Remember when I said this was part fix fic? One of those fixes is changing Ashley's rank to 2nd Lieutenant. Ash being freshly mustanged in preparation for becoming a Spectre is plausible. An NCO equaling Shepard in rank six months later isn't.
There were so many photographs on the wall. Rachel wondered how anyone could find who they were looking for. Hundreds of tattered, dirt-stained faces stared out at her, their faces covered in fingerprints. She and Ashley were here for one in particular. Thomas McMillan couldn't have been any older than twenty-five. His blue eyes were clear and honest, and his beret was set at a jaunty angle that gave him a faintly insolent air. Beneath the photo, MIA was stenciled in red block letters.
Ashley's gaze was intent, as if she could recover her sister's missing husband simply by staring long enough. Her bruises had all healed, and she was back in uniform. There was a new addition to that uniform: the Spectre symbol was embroidered on a patch on her right shoulder. This one was red instead of white. The symbol of a candidate who only needed to be vetted and recommended by an acting Spectre.
Ashley's fingers grazed the photograph. "Promise I'll find you and bring you home. For Sarah." She closed her eyes. "Please God, let me keep that promise."
Rachel bowed her head. Let me fight the bastards that made you disappear in the first place. Give me strength to avenge every person here. Bring this war to a swift and certain end. She crossed herself. Rachel had never been much for contemplation. Her prayers had been simple and goal-oriented: a plea to bring her mother home safely from the Blitz, thanksgiving for surviving Akuze, begging for forgiveness for shooting Wrex. Let me keep fighting. Amen.
Ashley straightened. "Thanks, Commander. Let's go back to checking the logs and looking for crazy hanar. Somehow I imagined being a Spectre would be more shooting things and less paperwork and poking through encrypted files. This is worse than OCS."
"Boring crap is half of being a Spectre. Tell you what, L-T. Next time one of those krogan husk-things charges, I'll let you handle it. Or if we get any more killer robots."
Ashley rubbed the back of her neck. "On second thought, I'll let you handle those, ma'am. If you hadn't shot that thing when you did…"
"You would've been in the hospital for a lot longer than three days." She cracked a smile. "On the other hand, your evaluating officer wouldn't be quite such a hardass."
"I'll take my chances with her."
They walked through the throng. There had always been poor on the Citadel: quarian pilgrims who subsisted on nutrient paste, immigrants from the Terminus or Traverse hoping for a better life, or just people down on their luck. They had been kept carefully out of sight. War had ripped away the façade. Refugees huddled in groups of three or four. Two batarians passed a pitifully small nutrient bar between them. The shrill cry of a turian infant pierced the air, and the smell of sweat and unwashed bodies nearly made Rachel choke. Some of the refugees rushed hurriedly from point to point as if they had somewhere to be. Most, though, sat listlessly in the shipping containers that made for makeshift shelters.
"Garrus was wrong," she muttered. "It's not Illium that's a bad day away from Omega."
It was the flash of red that made her stop. Rachel turned her head. The refugee's clothes were no better than anyone else's, but her hair was a brilliant shade of red. A very familiar shade of red. Kelly's back was against the wall. A human man with bleach blonde hair loomed over her. "Bit late with your protection money, Chambers."
Kelly met his eyes, but her hands were shaking. "Those supplies are for the refugees. People that need them. Not war profiteers like the Suns."
"Oh, we need them. It's not cheap to keep order in a hellhole like this."
"And here we have the other half of being a Spectre," Rachel muttered. "Dealing with petty thugs who think a gun and a fancy uniform make them a big man. Leave her alone."
The blond whipped his head around, but it was Kelly who spoke first. "Shepard? Oh, thank God!"
The thug's eyes went wide. "S-Shepard? The Shepard?"
Rachel summoned biotic power that raced up and down the length of her arm and coalesced around her fist. It wouldn't deliver all that much force, but it looked really scary if you were some two-bit thug who had just graduated from stealing lunch money. Sometimes the show was everything. "That's right, pal. And this lady happens to be a friend of mine. You would want to hurt a friend of Commander Shepard, would you?"
Color drained from his face. "No." He turned back to Kelly. "How about I give you a pass this month? Maybe next month too?" And with that, he ran off.
"Shepard!" Kelly repeated. She dashed forward and enveloped Rachel in a suffocating hug. Rachel threw her arms up stiffly and placed her hands lightly on Kelly's shoulders. "I heard about Earth. I was so worried about you, not knowing if you were alive."
Rachel had never known quite what to do with Kelly's boundless empathy. It hadn't seemed right that someone that warm and trusting should belong to Cerberus. She thought it was a front, a carefully constructed artifice designed to seduce Rachel into confiding in her. But for now, she was just something warm and comforting. The complete opposite of Miranda and her tests. So Rachel let Kelly hold her.
"I'm all right. But what are you doing here? Not some kind of supersecret double agent for Cerberus are you?" It was only half a joke. She tried and failed to imagine Kelly lying, and she certainly didn't look like the other Cerberus agents Rachel had fought, but anything was possible.
Kelly shook her head vigorously. "No. After the mission, I took a good long look at what Cerberus really was. The Illusive Man lied to us. He put our lives in danger even when it wasn't necessary for the mission. Horrible experiments were allowed to continue. I couldn't in good conscience stay with Cerberus. You opened my eyes, Shepard."
"Er, you're welcome." Rachel stepped back. "But what are you doing here? How did you get away from Cerberus?"
"I told the Illusive Man what I told you: that it didn't feel right that I remain with Cerberus when I had so many doubts about them. I came here to help the refugees. I can do a lot of good here with my psychology degree."
"You just left?" Rachel gripped Kelly's shoulders, more tightly this time. Panic surged through her. "You didn't change your name or dye your hair or anything?"
"Shepard, I was just your yeoman. I'm nobody to Cerberus. They won't bother with me."
"Yes, Kelly. They will. I've seen what they do to their own soldiers. They turn them into husks. They call it integration. I don't want to see them do it to you. Change your identity. Go into hiding."
"Husks? They wouldn't—no, I don't know what Cerberus would do anymore." Kelly took a deep breath. "All right. I'll do it. For you."
Ashley watched her go, her lips pursed in thought. "She seemed nice," she said at last.
"She is. A bit too nice sometimes, but her heart is in the right place."
"Was that—was that how Cerberus got you on their side? By making sure you only saw the nice people?" Ashley dug the toe of her boot into the ground. "I read the file. Dr. Chakwas, Joker, Daniels and Donnelly. Even Jacob Taylor. All of them were true-blue Alliance types before they worked for Cerberus."
Rachel rubbed her temples. Sometimes it felt like she had analyzed every nanosecond of her association with Cerberus, and it still didn't make any sense. "No. It wasn't that. Cerberus gave me a chance to act. You remember how it was after we killed Sovereign. The Alliance sent us on a wild goose chase after geth stragglers. Even then, they weren't taking the Reaper threat seriously. And it was even worse after I came back. But Cerberus? They wanted me to fight Reaper agents and save human lives. I figured the Illusive Man must have some kind of agenda. I kept expecting Lawson to knife me in the back every time I went against her boss' orders. But Cerberus was still a lesser evil than the Reapers. I'd have worked with the Devil himself if he wanted to fight Reapers."
"Only it turned out the Devil was just as bad."
"Yeah." Rachel shrugged. "Come on. Let's get back to the boring part of being a Spectre."
She'd fudged the truth a bit, of course. It wasn't only desperation that had driven her to Cerberus. They had been seductive. The Alliance and the Council had swathed themselves in bureaucracy. Sometimes it seemed as they were more concerned with holding onto power than doing good. But the long leash the Illusive Man offered her had possibilities. No more worrying about upholding the Treaty of Whatever just so the Alliance could save face. Miranda, cold half-monster that she was, had proved a thousand times more tempting than Kelly. They give me my resources and say do it. Well, enough resources meant finally doing something about pirates. It meant actually making a damn effort to integrate biotics into society. It meant doing something about corporations like ExoGeni when they used colonists as lab rats. Cerberus could have given her the power to change things.
And then she had seen David Archer and remembered what they really were.
She and Ash were halfway through a list of soul names when Rachel's comm went off. Miranda. Had to be. Cold metal lodged itself in her gut, and sweat formed on her palms. "Sorry, Ash. I've got to take this. Trying to find someone to take Chakwas' place now that Hackett has her busy."
She stepped away. "Well?"
"Can we talk in private? I'll send you the navpoint for one of my safehouses." Miranda's voice was hollow. Not impersonal and slightly smug. Soft. Empathetic. Before the incident with Oriana, Rachel had wondered sometimes wondered if Miranda was really human or just an android Cerberus had created to spew propaganda and further their goals. She had waited for some sign of warmth or empathy, for the acknowledgement that advancing humanity meant caring about actual humans. Well, here it was, long after she needed it.
She liked it better when Miranda had been a jerk. "How bad is it?"
"Please, Shepard. I'd rather do this in person." The link went dead.
Rachel didn't remember making her excuses to Ashley or stumbling toward the Presidium. There was only a terrible fog that enveloped everything and chilled her to the bone. She'd told herself that things would be better as soon as she knew what was wrong. She'd know how to make everything go back to normal. She could take aspirin or something. But the loss of uncertainty also meant the loss of hope.
The navpoint led to a surprisingly upscale apartment complex. Leave it to Miranda to find a way to be on the run and still have nice things. Miranda herself looked like hell, though. She was hunched over a desk surrounded by holographic representations of the human body. Her pallor had long since gone from beautiful to sickly. She looked up when Rachel entered. "Shepard. Can I offer you a drink? There's wine around here somewhere."
"You're being nice to me. I must be dying."
Miranda didn't smile. "No, not dying. When the yahg's men found you, your nervous system was badly damaged. We had to manually reinsert eezo nodules at critical points to restore your biotics. It was extremely delicate work. The slightest damage could have had disastrous effects. Do you remember the L5x implants Mordin created for Jack? How much more powerful they made her? Kenson's battlefield medicine has caused your implants to have a similar effect on you."
"That's great. Why do you sound like you're getting ready for my funeral?" Memory nagged at her, some half-forgotten warning. "Wait a minute. The only reason that those implants worked so well for Jack is that she was suffering from some kind of neural decay, right?"
"Right. All biotics have it to some degree or other, though it doesn't seem to affect most people very much. But the experiments Jack was subjected to increased the rate of decay exponentially. As she grows older, her gross and fine motor functions will be impaired and she has a very high risk for early-onset Alzheimer's." Miranda raised her head. "And that's what's happening to you."
No, she wasn't hearing right. "I'm going to be a cripple and lose my mind? Because your implants are screwing up? Don't you put in failsafes for this kind of thing?"
Anger and pride flashed in Miranda's eyes. "Of course I did! But those idiots at the Project broke them. It's like someone disabled a surge protector. As long as your body can handle the additional strain, your biotics will grow more powerful. When it can't, your nervous system will begin to decline. "
Like Dad. Rachel had only been able to watch as Daniel Shepard, the first human to capture a dreadnought, had succumbed to a lump of his own malignant tissue. He had lost his memory, his mind, everything that made him her father and not just a lump of flesh. And now, her body was turning on her. First the Reapers. Now this.
Reapers. Shit. She'd allowed herself to forget about them for the tiniest fraction of a moment. "You said my biotics would grow more powerful as long as my body could handle it. How long can I fight?"
"Shepard…"
"How. Long. Can. I. Fight?"
"Without treatment? Three months. With the drugs Teltin developed, you'd be able to double that."
Six months. Six months to destroy the Reapers. "I have to get to work."
"No, Shepard. You need to get to a doctor." There was still sympathy in Miranda's voice, but it was twinged with the authority of the woman who had insisted on leading fire teams and to hell with anyone who had a problem with her. "You're going to need a highly specialized cocktail that will change as the disease progresses."
She took one of Rachel's hands in both of hers. The hint of warmth her fingers had promised was fully realized now. It didn't blaze like a fire, but simply radiated through her. Rachel looked down. Miranda wasn't soft and gentle like Kelly, but she was strong. Rachel could lean on that strength. It would be easy, so easy, to do as she asked. Trust that she would use that brilliance to stop Cerberus and the Reapers, just as she had used it to bring Rachel back. Trust that the army Hackett was building would be enough. The Illusive Man had brought her back to stop the Collectors. Well, she'd done that. Now, it was time to look after herself.
But no. This had been Rachel's war from the moment that beacon touched her mind. She would see it through for the sake of humanity. Running away now would be spitting on everything Miranda had done with Lazarus and the sacrifices of everyone who had died. Kaidan. Thane. Kasumi. Even the Lazarus Station staff.
"And precisely who do you suggest I get to do that? No Alliance doctor will let me keep fighting. It'll be all over ANN and Westerlund before the ink's dry on the medical discharge. You of all people know the morale boost that will give to Cerberus. And not to mention the docs still don't know crap about my implants. You're the only one who knows anything about them."
The only one. The director of Lazarus was sitting right across from her, and they were just talking about how to manage whatever the hell was wrong? A sudden, wild, desperate idea flitted into her brain. "Is there any way you could give me more than six months? You know my body better than I do, and I know you're smarter than those idiots who ran Pragia. There has to be something you can do to slow it down more. Maybe stop it."
"There are… modifications I can make. Untested."
"Then make them. I just need more time. As long as I can live long enough to put the last Reaper bastard away, then nothing else matters." Rachel stared at her. "I want you on the Normandy. There's no one else I can trust to keep quiet about this and do this right. God knows, you're nothing if not competent." Rachel managed to smile, but it felt tight and forced, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. "You talk about wanting challenges. How about saving the savior?"
Miranda didn't speak for a long time. When she did, her voice was slow and careful. "You want me to serve on an Alliance ship? Shepard, do you realize exactly what I was to Cerberus? I wasn't an ordinary cell leader. I was the Illusive Man's right hand. The Alliance would never let me anywhere near one of their ships. They probably have orders to shoot me on sight."
"Lawson, I got a message from Aria T'Loak yesterday. She's promised me the combined might of the Blue Suns, Eclipse, and the Blood Pack. Hackett was practically jumping for joy when he heard. They'll accept you. They don't have a choice. Consider yourself conscripted."
She would make this work. She had to. Miranda Lawson was the only hope she had.