Entry 61:

Interference tests have failed today again. Every interference test we have run on the implants connected to Shepard's central nervous system have failed. Every time we establish a successful signal interference, the implants reconfigure themselves and change their signals. As a result, we have to stop the interference or risk more permanent neural damage. My working hypothesis is that this is a defense mechanism to avoid external changes to the implants.

I have requested additional resources from Cerberus to consider our next steps. The feedback I have received is that there is additional cybernetics expertise that has been recently developed by a different cell, which might prove useful with the problem.

In the meantime, I have decided to go ahead with the memory mapping tech. If we can reconfigure Shepard's nervous system itself, we might render some of the implant's defensive programming irrelevant. Should the tech prove powerful enough, then we might move to the more aggressive backup plans. I have requested Morgan's help with this task. We need to reconstruct the memory structure from the moment of Shepard's death backwards.

Miranda Lawson signing off.

I really hadn't expected to hear from Miranda. I did send her a few messages asking her how it was going with Shepard, which did get prompt but very short replies from the Ice Queen along the lines of "yes, we're working on it", but this time she had actually made an effort. She was short on the details, but wanted to have me over for an extended period of time. Odd. I spent some time trying to figure out what she could possibly want, but I came up empty. Thanks to the Shadow Broker's resources, I had followed up on the Normandy's crew, and found out that most of them had actually been honorably discharged and gone back to civilian life. Not all of them, but most of them. That seemed all right, but then I noticed all the former Systems Alliance personnel that had been aboard the Hibiscus had, too, been discharged from duty. So either they had left, or Cerberus had siphoned them off the SA. Not great, but who am I to complain. So I didn't think Miranda needed me for anything regarding the crew, and I wasn't going to be of much more help with the Collectors for the time being.

So, I put it to the back of my mind. I had enough in it already.

For one thing, the Broker's business. Gee was running it at maximum efficiency already, but he still kept asking me for organic consensus building input when it came to certain situations. The majority of those situations involved multiple parties at odds with each other and interested in the same thing, and usually said thing just puzzled the hell out of my Geth buddy. Some of them puzzled me, too, but then again, I could accept that in a freaking big galaxy with multiple planets filled with sentient beings, there's going to be a few weird people. Trading on endangered species? Check. Information on eligible bachelors from certain rich families? Sure. Blackmail material of all kinds to try and get ahead when trading favors and influence? You got it. The fact that organics actually achieved consensus in a system where nobody trusted each other was just weird to Gee. Of course, it's not like he needed my input. He never came to ask what the "right" decision was. That's what he was damn good at. It was mostly... curiosity, I guess. No data available.

That and we had made another change, a small one at first. Mostly at my request, and Gee had added it as an extra variable for his decisions. Criminal organizations trying to screw each other was the normal situation, but sometimes one of the parties wasn't exactly a bunch of complete dicks. So my request had been simply to try and favor people who weren't complete dicks if the chance arose. Gee had no idea what the chance would look like or what constituted not being a complete dick. So we had spent some time establishing parameters, and trying to incorporate them into his decision tree. Took a while before Gee saw a possible chance, one where failure to choose the optimal solution wouldn't cause much of an impact, but after a while he got the hang of it. Not that it came very often, but doing a bit of niceness made me feel better.

The other thing that was in my mind was the work I had been doing with Kasumi and Keiji. They had traced back the origin of the transfer of that indoctrination device. An Asari senator with hefty political weight, which had been pretty easy to get out of the way given the large number of enemies every single important political figure in the Asari Republics seemed to collect through their careers. It was crazy. The fact that they traded in influence in such an open way just confused the hell out of me. Regardless, there was a list of people who had gotten hold of reaper artifacts, and it wasn't pretty. People in positions of influence, all of them. I wasn't even sure whether they were indoctrinated or not, I only assumed, which didn't let me sleep that well let me tell you. We hadn't killed anyone, but we had ruined quite a few people's lives.

I added finding a way to detect indoctrination to the to-do list. I knew of one, but Gee didn't have any way to get a hold of Vendetta. And Vigil had stopped working even before the research team had arrived to Ilos, according to their reports. Catastrophic hardware failure due to power loss or something like that. It stank to high heaven, but we hadn't managed to get anything more useful than that. And Gee was looking, he was very interested in the protheans as well.

But all that was kind of secondary at the moment because the gene mods had me fucked over and on my back more often than not. The ambidexterity mod literally screwed with my head - sense of balance, confusion, you name it - although it had gotten better. Teaches me to mess with the wiring. Then there was the standard mods, which made me awfully hungry all the time. And given how half the time my head was making me feel sick, the combination wasn't pretty. On top of that I had to train them up or they'd just go to waste, so I had a pretty strenuous training regime both for physical, and for mental - exercises using both hands independently and alternatively, all that.

So overall, I was kind of glad I had a break. The fact that it involved Shepard somehow did make me a bit nervous. The fact that it involved getting out of the Shadow Broker's lair, then fly to the very guarded Minuteman Station made me just grumpy. It took almost sixty hours of travel.

Freaking secret lairs.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I finally arrived to the station, but the place looked busy. Lots of people I had never seen, too. And one of them was there to greet me when the shuttle finally landed. No Joker to fly the shuttle, sadly, and the pilot I got assigned seemed to be mute.

"Mister Morgan, I'm Jason LaBeck," the man said, extending a hand towards me. Good grip. He was about my height, chestnut hair trimmed down immaculately, a square jaw and bright blue eyes over a pretty fat nose. "Miss Lawson's assistant."

"Pleasure," I said, shaking his hand.

"Unfortunately she is unavailable at the moment, some last minute thing came up. Please, follow me."

"Oh? Something bad?" I said, falling into step.

"Nothing too serious, but it did require her attention. Did you have a good flight?"

"Too fucking long, but yeah."

"Security protocols, I'm sure you're familiar with them," he said.

Sounded like he was just trying to make conversation, which meant either he didn't know what this was all about, or wasn't going to discuss it. Either way I had been to the station before, so I kind of knew my way. He showed me to the quarters, and then to my won private room. Nice.

"There you are," he said, and handed me a small... thing. "We have upgraded security since the last time you were here, this will give you access to the common areas."

"Uh... thanks..." I said, looking at the tiny gizmo without a clue what to do with it.

"If I may..." Jason said, gesturing with his hand to hand it back. "It's a simple security chip," he explained, as he brought up my omni-tool and fed it to the fabricator slot. He then navigated the menus swiftly. "Hardware access keys, and here you go," he explained, as a new line appeared on the menu. "Just wave it in front of the locks with access open here and you can get through. If you try to enter a secure area above your clearance, it will simply warn you that you have no access. If you insist, then admins will be informed. Just procedure."

"Ah, all right. Thanks. You know how long Miranda will be?"

"Shouldn't be long, feel free to make use of our facilities. I believe you were already familiar with them, were you not?"

"Been here before. Thanks."

He left me be and I headed straight for the shower. And while taking a nap and sleeping in a proper bed for the next twenty hours sounded appealing, I was way hungrier than tired. So, off to the cafeteria I went. The place was busy, and a quick omni-tool check told me that it was indeed lunchtime by station time.

If you think time zones were bad back on Earth in the 21st Century, time zones in freaking Space in the Mass Effect timeline would make your head spin.

I grabbed a tray and started piling it up high. Everything - and I mean everything - looked delicious. Thank gene mods for that. And once again I found myself silently thanking Tela for pushing me out of that mental block regarding the food. Granted, I was mostly on nutrient paste and MREs while living with Gee, specially because they packed enough calories and protein to feed gene mods since that's what the Systems Alliance used for their marines, but it wasn't that far removed from the bars. I also still ate bars on the regular. I couldn't help it, it made me feel better. I still got nervous around real food.

With a full tray of food, I looked around and found only one face I recognized. Sitting way back, and on her own, was Julia. Correction, she wasn't on her own. A man was sitting next to her, not really moving, but slowly being fed by Julia. I thought about it for a fraction of a second, then we made eye contact, and I put on a smile as I made my way to her.

"Julia!" I said, as soon as I reached the table. "It's good to see you, how are you?"

"Hello Roy," she replied, and her smile was noticeably smaller than my own. "I'm doing all right, how are you?"

"Not bad. Mind if I sit?" I replied. "Or would you rather have some privacy? I don't mind."

"No, no, please, sit down," she said, and gestured at the chair across from her. I put the tray down and looked at her, and she gestured at her companion. "This is Jacob. Jacob, this is Roy, remember I told you about him?"

The man didn't say anything. He had tan skin, couldn't have been much older than me, and had very light, almost white hair. He was sitting there with a vacant expression and looking at nothing.

"Nice to meet you Jacob," I said.

"Well," Julia said, and turned to look at me. Then, she sighed. "We still have a long way to go. But he woke up, and nobody thought he would."

"What happened? I mean, if you don't mind my asking..."

"Vacuum exposure," Julia said. "We were both on the Worthington. They... They said there was nothing we could do, they..." She hesitated as her voice faltered, and looked away, almost like she couldn't look at me in the eye. "They wanted to remove the life support, but I didn't let them. I didn't..."

"Well, and here we are. I guess you were right."

"No!" she snapped. "I wasn't! I-" she stopped herself and gave me a cross look. "Look Roy, you don't know what you're talking about. I killed people. You understand. I killed them! I..."

She put her hand on her mouth and looked away, while I looked at her in surprise while thinking well, that escalated quickly! Several things went through my head, trying to figure out what to say, but the truth is that I had no idea what to say. She killed people who wanted to get this Jacob off life support? That... seemed heavy. My mind went back to the discussion I had with Miranda back when we picked Julia to join the team, and how Miranda had said she was dealing with some personal trauma. Hell of a trauma, really.

Well, there was only one thing I could say that was true.

"Look, you're right I don't know what I'm talking about. But you know what I definitely know?" I said, and waited until she looked at me. "You saved me and you saved my friend. And damn nearly got killed in the process. So maybe you did some things, I don't know, but regardless of all that, I will always be grateful to you. Always."

She looked at me as I spoke, then looked away, and since she didn't seem likely to keep talking, I just started eating. I thought about picking my tray up and leaving, but that was probably the wrong signal to send. I wasn't mad at her. I had no idea what she had done. But I was one hundred percent honest when I said I'd always be grateful to her. I said as much when she was still convalescent after the mission to rescue Shepard, and I would tell her as many times as she needed.

After a while, she finally spoke again.

"Since when do you eat real food?" she said. I looked up, and saw a very forced smile on her face.

Mine, however, wasn't forced. I smiled back and leaned forward, speaking in a conspiratorial tone. "Remember Tela Vasir?"

"The Spectre?" Julia said, matching my tone, and her face opening up in a much less forced gesture. "What about her?"

"Well," I said, and sat back, forcing myself to relax. Maybe not the best place to discuss this, but I wanted her mind off darker things. "She invited me for dinner to discuss what had just happened. She wanted to know what the hell was going on, mostly. But when it came to actually having dinner? She actually made me sit with her and actually take a bite of real food and get over this fixation I had with the bars."

"For real?"

"Yeah," I said, and cut a piece of the massive steak I had in front of me. "And it wasn't easy. I kept trying to put it in my mouth, and would stop and couldn't do it. But after a while, I managed."

"That's nice of her. So why weren't you eating? I mean, real food."

"Just what I said before, every time I tried to have some food, some bad shit went down."

"Really?"

"Yeah, no joke. Once I was almost kidnapped by a bunch of asari commandos working for Saren. Or Matriarch Benezia actually. Then there was the time I wanted to have lunch but the Normandy was attacked and almost boarded by Geth. Seriously, just bad shit all around."

"Wow. And nothing bad happened when you ate ration bars?"

"Well no, but..." I stopped to think about it. Yeah, bad shit had been going down all the time. I sure as hell was eating nothing but bars when Nihlus got me in jail and Saren attacked. Or when Mika...

"Yeah, I'm glad you're eating better," Julia said. "A lot better."

I chucked and cut another piece of my steak. "Can't help it, the genemods have me so hungry it's ridiculous."

"Ah, that explains it. Keep yur protein up, that's the only thing that helps."

"Thanks," I said, speaking through a mouthful of steak.

I got a nap before Miranda got back to me. Jason came to knock on my door after a few hours, and led me to Miranda's office. If she had been working non-stop for as long as I had been going around, she didn't show it. The Ice Queen always looked like she was ready to take on anything thrown her way.

"Morgan," she greeted me, extending her hand. "Thanks for coming so quickly."

"Of course," I replied, shaking the offered hand. "You know me."

"All things Shepard," she said.

"All things Shepard." I sat down and nodded. "How is that going? Can't imagine it's easy, but..."

"There's been challenges, which I expected," Miranda said. "We have been working on trying to understand the nature of the collector implants and how to counter them. So far, all of our efforts have been unsuccessful."

Shit.

That was what came to mind, and given my lack of poker face, it was probably written all over it. Miranda shook her head.

"This was not unexpected. We are attempting to be careful about how we handle the implants because of how deeply integrated they are with Shepard's brain. Removal would mean extensive brain damage, and I would like to avoid that."

"Right. But could you fix that if it comes down to it?"

"I believe so, but it would be a long and complicated undertaking, and there is no telling how much of that damage would be irreversible. I would rather avoid that."

"Okay... So what do you need from me? I mean, I'm not..." I thought about it for a second "... anything."

Miranda chuckled and shook her head. "You are something, Morgan. You are the last person to see Shepard alive before she was put in an escape pod."

"Yeah..." I muttered, somewhat dubious.

"One of the things we are contemplating is memory mapping and forced recollection." She looked at me, and I just made an I have no idea what any of that is gesture. "Basically, it is a way to repair brain trauma. When trauma is experienced, memories can become strongly fixed in the brain, which is what leads to involuntary recall and arrested will. What some people experience due to PTSD after traumatic events." I nodded at that. That much, at least, I could follow. "One way to do so is to stimulate near memories to route around the trauma. I'm hoping this might be a way to route around the implants. Worst case scenario it allows us to restore brain function after removing the implants and causing extensive damage."

"Jesus Christ," I muttered. I didn't like the sound of that. "It's really that bad? It's been months."

"Yeah, it's only been a few months since we started working to remove the extensive implant network in Shepard's nervous system and tried to bring her back to life," Miranda replied dryly. "Is there a reason we should rush that you haven't shared?"

"I mean... the collectors?"

"We have had no reports on renewed activity that matches their M.O."

"So they went back home?"

"They didn't," Miranda said. "The Omega-4 Relay has not been activated. We removed the fleet, but they never went back."

"Right..." I thought about it for a few seconds and shook my head. No, it wasn't great, but I had no idea what Miranda wanted. "So what do you need me for exactly?"

"To help us reconstruct Shepard's memories, at least as far as you were involved."

"And I do that... how?"

Miranda looked at me and smiled. "In your case, it might be easier if I show you. Come take a look."

She led me down the corridor and into what looked to be a very plain lab. Single counter, several terminals on it, a workbench at the back with a lot of electronic gizmos, and a chair at the back that looked rather ominous. It was like a dentist's chair, only with an attachment at the top that looked like a VR helmet of some sort.

"What's that?" I said, pointing at the chair.

"That's how we do memory stimulation. Take a look around the room." I did as she asked. "Now, have a seat, and I'll stimulate the memory of what you just saw." I looked at the chair, looked at her, and... hesitated. Miranda put on one of her frozen smiles. "You can't help yourself, can you?"

"I mean, Cerberus facility, some sort of device to mess with people's minds..."

"Just have a seat, it's completely harmless."

Shit. I hated the fact that so much of what I knew came from the games and associated media. If I were to look at things from a neutral point of view, Miranda had shown herself to be pretty trustworthy. I mean... Right. I sighed, and sat on the chair. Miranda followed me, and pulled the helmet down, securing it to my head. The screen in front of my eyes came to like, and a series of plain geometrical images with different colors started to flash.

"This is just calibrating," Miranda said.

"Okay, so how does this stimulate the memory of anything?"

"It's roughly based on asari mind melding. You can stimulate neurons easily enough with mass effect fields, and memory..." she hesitated and seemed to settle on the for dummies explanation, "memory is basically fixed paths, you can stimulate neurons in the path and the rest pretty much follow by themselves. Okay, it's done, now close your eyes."

I did as asked, and it was all black. A moment later I suddenly recalled myself walking into the room, looking around. It was very vivid. I looked and saw all the things on the bench, but they were wrong. It looked like a wet lab, instead of the terminals and the workshop-style lab. The workbench was all right, and so was the chair. And a moment later, the vivid recollection stopped. I remembered it just fine, it just wasn't as intense.

"And that's how it's done. How did it feel?" Miranda said.

"Weird. It was very clear, but some of the details were wrong."

"How so?"

"The lab bench was different." I looked around. "The rest was fine."

"Good. That was intentional, I wanted you to see that even if some of the details are wrong, the memories will still be recalled," Miranda said.

"So you need me to..."

"I want all the details you can give me about the last moments aboard the Normandy. The crew mentioned you were working on the pod before it launched, and that Shepard was thrown in rather abruptly. If we can stimulte her memories of the moments before her death, we might be able to restore more of her brain functions."

It sounded a little weird, but truth to be told, there wasn't much reason for me to hold anything back. Well, other than the fact that I had been messing with the Normandy's systems on our way down, but that wasn't relevant from Shepard's point of view. She took me to an adjacent lab, where a large 3D projection of the Normandy's bridge had been set up. It played like a cutscene from a videogame, only in 3D. The attack started, the bridge started to take damage, some of the systems overloaded, all of that. I helped Miranda with the details I remembered from my point of view, and soon we had a pretty good rendition of the moment when Shepard came in, I pointed her towards the pod, then pushed her in as soon as I saw the green light on the pod status screen. A small white lie to cover it up. Details weren't important, after all.

"This covers that, but I have no idea what happened in the pod," I said, looking at the holographic scenario play once more.

"We have the details from the rest of the crew in the pod."

"Are they working for you now?" I said, and looked at Miranda. She smiled.

"A few. Most of them took their papers and went back to civilian life. You haven't followed up with any of them?"

"Not really. I mean, with everything that went down... why?"

"No reason," Miranda said, which I damn well knew was a lie, and she probably knew I knew, too.

"So who stayed? I haven't seen any of them."

"They're with a different team working on the new Normandy. The SR2," Miranda added.

After that, I finally got to see Shepard for the first time after the mission. Through a screen, that is. At least Miranda had taken the warning seriously and was working remotely. For several hours they worked while I just observed from a distance, then when Miranda called to get started, there was a blip in Shepard's brain scan... and that was it. I had no idea what I was supposed to look at, but Miranda seemed satisfied. And after that, she asked for more details. Everything I could remember of my interactions with Shepard during the rest of the geth hunt, before that, it was a lot. I wasn't sure if Miranda was fishing for something or really was trying to get Shepard back to her feet with that, but as she helpfully pointed out when I started to get suspicious, I didn't need to provide all the details, Shepard's brain would do that for me. It was a lot, and we spent a few weeks on it. Until I got a surprise call from none other than the best thief in the galaxy.

"Is it a bad time?" Kasumi said.

"No, no, what's up?" I replied. "You guys all right?"

"Yeah, we're fine. But a friend of us is in a bit of trouble, I was hoping you could help us."

"What? Of course! Where are we meeting?" I said, already grabbing my things and packing.

"No, I... I was just hoping for information if you can, you don't have to come."

"'Course I do. I'm in the ass end of nowhere at the moment, but should be able to go anywhere. What happened?"

"Our friend was aboard an Asari luxury cruiser, the Inkean Dream. We got a short message from him and it looks like they were being boarded by batarians. We're thinking slavers."

So they took your friend? Damn." I grabbed my bag and headed out towards Miranda's office. "You know where they took them?"

"Not yet, but we're working on it. I was hoping you'd be able to pull something out of your hat and help us."

"I'll see what I can do, where do we meet?"

"Hm, the Citadel? We're here at the moment, if you want to come."

"I'll be there soon."

I put together a quick message for Gee as I got to the lift. Name of the cruiser, suspected slavers, anything o help Kasumi would be nice. I thankfully had renewed my stockpile of hardware encryption keys to send secure messages, so I wasn't worried about Cerberus eavesdropping. I nodded at Jason as I passed, and headed straight for Miranda's office.

"Miranda?" I called, opening the door before Jason could complain.

"Morgan? Is there a problem?" Miranda said, pointedly swiping the screen of her terminal away.

"Kinda, a friend is in a spot of trouble and needs my help."

"Don't tell me you have to run to Bekenstein again," Miranda replied.

Yeah, that got a chuckle out of me. "Nothing that dramatic, but I do need to haul ass to the Citadel. Do you need me to stay?"

"Not particularly, we have pretty much everything you can give us," Miranda replied. "But I thought you wanted to stay, the SR2 should be here in just a couple of days from her shakedown run."

"Yeah, this is more important for now."

"Very well, I'll arrange transportation for you," Miranda said.

"Thank you, and please let me know how it goes with Shepard," I replied. I was about to turn and leave, but Miranda stopped me.

"Morgan," she called. "Before you go, be honest here. You have been pressing me about a timeline for our work here. Are you expecting trouble soon?"

I looked at her and thought for a moment. The truth is that I wasn't sure how long it was until the Collectors made their move, two years or so I seemed to recall, but it was a few months later that the reapers arrived. There really wasn't a lot of time to delay, assuming it took Miranda just as long to bring her back as it did in the games. And I had seen zero progress during my stay. She claimed it was going well, but Shepard was still as dead as she had been.

"Morgan," Miranda prompted.

"I don't think the Collectors are going to be much longer. I honestly don't know what's keeping them. You said there haven't been any large scale attacks?"

"None that would fit the information we have. We can't track every ship that disappears or every remote outpost that goes dark, and figure out whether it was pirates or something else. And it probably is pirates. But none of the outer colonies have reported anything, none of them have gone dark."

"All right."

"...but?"

"I don't know, I really don't. I just don't think Sovereign and the Collectors are the only failsafes the reapers left behind." And that was sort of true because it was pretty much everyone's head canon when it came to the reapers randomly showing up for ME3, while making the previous two games and change kind of pointless. But ranting about the game wasn't going to do me much good now.

"Something you can share?"

"I wish I knew, I really do," I replied. "Just try to hurry."

"Very well. Have a good flight."

"Yeah, thanks."

Morgan's information had been useful, but less illuminating than she would have hoped. They had gathered more information on Shepard's whereabouts after her Spectre candidacy. Morgan had filled several gaps, it was almost a complete continuum in their simulated scenario. What little they were missing was easy enough to fill. Earlier than that was less useful, gathering information from her previous post aboard the Aconcagua was harder. The Normandy crew had been easy to convince to talk about their time aboard the ship - under various guises, from pretending to look for spies to "attempting" to find the reason why the Collectors attacked the ship - but they had much more tenuous connections to the Aconcagua. Shepard's service record was one thing, the minute details of day-to-day life were another.

The older the memories, the less complete they had to be, that didn't worry her. The real question was how much someone is made by their memories, or by their genetics. Nature or nurture.

As she contemplated her options, with her eyes fixed on the ever-broadcasting stream from Shepard's pod, she heard the door of the lab open. No points for guessing who it was.

"So," Rasa said, coming to stand next to Miranda. "Have you finally decided to go with my plan?"

As she spoke, she brought up the adjacent terminal, and the stream from the camera above the clone growing vat came to live. Side by side were her two options. The original, or the clone. Could the clone really take the place of the original? Miranda had serious doubts about it. Her first choice was still the original, she saw the clone as nothing but a collection of spare parts. But it wouldn't do to break it to Rasa just yet. People do their best work when they think they are important.

"I haven't decided yet. Not until the new team finishes their evaluation of the cybernetics."

"I'm surprised you trust a completely unknown team with your project," Rasa said. She wasn't wrong.

"The Illusive Man believes they are the most qualified to decompile the collector code in Shepard's implants."

"And did you ask how they just happened to acquire the necessary skills?"

"Yes," Miranda replied. "There was no answer."

Rasa looked at her for a couple of seconds, then turned to look at the clone again. "Odd, isn't it?"

"Perhaps."

"Well, regardless of that, either you start working on the clone's neuronal markup soon or that option will be completely off the table. There's only so much you can delay neural development. If you decide later to go for it, you'd have set yourself back almost a year."

"We still have time," Miranda said.

Rasa huffed and walked off, leaving the terminal running. As if challenging Miranda to look at the clone and disagree. She was a smart woman, Rasa, and Miranda herself had had the same reservations she had just expressed. But she wasn't about to let her know that. In part, because of the other thing Morgan had told her. Not everyone in her team could be trusted. He had strongly recommended to have a good second look at all of them. And she intended to do just that.

But in the meantime, she had a decision to make. And the vaguely urgent timeline weighted heavily in her mind.

Author's Notes: So there's the big Shepard update. We're about halfway through the break, and Miranda doesn't seem to have done as much progress as one would have hoped. Then again, it is heavily implied in the start of ME2 that Shepard was still not "finished" when the game started, so in reality it could be that she's right on schedule. Regardless, she has an interesting choice to make, one that she had to make in-game as well.

If you have been paying attention, you probably don't need three guesses to figure out why there's a Cerberus team that the Illusive Man has recommended to deal with the Collector implants. Hit to the ego of the Ice Queen? You bet! But Miranda is not one to let ego get in the way of achieving her goals. She does have a pretty massive ego, true, but she also probably has enough sense to realize she's quite stuck.

Finally, if you've been paying attention, you probably know who Kasumi's friend is. The Asari luxury cruiser is a dead giveaway!

Anyway, as usual, if you want to support me and my works, you can do so here:

tinyurl (period) com (slash) y2q9cop6

(Still think FFnet sucks at hyperlinks).

Reviews time! Couple of updates until Christmas time. It's finally getting warm here in New Zealand, but holy hell it's been a rainy year. Pure 2020.

maesde: We'll see more about Garrus, I just hope I don't completely ruin the character :D

Finshadow212th: Funny you mention custom weapons, there will be some customizations in the not so distant future. Not sure how extensive yet, but a couple of what will be very distinctive pieces of gear. And dual wielding because why the hell not LOL

Uemei: More Garrus will come, though outright killing him... not on the cards just yet I think. I have "possibilities" for all characters, so I'm never exactly sure until the time comes. Wilson was the easy target there, but we know it wasn't just him, right? And we'll see more Jack soon, though the idea of pairing her with the space vampire was quite hilarious!

Rainsfere: Man, welcome back, and sorry to hear about the 'rona, but I'm glad you're back on your feet!

Surprise Crayfish, SpecterXCove, RIOSHO, BJ Hanssen, RegiDelta: Thanks!

Next time, on My Effect: Convergence! A daring rescue, and bits and bobs from across the galaxy as the doomed time approaches. Until then, thanks for reading!