9. CHARM

She woke up with a wretched taste in her mouth and the three bars of Garrus's shoulder guard indented in her cheek. His eyes were closed, his chin tucked down into his cowl. He breathed softly.

The sky was dark, swathed in gauzy grey layers of cloud and dust. Little blooms of orange light dotted the surface from underneath, fading out into the murky horizon. It was still and quiet. The air had cooled, and the breeze carried the smells of gunpowder and wood smoke.

She extricated herself from Garrus's arm. He stirred and made a low, sleepy noise of protest. She held still until he relaxed again, then tiptoed a safe distance away, around piles of building materials, stacks of crates. She sat down cross-legged in the dirt behind a heap of corrugated steel and touched the comm button in her collar.

"Miranda," she whispered.

Silence.

"...Miranda. Miranda. Miranda. EDI."

"Yes, Shepard." EDI's voice hummed through the speaker, much too loud.

"Shh! Get me Miranda."

After a moment, a tired-sounding voice came over the line. "Shepard, it's 0200 ship time. Something had better be bleeding or on fire. What is it?"

"Miranda, you're a really good XO," Shepard said. "Seriously. Really great."

"I know," Miranda said shortly. "Is that all? I'm going back to bed."

"I guess. No. I don't know." Shepard flopped down onto her back and looked up at the opaque, fathomless sky. "Can we talk for a bit?"

"I suppose." Rustling noises came over the line. A long pause. "Well? I'm listening."

"—Come work for me." The words spilled out of Shepard's mouth. "Uh. After all this Collector crap is over, I mean. I want you with me when I take the fight to the Reapers. God knows I could have used your help the first time around."

A sigh. "We can discuss that once we've completed the mission at hand, Shepard. We're still a long way from the Omega Four relay."

"I know."

"Do you? I can't help but notice that lately the mission log looks like a long list of personal favors." A pause. Miranda's voice quieted. "Not that I'm not grateful for what you did for me. Or Jacob. I just want to make sure you remember why we're here."

"Of course I remember." Shepard sat up. "Every second of every day, I remember. Our people are still out there, enslaved, or dying, or worse. But we're the only hope they have, so we have to do this right. Our focus and teamwork has to be bulletproof." Her voice was rising. "If we cut any corners, the Collectors will kill us in a heartbeat. And then the Reapers will swarm in and fuck the whole galaxy right on top of our corpses."

A brief, appalled silence. "...You certainly have a way with words, Commander."

"Sorry. It's been a long day." Shepard let out her breath, and eased herself back down. "A really weird day. I'll tell you about it later."

"Of course you will. I debrief you after every mission."

There was a short pause.

"Well then, Shepard, if there's nothing else—"

"—How's Oriana?" Shepard said quickly.

Miranda sighed again.

"Really," Shepard said. "Is she doing okay? Settled in at the new digs?"

"She's doing fantastic," Miranda replied. "Barely even set foot in the house before she packed off to Nos Astra U."

"Does she like it?"

"Loves it. She's already tested into a graduate level bioengineering course." Miranda's voice warmed. "She wants to be a doctor. Started planning her thesis project the first week. She's trying to figure out a way to improve gene therapy treatment for the next generation of colonists, so they can adapt to alien environments more effectively. I looked at some of her preliminary work. It's brilliant— of course. Given the proper resources and development, she could open up a whole new spectrum of worlds for humanity to explore."

Miranda paused. Faint rustling noises came over the comm. "But who knows. She's only a freshman. She'll probably change her mind twelve times before the year's up."

"Sounds like you two have been talking a lot."

"We've exchanged a few messages here and there."

Shepard smiled. "That's really great."

"Yes," Miranda said. "It is."

Shepard stretched her arms up to the sky, and wiggled her gloved fingers in the air. "I never had a family."

"I know," Miranda said.

Shepard suppressed a sigh.

"I tried to find them, actually," Miranda said. "Your biological parents. Siblings, cousins. I searched for a long time."

"You— really? Why?"

"Their DNA and medical histories would have been incalculable assets during the Lazarus Project."

"Oh."

"But mostly, I wanted to know more about you. I thought if I could just— I thought it might explain some things." The rushing sound of a faucet. A clink. "Didn't have much luck, though. That's a hard city to track people in, even for someone with my resources. And you didn't leave much of a paper trail behind you."

"Sorry," Shepard deadpanned, before she could think better of it. "Next time I'm orphaned, I'll try to take better notes."

"Thank you," Miranda replied smoothly. "Next time I'm resurrecting your frozen corpse, I'd appreciate the help."

Huh. Shepard cracked a smile.

A gentle wind stirred. A few pale stars shone through the curtain of dust.

"What did you study when you were in university?"

"I never went." Miranda sounded distant for a moment. "My father hired instructors to come to the house instead. The best minds in their fields."

"Oh." Shepard folded her hands behind her head. "I guess that makes sense."

Silence.

"Miranda?"

"I'm here."

Another long pause. The comm link hummed in Shepard's ear.

"...I wanted to go." Miranda's voice was subdued. "I wanted to go to school. I wanted it so badly. I dreamt about it all the time."

"I dreamt about running," Shepard said.

"I was going to major in art history."

"Really?"

"Really," Miranda said.

"Not— political science, or— I don't know. Something more applicable?" Shepard scratched her ear. History of galactic warfare? Bioweapons? Whatever major taught you how to kill and dominate.

"It is applicable," Miranda snapped. "Art reveals everything about the people who make it, and even more about the people who consume it. Their beliefs, their desires, their blind spots and weaknesses. If you understand someone, you can influence them, control them. Art is a path to that understanding."

A pause.

"It's also beautiful," Miranda added, more quietly.

Shepard looked up at the stars. "That's a good argument," she said. "Very persuasive."

"I know."

"I'm sorry it didn't work on him."

"Thank you." Miranda's voice was tight.

The sunlit corridors of Illium. Miranda had stood at the edges of the crowded station, twisting her slender hands.

Oriana Lawson had turned at the sound of her sister's footsteps. A mirror image of Miranda, but lightened. Unburdened. Smiling.

Shepard rolled onto her side and looked out over the edge of the plateau. One of the orange lights in the distance winked out.

"Ori's going to have a really good time," Miranda murmured. "Going to parties. Making new friends. Learning about philosophy, history, music, relationships, ridiculous pop culture— whatever she feels like. No one to tell her she can't. That she's too special, too important. That she's wasting her potential." A short pause. More rustling noises. Miranda's voice sounded muffled. "It's everything I ever wanted for her."

Shepard raised her eyebrows. "Kinda sounds like it's everything you ever wanted for yourself."

"Yes. It was."

Shepard thought about it for a moment. Another life, another world. One where she'd had a family. Stayed in school.

Gotten slaughtered with all the rest when the Reapers came screaming through the relays.

"I used to talk with Niket like this," Miranda said.

"Yeah?"

"Ages ago, when we were children. My father had our network on lockdown, but he always forgot that I was smarter than he was. I hacked into a local news station's intranet and set up a private vidchat link on their server. Only Niket and I knew how to find it. On the access logs, it looked like we were just checking the news."

"Nice trick."

"I had to compress the data stream down to almost nothing. Anything bandwidth-intensive was too risky." A quiet laugh. "We looked like blobs of pixels. Our voices sounded like static. But it didn't matter. We'd stay up until dawn, just... talking. About everything and nothing."

"I'm sorry, Miranda," Shepard said. "He must have been a good friend."

"He was. He was the best friend I ever had."

A pause. Miranda's voice lowered. "I wanted to thank you for stopping me, back there. I would have... regretted that."

"I'm just glad I could help."

"You really mean that, don't you?" Another pause. "You're quite something, Shepard."

Shepard wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she didn't. The wind rustled. Swirls of dust settled in her hair.

"It's funny, you know," Miranda murmured. "I've always believed that regrets were a waste of time. You do what you can with what you have, and you never look back."

"That's good advice," Shepard said.

"Accomplishments outlast love. Power before people. My father used to say things like that, and I believed him. But now..."

"Yeah?"

"Oriana showed me how wrong he was. You did, too. And now I'm sitting here wishing I'd come down to Tuchanka with you, after all."

Shepard smiled up at the sky. "You would have kicked ass at art history, Miranda."

A low, warm laugh came over the comm line. "I know."

After the call ended, Shepard meandered over the silent plateau, too restless to sleep. She poked through the detritus of the millennia. Did some push-ups. Attempted to meditate. Gave up after thirty seconds. Finally she sat down at the cliff edge again and gazed out at the horizon, her mind unspooling.

Colonists. Collectors. Reapers. Forward. Stop. Rewind.

Her body, her blood, her brain. Whatever it was inside of her— digital or divine, Cerberus or supernatural, it was hers to use. A sword against time. A shield against death.

The first blue-tinged rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds. Armored footsteps clicked behind her.

"Good morning," she said, tipping her head back.

Garrus rubbed his neck. "How long have you been out here?"

"Couple hours. Couldn't sleep." Shepard flashed him an upside-down grin. "Why? Were you lonely?"

The look he gave her suggested uncharitable things about her intelligence. He folded his arms and turned to face the horizon. "So, this is sunrise over a nuclear wasteland. Pity I didn't think to bring my paintbrushes."

"Yeah, yeah, all right." She pushed herself up, dusted her hands off on her hips. "I won't force you to enjoy any more of it. Let's go collect our boy."

They picked their way back down through the tunnel. Faint noises from the settlement filtered through the still air.

"Suppose Grunt's hungover?" Shepard murmured. "Maybe we should ready weapons."

Garrus rolled his neck from side to side. "Pretty sure hangovers are biologically impossible for krogan."

"I was born into the wrong race," she said, awed.

He made a brusque noise. "Wrex certainly seems to think so."

She glanced up at him, opened her mouth— then thought better of it. He was probably cold and underslept and sore. He was almost certainly hungry. Maybe he was wishing he hadn't told her anything about Omega. Maybe he was wishing he hadn't come with her, period.

—Hell with it. She reached out and patted his hand. "There, there, Vakarian."

His jaw clicked sharply.

"You've been such a good boy," she cooed. "So patient. So brave. We'll get you home soon."

He squinted down at her. "I shot Weyrloc Guld through the eye before he could blast you with that Singularity."

"What? Horseshit," she said. "I was ready for him. All you did was steal my kill."

Garrus ticked off points on his fingers as they strode up the path. "I kept you from getting mowed down by klixen while you were tearing around the arena like a pyjack on fire."

"You should slap a ceramic patch on those teeth marks," she said lightly, toeing his ankle with her boot. "Looks like some of 'em went pretty deep."

"I pulled the thresher maw's attention off you while you spent a half-century trying to figure out how to reload the Cain."

"That just reaffirms my earlier statement. Fuck your big guns."

"And since I'm such a good person," Garrus continued, "I won't mention how I had to babysit you all night after you decided to go one-for-one against a genetically perfect krogan. We'll call that one a freebie."

"All night, my ass. You babysat me for fifteen minutes. Half an hour, tops."

"Is that how long it seemed to you? That's cute."

She powered up her omni-tool. "I may have been drunk—"

"And raving," he pointed out.

"But I also have the logs from my biomonitors. Thirty-eight minutes. That's not 'all night.'"

"And I never even got any dinner," he murmured, looking off into the distance.

"You got a perfectly good chunk of thresher meat," she said. "Not my fault you're so fussy. What's your point, Vakarian?"

Six and a half feet of wounded turian dignity turned to look at her.

"Be nice to me," he said.

She reached out and patted his hand again, laughing. "There, there, Garrus."

They wandered into the hushed Urdnot camp. Krogan lay heaped and snoring in their armor, their massive heads pillowed on duffel bags, supply crates, loose rubble, each other. Dozing varren huddled together for warmth, noses tucked under paws. The gleam of Grunt's pale armor caught her eye. He was squatting near the embers of last night's fire. Wrex and the shaman conversed in low voices nearby.

Grunt stood when he spotted them, bright-eyed and disgustingly alert. "Battlemaster! I'm ready."

The shaman nodded at them. Wrex rose to his feet. "Wondered where you two got off to last night. You missed the fighting."

Garrus coughed politely. "Did we? What a shame."

Grunt trundled over and fell in behind her, mirroring Garrus's position on her right.

Wrex squared off in front of them. Lowered his massive head, and leveled one great eye with hers.

"Shepard. Vakarian. Urdnot Grunt. Do me a favor while you're out there." His red stare bored into her. "Fight well. Kill them all. Leave nothing but ashes behind you."

Shepard patted the grip of her pistol. "Don't you worry. We'll blow the Collectors to hell."

"Wish I could help," Wrex said to her, more quietly.

"You already have," she replied.

After Tuchanka, the Normandy felt cold and sterile and very, very small. The lights were dimmed for the skeletal night shift, the cockpit dark and shuttered.

Grunt turned and gave her an oddly formal nod, then stomped off for the elevator. A bleary-eyed Matthews scrambled out of his path.

Chambers leaned out from behind her console as they walked past. "Welcome back, Commander."

"Ch— Kelly," she replied, startled. There were dark circles under the yeoman's eyes. "Since when are you on third shift?"

"I'm not, actually. The Illusive Man wanted to speak with you as soon as you returned. It's urgent. I've set up the link for you in the briefing room."

Hm. She glanced back at Garrus. He nodded and strode off.

She pushed through the doors to the comm room.

"Shepard."

Holographic smoke flickered in the still air.

"We've caught a break. I need you to go to the Korlus system."

The lights rose. She stood in the empty comm room for a moment, frowning at the floor.

"Shepard." EDI's globe blinked into view. "Do you require assistance?"

She lifted her head. "What's our ETA?"

"Forty-six minutes. I have alerted Mr. Moreau."

Shit. She spent two and a half seconds debating her options, then toggled the general squad frequency on her comm. "Look alive, everyone. We're off to infiltrate a derelict Collector ship. Remain on standby until further notice. Lawson, Vakarian, you're up. Grab your guns and meet me in the shuttle bay in forty."

"Affirmative," Garrus said.

An irritated sigh from Miranda. "So much for the mission debrief. I'll be there."

Shepard looked up at the ceiling. "Good. And Garrus— eat something first. If you get all cranky on me again, I'm leaving you behind."

A flat, rude-sounding noise came over the comm line.

She grinned up at the speaker. "See you in a bit."

A three-minute shower. Dust and dirt swirled down the drain. Hair stuck to her forehead in wet clumps. Her eyes felt gritty, unfocused.

She peeled into a clean undersuit, dumped the crusty, sweaty, boozy-smelling one from Tuchanka into the laundry hatch, and began reassembling her armor. Propped one foot on the bed to reattach her greaves. Clipped her pauldrons into place. Wiggled back and forth, settling the fit.

A gleam caught her eye. Her old breastplate lay face-up on her dresser.

She wandered over and picked it up. Brushed her fingers over the delicate, splintering edges of the hole through its ruined heart.

Something was off about this mission. The details didn't add up.

A trick. A trap. It had to be.

Well, fine. No better way to defuse a trap than to spring it. And no one better for the job than herself.

She was a sword and a shield. She was invincible.

After retrieving her guns from Jacob and some last-minute medical firmware updates from Mordin, she wandered up towards the cockpit. The Collector ship loomed in the viewscreen.

"Mornin', Commander. Nothing like waking up to a giant spiky deathtrap right outside your viewport, don't you think? Really puts some pep in your step."

"Joker," she said. Hadley was staring up at the two of them from the gangplank.

"Right. Sorry." Joker turned back to face the silent ship. She leaned over his shoulder to get a better look.

Miles and miles of rough, stony carapace, broken up by bands of steel. Great brown slabs curved like grasping fingers around the hollow core.

The Normandy's hull peeling away in silver sheets. Power cables writhing and spitting in utter silence. Airless, glittering black. Shepard's eyes narrowed. "That looks exactly like—"

"—I know. EDI's been trying to match the profiles." Joker's lips pressed into a thin line. "Without an engine signature, it's impossible to be sure."

No lights. No movement. No thrum of eezo in the drive core.

No blast marks, either. No impact craters. No debris.

Joker's voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "How in the hell did the turians manage to take this thing out?"

They hadn't. They couldn't have.

Was the Illusive Man really buying this?

"Silent running until I get back," she said, and spun on her heel. "Keep your eyes open. Be ready to leave hot."

"Yeah," he said, without looking away from the ship. "Good luck."

Garrus leaned back against the shuttle, watching her approach with his pale hawk's stare.

She squinted at him. "Are you sure you ate?"

He batted the question aside with a wave of his hand. "What's the situation?"

"Cerberus found an abandoned Collector ship. Looks identical to the one that destroyed the SR-1." She tossed him a blue-striped ration bar. He caught it with a hum of surprise. "We're going in to poke around their databanks, hunt for any intel that'll lead us through the relay. Hopefully steal some useful tech while we're at it. You got enough sleep planetside, right? You're not too worn out?"

"I'm fine, Shepard." He tore the foil off with his teeth. Took neat, rapid bites, his mandible flaring out with the movement. "So you want just me and Lawson on this? Why not Goto, too? She's a whiz at cracking into systems."

"I know. But— I don't know. Something's funny about this one. I want to keep the team small, in case we need to haul ass out of there." She ran a practiced eye over her pistol and SMG, clipped them back into place. "And Miranda's a non-negotiable asset for this mission. Whatever we find in there, I need her to see it in person. Some things just don't translate over vid uplink."

He tipped his head back to swallow the last of the bar. Licked a crumb off his fingertips with a flash of long, dark blue tongue. She bent her head and pretended to fuss with something on her omni-tool.

He dusted his hands off and unhooked his Mantis. "Glad I'm not the only one with a strange feeling about all this. You think the ship is worth the risk?"

"I think it's a giant ticking time bomb and we'll be lucky if we find anything at all before it explodes."

Garrus paused halfway through wiping a bit of dirt off his scope. "You know, Shepard, your pre-mission pep talks could use some work."

She rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter what I think. It's the best lead we have, so we have to try. And either way, Miranda needs to see that Collector ship up close, because she'll notice things and make connections that I won't. Then she can put that over-engineered brain of hers to work figuring out how best to blow them up."

"Fair enough." He snapped his rifle to his back. "That still leaves me. Or am I just here to make you look good?"

She pried open a ration bar of her own. "You're an investigator. Investigate. You'll see things I miss, too."

"Sure," he drawled, folding his arms. "But Lawson's the only one who gets to be a 'non-negotiable asset.'"

"C'mon, Garrus." She grinned up at him through a mouthful of protein mash. "Of course you're non-negotiable. You have to be there to hold my hand if I get scared."

He was unmoved. "I have a better idea. Use your hand to shoot whatever's scaring you."

"That's your job, big guns."

"So I'll be investigating, holding your hand, and shooting things?" His jaw clicked. "I want a pay raise."

"Denied. Everyone's gotta multitask, Vakarian."

"Really? It's starting to sound like Lawson and I are pulling all the weight on this one. Why don't you stay home, Shepard? Drink some tea, vidchat with Wrex. We'll bring Goto out instead."

She jabbed a finger at his chest. "You think Goto's gonna keep your bony butt alive when things start blowing up?"

The click of heels against the decking preempted his retort. Miranda drew to a halt in front of them. "Commander. Vakarian. If you're finished with your preparations, I'd like to get a brief assessment of the last two missions for Doctor Solus and Grunt."

Shepard blinked at her. Miranda's eyes looked a little tired, but if not for that, Shepard would have thought she'd hallucinated the entire midnight heart-to-heart.

"It's just a placeholder for the file until we can go back and do a comprehensive." Miranda glanced at her omni-tool. "We still have six minutes, if you were wondering."

"Um—" Shepard began.

"'Depressing' and 'Uncomfortable,' in that order," Garrus said. "That should cover it for now."

Miranda spared him a frosty look. "You're a paradigm of efficiency."

He flared a mandible at her. "I try."

Shepard frowned at him— was he flirting with her XO?— but then the shuttle pilot turned up, looking a little pale and sweaty, and then EDI began the approach countdown, and then it was time to go.

Shepard stayed up front with the pilot, a round-faced woman named Kozlowski.

Investigators. Strategists. Her left and right hands. Garrus and Miranda were the most logical choices on any number of levels. But the dark little engine burning inside her brain wanted this chance to observe them in each other's company. Just in case they were—

She didn't know what, exactly. But just in case something.

The Collector ship hung in the viewscreen. The pilot's arms tensed. Garrus and Miranda leaned forward to get a better look.

The monstrous black whale grew larger, larger, larger, until finally it engulfed them.

The shuttle touched down. The clamps engaged with a hiss and thunk. The pilot flicked off the engines.

"Good work, Kozlowski. Hang tight, keep your eyes and ears open. And if shit hits the fan and I tell you to bail— you bail. Understood?"

The pilot nodded jerkily.

"You know what I like most about you, Shepard," Garrus began, helmet in his hands.

"My sunny optimism?" Shepard tightened a gasket on her air hose.

Miranda frowned at her from behind her breathing mask. "The engines are cold. Long-range says the entire system's empty. I understand your caution, Shepard, but whatever else you might think of the Illusive Man, his intel is good."

"Hope you're right, Miranda. For all our sakes." Shepard flipped the seals on her helmet. Took a deep pull of recycled air. Tried to shake the crawling certainty that there was a hiss just below the threshold of her hearing.

Garrus's voice buzzed through her comm link. "So what's the plan?"

"We have no idea what we're walking into," she said, drawing her pistol. "So there isn't one. Stay sharp, stay close, expect trouble. Let's move."

One last check and pat-down. The hatch swung open. She stepped out onto—

What the hell? The ground felt pliant. Almost spongy. Like skin.

"Fascinating," murmured Miranda, looking around.

"They left the lights on for us," Garrus said. "And the gravity. How thoughtful."

Shepard tapped her comm. "EDI, I thought you said this thing was powered down."

"The drive core is offline, as is life support. However, gravity and other non-critical systems are still drawing reserve power."

"The turian patrol ship must have concentrated fire on the engines," Miranda said.

"Must have," Shepard said blandly.

Miranda frowned at her. "Or they could have hacked into the ship's system core and shut it down remotely. There are any number of possibilities."

"I'm sure you're right." Shepard flicked her hand forward. "Move out."

The ship was cavernous and still, and hummed with empty energy. Light filtered down from pods embedded in the fleshy ceiling. The deck plates grew in leathery clumps, with patches of bare steel shining underneath. Tendons stretched up the length of the walls. Corners and junctions sprouted fibrous lumps of scar tissue.

No dead bodies, either Collector or turian. No spent clips. No bullet holes.

Garrus peered up at the honeycombed surface of the light pods. "Strange. It's almost like an insect hive."

Miranda's footsteps halted behind them.

Shepard turned to look at her.

"You're right," Miranda said, staring up at the pods. "It is strange."

Shepard glanced back at Garrus, but couldn't read his face through the tinted visor. "What do you mean, Miranda?"

"The architecture of this ship. It doesn't make sense."

Shepard blinked. "Architecture? What?"

"Look at the hallways," Miranda said impatiently, waving a hand at the leathery walls around them. "Organic, seamless, curvilinear. An insect hive, just like Vakarian said." She gestured at a cluster of support beams jutting through the ceiling. "But there's all this rectilinear steel infrastructure underneath. Supports grafted in wherever they'll fit, with no regard for aesthetic integration. No regard for usability, for economy of space, for flow of internal traffic. No hierarchy of spatial organization."

Garrus tilted his head to one side. "...What exactly are you saying, Lawson?"

"I'm saying—" She frowned down at her feet. "I'm saying, I don't think the Collectors actually built this ship. Not on their own." She prodded the floor with her boot. "Look at the decking. The turf has a hexagonal growth pattern. But the plating underneath is cut square."

Shepard chewed on her lip. Flesh and metal slapped together. A graceless, stitched-together synthesis.

Garrus looked up. "So someone else built the ship, or most of it, and then gave it to them."

"Yes," Miranda said. "They must have been uplifted by another race. But crudely. Suddenly. They're either still adapting, or— they're not able to adapt, for whatever reason."

There was a short silence while they all digested that.

"Motherfucking Reapers," Shepard said.

"Good for them," Garrus said. "They made some new little friends."

"Or manufactured them." Miranda made a vexed noise. "This should have been our operating assumption from the get-go. I don't know why I never considered the possibility that the Reapers might have engineered more than one slave race. It's so bloody obvious in hindsight." She began pacing back and forth, boot heels tapping against the deck. "Damn. I wish we had more data. Of course the Keepers self-destruct if they're interfered with. Of course Collector bodies disintegrate after death. The Reapers don't want anyone else getting close enough to put the pieces together!"

"You ever think that maybe this whole galactic war thing could be avoided if we just taught them some basic social skills?" Garrus fiddled with something on his omni-tool. "How to play nice. How not to indoctrinate and enslave everyone you meet. Lawson, I'm sending you a file. We managed to scan some Keepers two years ago. Not a lot of data, but it's a start."

"Downloading. Did you find out where the process begins? How were they brought under Reaper control? Obviously, indoctrination has to play a part, but the genetic reengineering would take years to fully—" Miranda stopped, put her hand to her forehead. "Could they be capable of indoctrinating an entire race at once? Getting them to voluntarily submit? Is that what happened to the Collectors? Is that what they're trying to do to us?"

Shepard slashed her hand through the air. "We'll worry about the implications later, Miranda. Right now, we're here for hard evidence. Let's move."

Garrus took her left flank. Miranda fell in at her right, an unhappy crease between her eyebrows. "I can't believe I didn't see any of this before."

"You're seeing it now, Lawson," Garrus said.

"If I'd made the connections earlier, I would have been a lot more aggressive about retrieving samples. We should have interrogated that quarian witness. Our research team could have developed better countermeasures. We could have saved Horizon's—"

"Miranda," Shepard barked. "Quit it. If you start going down that rabbit hole, you'll never come back up."

Miranda pursed her lips and said nothing.

"Do what you can with what you have, and never look back." Shepard glanced back over her shoulder. "A friend told me that, once."

A pause. "I suppose your friend was right."

"Yeah," Shepard said. "I've found that she usually is."

Miranda's face softened fractionally.

"Pretty kickass at art history, too," Shepard added, after a beat. "An expert in Collector architecture. Loads of advanced degrees."

"...All right, Shepard, you're laying it on a bit thick." But there was a smile under her breathing mask.

Shepard smiled back.

They pressed on.