A/N: I'm deeply indebted to Ieldra, my beta-reader for helping smooth out the kinks on what has been a very difficult chapter to write. My thanks goes out to fongiel as well for his help with military-related matters.
Chapter 2
2195 CE, New Canton (Present Day)
"Has it ever occurred to you the Reapers may not come for many years?"
"All the time. But I can't be thinking that way. If they don't come in our lifetimes, and I have to go down in history as a raving lunatic, then that's the risk I have to take."
Over the last few years in the dead of nights, when deep space was just a bulkhead away and dark thoughts driven away by artificial lighting emerge from their hiding places, Miranda had wondered if the alternative was preferable.
Her thoughts drifted to the news of her father's death from the Reaper strikes as the orbital shuttle made its final approach to the space station. The truth was she hadn't thought of him in a long time. Moving from one space station to another, staying one step ahead of the enemy while carrying out special tasks for the Alliance occupied her life for the past seven years. Somewhere along the line, keeping track of his moves against herself and Oriana faded into the background until it slipped her mind.
It was a strange homecoming of sorts, to realise the voice of doubt that'd compelled her to justify the gifts he'd given her, to never see her accomplishments as her own had gone silent. But it was only now that she discovered its absence. It ought to matter more somehow, like a sudden epiphany appearing out of the blue sky, but it didn't. And she didn't know if she should mourn its absence or not.
The metallic clang of a grapple settling into place and the sound of an airlock decompressing gave the cue for disembarking. Deep in thought, she walked down the boarding ramp towards the customs check point. Customs check was mere formality with her Alliance clearance, so she was momentarily taken aback when she swiped her ID across the screen and the machine beeped.
A customs officer, a woman with greying hair, looked out of a nearby booth at Miranda's apparent confusion.
"Oh, don't worry. It's just a perk we installed on the system for people who come up here to pick up important items." At her frown, the woman went on to explain, "Bulky mail can get delayed a long time before going down because of priority on supplies."
"You're saying there's a package for me?"
"Isn't that what you came up here for—" the woman squinted at her console and her eyes went wide. "—Ms. Lawson? Excuse me, but are you the Miranda Lawson?"
"Yes." Miranda replied and remembered to smile, "So can you tell me more about this package?"
The customs officer gave her a goggle-eyed look. "Wow. I didn't think we have—"
"Right, yes. Do you know who sent the package? And where can I pick it up?"
"Let me see..." Thankfully, the officer re-directed her attention to the screen. "The point of origins isn't clear. Looks like it got rerouted through a few systems. I'll send someone to retrieve it from Package and Shipping if you like. Normally, we'd ask recipients to go down themselves—"
"So I can expect to pick it up here when I come back for the flight down? In an hour's time?"
"Oh, yes. Definitely."
"Thank you, officer. I'll swing by later." Miranda said briskly and walked through the divider before the woman could utter another word. She couldn't help her involuntary grimace. It was doubtful she'd ever get accustomed to this fame business.
Going through several levels of decontamination was the more troublesome affair. Stepping through the last chamber after fifteen minutes, she dressed in a pair of grey synthetic tights, her ordinary clothing having been left behind on the transit side of the station. Completing the ensemble with a lab coat newly minted from station stores, she entered the science wing.
Georg Aquino, one of the resident lab assistants, looked up cursorily from the wet bench section, and then did a double-take which caused him to almost drop the beaker he was holding.
"Dr. Lawson! It's good to see you again!"
"Just Ms. Lawson, please." Miranda said tightly, but nevertheless summoning up a smile for him. "And hello again to you, Aquino."
Aquino continued to stare at her. The slightly-built young man had been flabbergasted by her presence when they'd first met a month ago. It didn't help that she had to be the one to put him at ease. And it looked like she'd have to do it over again. She cleared her throat pointedly, hoping at the same time that this wouldn't become a repeat of her encounter with the customs officer.
Aquino blinked. "I'm sorry. What can I do for you?"
"I'm here for my test results. I left specific instructions that no one was to look at them, and that they were to be kept in a secure place until I return?"
"You did."
She raised her brows expectantly.
Seconds crawled by, then Aquino turned abruptly and made a beeline towards an office door located at the back of the laboratory, before realising he was still holding a beaker. He darted back to place it on the table, and had to scramble to catch it when it almost fell off. Miranda waited from her spot at the door, unable to contain her air of impatience this time.
Finally, the young man opened the door to reveal a messy office, one side filled with a bank of darkened consoles. Datapads were stacked haphazardly on a large table near the middle of the room, some in danger of toppling. Optical data cards lay strewn across the remaining space, some with labels, others without. Aquino shifted more piles of datapads in front of a mid-size safe located in a corner, causing a number to crash to the floor which he seemed oblivious to.
"You'll have to give me a moment, Dr. Lawson. As per your instructions, I printed the results and erased the softcopies."
She refrained from correcting him this time as she stood in the only clear space before the door. While Aquino struggled to open the safe, her mind ran ahead with her personal projections. There was no reason to think the test results would deviate greatly from those of the last five years. But if she was going to clear things with Shepard, it may as well be done properly. Yet trying to think past that point to tonight's confrontation and what it might bring caused her thoughts to skitter away.
She closed her eyes, suddenly feeling tired for some reason.
"Dr. Lawson?"
Miranda looked up to see Aquino holding an aluminium-plated dossier with an outstretched hand.
"Thanks." She accepted the folder and exited the room. A glance at the results, printed on plastic flimsies, immediately revealed that they'd been meticulously arranged, like the contents of a research paper.
"You've looked through these, haven't you?"
He looked suitably blank, too blank to her practised eye.
"Cut the act and stop playing me for a fool, Aquino."
Aquino sighed and rubbed his forehead. Straightening up slightly, his air of vagueness finally dissipated. "I'm sorry. Yes, I did. I couldn't help it. I spent some time in the Caleston Rift working to reverse the effects of indoctrination on the miners there. That's why I recognised your test results for what they were. I'm sorry."
Miranda snapped the dossier shut and walked towards a table. She placed the file on the flat surface and leaned against the edge, crossing her arms. What was done couldn't be undone. But if details of her personal life were going to be public knowledge, she'd damn well better get something useful out of it.
"Caleston Rift. When was this?"
Aquino wringed his hands as his forehead furrowed in thought.
"Nine months ago. The mining colonies there were being prepped for harvesting when the Reapers decided to begin their assault on the homeworlds. Indoctrination probes had been dropped everywhere. Some of the deeply infected miners had to be put down, but many more escaped with mild exposures. I was tasked to run tests, ascertain if they could live normal lives or if they needed medical intervention."
"What were the criteria? And what kind of intervention are we talking about?"
"We follow guidelines based on factors like age and body mass to determine infection thresholds. Those that exceed a certain level we either put on medical stasis or introduce minute quantities of a retrovirus to bring the numbers down to acceptable tolerance. It was touch and go. A number of people died because the nanites and the retrovirus were too much for their bodies to handle."
An involuntary shiver ran through her when that conjured up memories of her own experience. She cleared her throat in an attempt to hide it.
"What happened to the ones put on stasis?"
"After the Reapers were defeated, we released one of them—a forty-year old man. He'd regained control of his mind, although there was substantial memory loss and his body was ravaged extensively, very much like a husk. He died despite our best attempts. We decided it was more merciful to pull life-support from the remaining pods. I...I asked for a transfer soon after."
Miranda bit her lip before finally picking up the dossier from the table and holding it in clear view.
"I'd like to hear your professional opinion on this."
Frightened dark eyes stared at her until she muttered, "I'm not going to do anything to you, Aquino. The least you could do after reading my results is answer my questions."
That seemed to assure the rabbity young man. Wiping his palms on his lab coat, Aquino said, "As far as I can tell, the nanite count in your body falls within the safe zone. In fact, I've seen a number of colonists here with the same problem. With the Reapers gone, the indoctrination effect seems to disappear. I usually pass them off with a clean bill of health."
What Aquino said seemed to collaborate with Sanders' assertions. It also agreed with her assessment, but she had to be sure.
"What's the likelihood of my transmitting the nanites to somebody else? Someone who may or may not have the same problem?"
The blank look returned to the lab assistant's face, although this time she could tell he was genuinely puzzled.
"I mean through physical interaction, close proximity activities and such." She clarified, praying at the same time there wouldn't be a need to elaborate further.
A light seemed to turn on in Aquino's head as the confusion on his face cleared up. It was immediately followed by a wary but reserved look.
"I shouldn't think so. There were never tests conducted on how else they could be transmitted apart from the air-borne vector, because that vector was so effective. But in their inert state, which they are now, the nanites shouldn't do anything even if they can be transmitted via, uh, intimate physical interactions. And in time, your body will eventually flush most, if not all of them out."
Here, the young man looked pointedly away from her and busied himself haphazardly arranging a number of beakers on the wet bench.
It was her turn for the mental light to flick on. Oh, damn. Not this again. With annoyance, Miranda twitched her lab coat to cover the tight-fitting suit she was wearing underneath. With every passing year, she was beginning to find the dissonance between her youthful looks and her actual age more and more inconvenient. And this was definitely not the time where she wanted her body to become a distraction.
She flipped open the dossier again, wrestling her thoughts back to the matter at hand. Reservations still niggled at her despite how all facts seemed to come together. She was beginning to realise that her response wasn't entirely rational, even her fear. How much of it was apprehension over how Shepard would respond?
The topmost page summarised the results of a full body examination. Her eyes travelled down the list and saw that for the fifth consecutive year, there were no physical anomalies apart from the presence of indoctrination nanites.
I suppose we should be grateful the nanites were programmed to repair even as they alter. The fuzzy, half-coherent memory of Sanders' words inevitably coloured her thoughts. It hadn't mattered before. And she still wasn't sure it did now. But dare she take the evidence at face value?
"What's your prognosis for couples that want children?"
The words tumbled from her mouth before she could help it. Aquino looked up in surprise, and in that flash of a moment, she saw evident dismay on his face. When he failed to answer her, Miranda rapped the metal dossier against the table edge. I'm sorry, kid. Learn to pick someone closer to your age.
"There isn't a big enough sample size to judge based on the cases I've seen so far. Indoctrination nanites don't seem to be programmed to exert any effect on reproductive or sexual functions. And they don't cross the placental barrier readily." He shrugged carefully, eyes not meeting hers. "I suppose it depends on how much risk you're willing to take."
Which basically summed up all her choices on both matters. One thing was clear though; there were no more answers to be found here. With a heavy heart, she pushed herself away from the table.
"Who else has seen the contents of this file?" She asked softly as she reached the lab door.
"No one. I handled the tests myself, and then I destroyed all the data except for what's in your hand."
"Can I ask a favour of you?"
"You don't have to ask, Dr. Lawson," He said in a monotone. "I can keep a secret."
It took effort, but she managed to summon an appreciative smile for him.
"Thank you, Aquino."
Without waiting for his response, Miranda keyed the door shut between them. She closed her eyes and leaned against the cool metal surface for a few moments before setting off back towards decontamination and the docks. It was only when the customs officer ran out of the booth to stop her at the boarding ramp that she realised she'd forgotten about the package.
On board the shuttle, she looked out of the viewport, eyes unseeing, as the roar of the engines changed pitch, signalling the entry into the atmosphere. Would the alternative be truly preferable? Would things have been better had the Reapers never come? She wouldn't have been separated from Shepard; there wouldn't be that distance between them now. Her trip up here, everything would be unnecessary. She could go on living her life without being reminded of the tangled knot that was her feelings towards her father. They could have remained as they were, a galaxy's span between them, never crossing paths.
Except that meant Cerberus might never have been dismantled, or the Illusive Man disposed; she'd still be working for them, maybe incarcerated like many Cerberus operatives in the eventual fallout, or on the run for her life. She'd never have come to meet or befriend the countless of lives, human and alien, interwoven into the web of solidarity against the Reapers. And most of all, something like that would've destroyed Shepard totally; all that he had struggled for would have been for nought. She would have resurrected a dead man, pulled him from a laurel-filled grave, only to watch him live out his life as a pariah.
No, Miranda decided, she wouldn't have it any other way, regardless of the outcome tonight. For some strange reason, that newfound resolve brought along a certain peace of mind. Afternoon was already well in advance on the planet when she exited the shuttle port. Dimly through the pink-tinged atmosphere, the outline of the gas giant could be seen, skimming across the northern horizon where there was least urban development. Sister moons to New Canton would not rise till much later when they would take the place of the binary suns now passed their zenith in the sky.
She grabbed a quick bite in one of the many small cafes that dotted the city streets, and decided to stroll through the commercial sector of the city for leisure. Aimless meandering brought her past a delicatessen that sold mainly meat produce processed from indigenous fauna, especially a ubiquitous goat-size herbivore known colloquially as a brush-dog. She'd seen herds of them gather on the edges of farmland, brown pseudo-ungulates the local farmers considered pests. More regular staples like beef and chicken were on sale as well at exorbitant prices. These were likely imports since traditional animal husbandry remained a nascent industry. The tastes of home, she couldn't help but mentally label them; a visceral memory of Earth though it'd been almost two decades since she'd last set foot there.
On an impulse, she went in and purchased five-hundred grams worth of flash-frozen beef steaks. It was silly because she had absolutely no idea how to cook them. Perhaps Shepard would. The thought of him muttering expletives in the attempt almost brought a laugh out of her. At the last moment, before she made her way back to the hovercar lot, she darted into a pharmacy. The package and her purchases, along with a box of birth-control pills, went on the adjacent seat as she made her way back to Fraser's Rest.
It wasn't until she was comfortably ensconced in the unit she and Shepard called home now that Miranda gave thought to the package. It was the size of a datapad with a thickness that suggested a container of sort. A swipe of her omni-tool over the shipping tag produced a long list of systems the parcel had been routed through. The first few entries were corrupted to the point of gibberish. Scarred markings suggested the item had been entrusted to an expensive courier company as far back as half a year ago, and shipped on priority. Except none of that mattered in the aftermath of a galactic war where FTL-capable ships were in short supply.
Stripping away the synthetic covering revealed a metallic hard case—the type used to store and play crystal data cubes. The clasp was secured with a formidable-looking computer lock. Access codes sent via the extranet usually accompanied such packages, but it was likely none would be forthcoming at this point in time. A glimmering of excitement arose in her as she retrieved a set of precision tools and sat down at the dining table to hack the lock. Her skills were rusty, but eventually, a light on the disembowelled terminal flashed green and the halves sprung open.
She picked up the thumb-size data cube from its shock-proof slot and held it up against the afternoon light. Information was engraved and sealed within the matrix of the crystal. Each data cube was encoded so only one holographic player—the one embedded in the hard case would be able to decrypt the information. In an age where information existed mostly as digital code, plastic flimsies and data cubes acted as safeguard against tampering and controlled the duplication of important data.
She inserted one end point into the play-slot, and a holographic recording of an unknown middle-aged man materialised above the projection lens. Dressed in a smart business suit, the figure gave an acknowledging nod and began speaking.
Ms. Miranda Eldfell, it's a pleasure to be speaking to you. My name is Dauber, and I'm a partner of Messrs. Dauber & Sons, a law firm representing the personal estate of Mr. Aiken Eldfell. As you know, regretfully your father passed away on the 20th of March, 2195. You have our deepest condolences. I would also like to apologise for taking so long to contact you, and inform you that we are now able to execute Mr. Eldfell's final will.
Due to the current galactic situation, it may take a while for you to receive this message and even longer to make the trip to our office on Earth where official paperwork must take place for all procedures to be made legally binding. In the light of that delay, we have decided to disclose the gist of Mr. Eldfell's will.
In short, he has bequeathed his entire personal fortune to you. The final monetary sum rounds up to 113 billion credits, not including current on-going investments, dividends and interest payments. This also doesn't include major estates in and around the peripheries of Sydney, Tasmania, New Calcutta, Frankfurt, and Pusan, as well as numerous minor holdings on Earth and elsewhere in Citadel space, all of which have you as the sole beneficiary.
Along with his personal wealth, Mr. Eldfell has also made you executor of a number of confidential projects, some of which will require your active oversight in the near future. The address of our head office in Sydney is enclosed in this data crystal. We look forward to your arrival to fill you in on the details.
The hologram collapsed and winked out of existence. Silence rushed in to fill the void. Swaths of sunlight filtering through the window moved like luminous painted strips across the table surface.
She laughed, a desperate puff of air that failed to dispel the overwhelming sense of irony. How dare he? How dare he pull this farce on her? Did he really imagine that she'd play the role of the prodigal daughter returning to the fold? Now that his influence over her life had finally dissipated?
But even that anger felt perfunctory, like a rite of passage conducted far past its moment of relevance. Slowly, she reached out to hit the play button again. When she reached the part about confidential projects, her brows furrowed. She couldn't even begin to start understanding why her father would bequeath all his wealth to her. Did the answer lie there?
A faint sense of guilt stabbed her. The mole programs she'd installed in her father's security system were meant to be passive, flagged to recognise certain keywords and code signs and only then send out a code that would be disguised as transmission static. It was meant to serve as an early warning system, giving her ample preparation time whenever he located Oriana's whereabouts. Apart from that, she'd never attempted to ferret out what other plans her father might have had.
Such blinkered vision. Did you really think he'd stop working on his dynasty the moment you and Oriana were safely out of his reach?
The voice of dissent in her head chided her. She could still remember her first meeting with the Illusive Man where he'd advised her not to pry further into her father's affairs so as to maintain an uneasy cease-fire.
As if something like that's ever stopped you.
Well, there was nothing left to stop her now, was there? She quelled the voice hard and went to her console to fire it up. A quick search revealed a short list of freighters that made regular pit stops at New Canton. While Earth wasn't on any of the itineraries, a number nonetheless crossed into the edge of the Attican Traverse, where space was more trafficked and a berth to Earth more easily obtained. She was beginning to draw up an itinerary when her eyes fell on the list of articles that was sent to her in the morning.
Oriana...
Over the years, Miranda had tried to hide the truth behind their origins from her sister. It'd been a convenient white lie, and entirely in keeping with her promise that Oriana should have the normal life she was denied. But her sister was a grown woman now, and deserved to know the truth. What better way to do that than to bring Oriana along on the trip back to their birthplace? There was also that nagging suspicion that she might end up needing some sort of support.
Mind made up, she pulled out the mail function, and typed out what she hoped wasn't too cryptic a request for another chat session. She sent it off and stared at the outline of the travel plan she'd made.
There was no way to put off breaking this particular piece of news to Shepard tonight. Not to mention all the other revelations. Here, her eyes fell on the box of birth-control pills. She couldn't predict how he'd respond to her brief leave-taking, but it was likely she could do something to take the sting away.