Chapter 9
Miranda stood at attention, both hands clasped behind her back as the walls around her disappeared, replaced by a holographic image of the Illusive Man's command centre.
"Hello Miranda." The Illusive Man was seated with his back to her; the omnipresent cigarette perched in one hand, a glass in the other. "You're not scheduled to check in for another two days."
She stepped forward.
"There are important matters pertaining to the mission that we need to discuss," Miranda stated bluntly. The Illusive Man hated any deviation from standard communications protocol, but considering the importance of what she had to say, she knew he'd let the intrusion slide. The Illusive Man didn't turn his chair around.
"Can it wait? I already received your most recent mission report. Everything appears to be proceeding according to schedule."
"No, it pertains to Shepard. I have reason to doubt his mental stability."
The Illusive Man took in a long drag of his cigarette, holding it in for a brief moment and slowly blowing the smoke out, before rotating his chair.
"We've been over this, Miranda. Before the Lazarus Project proceeded, Dr. Crowe and his team assured me there was nothing in Commander Shepard's medical record to suggest he was likely to be susceptible to developing mental health problems for the duration of the mission."
"I've uncovered new data which requires that we review that assessment."
The Illusive Man quirked his eyebrow slightly but his face was otherwise emotionless. Miranda frowned. She'd done some digging after her conversation with Shepard about the batarians, working off only a hunch but as usual, her instincts hadn't failed her. For once I wish I was wrong.
"In a conversation I had with Shepard last night, he claimed to have hunted down the batarian pirates responsible for the raid on Mindoir, the attack that killed his family. I did some further research that confirmed his claim, but Shepard didn't mention that he'd also been hunting down everyone remotely connected to them. He wasn't entirely honest about the number of Mindoir raiders he'd terminated either." She glanced at the Illusive Man but he just stared back at her. Over the years she'd been able to pick up a few tells that allowed her to guess what he was thinking but there were times he was still completely inscrutable. "They're at least twenty surviving Mindoir raiders and based on what he's done so far, I believe it's reasonable to assume he'll continue his obsessive quest for revenge, possibly even at the cost of our mission."
"Miranda, what's your assessment of Shepard, given the additional information you now have?"
Miranda narrowed her eyes. My assessment? We have an obsessed madman on our hands!
"Shepard is like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick – if Captain Ahab was a sadistic madman who in addition to pursuing his nemesis, was also hunting down, torturing to death, and mutilating the bodies of every whale that shared an ocean with it."
"Torture, gratuitous violence, and collateral damage… you've always been uncomfortable with them," the Illusive Man stated calmly.
"They draw unwanted attention. They're unprofessional and usually unnecessary." Miranda crossed her arms across her chest. "I've never made my distaste a secret."
"No, you haven't." The Illusive Man flicked his cigarette with a snap of his wrist. "It's certainly not a secret to Shepard anymore."
"Excuse me?" Miranda asked in a more forceful tone than she'd intended. What the hell is he talking about?
"How did you access the intelligence that allowed you to corroborate Shepard's claims? The Cerberus internal data network?" Miranda eyed the Illusive Man warily. Where's he going with this now? "Did you cross-reference any of it with extranet intelligence feeds?"
"No, it was highly specific, classified information. I didn't want to leave a trail," Miranda said, an inexplicable feeling of unease growing in her. The Illusive Man finally decided to put her out of her misery.
"According to Alliance records, the band of pirates that attacked Mindoir was estimated to be about one hundred-strong by the first Alliance reinforcements that arrived on the scene. This exact strength of the raiders was later determined by Alliance Naval Intelligence to be eighty-nine. Of those eighty-nine, eighty-one have been confirmed dead, most of them the victims of targeted strikes conducted with extreme precision. Three of them were killed in their homes without cohabitants even realizing what had happened." The Illusive Man pressed a button on his side console and a statuesque blonde entered the room with an ornate crystal decanter and refilled his glass.
Miranda felt her face twist into a look of disgust as it dawned on her what the Illusive Man was saying.
"He was playing me."
"You shouldn't be surprised. He attempted something similar immediately after Freedom's Progress." The Illusive Man took a sip from his glass and set it down in his armrest. "I don't have to tell you how crucial the success of this mission is, not just for Cerberus but for the entire human race. We need Shepard firmly on our side. Do whatever it takes to secure his trust."
"That could be difficult. Shepard seems to know me better than I know him," Miranda said bitterly.
Pulling his cigarette case from his jacket, the Illusive Man slipped a cigarette between his lips and snapped the case shut.
"Then maybe it's time you reinvented yourself."
Shepard stripped down his sniper rifle and reassembled it. Six and a half seconds. You're getting rusty. He allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. Slipping the doctored intelligence reports into Cerberus' internal network hadn't been easy. Or maybe you're just distracted. Even with the doctored reports, he hadn't expected Miranda to buy his story about the batarians. But just as he'd hoped, she'd checked up on his story and seemed to have bought it. Despite all her training, experience and intelligence though, it seemed she could be just as prone as anyone else to believe a story that fit her preconceived had formed an idea about who he was in her head and anything he told her that fit that idea would likely be accepted. She wanted to think he was nothing more than a killer and what he'd told her had confirmed it.
He stripped the weapon down and put it together again. Five seconds. That's more like it. He levelled it down the range and squeezed the trigger repeatedly until the heatsink popped out and struck the Normandy's metal cargo deck with a loud ping.
"EDI, results."
"All ten of your shots struck well within the standard killzone, Commander. Four struck within one millimetre of the optimal aiming point, four within five millimetres, and one struck six millimetres from centre."
Shepard cursed.
"Was it the last one again?"
"Affirmative, Commander. Visual analysis shows that your right hand shifts slightly forward to account for recoil towards the end of the sequence."
As much as it bothered him, he knew there wasn't much he could do about that. Still… six millimetres variation at a range of six hundred metres could amount to a metre at ten kilometres. The state-of-the-art firing range Jacob had installed in the cargo bay could simulate ranges up to a kilometre with its holographic projectors. Longer distances would require that he switch to a training weapon firing simulated rounds. Jacob had assured him the training weapons could accurate replicate recoil but Shepard still preferred the feel and sound of real bullets.
So what did Miranda's reaction mean? In the days following their conversation, she'd looked more disturbed by what he'd allegedly done than he'd thought she would. Her reaction wasn't what he'd expected. Given how much she must have seen and done as a veteran Cerberus field operative, he would have thought she'd be inured to the idea of torture and killing. Evidently not. It seemed his initial impression of her was just as wrong as hers was of him.
"You need more practice."
"Not as much as you," Shepard said, loading another thermal clip into his rifle and tossing it to Garrus. The turian caught it deftly in one claw and took Shepard's place in the firing lane.
"You've been down here for four hours."
"Perfection takes work." Shepard stretched his arms and cracked his neck. "You know, you still owe me the story of how you ended up on Omega."
Garrus adjusted the sight on the rifle and fired off a few shots. The turian narrowed his eyes and adjusted the sight again.
"The barrel on this needs to be realigned. It's offset a little to the right."
"That's intentional. I pull to the left." Shepard grabbed another rifle from the rack and handed it to Garrus, taking back his own rifle and carefully slipping it back into its heavily worn carrying case. "You know I have ways of making you talk."
Garrus chuckled. "Torture? Shepard, I've got so many painkillers running through me right now that you could throw me out an airlock and I wouldn't feel it." Firing a few shots from the new weapon, he cocked his head to the side, adjusted the scope, and fired again. Shepard leaned against a bulkhead and crossed his arms.
"I'm not due to relieve Miranda in the CIC for another seven hours so I can literally stand here all day."
Garrus ignored him for a few more minutes but eventually seemed to come to the realization that Shepard was serious and finally set the rifle down.
"I trained to become a Spectre after the Normandy was destroyed, but it didn't work out. Too much politicking on the Citadel, nobody was willing to take risks. Omega was filled with criminals nobody else could touch, and there was no red tape to slow me down. It was a perfect fit. People there needed someone to believe in. Someone to stand up to the local thugs."
"So you thought you were going to scrub out every single scumbag on Omega by yourself? Just you and your rifle against the world?" Shepard asked incredulously.
Garrus shrugged, a distinctly human gesture he'd picked up over the last few months of his stint on the old Normandy. "I had help. There were twelve of us, including me. Former military operatives, C-Sec agents, the usual. Had a salarian explosives expert, pretty sure he'd spent time in the Special Tasks Group. My tech expert was a batarian, believe it or not. Not the friendliest guy, but he could hack any system ever built." The turian's eyes took on a newfound intensity as he spoke that Shepard wasn't accustomed to seeing in the normally reserved ex C-Sec officer. "You saw Omega – it was full of thugs kicking the helpless. I formed my team to kick back. We weren't mercenaries - nobody was paying us. We made money by taking down slaver, pirates, or gangs that went too far."
"Still, that doesn't sound like an easy life. Hard to believe you were able to find that many people just willing to drop everything to fight an unwinnable war."
The turian bristled and shook his head. "It might have seemed unwinnable but somebody needed to do something and I was making a difference. You prove that you get things done, and people join up. My team was different. We didn't shake anyone down. No civilian casualties. That was our rule. Every member of my team had lost someone to Omega's gangs. We weren't out to get rich. We were out to make those bastards think twice before murdering someone in the street."
Garrus picked up his rifle and expertly began to disassemble it to clean. His voice took on a satisfied tone.
"We got three separate merc bands to work together to take me down. My manager at C-Sec would be impressed. It was simple. We'd hit their shipments, disrupt activities, get under their skin. Make them angry. They'd come charging right into our well-prepared killzone. Crossfire and snipers, clean and surgical. They never stood a chance."
An image of rows of bodybags in Garrus' hideout, neatly – almost reverently – arranged in straight lines came to Shepard's mind and he was about to ask about them when something stopped him. For a moment neither of them spoke, Shepard unsure how he should broach the subject, Garrus seemingly unwilling to. The latter finally broke the silence, reassembling the rifle in his hands and setting it aside.
"They're all dead now," he said quietly.
"You had to know casualties would be inevitable. We've both been in this business long enough to know that the other guy shoots back," Shepard said carefully. "Omega's gangs outnumbered you. If you and your crew kept up your fight, Omega and the odds would eventually catch up to every one of you."
"A part of me knew that but I was too distracted by what we had achieved. I thought we had a few more months before the odds would get us. I was wrong." Garrus suddenly seemed strangely entranced by his gauntleted claws, staring down at them as he manipulated them. "It was my own damn fault."
"What happened?" Shepard asked.
"One of my people betrayed me. A turian named Sidonis. He drew me away just before the mercs attacked my squad, then he disappeared. Everyone except me is dead because of him and because I didn't see it coming."
"You sure it wasn't an honest mistake?"
"No. I've put out feelers with some old contacts. He booked transport off Omega just before the attack. He also cleared out his private accounts before he left. He sold me out and ran." Garrus' eyes narrowed as he got back to his feet and moved back towards the firing range, staring out at the targets as he spoke. "His trail vanishes after he leaves Omega. But I'll keep hunting. I lost my whole team, except for Sidonis. One day I'll find him… and correct that."
"We'll get him," Shepard said, placing a sympathetic hand on the shoulderguard of the turian's armour. Garrus seemed surprised by the gesture but nodded. Shepard's comm bead beeped.
"Shepard, it's Miranda. We're coming up on the Purgatory."
Shepard glanced at the chrono on his wrist, then at Garrus.
"Looks like we're a few hours early." He tapped the bead in his ear. "I'll be right up."
Miranda grabbed the edge of the briefing table to steady herself as the Normandy was rocked by the shockwave of one of the Purgatory's drive cores detonating. She wasn't a fan of Joker's cockiness or his seeming inability to take anything not related to piloting 'his' ship seriously but she had to admit his claim to having been the best helmsman in the Alliance fleet might have some merit. There weren't many helmsmen in the galaxy who could have plucked them off the disintegrating Purgatory without losing a few pieces off their own ships in the process. She still couldn't understand why with all the other qualified personnel in the galaxy available for recruitment, the Illusive Man had placed the infamous Subject Zero on Shepard's list of candidates nor why Shepard had made the decision to go after her. Maybe he figured her 'recruitment' would be the simplest. After all, it only involved dropping off payment with the Blue Suns and picking up a cryogenically frozen prisoner with no other options. That didn't make any sense, considering their mission and Shepard's history. No, he picked her because he thought she had a skillset we need. Subject Zero – Jack – is one of the most powerful human biotics in the galaxy, after all. But is that power worth the risk? The woman is borderline psychotic…
The door to the briefing room hissed open, shaking her from her thoughts. Shepard walked in, accompanied by a small-statured woman with a vicious scowl on her face. Did Shepard do something to piss her off already, or does she just always wear that expression? Both possibilities seemed equally likely, based on her experience with Shepard thus far and what she'd read in 'Jack's' dossier. Despite the woman's slight build, there was a distinct menace about her that was as obvious as the tattoos that covered her half-naked body like a second skin. To his credit, Shepard showed about as much interest in Jack's near nudity as he showed Miranda. That is, none at all. Miranda pushed the thought out of her head and suppressed the annoyance that accompanied it. She cleared her throat.
"Welcome to the Normandy, Jack. I'm Miranda, Shepard's second-in-command," she said with a forced smile. Remembering how hostile Jack had been when they'd finally caught up to her on the Purgatory, she quickly added, "On this ship, we follow orders."
She knew immediately she'd made a mistake when Jack opened her mouth and sneered.
"Tell the Cerberus cheerleader to back off, Shepard. I'm here because of our deal."
Miranda gave Shepard a disapproving look as a nonverbal warning. As usual, he ignored it.
"Get settled in and we'll talk about getting you access later."
With anyone else, Miranda would have assumed he was just oblivious to her nonverbal signals but she knew he wasn't. It had only been a few months and already Shepard could read her even better than Jacob could, despite the latter having worked with her for years.
"Right. You might wanna hurry on that." Jack gave her a mock smile that bore an eerie resemblance to the proverbial cat eyeing a canary. "You know the damage I can do inside a frigate?"
Miranda crossed her arms and stared back at her. She'd obviously ruined any chance at forming an amiable working relationship with Jack, but that didn't mean she could allow Jack to walk all over her. She has to know there are limits.
"Do I need to put her in the holding cells? Just to be safe?" Miranda asked, turning to Shepard. Hopefully Jack hasn't noticed yet that the Normandy doesn't have a brig. Despite its greater size compared to the original, space was still at a premium on the Normandy SR-2. Permanent detention facilities hadn't been included in its design.
Jack didn't respond immediately, choosing instead just to scowl at her. Miranda didn't blink. If Jack wanted to engage her in a test of wills, Miranda would gladly oblige. You wouldn't be the first to attempt it. Jack was the first to look away, just as Miranda knew she would.
"No thanks, precious. I'll find my own place somewhere near the bottom. I don't like through traffic." The young woman turned to leave, pausing only to let off a parting shot. "Don't keep me waiting, Shepard."
As the briefing room doors slid shut behind her, Miranda put her hands on her hips and glared at Shepard.
"Just say what you have to say."
"You're not actually going to give her access to the Normandy's databanks," she stated simply. The sinking sensation in her gut told her that that was probably exactly what Shepard intended to do.
"I'm not giving her access to everything. She'll only have access to the files relevant to her past," Shepard said, confirming her fear as he began to move toward the door to leave.
"There could still be sensitive information in those files, Shepard. Information that someone with a grudge against Cerberus could use," Miranda protested and inclined her body at an angle to partially block his exit. We're having this discussion now, whether you want to or not. "Regardless of how you feel about Cerberus, we're on the same side right now. Giving Jack a weapon to use against us doesn't help your cause either."
Shepard knitted his eyebrows momentarily, as if trying to decide whether to awkwardly attempt to squeeze past her but seemed to give up, leaning both hands against the briefing table.
"This has nothing to do with my opinion of you or your organization. I need Jack happy if she's to be a productive member of the team. What would you have done?" he asked exasperatedly.
"Not recruit her at all? Shepard, she's an uncontrollable criminal with psychopathic tendencies and antagonism towards Cerberus that borders on obsession, as evidenced by multiple, highly destructive attacks she's made on Cerberus facilities and personnel. Would you like to see the after action reports of our rapid reaction teams?" Miranda asked angrily. There was a reason a Cerberus shell company had been paying the Blue Suns such vast sums all these years to keep Subject Zero locked up tight on the Purgatory. God knows I wouldn't want to have been assigned to the team that had to clean up the aftermath of Jack's last attack.
"If I had to limit our recruiting to candidates who didn't have a problem with Cerberus, my team would consist of you, me, and Jacob. Given the scant intelligence your Illusive Man has made available on what we're facing, I need the best and Jack is one of the most powerful biotics in the galaxy – human or alien," Shepard said firmly. His tone was calm but his body language was clearly telling her he intended to end this discussion as he pushed past her toward the door. "Now, I need you to give Jack access to those files because I don't have the necessary security clearance and I'm not familiar with what's in the databanks."
"Is that an order?" Miranda asked with a final glare.
"Do I need to make it one?" Shepard asked. He sounded surprisingly tired. "Just get it done. I need to check on Jack before she rips a hole in the hull."
"How're things going down here, guys?"
"You're the best, Commander. We just got those FBA couplings installed. Now we only have to calibrate every week instead of every day," Donnelly said excitedly. "We're thinking about celebrating our newfound free time with some Skyllian-Five poker. Want to join us?"
Shepard was about to decline the offer outright, but then thought better of it.
"I'll have to take a rain check, Ken. Maybe next time," he said with a friendly smile. Don't want to give off the impression of being too much of a straight-laced hardass.
Ducking down below the engine deck, Shepard blinked his eyes once to adjust to the dim illumination of the storage area Jack had apparently made her home in. Jack was sitting on a cot she must have stolen from one of the escape pods, staring at a bare bulkhead as if it was the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. Hope she's not another brooder.
"Hey." She didn't even look up at him. Could be good or bad.
"The Normandy has proper crew accommodations, you know, accommodations not directly situated beneath an active power core spewing enough radiation to cause you to grow a third arm."
Jack stared at him with her large, dark brown eyes for a moment, looking like she was attempting to figure out whether he was joking or not.
"It's dark, quiet, and hard to find. That spells safety to me."
"I'd have picked one of the cargo bays," Shepard said. Jack frowned and regarded him warily. Shepard shrugged and continued. "It's pretty hard to hide on this ship. The cargo bays have a lot more elbow and leg room and a lot less chance of fatal radiation poisoning in the event of an accident."
"What do you want, Shepard?"
"I need to know more about you if I'm going to integrate you into my team. The Cerberus dossier was surprisingly… uninformative." Shepard said, carefully picking his words as he began to fish for information. Jack had very little formal education or training but there was something in those eyes that told him she wasn't an idiot. Based on her dossier, what she lacked in training she more than made up for with practical experience. She probably wouldn't spill her guts immediately, but every little tidbit of information, no matter how seemingly insignificant, helped him piece together an image of who a person was. And that image is the key to making them do what you want.
"What's there to tell? Do you want to hear about how many people I've killed? How I can turn someone inside out with nothing but a look?" Jack asked menacingly. She's bluffing. Incredible as biotic abilities could be, they were still limited to telekinesis and movement of the eyes alone likely was inadequate as a physical mnemonic to fire any kind of biotic ability.
"I once killed a man by inserting a weaponized laxative into his toilet paper. Death by diarrhoea is nothing to laugh about," Shepard said with a straight face, eliciting a faint amused smile from Jack. So she reacts to humour. I can work with that. Jack's frequent run-ins with law enforcement and military interrogators had probably allowed her to acclimate herself with harsher, more confrontational approaches. A more relaxed approach might elicit some suspicion at first, but would likely be more effective as it'd be something she probably didn't have much experience with.
"Tell me about you and Cerberus," Shepard said, leaning back against a bulkhead and slipping a cigarette between his lips. He'd finally discovered Crewman Cho was a smoker a week ago but had been careful to avoid bumming smokes from her too often. Best that Miranda not realize how badly he'd been craving a nicotine fix.
"Cerberus raised me in a research facility. I escaped when I was a kid. Been on the run ever since. And they've been chasing me ever since. But soon, I'm going to chase them."
"Find anything useful in those files you hacked into?" Shepard asked casually. Jack looked at him in surprise but Shepard didn't meet her eyes, instead lighting his cigarette and puffing on it a few times before exhaling. Jack made a face and scrunched up her nose as the smoke slowly wafted past her, up to the deck above. Shepard noticed her discomfort and filed it away in the back of his mind for use later. Knowing what irritated people and distracted them was about as useful as a tidbit of information could get. Didn't think cigarette smoke would bother this one. "Didn't think I'd notice? Come on, give me some credit. You really shouldn't have bothered with the hacking."
Jack arched an eyebrow as a query.
"I didn't know you had any hacking skills before. Now I do. Miranda would have given you access eventually anyway, so it was a bit of a waste to show your cards like that."
"I got impatient. Bust someone out of prison, they'll probably try to take what they want," Jack said. "Besides, do you really think the cheerleader would have given me full access?"
Noticing Jack's growing discomfort at the smoke from his cigarette, Shepard stubbed it out. Already figured out it pisses her off, no need to keep pushing it.
"You might have a point there. So you come across anything interesting?"
"Lots. Your friends at Cerberus are into some nasty shit. I'm going to find something I can use, I just know it."
Miranda will be happy to hear that. Shepard crossed his arms.
"So what are you looking for?"
"Names, dates, places," Jack said ominously. There was a peculiar glint in her eyes as she picked up a pistol she had requisitioned from the armoury and began turning it over in her hands.
"Looking to catch up with some old friends?" Shepard asked, pretending not to notice the precarious way Jack was holding the pistol or the fact the safety wasn't on.
"I'm going hunting. Anyone who's screwed with me pays. Their associates pay. Their friends pay. The galaxy's going to be a lot emptier when I'm done."
Yup. Miranda's going to be overjoyed. A sliver of doubt was beginning to form in the back of his mind about his decision to recruit Jack. He'd hoped having someone like her around would be useful in the event the fragile marriage of convenience he had with Cerberus fell through, reasoning he'd have another dependable ally, but… What if Miranda's right and I really do just have an insane psychopath on my hands?
"The galaxy's a pretty big place. You'll be 'hunting' for a while before you make a dent."
"I've got a really long list of people stupid enough to fuck with me," Jack said, finally putting down the pistol.
"Anybody I might know?"
A sinister grin crept across Jack's lips.
"I don't know. I guess it'll be a surprise for both of us."
A/N: For anybody wondering why I reposted this chapter, I've made a few minor edits to this chapter, fixing typos, streamlining sentences, etc. Thanks again to Atiaran, jtav, and Nightwriter for reading over and betaing my work.