Chapter 26: The Tale of Two Shepherds

Alliance HQ/Toronto, Canada (Earth)

The team was in Shepherd's room waiting with bated breath for news from Natalia. Three months ago, Ambassador Osoba started his investigation of the Bahak incident and Shepherd's involvement in it. They didn't hear much about the report, but there have been talks among the regular soldiers that the Committee was thinking about reinstating Shepherd back into the Alliance, though it was just rumors. Either way, if it came out that Shepherd had nothing to do with the incident, he would a free man. Natalia came into the room; she had a huge grin on her face, which was always a good sign…

"Commander Shepherd, I'm happy to announce that you are officially a free man" Natalia said. Shepherd sat back on his bed bewildered as the others cheered, Tali pounced and hugged him tightly. Natalia spoke up. "It gets better the news has reached the Councilors all talks of revoking your spectre status has dropped" Natalia smiled. "I'll leave you to your celebrations…"

"Keelah, that's great, isn't it Wayne?" Tali asked.

"Huh? Uh, yeah…" Shepherd said.

"Something wrong, Wayne?" Kasumi asked.

Shepherd shook his head. "No, no just thinking about what I'm going to do next…" Shepherd was free, but he didn't know what to do next. The committee couldn't keep him here, but he couldn't stay on the Normandy due to the Alliance claiming the ship when the Committee thought he was done. Though that may not matter when they reinstate him in the Alliance, and knowing Anderson, he would fight his hardest to make sure Shepherd keeps the Normandy. His thoughts were broken when he heard some cheers outside his window. "What the hell?"

The team went to the window and saw a huge crowd of people standing outside the building, and all of a sudden white doves flew up. "Well, they seem happy…" Kaiden said. Happy was an understatement, the crowd was jubilant it almost disturbed the spectre, he didn't mind flaunting his celebrity at times cause it was mostly for getting score discounts but this was hero-worship he didn't know what to do with that…

"Yeah…let's go through the back…" Shepherd said.

"Um..is it me or is it getting louder?" Lia asked. Shepherd and the other came to attention and found it was getting louder. Shepherd frowned and went to the door; he cautiously opened the door and found a flood of flashing lights, microphones, and shouting reporters in his face. In front of them was a curvy woman in a tight white dress with a camera drone.

"Commander Shepherd, Diana Allers, Alliance Network News" she said. "What's next now that you're a free man?"

"Uh…"

"Commander, will you sue the Alliance for wrongly accusing you?" Another reporter asked. The roar of questions came from the reporters; Shepherd was overwhelmed trying to answer them all. He looked back at the others.

"A little help guys...? Uh…guys?"

Unknown

While Shepherd was being interviewed, a ship was flying in an unknown sector of space. A man in the dark was watching the interview while spinning a knife on its tip. He gave a low growl at the man before him, he had the same voice as him, the same face as him, but unlike Shepherd he didn't have his memories. When Shepherd died two years ago, Cerberus sent out their best operatives to retrieve Shepherd's body for their Lazarus Project. In the event the Shepherd couldn't be revived by the project, the organization had a back-up plan.

The plan was called Project Gemini, and its goal was if Cerberus could not revive the original, then they would simply replace him with his clone. Gemini like Shepherd was a Sentinel class biotic, he had his hand to hand combat experience and knowledge of the Alliance but for all that he didn't have Shepherd's charisma nor did he have his memories which made infiltration impossible. So when Project Lazarus began, Gemini would be used as an organ farm to make sure it was a success, however it was not needed as they successfully revived him and soon afterwards Gemini was put on ice…until now.

Gemini gripped his knife and with a roar threw it clean through the vid-viewer. The device sizzled and exploded as he breathed heavily. "You know, you really have to control that temper, we can't keep on repairing stuff on the ship just because you had a temper-tantrum" a voice said behind him. Gemini looked behind and a dark-skinned woman wearing nothing but her bra and panties came down.

The clone scoffed. "If you would hurry up, Shade, I wouldn't have to break your toys" Shade, was the name the woman gave to Gemini when she broke him out of his confinement, when he asked why did she free him, she said it was for humanity…something to this day he does not believe. The woman was an enigma, she worked for Cerberus for a certain amount of time and she was somewhat good in combat but that was all Gemini knew, he didn't even know her name as she had several names that she had used.

"Maya…"

"What?" he asked.

"My name is Maya Brooks, do try to remember that when we land" She said wrapping her arms around his body. "And I told you, we can't go after him until…"

"Until we have built up our power, I know, I'm not stupid…" Gemini said. "I just can't stand the thought of him, wearing my face…."

"Well to be fair, it was his face first…" Shade said dryly.

He scoffed. "So glad you find my predicament so fucking funny…" Shade smirked and down at the table, she took out a cigarette and lit it. Gemini waved away the smoke, another thing he shared with Shepherd, the dislike for cigarette smoke. "So where are we going?"

"A Cerberus lab…" Gemini looked at her and narrowed his eyes. "Oh relax, we're just going there for more allies, they have been quite disillusioned with the Illusive Man's new path and wants to play for our team" She blew out some smoke. "They agreed to give us some weapons and some of their top line ships"

"Fine as long they keep their distance" he said. "What about that merc group we talked to months ago, CAT-6?"

Shade frowned. "Apparently the leader is not taking us seriously; we'll have to remedy that…"

The Normandy

Back on Earth, the press was insatiable with their questions and wouldn't hound Shepherd; causing the spectre to hide in the one place they had no access to, the Normandy. If this was what he was going to go through when he was outside, he rather be under house arrest. Shepherd looked around his room; it was going to be strange being away from the Normandy after living on it for past months, it was place he felt at home.

He looked on his omni-tool and searched his account; with enough credits he could buy himself and Tali a nice apartment near Alliance HQ. As for the others, Kasumi dug into her family's banking account to get some money to afford an apartment for herself and Lia, Kaiden decided to stay at the barracks at HQ to keep an eye on the Normandy make sure the Committee didn't try anything. Joker was staying on the Normandy, although Shepherd was not surprised, he'd have to be threatened at gun point to leave the ship and even then that would be hard. Plus he was staying on to protect EDI, though the spectre thinks the Alliance members were slowly realizing she was AI not a VI. The door opened and Tali came in.

"James and Kaiden are almost done beating back the human press" she said. "Keelah, and I thought the Citadel's press was annoying"

Shepherd chuckled. "Trust me, you haven't seen anything yet" he said. The two of them laughed.

Tali sighed. "So strange to be living on a planet…I'm very interested to see what human culture is like"

"We'll make it a date" Shepherd looked at the decon-unit, that would have to stay on the ship, and the parts to make another would be hard to come by. Which meant Tali would have to stay in her suit for a while so she wouldn't get sick by Earth's atmosphere, but at least she was with him. The spectre started packing and when he was finished they went down to the CIC, as they walked towards the entrance they saw Adams.

"So, getting out of here, huh?" he asked. "You know you can always stay…"

"Nah, we wouldn't want to get in the way" Shepherd said. Tali walked out of the Normandy and Shepherd was going to follow, but Adams spoke up.

"Commander…about Cerberus…I owe you an apology…" he said.

Shepherd looked back. "How so?"

"Back when you got this ship, Joker contacted me and asked me to help you with the Collectors" Adams said. "I refused…I didn't trust Cerberus, I didn't trust you…I should have known that you wouldn't join them and for that, I'm sorry for doubting you…"

Shepherd placed a hand on his shoulder; he understood how it would be hard to swallow that an old comrade would betray everything they believed in. If Shepherd was in his shoes, he would doubt himself too. "Don't worry, I understand, you're Alliance first…plus after all the shit we been through, it was probably for the best"

"Thank you Commander, that means a lot, and don't worry I'm with you 100%"

Shepherd smiled. "I know…" He left the Normandy.

One chapter left until the war!

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