor do I want to. So, take some time, think about it. My room is across the wing, and I'll be here for a week. If you decide to ask me some questions, if you want to hear the answers, I'll be here."
"So I'm your prisoner now?"
"You will find no doors locked and three shuttles in the hangar, ready to take you to orbit, if you like. Just leave the Corvette, I need it to get back home. I'm not holding you here. But I really want you to stay. I want to learn about you, hear your story, get to know you. So I'm asking you: please, don't go. It's not an order. This is a plea from sister to sister."
Jo left the other woman alone in he room. She knew well how to play people. She knew best of all how to play herself.
A full day she spent working on her computer, cooking or reading in her room with her door open. The other one didn't show. Jo heard a shuttle leaving the hangar late in the night, but also heard it return before morning. She knew she would be back.
Next day she came to watch Jo make breakfast.
"What was our mother's name?" She asked.
"Janina," Jo said without showing surprise at being spoken to. "Dad's name was John. Lots of Js in the family."
"Do you know of any other family we have?"
"All I know is that mum was from Sweden, and dad was from a family that came to America from Sweden many years ago. The last two blondes on the planet somehow found each other. Hence our hair. I was born in Vancouver, but the state hadn't found any blood relatives in the database. And through all the years that I've been on display nobody ever came forward to claim a blood relation."
"I can't name myself. It's creepy. It's… I'd miss out on something if I choose my own name."
Jo looked up.
"Would you like me to name you?"
"I don't know. If I said yes, what would you name me?"
Jo put aside her knife and cocked her head:
"You deserve a J name. I think mum and dad would have kept that tradition up. I'd call you Justine."
"Justine. Justine Shepard. Hm." The other woman tried out the taste and the feel of the name. Without sharing her thoughts she left the cafeteria and didn't show herself until late in the night, when Jo was putting on her pyjamas.
"I'll take it," she declared forcefully. "The name. I'll be Justine Shepard."
"Nice to meet you, Justine. I'm Jo, at least people close to me call me that."
"You don't mind me being Shepard?"
"Oh, no, you can keep Shepard. I'm not Shepard anymore, myself."
"Huh?"
Jo showed Justine her wedding ring:
"Got married two months ago."
"To whom?"
"You wouldn't know him personally, but I can tell you about him if you like."
"Uhm… whatever." Justine huffed and left the room. Jo only smiled to herself: small progress was better than no progress.
Jo made breakfast next morning and brought Justine a plate. She found her door open and the woman lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
"Try this," Jo said. "I'm very curious if you like it."
"What is it?" Justine asked briskly.
"My favourite food. They used to make that at the orphanage I was in, and I hate everything about that orphanage, but I like these dumplings."
Jo stepped closer to put the plate on the nightstand, but as she let the plate go, Justine's hand shot out to grab her wrist. Jo allowed the other woman to yank and topple her onto the bed. Next moment Justine was sitting on top of her, pinning her wrists at her shoulders.
"I win," she declared with an evil smile.
"You do," Jo agreed.
"What, no snippy remark? You're not going to fight me?"
"No."
Justine frowned and shook Jo's shoulders:
"Fight me."
"No," Jo said, and barely had time to evade a fist flying in her face. Punches rained down on her, none of them hard enough to actually hurt her, but if Jo wasn't careful, she could earn a broken nose. She bulked and tossed Justine off, changing their positions. Justine started fighting for real dominance, but Jo let her go immediately, just sitting on her.
"Stop," she pleaded earnestly. "Stop, I'm not going to spar with you!"
"Afraid I'll kick your ass?"
"Of course. Last time we did that, I ended up hanging over an abyss."
"Scared of some pain? I thought you'd be tougher."
"I'm pregnant." Jo looked at Justine intently, trying to make her understand the whole meaning of her words. "I'm pregnant."
Justine stopped moving under her and blinked several times. Jo took her hands and placed them on her belly:
"I'm pregnant."
Justine lowered her glance to her midsection and her hands finally came alive. She stroked Jo's shirt almost gently.
"Pregnant?"
"Yes, just a few weeks. I put fighting past me. No more pushing myself to the limit in life threatening situations. My body is now a sacred vessel for our little miracle."
After the first shock was gone, Justine moved them to Jo's sides, pressing strong fingers deep into the flesh, exploring her with dominant force. Jo let her. It was as strange to her as it was to Justine, knowing that their bodies were a genetic copy of one another. It was mind-boggling on many levels. Jo was as curious about Justine, but she could wait.
Justine ran her hands over Jo's thighs and knees, endless wonder spreading on her face. She took Jo's hands next, entwining their fingers, comparing the length, the bone structure.
"You're..." She started, but cut herself off. Then she tossed Jo off herself and sat up, feet on the floor and face in her hands. "Why? Why did you bring me back? What do you want from me? Why do you even care? I gave up on the world, you should have been happy, should have continued your life as if I never was."
"You've been alive for half a year, it was a bit too early to give up on the world. You didn't actually want to die, simply didn't know any better. Remember what I said to you when you revealed that you're my clone? I said that I wanted you. The prospect of having a sister shook me to the bone. It was what I've dreamed about for so many years. If I'd known about you from the start, I would have rearranged the galaxy to get you out. You lived in your hell for six months. I lived in mine for twenty nine years, until I met my husband. I know what it's like to be completely and utterly alone, when nobody cares and everyone wants a piece of you. Nobody to come home to, no return to the place I grew up in, nobody to claim my corpse if I failed to dodge the next bullet. At least you've always known I was out there. I've spent a lifetime wishing I had somewhere to belong. Can you imagine what it's like, being an orphan, and suddenly gain a sister?"
"You want me to belong to you?"
"No, I want to belong to you."
That got Justine to turn around. In true Shepard fashion her face was a stone cold mask, perfectly hiding any emotion.
"You want to be mine? Why? What have I done for you to want me, to trust me?"
"You don't have to do anything. You exist, that's reason enough for me to love you with all my being."
Justine's jaw slacked. She opened her mouth and closed it several times with no sound coming out. Jo could see that her sister's world was crumbling apart. Everything she thought she knew was going out of the window.
"Look, baby," Jo patted the bed next to her. "Why don't we lie down? I'll talk for a while, and you can listen before you say anything. There will be a lot for you to think about. And eat your dumplings, they're getting cold."
Still speechless, Justine accepted the plate and forked the first dumpling.
"Where to start..." Jo made herself comfortable. "As I just told you, being an orphan makes you appreciate blood family. You never take it for granted, like most people do. That day we met? I knew from the start that something was wrong. First of all, the Bitch was trying too hard. I didn't know what she was up to, but I wasn't surprised when she turned out to be the traitor. My first clue about your intentions was when those mercs in the restaurant didn't shoot at me. Instead they broke the floor. Then when we finally met, it all became perfectly clear."
"What did?"
"You've been created by Cerberus in the worst way possible, like a piece of meat in a butcher shop. When Brooks let you out of the tank, she made a point to tell you all about that. You were newborn, confused, disoriented, your mind empty of any knowledge and trapped inside a powerful body you didn't know how to use. Your instincts must have told you not to trust Brooks, but you had nobody else, and she took advantage of that. She wanted something from you, something she couldn't get on her own. So, she started poisoning your mind to make you loyal to her. She told you about me, my life, my recent mission, but she also told you that I was 'wrong'. Weak, inhibited. She told you that you were the better Commander Shepard, without wear and tear, doubts, failures. She made you believe that you were the lone wolf I was always meant to be."
"That's what I said to you that day!" Justine mumbled around food. "You remember?"
"I remember everything you said to me. You think Brooks taught you how to be human with all those neural implants. Let me tell you that Cerberus is a bunch of most amoral, most inhumane monsters in the galaxy. They couldn't teach anyone how to be human because they don't know the first thing about that. Brooks may have taught you how to speak, read, fight and imitate me, but she had an ulterior motive. She didn't want you for who you are. She wanted to control Commander Shepard, and you were the means to an end. I believe that deep inside you knew that, even when you spouted all the nonsense she fed you, repeating it like a parrot. I don't think you truly believe any of that. You always knew that you weren't Johanna Shepard, and I sincerely hope that you don't actually believe in human superiority to other races, because that would just be embarrassing. After what Cerberus did to you, spreading their beliefs would make you look stupid."
Justine shot her an evil glare, but Jo didn't mind.
"You knew that you were surrounded by vipers. So, when Brooks cooked up the plan to steal my identity, you jumped at the chance. As my clone, you wanted to know what you were modelled after. You needed to see our similarities and differences. So you came to me for help, and you asked for it in true Shepard fashion: by punching me in the face. You wanted my attention, my recognition, you wanted to be as badass, as loved, feared, famous as me, but most importantly you needed me to admit that you were good enough, as good as me. But you weren't going to beg for it. No, you wanted me to prove myself first. I needed to earn your trust before you'd let me help you. I knew all that within minutes of meeting you, and believe me, baby girl, I was more than interested. I was ecstatic."
"Even though I tried to kill you?"
Jo laughed:
"Baby, you never tried to kill me. You never even pointed a gun at me until I cornered you in my cargo bay and started shooting at you."
"You..." Justine choked and coughed. "You noticed that?"
"Of course. I've been threatened so many times that I can tell when I'm not. You had many opportunities that day, but you didn't use any of them."
"I tried to make it look good."
"And it did. My team totally bought it. They're still teasing me about evil clones. They wanted to kill you, you know. I never did. You wanted my attention and you had it. I wanted you to stay so badly... When you let go and fell, I went off the deep end. Went completely off the rails."
"How?"
"Well," Jo looked down at her hands, not exactly proud of the story. "I told Brooks I'd take her head off and mount it in my CIC, but she didn't believe me. I wasn't threatening, though, I was informing her. So, when you fell off the ramp, I actually beheaded her and mounted her head on a spear in the docking bay. There was a crowd there, everyone saw and recorded. There are vids of that on the extranet. People will never look at me the same ever again. My team didn't say anything, though. I think they felt how badly I was hurting, and they let me be."
"Why'd you go berserk like that anyway? What was she to you?" Justine had long forgotten about the remaining dumplings, too focused on Jo.
"She hurt you." Jo said. Justine waited for further explanations, blinking rapidly when none came:
"That's it?!"
"She. Hurt. You." Jo stressed each word. "She deserved worse than what she got for such atrocity. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my team. For my sister? Well. I only wished that you believed in me a little more. I wanted you to stay, to make everything better for you. I know first hand that being resurrected is not all rainbows and candyfloss. I also know what difference loving support means. My friends grounded me, Joker bore the brunt of my craziness both times I died. But he was there and loved me, no matter what. He brought me back and made me human again. If you don't want to live, I'm not going to force you. I'll even give you a loaded gun. But I want you to know: I'm not a Cerberus bitch. I'm your sister. I'll love you, stand by you and teach you all I know, I'll show you the beauty of the world and I'll ask for nothing in return, except a chance to be a part of your life."
Justine sat still, petrified, eyes wide and jaw slack. She had been prepared for many things, but not this. Hostility, hate, aggression - yes. Not a love confession.
"I dumped a lot on you. Take your time to think about it." Jo got up from the bed and headed out. "I'll get you some clothes, no point running around in lab garments."
She fetched from her room a bag she'd packed for Justine before coming here. It was no trouble shopping for a twin sister. Then she left her to her thoughts.
