Chapter 19

Miranda Lawson was a woman who rarely made mistakes. In her years spent working on dozens of Cerberus operations, she had gained a reputation among her co-workers for having the annoying habit of always being right. Doubt was, for her, a decidedly alien feeling. Yet it was creeping up on Miranda now.

She paced back and forth across the lavish bedroom that had been provided her. Her eyes drifted to the locked door with every turn as she thought on her decision. Each time her eyes she looked at the entrance, her pulse would quicken.

I had to do it, she told herself once more as she turned on her heel. Yet despite her best efforts, she couldn't help wondering what Shepard would have done in her place. It was all too obvious what decision Jack would have made. The thought of her former partner curled her lips into a slight smile and her eyes turned to the spectacular view of the ruined city below her massive window.

Wherever you are, Jack, stay safe.

That was one decision Miranda had no doubts about. Whether she realized it or not Jack had a real future ahead of her. Certainly brighter than the one Miranda could look forward to. She pictured the biotic finding herself another teaching job on Earth somewhere, the awkward years settling into a normal life; above all she pictured Jack happy.

If anyone deserves it, it's you. You've been through so much.

Before Miranda's sentimentality could get the best of her she was frozen in place by the sound of her door sliding open. She kept her back to the entrance and her eyes glued to the view of the city below as she heard a set of footsteps enter behind her.

A calm voice greeted her. "Ms. Lawson, I believe I owe you my life."

Miranda turned to see Anthony Ford standing in her doorway, his posture perfectly straight despite the lack of his cane.

"So it seems."

Ford stepped inside. "I'll confess I had my doubts about you."

"Yet you let me do the surgery anyway?"

"Mankind was built upon the shoulders of those who were willing to take risks. I'd like to think that one day people may look back and see you and I as two of them."

"Is that what this is all about to you? Leaving a legacy?"

Ford cracked a smile. "You'll have to forgive my ego. I fear it may rear its ugly head more than a few times during the course of our partnership." He walked over to the window and stopped, joining her in staring down at the city. "I hardly recognize it anymore."

She turned to face the man but Ford kept his gaze locked on the ruined skyline. "I was stationed on Typhon for years before the Reapers arrived. It was a beautiful colony. I wish you could have seen it before it fell into such a state. I wish you could have seen how our people fought for it."

Miranda found herself curious to hear his side of the tale and so she asked, "What happened?"

"Besides the Reapers? The colonists' fear and desperation turned them into beasts, the aliens most of all. The turians made up the second largest portion of the planet's population. They started the riots and the other non-humans were quick to join in on the slaughter. They hated humanity because the Alliance abandoned their colony in its greatest hour of need. It wasn't long after that that the whole city was consumed by one giant race war and we were forced to come out of the shadows to put a stop to it. Some of the remaining alien forces continued to meddle in our affairs and so we made examples of them to keep the peace."

"I don't want to think about how many good people died in as a result of the senseless violence those savages begun. Between the Reapers and the aliens, our numbers had begun to dwindle, which forced us to explore alternative methods of recruiting, as you've seen. That was just four months ago and already our forces have nearly recovered. Just picture what we could do with two years."

"It's an interesting image," Miranda granted, trying her best to seem as if she shared Ford's enthusiasm. "You'll have to explain more to me about the process behind their creation."

"Oh certainly, Miss Lawson. We've made great progress already, but I look forward to seeing what suggestions you have to offer."

"I am curious about one other thing," Miranda admitted.

"And what might that be?"

"Why did the Illusive Man give you all of that Cerberus data? It's a tremendous amount of power for him to have trusted someone else with."

Ford smiled fondly. "The Illusive Man and I were… kindred spirits. I knew the day I met him that he would achieve great things."

"And you truly believe there's still hope for Cerberus to be reborn? To fulfill that dream?"

He nodded. " Beyond any doubt. I'm sure that together, we can achieve..."

Ford never finished his sentence. He was midway through making an expansive gesture when suddenly his hand flew to his chest, clutching at it as his face contorted into an agonized rictus. A violent cough brought up blood that erupted past his lips and dripped down his chin. He fell to his knees, his other hand reaching out toward her as another spurt of blood trickled down his face and pooled on the ground beneath him.

Miranda wasn't sure if it was an attempt to lash out at her, or to beg for assistance, but she didn't care. No doubt Ford's mutant sentinels were just outside the room, and if she was going to retain even a slim hope of survival, she had to act quickly.

Rather than offer assistance, Miranda drove her foot into Ford's chest, kicking him over onto his back. He continued to twitch and gurgle up a mixture of phlegm and blood, but she paid it no mind. Ford had only moments left to live, but there was something Miranda needed from him before he expired. Bending down, she brushed aside his flailing hands, patting down his body until she found what she was looking for. Her search revealed a small plastic object that she removed from his belt and brought up to her neck. Miranda fitted it into a slot on her collar and the metal restraint snapped open, letting letting her throw it off.

As the collar clattered to the floor, Ford finally managed to say something in-between his dying gasps, choking out, "Why?"

Miranda stared down at the dying man with cold, unfeeling eyes. "Because I've made enough moral compromises in the name of some greater good already. Because I couldn't look her in the face if I made this one. And above all...because you deserve it."

Ford may not have understood what she was talking about, but that not longer mattered. His final words were drowned out in a fit of bloody coughing, and even if he had been able to reply, Miranda had no time to listen. Yet before she could make her getaway, something caught her eye. Just beyond the grasp of Ford's clutching hand sat an OSD that had fallen from his breast pocket during his cardiac arrest. Miranda looked down at the sum of the organization she had devoted her life to. Every bit of the Illusive Man and Cerberus' discoveries, funding and assets were there, contained in a single drive. With one step Miranda could crush the last true remnant of Cerberus.

A booted foot hovered over the device. One step and she could end it all. Yet it never came down. As Ford's final breaths escaped him, Miranda bent down on one knee and picked up the device instead. Without sparring Ford a further glance, she tucked the OSD away in her catsuit and dashed to the doors of her quarters. They opened for her, revealing two hulking Cerberus mutants.

"Help!" she cried out, doing her best to sound genuinely distressed. "You need to get help! Ford has collapsed. I think it's bad."

Fortunately, whatever process gave the Cerberus elites their tremendous strength didn't seem to have had a similar effect on their mental acuity. In that moment, all they appeared to realize was that their master was in danger. One of them rushed into her quarters in search of Ford while the other opened up a comm link to report the emergency.

Not that it will do Ford any good. The sabotage had been, if she could be so bold as to say it, some of her best work. Not only had she arranged it so that the heart wouldn't fail until well after they were out of the OR, she had made sure that when it did, Ford would be dead before anyone could do anything about it.

As she ran down the corridor, Miranda felt her heart pounding in her chest. She doubted that Ford's followers would be inclined to wait for an autopsy before the started assigning blame. Once they found out that their savior was dead, they'd guess the truth, and then she'd die by inches, at least if she didn't move very, very quickly.

Taking the elevator was, she decided, a bad idea. If Cerebus cut the power halfway down, she'd be trapped, and whatever happened, she wasn't going to let them take her alive. The stairs it had to be, and so she threw open a metal door and began to bound down them, three at a time.

Her breath came in short gasps, but he didn't allow herself to recognize the likely futility of her escape attempt as she descended the concrete stairs. Keep moving, dammit. Just keep moving.

Miranda made it down six floors before the doors to the next level flew open to reveal a squad of troopers with rifles aimed at her. She didn't even blink before she shot one hand forward and unleashed a biotic pulse that threw the armored goons like ragdolls back into the corridor they had come from.

Before they had a chance to recover, Miranda leapt down into another flight of stairs, but when she leaned over the guardrail, she saw a second squad of men galloping up to greet her. Her hands glowed bright blue as she gritted her teeth. It wouldn't matter how many she took out, they would just keep coming until she was overwhelmed. She took a moment to look around at her surroundings and took a deep breath.

After everything she'd been through: her father, Cerberus, the Normandy, even Jack, Miranda never imagined it would end here in a dirty stairwell on a burned-out colony. She tightened her glowing fists. She might have been about to die, but she had no intention of making it easy on her killers.

She jumped back from the guardrail as a hail of gunfire erupted from below. The bullets soared up through the open center of the stairwell even as the first squadron of soldiers regained their footing on the floor above her. Miranda went for them first. Before the closest trooper could react, she yanked him off the ground and tossed him down towards the soldiers climbing the stairs toward her. The armored man collided with another trooper with enough force to leave them both stunned and both squads responded with a coordinated blast of biotics and bullets that Miranda only narrowly avoided by diving to the ground.

The concrete walls were shredded by the blast, causing smoldering bits of stone to rain down on Miranda. She gritted her teeth as she felt a bullet graze her back, the impact only partially stopped by her barriers. When the bullets finally stopped flying, Miranda's ears were ringing so badly she couldn't hear a thing as she leapt to her feet.

She threw a flare with both hands, letting out a fierce battle cry as the biotic explosion tore through the men above her before they could reload fresh clips into their weapons. She tossed attack after attack as they dived for cover, ignoring her temporary deafness and the aching pain that was developing in the base of her skull as she pushed her abilities past their limits. Biotic strikes landed like machine gun fire from her hands as she backed down the stairs. Yet by the time she turned her attention to the second group of hostiles, it was already too late. A bullet tore through her shoulder, pain searing her body as blood dripped down her shoulder.

Miranda fell to the ground, and as she tumbled down the stairs, she felt a handful of her ribs crack. Her chin slammed down on the hard stone and her teeth bit into her tongue before she rolled to a stop at the next floor of the seemingly endless stairwell. Blood filled her mouth, drowning her scream of agony as she pushed the palm of her hand against the oozing wound in her shoulder. She knew she couldn't last another minute without armor, or back-up, and neither was at hand.

You always knew this would be a suicide mission.

"So, what do you think of my baby?"

In response to Alfina's question, Jack could only grin. The wind was whipping through her short hair, and below her, the ruins of the city were spread out in a giant, blasted tableaux. From this high vantage point, it felt as if she was some sort of primitive goddess, capable of doing anything she wished with the world beneath her.

Even rescuing stupid Miranda before she gets her dumb ass killed. A part of her was still angry with the operative for having run off like that, but before she could yell at Miranda, she had to rescue her first.

"I think this is one bad-ass gunship," she replied, trying to keep her fears to one side. "These Cerberus fuckers aren't gonna know what hit 'em."

"They'd better not," Seris said cooly from behind the controls, not as caught up as her bondmate in the excitement of the moment. "We've got a fairly impressive strike force with us, but if Cerberus is properly prepared, it still won't be enough."

"Don't worry about it," Jack insisted, hoping she sounded confident. "The cheerleader will take care of Ford and we'll take out the rest of his buddies while they're still trying to figure out what happened."

Alfina furrowed her brows in confusion. "The cheerleader?"

Jack laughed at the incongruity of the question under the circumstances. "It's just a dumb human thing. Don't worry about it."

"We won't," Seris said matter-of-factly, her vision fixed on the gunship's navigation system. "We'll be coming up on the first target any minute now, so get ready."

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Jack chuckled, summoning up a biotic field around herself. "I'm always ready to kick some Cerberus ass."

"Likewise." Alfina cocked her assault rifle and took up a firing position by the side door of the gunship.

Seconds later, the first sounds of gunfire crackled through the air. Jack tensed automatically, but at least for now, they weren't coming close to her. The gunship wasn't that high in the air, remaining in position to support the ground forces, but it seemed that Cerberus didn't have any weapons to spare for them. Looking down, Jack saw that the first wave of the alien rebels had made contact with the outer line of Cerberus soldiers who stood between them and the skyscraper. A mixed horde of turians, asari and more were swarming over the shocked Cerberus troopers, overwhelming them with a mixture of numbers, firepowers, and the element of surprise.

Whether or not Miranda had gotten to Ford, it was clear that Cerberus wasn't expecting a counter-attack on this scale. A few of the aliens fell to their defensive fire, but they were far outweighed by the losses on the enemy side. Jack did her part, tossing down biotic blasts, as Alfina's assault rifle chipped in as well, while the gunship's heavy weapons took a heavier toll.

It didn't take long before the Cerberus lines had collapsed completely. Blood and metal were left sprawled across the shattered barricades, and the few survivors were scattering back into the ruined city. Some of the aliens made as if to pursue, but Seris opened up her omni-tool, and barked down, "Let them go! We've got to keep moving before Cerberus realizes what's going on."

For the most part, the aliens seemed to listen. Their lines reformed, and as one, they continued their advance onward toward the looming tower in the distance. It had taken Miranda and Jack days to traverse the city in their journey to Ford's tower yet the rebel's army fought their way through the city blocks in a matter of hours. They'd taken some losses but even Ford's troopers were not able to survive the combination of their numbers and the onslaught of fire from the gunship.

At last they were flying above the circular ring of high rises that surrounded the tower, but the Seris held back as she got a good look at what awaited them. "Shit!" she spat. It seemed that Cerberus had, at last, realized the scale of their peril and organized a proper defensive line. Dozens of troopers guarded the entrance to the tower with high powered weapons and two manned turrets pointed directly at the bottleneck the rebels would have to push through in order to reach it.

"I guess we've used up the element of surprise," Alfina said grimly before she opened her comm. "Ground team, the enemy is dug in around the tower. Prepare for a real fight!" Jack grabbed an Avenger from the gun rack inside the ship and extended the barrel, while Alfina turned to the cockpit. "Let's light 'em up, babe!"

With a whir, the gunship's cannon spun up, and as they flew through the gap in the buildings, it unleashed hell on the Cerberus troops below. They fell back behind their cover, but even as they retreated, the turrets were returning fire. The rebels poured in to support the advance, but with little cover to hide behind, their losses from Cerberus' defensive fire were terrible. Bodies began to litter the ground even as the gunship pitched and weaved through the air, trying to dodge the dual barrage of the turrets.

Jack held tight to whatever she could get her hands on as the gunship soared erratically in the skies above the battle. "That was too fucking close!" Alfina screamed as a stream of bullets whizzed by the right of the ship. "We may have to pull back."

"Hell no! This is the only chance you'll' have!" Jack yelled out.

"She's right, Alfina," Seris replied, her voice calm amidst the turmoil. "Our people will die unless we do something!" Her fingers glided over the controls. "I need you to distract those turrets so I can hold the ship steady for a clean shot!"

Jack and Alfina didn't waste time before following orders. With one hand holding onto a metal bar on the side of the ship, Jack leaned out the open door and raised a glowing hand. Alfina did the same on the other side as the two biotics commenced their attack. Flares, warps, and anything else they could throw at their distant enemies caused explosions of blue energy to ripple off the metallic hulls of the turrets, sending their operators scrambling for cover.

"Almost got it!" Seris said from the cockpit.

Hurry the fuck up! Jack's head had begun to feel light as she launched another biotic bomb from her outstretched hand. It erupted like a firework but the damage wasn't enough to disable the armored weapon and her eyes widened when she saw the Cerberus trooper abandon his cover and climb back into the turret.

"Now!" Jack screamed.

Seris' hand pressed down. "It's away!"

The missile launched from the gunship in a spiraling motion, causing the three women aboard the ship to hold their collective breath as it soared towards their enemies. The Cerberus forces ceased firing on the advancing rebels long enough to look up to the sky, and though some ran for cover, most didn't have time to move as the missile landed directly on the right side of the turret, blowing the weapon to pieces. Half of the Cerberus forces were annihilated outright, while others were impaled by flying bits of metal debris.

Everyone aboard the gunship let out a cheer while the alien rebels on the ground jumped at their opening, charging forward with renewed enthusiasm. Yet there was no time to celebrate, the remaining turret already returning fire.

"Incoming!" Alfina screamed but it was already too late. A burst of turret fire slammed into the front of the gunship and it lurched violently, throwing Jack from her feet in spite of her grip on one of the handrails. Seris returned fire, raking the turret with the railgun, while fighting a losing battle to keep them aloft.

"Brace yourselves," she yelled back into the hold. "I'll try to set us down easy, but I'm not making any promises."

Jack reached out, wrapping both of her arms around one of the seats and holding on for dear life. The gunship jerked again as fresh fire tore into it and in front of her, Alfina threw up a barrier to block the debris that were now spraying back into the hold. Jack followed suit, and not a moment too soon. Moments later, something in the undercarriage of the airship exploded and only the barrier shielded her from the rush of heat and force slamming into her belly.

The next few seconds were a blur of twisting metal and wild motions strong enough to make Jack's arms feel as if they might be ripped out of their sockets. They weren't though, nor was the impact of the crash enough to shatter her barriers. It was, however, enough to hurt like a son of a bitch, and as she crawled out of the wreckage, she gritted her teeth, beating down the pain.

The pilot had managed to crash land them in what remained of the Cerberus forces, and the rebels were taking advantage of the chaos their impact had caused. They surged forward into the broken remains of the Cerberus formation, screaming a variety of alien war cries as they attacked.

Forcing herself back up to her knees, Jack aimed a warp at a nearby Centurion, trying to ignore the ache the ran through her side when she released it. Between her earlier biotic use and the impact, she wasn't exactly at her best, but fortunately, the Cerberus forces were too overwhelmed to take advantage of that fact. Right then, a pair of krogan had the attention of the nearby soldiers. One of them was cutting the troopers in pieces with a massive axe while the other was using a mixture of his shotgun and a series of vicious headbutts to devastating effect.

Behind her, Jack felt a hand take hold of her, yanking her back to her feet, and she turned around to see Alfina standing there. The asari had purple blood marking the top of her head, but when she saw Jack staring at the wound, she laughed. "Don't worry. It's just a love tap."

"What about your bondmate?"

From the wreckage of the gunship came a pained rasp. "I'll live." Seris wasn't in as good shape as Alfina, one of her arms hanging at an unnatural angle and blood covering a swath of her torso, but she was still alive, and that would have to do for now. Jack and Alfina threw themselves back into the battle, aiding the advancing rebels with a series of warps and biotic throws, and it wasn't long before the last of the Cerberus troops were put down. That wasn't a fact that Jack could take much comfort in, though. Above her, the massive structure of the tower loomed, filled with plenty more of the troops they had just defeated. And Miranda. At least if she's still alive, that is.

Notes- We're very close to the finish line with this story! I hope you enjoyed the chapter and will share your thoughts on it with us in the reviews. Do you think Miranda make the right choice?