"Elliot Shepard could be a valuable asset to us, but if we lose him into the system, there's no way we'll be able to track him down discreetly when he comes of age," Miranda Lawson briefed her boss. He took a long drag of his cigarette and swirled the bourbon in his glass.
"And you think he's worth the wait and the effort?"
"I believe so," Miranda said. The Illusive Man downed the last of his drink and put his cigarette out before lighting another immediately after.
On some level he assumed Miranda had to know she wasn't fooling him, her motivations weren't just to ensure the boy could be studied in case he'd inherited his father's resilience. Her endgame was to have a child, namely pull enough strings around the system to ensure she would be able to adopt Elliot.
Frankly, The Illusive Man had considered Miranda's research regarding "The Entity" a load of nonsense. He'd almost cut the funding to the project but then Miranda had shown him the evidence to validate her claims.
She'd studied Shepard extensively over the past few years now, she'd looked at the video footage available from combat zones Shepard had been in, and most recently the video from the dash cams installed into the vehicles that had been at the Traynor house when Shepard had gotten gunned down.
She'd gone through the footage slowly, frame-by-frame and she'd seen it. The Illusive Man had seen it too.
A being tethered to Shepard, surrounding her like a force field of some kind, protecting her from harm at least to some extent. Shepard hadn't been indestructible, but she'd been able to take incredible amounts of damage without flinching, even more so when under the influence of combat stimulants.
Miranda had theorized the entity was a remnant of Shepard's twin, his soul looking after Shepard like a guardian angel, if one was feeling dramatic and romantic enough to use such terms. The Illusive Man wasn't interested in drama or romance, he was interested in soldiers like Shepard, and definitely in the entity which had accompanied Shepard.
If that could somehow be replicated and utilized, the Alliance troops high on painkillers and stimulants wouldn't stand a chance against Cerberus troops. The question was, what had caused it and how it could be replicated if at all. Starting by finding out if Elliot had a "guardian angel" would be a good start.
Considering the circumstances his mother died under and the close proximity to Elliot she'd been in, Miranda had theorized that if there ever was a way to tether a soul (if such a thing existed) to another living person, close proximity and intense emotional distress and connection would be the key. In other words, for this project, they'd need traumatized children, starting from Elliot Shepard.
"Then see to it that we don't lose him."