Thank you to those of you who followed and/or favorited this story thus far. I look forward to hearing any thoughts, comments, critiques, or suggestions that you may have. This story arc is proving a bit more challenging than anticipated.

Walter Kenny would be enthused by the information Anthony had compiled. However, Anthony was well aware that the entire interview would have been a bust were it not for Liara's ambiguous comments at the end. He needed to know more. Was there something worth reporting on between Shepard and Garrus? Anthony felt a bit sleazy pursuing that angle, but if it would get him support and funding to do these interviews, than so be it. It's not like he was trying to uncover anything salacious. He just wanted to know what Shepard was like. At least, that is what he told himself.

He needed more to substantiate it though. An off-the-cuff comment made at a moment of dropped guard wouldn't be enough. He would need to follow up on that. But the important thing was that he had gotten something. And Liara could not ignore him. A journalist with that kind of tidbit could make all kinds of trouble, and so she—if she was really trying to protect Shepard—would need to nip it in the bud. She could not ignore Anthony now, but she could defeat him. As such, the next interview would be the most important one. He would need to get more substance, and whoever he talked to would need to quash his curiosity. There was no coincidence that Liara set him up to talk to Miranda Lawson.

Anthony took a transport across the earth to meet with Ms. Lawson, who made her temporary residence in Beijing, while working for a large military contractor. She was rarely on earth, so this was another convenient coincidence for Anthony. He had not earned enough good will or funds to travel off world yet, but he could at least justify flying across the earth.

Or, at least, partially justify it. He was only able to persuade Walter to give him the cheapest seats possible on a transport normally reserved for freight. It would be an uncomfortable ride.

He double over in his stone hard seat, trying not to think about the sudden jerks and movements the shuttle was making. As primarily a freighter, it did not have any real need for the inertial dampeners that mass effect fields made possible. A pilot, co-pilot, and small maintenance staff were all that was needed. The cargo was simply tied down in the fuselage. Even old tech was superfluous in the face of good, old-fashioned rope.

The engineer present sat down in the seat across the small aisle and laughed at Anthony. He managed to choke down his chortling and then asked, "Never flown in a real bird before, have you?"

Anthony, face white and knuckles clenched onto the armrest, was only able to shake his head "no."

"You get used to it after a while," said the engineer. "First, it feels crazy. But then, after a few trips, you're able to drink. Even have a beer."

Anthony was feeling queasier.

"Then, after that, you can even eat mid-flight."

That was enough. Anthony wrenched forward and put his head between his legs. Count to ten. Count to three... too late...

He vomited on the floor between his legs.

The engineer sighed, shook his head, and then got up. He walked with the alacrity of a drunk man towards the front of the shuttle, and informed the pilot. "Our guest just spewed all over the floor."

"What do you want me to do about it?" the pilot asked.

"Listen to me complain?"

"Quit bitching and clean it up," said the pilot back.

"Yeah, all right." The engineer came back with a warm towel and some cloth to wipe it up. He put the towel on Anthony's head. Anthony took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. He actually did feel a little better.

"You office-types," said the engineer derisively. "Always so weak in the stomach. You've probably never worked a day in your life. Not real work. Just sitting at a desk all day, writing messages and answering calls. Sounds like hell. No one asked me, but, well, I'd rather work a hundred years in a dockyard than one in an office."

Athony, though unable to speak, silently agreed with the man. His office was the place where his will went to die. Still, he managed a few words. "It's not...that... bad."

The engineer laughed. "Yeah, sure it isn't."

"Once I get this story done, things will be different for me."

The engineer nodded, said, "Whatever you say."

The remainder of the flight, Anthony spent his time trying desperately not to throw up again.

Anthony had never been so thankful for solid ground. Stepping off the shuttle, he nearly fell down the ladder and only barely managed to avoid hurting himself. He sunk to his knees and then took a deep breath.

The cackling of the engineer was behind him, but Anthony no longer cared. He spent a few minutes regaining his composure before finally taking his feet and then hailing a cab. He got inside the small shuttle, and rejoiced when he it took off without any of the G forces that had previously afflicted him. He was actually able to enjoy himself as he sailed through the city on that sleek, bullet-like transport and looked down on the city beneath him.

He had never experienced a city as bustling or teeming with life as Beijing, and he had been to New York before it was destroyed. The sheer scale of the place, the throngs of people, the population density, was all jarring to him. He felt the weight of human existence pushing down on him. New Angeles had been destroyed and rebuilt, but Beijing had risen from the ashes like a phoenix.

He made his way to the agreed upon meeting place, and was dismayed to find out that the building in front of him was Ms. Lawson's office. He had hoped to meet somewhere more amenable to friendly discussion, but her icy reputation preceded her, and he knew to expect stiff formality at best. He went inside, took the lift up several flows, and then greeted her secretary with a smile. He had only to wait there a few minutes before she summoned him.

What he did not expect was the sheer stunning attractiveness of the woman who greeted him. Just a few seconds into greeting her, he felt that focusing on her eyes was possibly the most herculean task he had ever undertaken.

"Mr. Everest," she began in a distinct accent. "Please, have a seat."

He believed that he said, "Nice to meet you." He was not thinking anything along those lines. He had seen her on the vids before, of course, but he was still not prepared for the onslaught on his senses she was inflicting on him.

He would hesitate to call her beautiful. Surely that was true in a literal sense, but she appeared to him simply as raw sexuality, without the subtlety or the gentleness he associated with beauty. Like an engine that was all power and no nuance. Fantasies of her topless would no doubt nourish the midday reveries of angsty teenage boys the world over, but she would likely not function as a muse for a serious artist looking to capture the ineffability of beauty in a painting.

Nevertheless, he really wanted to look at her breasts.

She sat down behind her desk and it was with simultaneous relief and dismay that Anthony realized the table obscured her more feminine characteristics. He could not be sure, but he felt that blood was beginning to circulate through his brain again.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"I'm researching a possible historical piece on Commander Shepard, and I thought—"

"Yes, so you told Dr. T'Soni. She told me."

"Right," he said, trying to hold his ground, "so I've been wanting to ask about the Commander and some of your experiences with her and I—"

"I'll say it again. You told Liara. She told me. I know why you're here, yes? There is no need for formalities. Please, ask your questions. I am very busy."

Anthony felt three feet high, sinking into his chair. This was not going to be easy. Her iron eyes bored into him. He had to muster something fast. What was the first question he had prepared? He could not remember, but his reflexes began to ask for him when his brain failed. Fortunately, his mouth asked an interesting question right off the bat.

"Dr. T'Soni told me that she never called the Commander by her first name. She said that this was common on the Normandy. Is that true? Did you ever call her by her first name?" A great question! He congratulated his mouth for asking it.

"I don't have a habit of calling my commanding officers by their first names."

Defeat. He weakly began, "So after all that time—"

"Do you call your editor by his first name?"

"Actually, I do..." he began, thinking of Walter.

Miranda huffed slightly. "You must have no experience in the military. Chain of command and all that. You know—rules. The Commander ran a tight ship."

He could see where this was going. "So, no one was close to the Commander, then?"

Miranda's steel gaze burned holes in his face. He would see if she would go down this path or if she would resist. She needed to dispel his notion about the Commander and Garrus, but she also needed to not appear too defensive on the issue.

"You journalists," she began. "You're all the same. You present yourself under the guise of a historian. A serious scholar. Someone with an academic interest in Shepard's life. But you're really just a muckraker. Looking for something you can sensationalize to make a few splashes in the media, get some advertisements, raise your profile." She raised from her chair and leaned forward. Anthony fought hard to lock onto her eyes and not let his drift south. This was not a fair strategy, from his perspective.

"Am I right?" she asked.

"You're pretty defensive," he offered meekly.

"I defend people I care about," she said flatly. "From people who have no interest in anything but tearing down those who are better than them."

"So you were close to the Commander?" Anthony asked. He had got her!

Miranda's eyes finally disengaged from his and she looked down. She slouched back in her chair and leaned back. "She saved my sister's life," she began. "She saved my life. Hell, I didn't even like her at first. And she went and did that for me."

Anthony sat and waited. He had heard about this.

"She wasn't like everyone else," Miranda stated simply. "If there were more people like her, the world would be better for it."

"In what way?"

"There would be fewer people like you," she said with venom. Her eyes then drifted down, and she started dragging her hand across the back of a chair. Her hesitation spoke volumes to Anthony, she likely felt some of the same guilt that had plagued Liara after Shepard's death.

There were identifiable chinks in Miranda's armor now. If he could probe more, ask some strategic questions, he might get something interesting. Shepard's death brought out guilt. Just as it had with Liara.

"It is a tragedy," he said, trying his best to sound sincere.

"The tragedy is that it takes the death of a good person to rescue the lives of so many terrible ones."

"Are you referring to me again?"

She squinted at him. Her posture said yes but her eyes said no. Again, she seemed to be speaking just as much about herself as about him.

"It always seems like the good ones die too young. 'Why do the wicked prosper, growing old and powerful?'" recited Anthony.

"Hiding behind quotes," Miranda accused. "Though it's a question I wonder about." She turned to her right and walked a few paces, seemingly moving around trying to find a position of physical dominance to reinforce her words. Anthony elected to sit still, hoping to make her uncomfortable. "It's a very poetical notion, the death of a beautiful, young woman," she said.

"Poe thought so," Anthony supplied in response to the notion. "Though I think he meant that the death of a beautiful woman was the most melancholy thing to write about, and the words of her lover would be just as melancholic. I don't think he meant it about a heroic death."

"You don't think Shepard satisfies this criteria?"

"I guess I think more of her as a noble hero than as a beautiful woman dying."

Miranda cut him off. "Right, she wasn't beautiful," she said with a smirk that managed to seem depressed. "Not to you."

"No, no. I didn't mean—" Or did he? Surely he hadn't just said what it sounded like he said.

She turned and walked to the back of her office, stood still for a moment and peered out of the window. To his discomfort, Anthony found this view to be just as distracting as looking at her from the front.

"All men I've ever known have thought the same thing. Beauty to them is nothing more than a woman's physical appearance. Whether a woman is beautiful or not depends wholly on her body and nothing else." She turned her head over her shoulder and looked at him. "So, for you, Shepard was not beautiful. Because she did not have cartoonishly oversized breasts, her hair wasn't styled like a model's, she wore no make up, and donned bulky combat armor instead of a metal plated bikini."

Anthony wanted to disagree but found he could not.

Miranda turned around and faced Anthony directly. "In your mind, I bet, she wasn't a woman. Not really. She was just the Commander. It always seemed to me that men only treat women as they treat themselves when they find them too ugly to be considered women. It's a paradox, because ugly woman are often the only women treated like people, but just as often their existence is completely ignored."

It was true that Anthony never considered the Commander attractive. He had not formulated such thoughts before, but he found these feelings drawn out in front of him. It occurred to him at that moment that he always felt an indescribable rage at women who made no effort to be attractive. As though they owed it to him to be pleasant to his eye, and had failed to uphold their end of the deal. This realization made him feel bitterly guilty.

"I'm sorry," Anthony said, "I didn't mean—"

"Shepard was a beautiful woman," Miranda said pointedly. "But she was also beautiful in a fuller, deeper sense. She loved her friends, she even loved people she never met. She did everything she could to help others. She had..." she paused, looking for words. "She had a merciful heart."

Anthony nodded in agreement.

"Commander Shepard was a figurehead, a symbol, a beacon of hope. But behind that visage and under that armor there was a beautiful woman. Her name was Jana."

He felt he could actually look at Miranda without the animal lust that had plagued him when he first saw her. He did not know what to say, but his mouth allowed words to escape regardless. "I wish I could have known her."

"Those who did were lucky."

He had so many things he wanted to ask now. So many questions that need answering. But it was not to be.

"Please," Miranda said suddenly as she approached his chair. "I must get back to work. Thank you for your time."

"But," Anthony began, "I wanted to ask about the Commander and her relationship to the crew."

"I believe we already discussed this," said Miranda.

"Was there anyone she was particularly close to?"

"I already told you," she said with irritation, "she ran a tight ship. There was nothing unprofessional about Shepard."

"Not even with..."

"Why do you keep asking the same question expecting a different answer?"

"Liara seemed defensive about Garrus and..."

Miranda interrupted again. "You ambushed Liara, lied to her, and then recorded her in secret. She was surprised and not speaking accurately, which she confessed to me. I would hardly quote anything she said to you in that interview. You're grasping at straws. Now, go on back to your little news camp and leave me and the rest of us alone. This is the last interview you will get."

She offered her hand to Anthony and, stunned, he shook it once before her secretary arrived and whisked him out the door. He did not even have time to process what happened. But the interview was over.

He stood outside on a Beijing sidestreet. His quest was over. He had not gotten anything substantial. Miranda had thrown up a dozen kind of smokescreens and had successfully distracted him with questions about Shepard's appearance.

But he felt there was more to it. What she said was true. And she spoke with passion. And, just like Liara had, when pressed to the point of emotional compromise, she called Commander Shepard by her given name. Despite her cold demeanor, Anthony felt that Miranda really had wanted to talk about Shepard, but kept herself from doing so for some undisclosed reason. Just as Liara had.

But he was without the information he needed. This was the end of the road. They New Memorial Times would not continue to fund his travels if he came up empty handed like this. He had scratched the surface of an iceberg it seemed, but he did not have anything left to go on.

Weary, he decided he needed a stiff, strong drink. He did not want to go back to New Angeles just yet.

References:

"Why do the wicked prosper..." - Job 21:7

"The death of a beautiful woman..." - Philosophy of Composition, Edgar Allen Poe