For the hundredth time, my hands turned the Paladin in my hands, memorising each groove, each scratch, each dent. What battle caused them, what foe did mum face, what was she feeling, thinking? My shoulders sagged, the pale gun finding a place on the pillow with a thud. It freed my hands to scrub the greasy sensation from my face. Three days... three days on the Normandy and Shepard still hadn't explained a damn thing. And no one pressed him for answers! When I asked, he told me to wait, when I asked Sassy or Marruns, they shooed me away. Had Shepard said it to get me on the ship? If so, he was a bastard deserving of the title 'Asshole Number 2' and my lack of bad experiences with him were down to my age. Maybe mum's experiences were that bad… My arms wrapped around my chest, a quiver shaking my frame. Kala trotted down the stairs, her yellow light burning through the red haze from the security lights. She noted my position, my averted eyes before shuffling closer, judging my mood.
"We will be docking with a space station in the next few minutes. Commander Shepard said it was to dispose of waste and pick up some new supplies. We'll be off again once that is complete," she said, her voice stuttered like a bad VI mixing unrelated pre-recorded messages. A snort ruptured free.
"Yeah and he still hasn't explained shit," I rumbled. Kala beeped. "Sassy seems happy though, although he keeps fidgeting with something in the med bay," I sighed, pushing myself off the bunk.
"Commander Delern has said he is setting up an RIT unit. He requested it from the Council. The unit should be dockside if they sent it as quick as they say," Kala said. A grunt escaped, but nothing else. Even here, no one escaped RIT.
Marruns and Sassy had made quarters in the crew bedrooms. Sassy's attempts to push me there failed after realising I wasn't considering the idea of letting Kala's servers out of my sight, he surrendered and let me stay here under the engineering deck. The only other thing that concerned me was learning the ship had an AI of its own. Kala kept a low profile, careful to ensure the mech acted like normal FENRIS mech and communicated through the headset only for normal conversations. My responses would give away everything, so Kala had to make due with changing her vocal tone to a monotonous one, one that sounded like a bad VI piecing together words from a source or instruction. She spoke in her normal way through the headset, a small sanctuary. Whether all this worked or not remained unclear. The only way EDI could communicate to Kala would be through the ship's speakers. Kala's systems took power from the Normandy but remained disconnected otherwise. EDI had not tried to speak to Kala or attempted to ping her servers, so maybe she didn't have enough evidence? My head shook, refusing to dwell any further on the problem. nothing had happened since we left Earth. If everything stayed the way they were now, we were fine.
Out of the pit and into the bright interior of the Engineering deck, the carnage of the cargo hold sprawled before me. With the Normandy in action earlier than planned, the retrofit had to step it up a gear. While on the move. The elevator and engineering tunnels were in constant use, people coming and going, the ship vibrating with construction work. This elevator ride proved no different. Squashed between a pallet of cables and metal grid flooring with 5 other humans inside, Kala had just enough room to follow me up to the CIC. Here, the computer retrofit had finished but a worn path led towards the old labs where a new war-room was in the making. The area was off-limits, so there was no point in even attempting to get close. The CIC felt cramped compared to the Starquake's double tiered bridge. Unlike the Starquake, there was no visual to help with orientation. Being here which lacked that unnerved me. Instrument flight only, aside from a few windows in the cockpit. Shepard hovered near the airlock, a wave of people coming and going towards him. After finding a quiet place to stand for a while, my arms folded over my chest, waiting.
Docking didn't take long. The planet was a human colony and Alliance vessels got landing priority, especially with a Spectre on board. Shepard disappeared outside the ship once available, leaving me to grumble while waiting for an opportunity to get him to speak about his plan. Again. Sassy and Marruns hadn't even tried from what I saw. My grumbling worsened. Minutes later, radio chatter between the ship and ground lit up the room. The old, waste material from the retrofit dumped into waiting containers dockside as new equipment piled in for the next phase. Minutes after that, Shepard returned through the airlock. At his side, a tall, dark haired female followed. The woman walked with a potent gait, confidence in each stride. Shepard clocked me standing by the wall and waved me over. Kala sprang to her feet, waiting for me to shuffle towards the pair before following.
"Gid, this is Miranda Lawson, my former XO before we both told Cerberus to shove it up their ass," Shepard said. "Miranda, you remember Dell? Well, this is her son, Gideon,"
"A pleasure. Your mother and I didn't get a chance to talk for any great length. Shepard kept driving her off. Quite the hot-head, last I recall," Miranda said. My eyes diverted.
"Yeah... she was," I mumbled. Miranda furrowed her brows, turning to Shepard.
"Why don't we head downstairs to your old quarters, Miranda. We'll explain the situation there," Shepard said.
"You said this was important Shepard. With the Illusive Man after me now..." Miranda hinted.
"We'll deal with Cerberus, Miranda, don't worry. But right now I… we need your expertise," Shepard said, herding us into the elevator. "Gid, call the salarian and turian," My eyes narrowed, unease running through my stomach, but my hand raised and omni-tool lit up. Seconds after sending the message, Sassy responded with an affirmative.
We exited out onto the mess hall, curling around the elevator to delve into the XO quarters on the port side of the ship. The med bay held a darkened corner, but the light was still bright enough to highlight the cryo-pod. My eyes fought to stay straight. The XO room retrofit isn't due to start for several weeks, everything but the larger furniture remained in the room. Kala sat by my heel as my back pressed into the wall, back to the med bay. Miranda and Shepard kept light conversation, catching up on what had happened since their last meeting. Sassy entered the room, eyes swivelling to the woman. His chin raised, recognising her as he floated to my side. Marruns trailed in behind, securing the door. My stomach twisted. Shepard attempted to reassure me with a smile, but he held it taut, as if unsure himself.
"Miranda, thanks for coming, I didn't know who else to turn to," Shepard started. His eyes trailed over me. "Do you remember how you revived me?" My eyes fixated to the pair, heart thumping harder.
"it is quite an unforgettable project," Miranda said.
"Yeah well, I'm hoping you can do the same for someone else," he said. Miranda shifted her weight.
"I'm not sure, Shepard. With Cerberus all I had to do was ask and the Illusive Man made every resource available. Money was no question. I don't think you have quite the same level of resources available this time as I had then. What is the situation?" Miranda said, measuring her tone. Shepard passed her a datapad. Miranda scanned the datapad, a frown developing as she read it. Her eyes skimmed past me before returning to the datapad again. She breathed through her nose in a heavy gust. "I don't know, Shepard. Her brain trauma is... different, far more different than yours. Unlike your brain, whatever caused this burned her neural network in a way that is too striking to be random. This was a strategic attack, I would say. Whatever caused this did not want this person to recover," My heart sank.
"There's nothing we can do?" Shepard asked. Miranda sighed, folding her arms.
"Not without destroying her personality. Even then, with the brain in this condition, there is no guarantee we can even recover the chemical and electrical code for the memories. Without those, she'll be no one. The easiest solution would be to clone her brain but that brings about a different problem. The more difficult way would be to repair the damage, but with this Reaper tech inside her..." Miranda said, staring at the datapad. "Even if we reversed the damage and revived her, chances are the Reaper tech may just do it again or do it worse than it was before. Leave it with me, I may come up with something," My heart faltered. Mum couldn't come back... she couldn't come back. My eyes squeezed shut, hands gripping the front of my shirt. The person who brought Shepard back couldn't save my mum... couldn't save her at all... Was there nothing… nothing at all?
"W-What about a direct clone? N-new everything?" I asked.
"We could, but it wouldn't be her," Miranda said. My eyebrows twisted up. "This is the problem I mentioned when the easiest solution. Remember those chemical and electrical codes for memories? Cloning regrows the body, but it doesn't write the signals for memories since the cells aren't designed to produce those. If we could do that, cloning would be even more taboo than it is already. So we could revive her by cloning her, but she would have no memories of who she was before and - judging from earlier cloning attempts - can have a different personality to what she had before. It wouldn't be the same person, only on a biological level would they be similar," My eyes dropped to the floor. Shepard clucked his tongue, tapping a finger against his thigh.
"If you can think of anything, Miranda, I would appreciate it. You said you needed to head to Omega?"
"Indeed. A lift would be welcome," she said.
"We'll chart a course," Shepard said.
I heard no more. The doors closed behind me, snapping me awake from my haze. Kala stayed by my heel, staring up with her emoticon expressing concern. My head shook, stepping further away from the room and back towards the engineering pit. Anywhere away from here. She's gone, nothing could bring her back. Not as she was, at least. The Reapers had won... My eyes squeezed shut, a swarm of bubbles curdling in my throat, wetting my eyes. The red stain surrounded me. My eyes landed on the Paladin. My body quivered. The trembles grew until my knees couldn't hold my weight, forcing me down onto the bunk. No hope, no victory. The Saboteur Bane is gone. My mum's gone... My head bounced on the bunk, muscles seizing as a bottle of emotion erupted. A flood of emotions from anger to grief consumed me, blinding me to the world. Tears soaked my cheeks, stained the pillow. Only the pillow kept my screams from echoing off the walls. Gone... Pain split my heart, stabbing me in the chest until nothing but agony walked me down a lonely road. What was the point? Why bother fighting? Why did everything I touch hurt me?! Why, why, why?!
"There's... no easy way to begin one of these, as I'm finding out,"
My heart thundered to a stop, breath stalling in my lungs. My head lifted, shaking beyond control. That... That was-
"I've done a lot of stupid stuff in my life but this takes the biscuit. If you are listening to this then… then Shepard fucked up. Or I fucked up, we'll see. Plenty of time for both," My head tracked the sound, leading me to the starboard stairs out of the pit. A figure leaned against the wall, omni-tool staining the silhouette orange. "...Whatever happens, if I'm no longer here, if this mission kills me, I need you all to push on. Finish what I started, no, what we started." the figure glanced over their shoulder, towards me. "...I'm blabbing, sorry. I… what the hell can you say those you care about, last words knowing you'll be neck deep with grief, with anger, with God knows what?"
The recording continued, the figure still in the gloom as mum's voice rang through the silence. My breath refused to come, listening. Mum's final words, a solemn goodbye when she couldn't give it herself. It worsened the tears running down my cheeks. The gloom hid the figure until mum's bubbling voice died, tears in her voice. When her voice vanished, my hand twitched, aching to reach through the void to the voice. Hopeless as it would be. The figure shuffled, stirred from their silence. They stepped from the gloom. Shepard shoved his hands into his pockets, omni-tool vanishing as his eyes wandered the pit. He paused beside me, refusing to meet my eyes.
"Your... mother recorded that while en route to the Omega 4 Relay. I went to go chat with her about her plans. She was in take 3 of this recording. Took another 4 before she settled for this one. It... well, you can guess what that does to a person," Shepard sighed.
"Why...?" I murmured, voice too tight to speak above a whisper.
"Because despite all of this, your mum didn't give up. She pushed on, determined to find solutions to our Reaper problem. I know what Miranda said is... is hard. But she's looking through the data, trying to find something to help us," he said, eyes diverting down to catch me in the corner of his vision. "She wouldn't want you to give up either,"
"But no one believes me when I said she could... she might... no one did. E-Even you on Earth tried telling me to give up," I stuttered, a tight bubble swelling. Shepard clucked his tongue as he sat down on the bed. His hands reached out, thumbs running over my soaked, puffy cheeks. My body rocked with a hiccup. After a heartbeat, his eyebrows drew together. He grabbed his dog tags, sliding them over his head. The chain slipped over my head. My eyes bugged.
"Then here's what we'll do. I want these back. However, I don't want you give me them back. I want your mother to. And she better do with a smile and tell me how amazing I am," Shepard said, smirk growing. Jaw dropped, my gaze flopped between Shepard and the tags.
"M-Mum wouldn't... she'd punch you first," I said, gawking at the metal tags on my neck.
"As long as she does it with a smile and says I'm an incredible guy, I don't care," he laughed. "We'll get her back. We have to, I need those damn things!" The tags weighed on my neck, my eyes lifting to Shepard. I nodded. "Don't give up. We'll find a way,"
"Shepard, you are needed on the bridge," EDI called. Shepard grumbled, muttering under his breath about terrible timing. He saluted, a quick flash of smiling teeth before he marched from the pit, leaving me to take in the last few minutes.
The silence stretched on, the sting from hearing my mum's words pulsing like a heartbeat. Shepard's dog tags glinted red in the dim, a promise of hope. Or something. Despite what Miranda said, Shepard... still believed. Either that or he just wanted to cheer me up. Why were people so hard to read? My head shook, the tags clicked as they tumbled in my hands. Mum could come back if we got her memories... but with her brain fried she needed either extensive brain surgery or a new brain. Would the chemical code in her damaged brain still be there, at least enough to rebuild her personality? My heart fluttered, a stab sending chills down my back. A new brain seemed the only long term solution. Well, it would get Nyryntha out of her head... My pupils shrank. Get rid of... Would... would that work? Could a new body stop mum being a Saboteur?! No, no, there was the memory thing. It's impossible to transfer memories... unless you were a Reaper making a Saboteur. My brain lit, wheels spinning. Did... Kala mined the data from the Collector Base, could mum's revival lay in the same data created by the things that killed her?
"Kala, bring up the data of Saboteur creation from the Collector Base," I said, unmoving in my frozen position. Kala beeped, bringing up the data on my omni-tool, emoticon cautious if not curious.
A shaken hand raised, scrolling through the data before me. The whole process had the old bodies melted down to the base genetic code before re-growing it. But mum had all of her childhood memories as a Saboteur. They must've transferred them to her new Saboteur body somehow! If we had the data, mum's old brain could be useful one last time. If we didn't though… no, no, be positive! Ideas burst through my brain like fireworks, reading every piece of data that scrolled by. Detailed plans on how to connect tech to a person's brain appeared. Schematics defined said tech; a series of wires that reminded me of tree with pincers on the end of each branch. This read through the chemical and electrical signatures, memorised and copied them for later transfer in a Saboteur's mind. A Reaper 'hard disk' then held the memories until time to transfer them to the new Saboteur body. But the memories could only be copied from... a still living mind... My hope died. That wasn't possible... not with mum. If there had been a copy of the memories, that too was long gone with the Collector Base and their vast databases. My head shook. So close. Clone mum's body, freeing her from the Saboteur tech, then transfer her memories into the new brain. So simple but... without those memories... Dammit, Nyryntha, why did you fry her brain so... bad...
Nyryntha. My heart thundered. She had mum's memories. She taunted me, she tormented me. Nyryntha had a copy of mum's memories! She must have! All that knowledge, all that insight into what's what with this cycle. The Reapers wouldn't want to lose that until the end of the war when it was no longer necessary. My eyes returned to the omni-tool, to any blueprints of Reapers or some piece of data that would guide me in the right direction. But with so much data... Kala caught my eye. Kala beeped, the mech shuffling under my stare.
"Kala, scan through everything we know about Reapers. If you see any mention of the memory 'hard disk' they've mentioned here," I said, highlighting the section I found. "Flag it, in particular if it has something to do with a location inside a Reaper,"
"Of course, Gideon," Kala said, the mech's light flashing to standby mode.
We had the schematics for the memory transfer, we knew where they stored the memories - when creating a Saboteur at least - and we had a chance that the Reaper who took my mum from me would bring her back. Whether she liked it or not. And we can clone body parts, but could we clone a whole person? My tongue clucked as data streamed in from Kala. Details on how to make the drive, how it stores and transfers, where in the brain you need to hook everything up to. Wow, the Reapers were sloppy, assuming they could corner mum on the base before any data leaked. Nothing about a location in the... now there was something. My eyes narrowed, focusing on a paragraph of text. Memory data drive stored on Reaper memory to prevent any... So they copied the data and then stored it on their own systems. No memory disc drive then. How to fix that... Could we make a memory drive and then tease out the memories from Nyryntha's databases? That could work, but it depended on how well we could mimic the Reaper tech. Then we had the problem of getting data out of Nyryntha to begin with. Would her existance be more valuable to her than dying to stop us stealing data from her or eradicating her databases? My shoulders quivered. This was better than anything else on the table... My blood fired, jaw setting as I rocked to my feet, charging out of the pit. The mech jerked awake, slipping on the floor to chase me. A chance, a real chance! On the crew deck, Shepard and Miranda spoke over the kitchen counter, Sassy listening in, leaning on the counter while Marruns poured coffee. They jolted upright as they noted my sprinted approach.
"Gid-?" Shepard began.
"Cloning!" I wheezed. "C-Can we clone whole people?" I asked. Miranda frowned.
"We can, although that isn't-" she said.
"I've got a crazy, crazy, crazy idea!" I said, shaking my head hard, settling everything into place. "Kala, crunch the probability for me. Ok, listen. First step; clone mum's body. Second step; find Nyryntha and pin that Reaper down. Third step; go inside and copy mum's memories from her data storages. Fourth step; create the memory storage drives that the Reapers use to transfer memories across when making Saboteurs. Fifth step; sort out mum's memories and copy them onto the drive. Sixth step; recreate the memory read and write device the Reapers used to grab the memories from organic minds. Final step; use the memory read-write device with the memory storage drive, hook them up the clone of mum and transfer the memories over. Boom! Mum's back, with all memories, and without the Reaper tech! Mum won't be a Saboteur anymore!"
Shepard and Miranda gaped, frozen in place while my plan rattled off. Sassy blinked, expression blank. Marruns flounderded behind Shepard and Miranda. The humans turned to each other, coming to terms with the idea. Kala binged beside me.
"Probability of success; 8%, plus or minus 3%," Kala said, tone juttered and offset.
"5 to 11%? That's all?" I asked. Kala beeped. My teeth grit. Miranda cleared her throat.
"Well, cloning the body won't be a problem, the technology exists. I used it for Shepard when recreating him," Miranda said.
"You cloned me?!" Shepard gawked. Miranda smiled.
"Probability of success: 9%, plus or minus 4%." Kala said.
"However, the cloning equipment is on an abandoned Cerberus base filled with mechs that were re-programmed to attack people on sight. That Shepard escaped unscathed is impressive. I'm not sure if Cerberus has made any attempts to retake the base or the equipment. Also, after this length of time, I'm not sure if any of it is still functional,"
"Probability of success: 6%, plus or minus 2%." Kala said.
"Kala!" I snapped.
"Well, can't hurt to check it out," Shepard said. "I don't know what to do about creating these memory things you talked about,"
"You leave that to me," Sassy chuckled a small smile lifting his lips. "We have R&D facilities with the equipment necessary. We'll pass them along and see what we can do,"
"Ok, then the bigger challenge; how do we pin down a Reaper?" Shepard asked.
"With difficulty," Sassy said, frowning. "I would also not put it past the Reapers to install a destruction protocol to stop organics or other synthetics from accessing their data,"
"Probability of success-" Kala said.
"I swear to God, Kala, say that one more time and I'm flashing your server!" I growled. Sassy chuckled.
"Can we just deal with the easy bit first?" Shepard grumbled. "Cloning takes time. Full body clones can take months, even a year or more to grow. Let's just hope we can do it without the Council finding out. This kind of cloning is illegal on all fronts," Miranda nodded.
"Even sped up with the right chemicals - most of which are difficult to come across or make - it can take anywhere between 4 to 9 months, depending on how well the body takes to the process," Miranda said. My heart stuttered.
"Then... then we need to find the cloning equipment!" I said.
"Do you still have the coordinates for the old facility?" Shepard asked. Miranda nodded. "Drop the coordinates to Joker. We'll head over and see what we can find,"
"I'll join you, you may need help navigating and recognising the equipment," she said. Hope... real hope. Even if there was a 1% chance, it was still a chance. My hand clutched the dog tags around my neck. A chance. That's all mum needed.