So given that I ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger, I didn't want to make you wait too long before posting another update. Enjoy.

Her clone's assault rifle unleashed another hail of fire and the Spectre dove behind a drill press, narrowly avoiding the incendiary rounds flying at her head. "God, you're pathetic," her doppelganger taunted as she paused to reload.

"Why?", Shepard asked, switching over to her Punisher, the submachine gun better suited than her Indra to the narrow confines of the machine shop. "Because I find cover useful?"

"No," the other redhead laughed. "Because Cerberus offered you everything and you were too weak to take it."

"Offered me everything?!" Shepard ducked out from behind the press, firing a few shots at the clone, driving her behind a cart filled with unassembled gun parts. "Do you know what they did to me?"

"Sure I do." The clone stalked behind the broken machines, making her way towards Shepard, and though elsewhere, the battle still raged, the commander kept her attention focused on what she knew was their most dangerous adversary. No more of her friends would fall to this woman. "They gave you the best ship money could build, put a bevy of beautiful women at your disposal, and even threw in some extra equipment to enjoy them with."

"That's not exactly how I'd describe it." Shepard hurled a grenade in the direction of the voice, but her clone was too quick, vaulting away from the blast and into fresh cover. "They'd used me. They experimented on me and tried to control me."

"So? Everybody uses everybody. All that changes are the perks, which in this case… I mean, have you seen Lawson's ass?" She could hear the raw lust in the clone's voice, a reminder of the temptations she'd only barely resisted before Liara had saved her from them. "I can just imagine her screaming my name as I fucked her in it. And that mouthy little bitch, Jack, chocking on my cock…"

There was something about hearing those words spoken not by a stranger but in her own voice, that distracted Shepard and as the commander tried to keep her mind off of the pictures her clone was painting, her enemy struck. Lightning-fast, she sprang out of cover, landing a few meters away from the Spectre and unleashing a hail of bullets into her shields. Shepard winced but she charged forward, spraying down her double with her submachine gun as she did.

The clone tried to retreat, but Shepard closed the gap too quickly, lashing out with her foot and pulling her enemy off of her feet and knocking her rifle from her grasp. Sliding out her omni-blade, the Spectre dove on top of her enemy, only to be stopped by an armored knee slamming into her stomach. She fell off of the clone, and the woman dove after her, grabbing Shepard's arms and pinning her with her full weight across the commander's hips.

The Spectre thrashed, trying to throw the clone off of her while the woman continued her mockery. "But no," she chided, pushing Shepard's shoulders back until her head slammed into the hard floor, "You had to moan and cry about one blue piece of ass until she showed back up again to make your poor, aching cock feel better." She slammed Shepard's head down again and the Spectre's vision began to daze with the pain of the impacts. "Not that Liara isn't cute," the clone taunted, "Hey, if she survives this, I can look after her for you. Show her what it feels like to get fucked by a real soldier."

With a roar, Shepard wrenched her arms free of the clone's grasp and pushed her shoulder into her enemy's chest. The clone rolled backwards and Shepard followed, aiming her omni-blade at the woman's head. The clone's own glowing blade sprang into existence, parrying Shepard's thrust, but even as the two energy weapons ground against each other, the Spectre's armored first crashed into her double's face, sending her sprawling across the floor, blood coming out of her mouth.

Before the clone could get back to her feet, Shepard kicked her in the stomach. Her enemy rolled with the blow, buying a little space from the Spectre, and as Shepard tried to pursue, the clone snapped out her pistol and fired two rounds at the commander's torso. Her shields buckled and she grunted at the impact, but her rage drove her forward in spite of it. She kicked the gun out of the clone's hand and grabbed her enemy by the throat.

"You're wrong," she snarled, smashing her fist into her double's face again. "Not listening to my cock all the time isn't a weakness and trying to fuck everything that moves isn't a strength. And by the way, if you tried that shit on Liara, she'd rip you apart with her mind but since she's busy right now, you'll have to settle for me doing it."

As Miranda threw a fresh thermal clip into her assault rifle, Liara got back to her feet. "Sorry I ran off like that," the operative offered. "I had to deal with a couple of Centurions."

"There's still a sniper to take care of," Liara reminded her.

Miranda nodded. "I'll get her. You check on Garrus." She looked across the machine shop. "What about Shepard? Is she all right?"

"I cannot tell." On the other side of the room, the Shadow Broker could see two armored red-heads fighting back and forth, but given the poor lighting, even as interested an observer as her couldn't tell them apart. All she could do was hope her lover was winning.

Reaching Garrus' side, Liara was relieved to see that her old friend was still breathing. The sniper round had penetrated his armor, staining it with his dark blue blood, but it didn't seem to have pierced any vital organs and the asari applied medi-gel to the wound. Garrus' eyes blinked open and he groaned. "Is it over? Did we win?"

"We are working on it," she replied with a forced smile. A red light suddenly appeared on the turian's forehead and Liara shoved them both to the ground. The sniper round smashed harmlessly into a wall behind them and an instant later, she saw a biotic flash coming from that direction indicating that Miranda had gotten her target.

Liara applied a small amount of the medi-gel to herself, soothing the smoldering pain left in her skin by the Phantom's blast. "I have to help Shepard," she told the turian as she got up and grabbed her submachine gun from where it had fallen.

Racing across the machine shop, she saw Shepard and her twin locked in a grapple. She leveled her gun but their armor, similar enough to begin with, was caked in blood and dirt, and in the dim light, she couldn't tell which was which. The Shepard on the bottom tossed the women on top of her to the floor before leaping after her. Liara prepared to use her biotics to pull the two humans apart, but before she could, the descending Shepard's eyes went wide with shock. Between them, Liara could see the glowing length of an omni-blade stuck straight into her chest, her heart's blood spilling out onto her double.

Liara gasped, all of the breath seeming to leave her body at the sight of what might be the woman she loved dying in front of her. The other Shepard started to struggle to her feet, but the asari held up her gun, trying to keep her hand and voice from shaking.

"Wait!", she insisted, "Which one are you?"

"It's me," the woman panted, "It's Shepard."

Her hand brushed aside the filth covering her shoulder guard and Liara exhaled. Beneath the grime, it's red standing out against the dark grey armor, was the N-7 insignia.

As Liara helped her to her feet, Shepard saw Miranda and Garrus staggering towards her. "Everyone all right?"

"I'll live," Miranda told her, wiping the blood away from a cut on her forehead.

"'I'm good too," Garrus said, though as the commander looked at the gaping hole in his chest plate, she thought he might be overselling it a bit.

"I will be all right as well," Liara said before adding, "Thanks in large part to Miranda." She still wasn't sure she entirely trusted the operative, but she deserved credit for her rescue.

The Spectre nodded at Miranda. "Thank you for that."

"What about you love?", the asari asked, gently brushing her fingers over the rising lump on the back of Shepard's head. There was dried blood in the Spectre's hair and she winced slightly at Liara's touch.

"It's a little sore but it's not too bad. I can't exactly say I enjoyed stabbing myself in the heart though."

"It was… disturbing to watch as well," Liara agreed, a chill running through her as she thought of the moment when she hadn't been sure which Shepard had lived and which had died. "But we are all alive and that's what counts."

Shepard paused for a moment, reassessing their situation. "Okay. At this point, I think we can call in the Beta team to mop up whatever Cerberus survivors are left. We've got the route to the sever room secured, and with the clone dead, I don't think anybody who matters is going to escape."

"I wouldn't complain about some back-up," Miranda confessed. "I'm not sure how many more fights I have left in me today."

Shepard made the call to Javik and she and her three teammates headed towards the server room. As Liara starting hacking the door with her omni-tool, Garrus turned to the commander. "So Shepard," the turian asked, "I know I was a little out of it after Liara shot me full of medi-gel, but I swear I heard you saying some pretty weird stuff to your clone."

The commander's brows furrowed warily. She didn't like where this was heading. "What kind of weird stuff?"

Garrus shrugged. "I know this doesn't make sense, but I swear you said something about your cock."

Shepard didn't reply, but if her visible swallowing wasn't giving her away, the small smile and dark blush spreading across Liara's cheeks definitely did the trick. Garrus looked back and forth between the two of them in disbelief. "But… How… What exactly do I not know here?"

"It's her fault," Shepard blurted out, pointing at Miranda even as the door to the server room opened.

Inside, a Cerberus technician looked up from a terminal nestled amid the banks of computers, a crazed look on his pale face. "You're too late," he snarled, "You'll never…"

"This is not a good time," Liara snapped and with a gesture, she caught the man in her biotic grasp, sending him crashing unconscious into a wall. The Shadow Broker turned back to Garrus. "When Cerberus brought Shepard back to life, they modified her body without her consent."

The turian looked more puzzled than ever. "But why?", he asked Miranda. "Was there a purpose to that? Or is it just something you do to be more evil, like slaughtering refugees?"

"We had our reasons," the operative responded defensively, uncertain as to how much she should explain. Liara glared at her, and Miranda added, "Though it retrospect it might have been a mistake."

"Can we not talk about this?", Shepard growled, inserting an OSD into the Cerberus systems to download any files on the Crucible she might find there.

"I just can't believe you didn't tell me about this," Garrus laughed, deciding to make the best of a weird situation. "I thought we were friends."

"It's not the easiest thing to bring up, okay," Shepard told him as she searched the system for any data on the Crucible. "Somehow, 'How about that new canon upgrade and by the way Cerberus gave me a dick' doesn't feel quite right. It happened. I dealt with it."

"Well, it can't be all bad," the turian chuckled, shooting a look over at Liara even as the Spectre blushed, thinking about all the ways her lover had taught her that same lesson.

"I said I'm not talking about it any more," the Spectre insisted, staring intently at the file headers scrolling across the screen. Whatever data they were getting here had better be worth it.