It was amazing how much blood the human body held. Despite her years as a marine, despite everything she'd seen in her life, it always took her by surprise…that sheer volume of blood.
It happened as if in slow motion. The woman, dressed identically to Jacob, was running down the corridor toward them. She held no weapon. Her short, ginger hair flew back from a frantic, wide-eyed face. Behind her, looming like a demon at the gates of Hell itself, was a full heavy mech. Almost too big to fit in the hall, the massive construction glimmered a reflection of the fire that bloomed from its shoulder launcher. The woman seemed to rise into the air slightly, before her body split and came apart in a terrific flood of blood, fire, and meat. Shepard felt the wet slap of it over her face and chest as she was picked up off her feet by the force of the explosion. She felt the tiny sting as flecks of bone spit over her cheeks and neck. She felt the slap of pain as her tailbone came down on the hard corridor floor.
Sound struck her a breath later, seeming to slam her ear-drums into her skull. Skidding, she rolled onto her side, and then lurched to her feet. Turning toward the mech, all sound but the painful after-ring of the blast drained out of the world, Shepard charged forward.
Jacob had been thrown aside by the force of the rocket as well. Disoriented, in shock, he turned to a sit and blinked stupidly as the small woman in blood-stained scrubs charged toward the heavy mech without hesitation. The machine quickly oriented on her, rattling gunfire peppering the wall and floor behind her as it tried to peg this organic madly rushing up on it.
Just as she reached it Shepard suddenly ducked down, sliding along the floor right underneath the mech, like a z-gee ball player skidding into home. The wet blood still covering her made her slippery enough on the polished metal that she lost very little of her speed. Stumbling back up to her feet, now behind the heavy, she wrenched a fire extinguisher off the wall.
The mech rotated on its waist, guns lighting up again a breath before a slap of foaming white slapped over its head, blocking both its infrared targeting and its optical sensors. Blind, the mech madly fired, guns ratcheting in a fury of flame.
Every inch of her body felt like it was burning, every motion of muscle strained as if it would tear off her bones under its own power. Still holding the spent extinguisher she slammed the butt of it against the chest panel of the mech, popping it open. Ignoring the searing snap of sparks she gripped hold of its power core and ripped it out. The furious gunfire died as the mech sagged, lifeless.
Shaking terribly from the exertion, Shepard swayed a little on her feet as she paced back a step or two, the extinguisher lowering before she stumbled down into a sit. Jacob forced his way past the dead mech and ran over.
"Are you hurt?"
She shook her head. Most of her hair had come loose of its knot and hung in sheets over her face. Her shoulders quaked uncontrollably.
"No, just…I'm… just a little out of shape," she panted.
"Out of shape?" Jacob's brown eyes were shocked. "You just took out a heavy mech with a fire extinguisher!"
"Yeah I…I guess," she mumbled. He took her arm and helped her to her feet. She felt as weak as a new born foal, her heart racing so fast she couldn't tell one beat from another. If they didn't get to safety soon she feared she would completely collapse-
Whipping suddenly to the left she lifted the extinguisher in front of her face. A bullet panged off of it, denting the side and ricocheting into the wall. Snatching Jacob's pistol she smoothly lifted it and fired. The face of the small mech at the end of the corridor exploded and it sagged down with a dying whine.
Holy fuck…
The extinguisher fell from nerveless fingers. "H…how did I do that?" she whispered, then looked at Jacob, anger lifting in place of shock. "How the fuck did I do that?"
"I…I don't know," the man replied, and his bafflement seemed honest enough at least. Even so, Shepard's mind was swimming, her temper raging to the fore.
"Tell me what the fuck is going on!"
"I told you-"
"No! You told me I was hurt, healing, and someone hacked these fucking mechs to take me out! That doesn't explain these fucked-up…things all over me, why I feel like I can barely move and yet I just fucking blocked a bullet I didn't even know was heading my way!"
"Shepard, please…there's just no time. I'll tell you everything, I swear, but we have to get off this st-"
{Hello? Can anyone hear me?} A male voice suddenly crackled over a nearby console. Both Shepard and Jacob turned their heads toward it, before Jacob strode over. {Is anyone reading me?}
"Wilson, is that you?" Jacob asked, hitting the connect command.
{Taylor! Thank God…I thought I was the only one left alive!}
"No, I'm here with Shepard…where are you?"
{Shepard? Wha-…she's awake? How- never mind. You gotta get to the shuttles.}
"That's the goal. Where are you?"
{Server room B. I have an infrared of the station pulled up…ok. Fastest route for you is through maintenance. But you gotta book!}
"On our way," Jacob replied, then looked at Shepard, jerking his chin toward a far door. "That way. We should be able to cut directly through the middle of the station."
Shepard scooped up her pistol and followed at a weaving trot, her brain still swimming. She stumbled more than once as random, rippling muscle spasms crawled under her skin, only intensifying the exhausted ache.
"You're a marine?" she asked as they reached the maintenance door.
"Yeah, was. Alliance," Jacob replied, working on getting it open.
"Was…not anymore?"
"Not exactly," he said. The door popped free and he muscled it open, ushering her in.
Pistols lifted in tandem as more than a dozen mech face-lights bloomed out of the darkness.
Always trust your gut.
That was the first rule Shepard had ever learned. As a child, once she had escaped the Room, Shepard had lived in hot narrow vents in New York's subway system, stealing food and smokes and anything else she needed to survive. There was no room for humanity in such a situation, not that it mattered. Nothing in Shepard's life at that point had shown her what humanity even was. She was born an animal, raised an animal, and she lived like an animal.
Survival of the fittest, and animals survived with their instincts.
Even after she had joined the Reds and been arrested, even after Nan and Paul and the institute and joining the Alliance, Shepard's gut feeling had never failed her.
Sitting here, an overheated pistol with a jammed heat-sink dangling from her hand as she watched Jacob treat the leg wound of the man propped against the computer bank, Shepard's gut could not have been any more plain.
This Wilson ass was trying to kill her. He could not be any more obvious about it if he screamed it in her face.
She knew him, somehow. Faint echoes of his voice, his face, she could recall like a distant and fading dream. According to Jacob, he had been the medical lead in charge of her case, which might explain why he looked and sounded familiar. She had no memory of waking up or of hearing him but she'd heard that people in comas or chemically kept unconscious retained some subconscious awareness of their surroundings.
Fucking asshole didn't look like a doctor though. He looked like…well, a fucking asshole.
That he was trying to off her wasn't in question. For one, he'd directed them into that maintenance area…which was absolutely crawling with mechs. They'd barely gotten out of there. He'd pulled up their position on the infrared…there was no way he could see them and not see the mechs clustered right where he directed them to go. His lame excuse was that the mechs were everywhere on the station, and yet Shepard had seen whole corridors completely deserted of life, organic or otherwise.
Just before they'd reached his location he had screamed out over the comm that the mechs had shot him, but there wasn't a goddamn mech in the room…alive or otherwise. And a single shot in the leg? Seriously? Mechs didn't aim for legs. They aimed for chests and heads, seeking out the kill-shot, always.
He was incredibly defensive about it too, frantically explaining to Jacob even as the man tended him that he'd been trying to figure out who had hacked the mechs and override it when he'd been shot.
Jacob, to his credit, didn't seem like he entirely believed Wilson either. At his skeptical look, Wilson gestured to his leg now slathered in medi-gel. "I was shot! How do you explain that?"
Shepard caught his eye and smirked. Shifting the jammed pistol in her hand, she pressed the barrel against her thigh in a slow, obvious manner and tapped the trigger meaningfully. He scowled darkly but she could see the fear, the uncertainty, behind his eyes.
Not that Shepard planned to kill him…just yet, anyway. He was trying to off her, yes, but she wanted to know why. She'd been out, helpless and healing, for weeks at least. If he was really the medic in charge of her case, then he'd had a thousand times, easily, to put her down. Being a doctor he could even make it look like natural causes if he wanted, it wouldn't have been hard. Why hack mechs to attack an entire medical station just when she was healed enough to become mobile? It made no sense, unless he was a fuckin' dupe, taking creds from another source. If he'd only been approached recently, it would make sense…and that meant someone else out there was actually the one gunning for her. If she wanted a chance in hell of finding out who that was, Wilson needed to stay alive long enough to tell her.
"Look, we just…we need to get to those shuttles, get out of here," the man said hurriedly. "Before they kill us too."
"Shuttles aren't too far," Jacob agreed. "You got the comm working at least partially. We need to try and contact Miranda-"
"She's dead," Wilson huffed. "The mechs were all over the sector she was in. She's hamburger!"
Jacob snorted. "Miranda can hold her own against a bunch of mechs, even heavies. She's alive."
"Then she's the goddamn traitor! Has to be! She-"
"That's enough," Shepard grumped. Gripping hold of a console she pulled herself to her feet, scowling in irritation at her own weak trembling. "Right now I don't give a fuck who's a traitor and who isn't. I don't know any of you goddamn people from Adam, get me? We can sort out the bodies once we're off this station."
She dropped her useless weapon and as Jacob helped Wilson to his feet, she moved over and pulled the medic's pistol from his belt. Her brown eyes were sparking dangerously as she smiled.
"You won't be needing this, now will you Doc?" she said, checking the safety and ratcheting a new heat sink into place. Wilson looked a little pale, sweat sheening his upper lip.
"The mechs…" he started to protest weakly. Shepard clucked her tongue and shook her head a little.
"Oh, I'll protect you from the big bad mechs, don't worry," she cooed.
"Oookay, this is getting tense," Jacob intervened. "Look, we all have to work together to get to those shuttles. Shepard, if I tell you who we are…who the boss is…will you trust me?"
"No," she said with a derisive snort. "But it'd be a goddamn start, don't you think?"
"What are you doing?" Wilson protested. "You can't tell her that!"
"The fuck he can't," Shepard snapped back.
"Look! I'm not going to lie to her," Jacob retorted. He had been a marine. He knew how important trust and disclosure were, especially to those who you were going to be fighting with, shoulder to shoulder. You didn't put your lives into the hands of someone you didn't feel you could trust.
"Fuck. Fuck, this is not going to go well," Wilson lamented, dragging his hands over his sweaty skull.
"Shepard, the organization that we work for, that has been overseeing your…medical treatment," Jacob spoke carefully but without hesitation, "is Cerberus."
For a moment she could not place the name. Like Wilson's voice it rang familiar but any meaning behind it was lost in the fog of her still disjointed memories. Then her eyes went dark, lighting with flecks of danger as the pistol snapped up and aimed at Jacob's face.
Wilson let out a faintly alarmed squeak, covering his face, but to Jacob's credit he didn't so much as flinch, merely held her gaze sternly with his own, before nodding.
"Yeah," he affirmed. "That Cerberus."
"You people laid a goddamn trap in a fucking thresher nest," she snarled. "It killed a squad of marines, nearly killed me and my team! Then you made an Alliance admiral 'disappear!' What…have I been 'disappeared' now as well?"
"I don't know about this admiral but it's true," Jacob confirmed. "Cerberus has done some…questionable things. But no, you haven't been 'disappeared'. It's complicated…and a story best told somewhere safe. I'll tell you the whole thing on the shuttle once we're out of this place, I swear."
Shepard knew liars when she saw them. This Jacob may not be a saint, but neither was he a liar. She searched his eyes for any trace of guile before finally lowering her pistol. "Then let's fuckin' move," she grumped. "The sooner I get those answers the better."
The brunette woman that shot Wilson in the throat was tall and looked like a vid model. The lashes over her blue eyes didn't even flutter as she lifted the gun and pulled the trigger, erasing the startled, bald-headed doctor as if she were batting away an annoying bug.
Shepard, irritated beyond belief, lifted her own weapon and fixed her aim between those blue eyes even as Wilson collapsed. Jacob was more vocal.
"Miranda! What did you do?"
"What should have been done several hours ago," she replied, her voice that same unmistakable Australian that had spoken in brief, broken snatches over the comm. If Shepard holding a pistol on her face bothered her she didn't show it, merely glancing at blood-spattered marine in scrubs coolly. "Wilson was a traitor. He reprogrammed the mechs, trying to take you out."
"No shit," Shepard replied dryly. "He couldn't have been more obvious about it if he were waving a fucking flag. But it is kind of hard to interrogate him and find out who the fuck hired him when his goddamn jugular is pumping filth all over my bare feet!"
"Well, I see your temper is intact. That's good."
"Oh, honey, you are about to see my fucking temper," Shepard glared.
"That's fine. May I see it aboard the shuttle?" Miranda asked, still completely calm. "Or would you rather have it out here while the station self-destruct I activated two minutes ago finishes its six minute countdown?"
Shepard blinked, lowering the gun a little. "What? There are people on this station!"
"No. No one but the three of us are still alive. The mechs were very thorough, no one else got out. I activated the destruct when I saw you three approaching the bay on the infrared. The secondary records of your recovery here must be eliminated from the station databases…the most efficient way to do that is through the self-destruct."
With a glare that could have melted metal, Shepard stepped past Miranda and strode off toward the waiting shuttle just behind her.
In the depths of space, there was no atmosphere to transmit sound, to fuel the flames of an explosion or rattle a shuttle with a shockwave. The only effect noticed when the station blew was a momentary bright flash of light that faded almost as swiftly as it had bloomed.
Sitting across from the other two, Shepard felt weak almost to the point of being nauseous. She held the pistol rested on the knee of her scrubs but honestly, even if they threatened her she wasn't sure she would be able to lift it enough to fire. Not that it was really a concern, she supposed. They had hardly gone through all of this to simply kill her.
Of course, she still wasn't sure what 'all of this' was, exactly.
Looking up at them both through the still disheveled, lengthy locks of her hair, she said, "All right, Cerberus. Spill."
"Cerberus," Miranda stated, glancing immediately over at Jacob. "Do I have you to thank for her knowing that?"
"I didn't see any point in lying to her. I still don't," he answered.
"Look, will you just lay it down for me, plain?" Shepard demanded. "I've just had a fairly shitty day and as Jacob gathered I'm not exactly fond of you people to begin with. Someone had better start explaining some shit or I swear to fuck-"
"Very well, Shepard. Jacob is right," Miranda interrupted. "At this point complete disclosure is probably the wisest course of action."
"Do you remember the attack on the Normandy?" Jacob asked, leaning forward a little as he rubbed his hands idly together, forearms resting on his knees. Shepard had seen such a pose before…in doctors, in blue-shirts, in admirals…in anyone who had news to impart that they weren't quite sure was going to be well-received.
"Parts of it," she replied tersely. Her whole body felt like a goddamn toothache and was doing little to improve her mood. "I remember ordering the evacuation, going up to the CIC to get Joker. I remember shoving him into the lifeboat."
"And after that?" Miranda hedged cautiously.
"Not a goddamn thing until I woke up in that room on your station with those alarms blaring," she shot. "I take it by the decom chamber and this weird…whatever the fuck this shit is all over me…that I was burned pretty badly. An explosion, I guess?"
"Shepard," Jacob spoke softly, but intently, idly rubbing his palms together again. "After you got your pilot into that pod, a blast knocked you into space…compromised your oxygen. According to the lifeboat short-scans which managed to pick up your vitals, six minutes after you were flung into space…"
"You died," Miranda finished bluntly. "You were killed, Shepard. You fell with the rest of the wreckage of your ship into the gravity well of a nearby planet."
Shepard was aware of her own pulse as she stared at them, then scowled. "The fuck are you trying to pull? I was spaced…died? I can maybe buy that…I've heard stories… people in compromised hard-suits that have been picked up two days after being spaced and revived. It's really fucking rare but possible, if they're flash-frozen in just the right way…but there's no fucking way I could have gone through atmo and hit the fucking ground in one piece! The…the entry alone would have generated temperatures of thousands of degrees and an impact of that speed…"
"Your hard-suit managed to protect you from some of the heat of atmo entry but it's true," Miranda stated. "You were burned beyond all recognition and in several pieces when your body was finally located."
"Jesus, Miranda, you could be a bit more gentle about it," Jacob chided.
"She's not a child, Jacob," Miranda returned.
"You're both fucking insane!" Shepard stared.
"It's the truth, Commander. You were killed," Miranda replied. "It was several weeks before your body was recovered and remanded to us. The project we just left, the Lazarus Project, was devoted to no other end then to bring you back."
Shepard sat back, still staring at them. She was thinking about that fire extinguisher, about blocking that bullet, an act that should have been impossible even had she known the shot was coming. "So…I'm some sort of clone? A construct?"
"No," Miranda said adamantly. "You are the real Shepard. No expense was spared. We wanted you back, not a poor copy. All your memories, your personality, your experiences…it was essential they remained intact."
"No expense was spared? To do what you're talking about would have required…billions, trillions of credits and…massive amounts of experimental, even theoretical equipment…and even then it would take so long that-"
She broke off, looking from Jacob's grim face to Miranda's implacable one, and her jaw tightened.
"How long?"
Jacob glanced at his companion, then back at her.
"Two years," he said finally.
"Two years?" she gaped. "I've been dead for two fucking years?"
"No, you were dead for six months," Miranda replied. "The biologic, electrical and chemical recovery of your primitive brainstem to the point it could independently control your body's systems…the few we had restored at that point…was accomplished then. You've been in a chemically induced coma for the last eighteen months as your higher brain, organ, and circulatory systems were fully repaired. The last month has been strictly devoted to re-growing your epidermal tissue. A process that, sadly, won't be fully complete for another three weeks."
"My epi…that's what these weird lines are, all over me?"
"Yes. We used microbiological technology…nanites…to regenerate and stimulate growth on a cellular and even atomic level. The lines will fade as the epidermal reconstruction completes."
"Why?" Shepard asked, the word rushing out on a still unbelieving breath. Her head was spinning. This couldn't all be true…it was ludicrous! "If I really did die then why? Why throw so many resources to recover me and bring me back? I'm just a marine, that doesn't make any sense!"
"You're more than a marine, more than even a Spectre," Jacob replied. "You're a hero, an icon. What you did against Saren, against Sovereign…you've become a symbol, Shepard…not just to humanity but to the entire galaxy. The Reaper threat isn't over. If there's to be any chance of standing against them we need a rallying point but more…we needed someone who knows the threat they posed, someone who could lead an army."
"No other soldier, human or otherwise, has ever done what you did," Miranda replied. "You are the galaxy's best hope of stopping the Reapers."
"Yeah, right. And Cerberus has no alternate agenda," Shepard scoffed. She wasn't a goddamn hero. Fuck, the Council hadn't even wanted to listen to her.
"Like us or not, Shepard…you are sitting here now because of us. I'm not asking you to trust us. Right now we are heading to speak to our boss, the Illusive Man. All I want is for you to listen to him. After that, whatever you do is your own choice."
"The Illusive Man…yeah, that's not the most fucking pretentious name I've ever heard…" Shepard grumbled. A loose lock of hair fell in her face and she shoved it angrily back with a trembling hand.
Noting the motion Miranda said, "I'm sorry you are still weak. Your muscles are atrophied. We were toning them with a combination of electric stimulation and passive physical therapy, and we had hoped you'd have a few days when you did wake up before you had to do anything…strenuous. Don't worry, you'll gain strength quickly with regular activity. We'll also want to do a number of tests to make sure your coordination and reflexes are-"
"I don't think her combat skills are in question," Jacob told her. "I saw her take down a heavy mech with a fire extinguisher. I think that speaks for itself."
"Reflexes," Shepard mumbled into her palm, before looking sternly up at Miranda. "Yeah, let's talk about my reflexes. Let's talk about how I blocked a fucking bullet without even knowing there was a gun pointed at me!"
Miranda lifted her brows slightly. "Not…entirely unexpected," she said. "A fortunate side effect of some of the biochemical processes we had to utilize to re-grow and re-integrate your cerebral matter. It was not what we set out to do but restoring your complete memories and personality was the priority, and the experimental processes allowed us to do that. As well, there are some more intentional upgrades to your body you might notice. For one, it is relatively quick and easy to generate soft tissue but growing bone, even from established samples, is far more difficult and time consuming. Nearly all your bones were broken, most shattered, and some were unrecoverable. They were sealed, bound or replaced with metal implants. The alloy is incredibly strong and lightweight, however you may notice you weigh a bit more than a woman of your size should."
"Fuck that. I'm more concerned with the fact you took my fucking scars away from me."
"Your…" For the first time, Miranda actually looked surprised, and a little baffled. "Your scars?"
"Yeah, my scars," Shepard retorted. She tapped her jaw. "I had one here. One on my collar bone. Several lines on my side and a battle-blade starburst right the fuck here." She slapped her hand lightly over her stomach, glaring.
"Most women would be happy their scars were gone," Jacob stated. Shepard's furious expression turned on him.
"Look… Boy Scout…do I seem like most goddamn women to you? I wouldn't be fucking sitting here if I were most goddamn women! I earned those fucking scars, every damned one of them. I earned them!"
"I'm…sorry, Shepard," Miranda murmured. "But even had we wanted to, it would have been impossible to preserve them. You were burned over ninety nine percent of your body…only some skin around your eye and on your scalp was unharmed. Most of the burns went down to bone…the rest was fused with melted pieces of your hard-suit…the heat of entry into atmo is what took your scars, not us."
Shepard sat back, wiping a frustrated hand over her face. This was unreal. All of it. Dead? She'd actually died, been gone two whole years, and some fringe terrorist organization had brought her back to life. She couldn't accept it. She didn't even know how to start accepting it.
"We should test your cognitive function-" she vaguely heard Miranda saying.
"C'mon, leave her alone for a while," Jacob interceded. "Can't you see she's exhausted? Not to mention this is all enough to make anyone's head swim. Let her acclimate a bit, process what she's been hit with."
"'She' is right the fuck here," Shepard grumbled, focusing on them again.
"Well, we're nearing the platform station," Miranda relented. "The Illusive Man has been extremely busy lately, chances are you'll have a chance to eat and sleep before he'll be available to talk to you anyway."
"All that and I'm not even a priority," Shepard muttered with bitter amusement.
"However I will have to evaluate your memory and cognition before you meet with him. After what's happened I'd like to think….to hope it was at least worth it."
"Yeah, you think that, because I'm still not sure," she grumped, then lifted her head and focused on them again. "Where's Liara? Boy Scout said she wasn't hurt when the Normandy went down. Where is she now?"
"I'm afraid Dr. T'Soni's current whereabouts are unknown to me, commander," Miranda replied evenly. "The Illusive Man may know more."
She thinks I'm dead, Shepard thought, setting the pistol on the bench beside her before leaning forward, threading her hands through her hair. Liara, my crew…Anderson and Hackett, the Council and the Alliance, they all think I'm dead. Nan…God, Nan! I can't even imagine what she's been going through.
Two years. She simply couldn't get her mind around it. Two goddamn years. It was unreal, a nightmare, all of it.
A damn nightmare that just wouldn't end.
The platform station they arrived at was much larger than the station they had just left, and teeming with life. As Shepard followed behind Miranda, Jacob trailing along behind, she noticed more than one pair of eyes staring at her unabashedly.
Of course, she was barefoot, wearing blood-soaked scrubs, and had strange red lines all over her skin…she'd have probably stared at herself, too.
She was brought to a set of quarters, left alone. Almost instantly the scrubs were discarded and she was in the shower. The hot water felt fabulous as it streamed over her but seemed to leach the very dregs of her energy away. She barely managed to dry off and drag herself to the small bed before collapsing and falling into a sleep so thick she may as well have been comatose again.
She woke sixteen hours later, famished and hurting. Every motion still wanted to set her muscles afire but she felt a bit less weak than she had. Sitting up she noticed someone had brought her a tray of food. Too hungry to even care that it had been left while she lay not five feet away, asleep and naked as the day she was born, she immediately went over and began to eat. More ravenous than even she had expected to be, it was all she could do not to choke on it as she shoved bite after bite of eggs, toast, and bacon into her mouth. An entire carafe of coffee had been left and by the time the last of the food was gone, she'd drained more than half of it.
Stomach settled, feeling at least a little better, she started on a hunt for some actual clothing.
Miranda found her an hour later. Shepard had abandoned her quarters and hunted out a small gym. When Lawson walked in the commander was systematically throwing jabs into a weighted bag, her hair tied haphazardly back from her face, her lips thin and her jaw set. She was wearing a pair of gray sweat-pants and a white t-shirt…both of which bore fresh tears. The shirt was ripped on the right sleeve, the pants had a hole the size of a coffee cup on the right hip. Miranda lifted a brow at the obvious, deliberate rents in the fabric even as she leaned against a nearby weight-bench.
"Didn't care for the style?" she asked. Shepard's jaw rippled but she didn't bother to glance over, throwing another set of punches into the unfeeling canvas.
"I'm not wearing anything that has your damn Cerberus symbol on it," she replied.
"I see," Miranda nodded. "Well, I will see if I can't arrange for some Cerberus-free clothes to be brought to your room…so that you don't have to tear the patch off of everything."
Shepard didn't respond, only continuing her assault. The clinical part of Miranda couldn't help but watch the way her muscles worked, the way her body pivoted with every strike. Though she was still too lean, gaunt with atrophy and IV nutrition, every motion flowed just right, with no catches, hesitations or obvious flaws in dynamic. Physiologically, it did seem as if the finished product had come out perfectly. With exercise and time, Shepard would be right back to her previous condition.
"I'm not a piece of meat. You can stop staring," Shepard said after a moment, pausing in her attack to wipe a wrist over her forehead, glancing over at Lawson darkly.
"No, but you do represent a great deal of work," Miranda replied. "You cannot blame me for evaluating the results of my efforts."
"Yeah? So tell me, how do I stack up, sweetheart?" Shepard asked, holding her hands out as if presenting herself. "Am I everything you hoped for?"
"So far, yes," Miranda answered honestly. "Beyond regaining muscle density and the final stages of your skin regeneration, physically you could not be more perfect."
Shepard only grunted, slamming another quick roundhouse into the canvas, followed by a swift jab.
"Where's Liara?" She asked again.
"I already told you. I don't know the current whereabouts of Dr. T'Soni. It was not necessary for us to keep tabs on her. We were only concerned with you."
"Then how come I keep smelling bullshit," Shepard demanded.
"After you speak with the Illusive Man you're free to look for her if you'd like. It doesn't matter to me."
"Yeah, and when's that going to happen? When does a woman he's spent trillions of credits and two years worth of time on become worth a fucking phone call?"
"This afternoon, actually. In about four hours. I would like to make sure your memories and higher reasoning centers are intact first-"
"My memories are fine. I remember everything," Shepard barked.
"Then you won't mind me asking a few questions."
"Knock yourself out," she grumped. "Just so long as you know I'm not going to stop punching while you do."
"Fair enough."
Straightening from her lean she folded her arms. "Where were you born?"
"New York City, Earth," Shepard answered. "Fucking pit hole of a room."
"How did your parents die?"
"Saving the fucking world."
"Shepard, I know these are uncomfortable questions but I need serious answers."
"Honey, right now the amount of concern I have for you and your goddamn 'serious answers' couldn't fill a fucking thimble. They OD'd on some twisted powder or another. Bitch just died. Asshole lived long enough to scream for a while and think a damn lizard was about to pop out of his skull, so he tried to shoot it. That's how they died."
"What's the name of the woman who took you in after you were in the institution?"
"Nancy Salgado," Shepard grunted, the slamming of her fists into the canvas taking on a slightly more fervent tone. Sweat was quite obvious now on her face and bare arms, a result of her concentration and exertion.
"What gang did you run with?"
"Tenth Street Reds."
"What was the name of the man who ran the gang?"
"Fucking Sperry, that ever-loving prick!"
She punctuated her opinion with a spin and a roundhouse kick that sent the canvas bag swinging wildly.
"All right, past history seems intact-"
"You want more current history? Fine. Ilos is the name of the planet that Saren Arterius went to in order to sneak in the back door onto the Citadel. I shot the fucker in the head, the Alliance fleet took down Sovereign. The Council never believed a goddamn word I said and people died because of it. I left Kaidan Alenko behind on Virmire and set off a nuke so big there wouldn't even be DNA in the ashes to identify him. My favorite food is fried chicken with jalapenos, my favorite drink is whiskey, I really want some Gold-Label cigars right about fucking now, I listen to jazz and play the fucking guitar, my favorite color is blue and I want to know where the fuck Liara T'Soni is!"
Slamming the bag with another kick she turned and strode over to Miranda, her look almost murderous. Her voice, however, was low, if thick with promised violence. "Do my answers suffice, Miss Lawson?"
"Yes, I…that will be all."
"Good. I'm going to take another shower, then I'm going to eat enough food to choke a krogan. When I'm done with that, your pretentious boss had better be ready to talk to me because I do figure I owe you at least that for bringing me back to life. After that, I'm a ghost. Gone. Dong ma?"
"Yes. I understand perfectly, Shepard."
"Good," Shepard smirked without mirth, then stepped away, slamming out of the small gym. Miranda shook her head with a sigh.
"Yes," she said to the empty room. "Her temper is definitely intact."