Chapter 4:
Tali's shotgun sounded again as she ducked out of cover to blast the defense drone hovering its way toward her to holographic bits. Damn, those engineers were getting annoying. Is this how Cerberus felt when she used to spam Chatika and her own as-of-yet unnamed defense drone at them? Well, they were terrorists, so they deserved it. She on the other hand was one of the good guys in this story. Before she could duck out of cover and blow the merc's head off his shoulders, Wrex charged, jumped over the cart the engineer was using as cover, and split said engineer's skull open with a headbutt.
"Damn, loving this!" Wrex shouted before blowing a hole in a heavy mercenary's chest. "Uncle Urdnot is back in town! And he brought the BOOM!"
"Wrex focus! That's the third time you've said that stupid catchphrase." Tali shouted back at him as she redeployed Chatika behind a merc sniper and moved up.
"I don't know Tali I think it fits him," Shepard responded over the comm. Another mercenary's head exploded as the Commander's Widow sniper rifle sounded again.
"He needs to stay on task instead of monolog- ATLAS up top!" Tali ducked back into cover as an Atlas Mech dropped down from the above walkway. With a battle cry, the Krogan warlord, lost in the blood lust and thrill of battle, charged the Mech. He was summarily grabbed by the ATLAS and lifted off the ground. However, before he could be crushed by the war machine, her boyfriend's anti-material rifle fired again. This time the bullet penetrated through the ATLAS' hard light window, through the pilot's helmet, through his skull, and then through his brain. The ATLAS dropped Wrex and then went limp.
"Awwww. I like it more when they blow up." Wrex complained as he headbutted yet another merc.
"Wrex," Tali said through gritted teeth. "What did I say about staying focused."
"Hey! I'm killing people, aren't I?" Wrex said as he continued to fire off his shotgun at the last few mercenaries in the room.
Tali groaned with exasperation. She knew he was right. While he was fighting recklessly and spending an irritatingly large amount of time trash-talking the enemy, he was keeping the focus on him and off of her still-injured boyfriend. She just wished he took it more seriously…
Actually, no, that wasn't the reason why she was in a bad mood.
"Alright. Shepard, let's go kill that clone of yours. He shouldn't be far now," Wrex said as the two aliens waited for Shepard to catch up with them.
That was it. This whole clone bullshit. Out of all the people trying to kill Shepard, it was another version of Shepard! The worst part was that she wasn't even surprised by it. At this point, Saren could drop down from the ventilation shaft, and she wouldn't bat an eyelash.
"Alright, let's move," Shepard said when he finally caught up with them. They then walked through the door into the next vault.
"Shepard, help!" Brookes cried out from the other end of the chamber. She was in a hallway leading to another room, but it appeared to be backing away from something or someone. Several gunshots rang out, following her cry for help.
"C'mon!" Shepard shouted more to himself than to his crew. Lifting his cane up off the ground, he hobbled forth at a speed that Tali had not seen from him since the Reaper War. The adrenaline being pumped into his body and the will to save the innocent analyst were driving Shepard's body forward at a speed that was far beyond his current limits. Which is why when the mass effect field was activated, Shepard was unable to stop.
Shepard slammed into the vault's mass effect field with the full force of his charge. Unable to cancel his forward inertia, the Commander bounced off of it and toppled backward to the ground. Tali skidded to a halt and knelt to help her prone boyfriend. "Shepard! Are you alright?"
"No, he isn't." The clone's voice answered. He walked leisurely up to the archive pod they had been trapped in. "He's weak. Pathetic. Not worthy of the title Commander Shepard anymore."
"And you think you are?" Wrex snarled back. "You haven't done jack shit to deserve anything! The real Commander Shepard stopped the Reapers. The real Commander Shepard cured the genophage. The real Commander-"
"Is lying flat on his back because he's too feeble to get up on his own." The clone interrupted. "He needs his friends to help him. He thinks that they and the Alliance will be there to help him after all the time he's wasted on them. What do you think staff Analyst Brookes, will they?"
"Considering the fact that the rest of his friends are sealed in Iriduim vaults scattered throughout the complex, no, I don't think they will. And as for the Alliance… I don't know, I don't actually work for them," A familiar voice interrupted. Only this time, it wasn't stuttering over its words in uncertainty. Analyst Brookes stepped into view from behind the clone.
"Who the hell are you? And do you really think I won't track you down?" Shepard asked as Tali helped him to his feet.
"My name doesn't matter. I never keep the same one for more than a few days. And if the Illusive Man's agents couldn't keep up with me, then you never will with that walking stick of yours." Brookes responded.
"You're Cerberus?" Shepard asked, his face growing red with rage.
"Ex-Cerberus. I left the organization a long time ago. The Illusive Man was indoctrinated, whereas I prefer the voices in my head to be my own. I would say its nice to finally meet the great Commander Shepard and the legendary crew of the Normandy, but I already know more about you all than anyone would wish to. I was the one who put together all of those dossiers for your suicide mission, after all. Nice to finally put a name to the face, Tali, or should I say mask." Brookes answered smugly.
"A pleasure to meet you, too." Tali's response oozed with venom. "Care telling us how you two found each other?"
"Of course. It all started when the Illusive Man betrayed the very ideals he fought for! Working with aliens was the biggest mistake Cerberus ever made. So I bided my time to make a move, and when I found your doppelganger here, who agreed with me, I woke him up."
"Cerberus made me to be used as spare parts for you. When they realized that they didn't need me, they threw me into a storehouse to sit and gather dust. But that doesn't matter anymore." The clone smirked at them. "Fitting that I should finally get my chance in the sun while you all gather dust."
The clone turned around and strode up to the nearby terminal. "There's only one last loose end. Your Spectre codes are based on your handprint. We might be identical down to our genetic level, but our experiences are what determines our handprint."
The clone placed his hand down on the console, which beeped an affirmation before an automated computer voice sounded. "Handprint ID updated."
"And now it's official. I am Commander Shepard." The clone turned around and spread his arms out in a grand theatrical gesture. "And now you're the nobody."
Shepard's face had turned from a shade of red to purple. Tali hadn't even realized their skin had so many ranges of color. Then he exploded. "When I get out of here, I am going to shove my cane so far up your ass it comes out your mouth!"
The clone and Brookes both stepped back in surprise.
"Then I'm going to take your Cerberus bitch and shove my cane up her ass until it comes out of her mouth as well. With you still on it."
The clone opened his mouth to say something but was cut off.
"Then I'm going to take my shithead shish kabob and cut off your heads, tear the skin off them, and take your skulls to use as dashboard decorations for my ship's cockpit!." Shepard finished his rant. He was seething with rage at not being able to reach out and strangle the both of them right then and there.
"Normally, I'd be scared of a threat like that if it came from Commander Shepard. But you're not Commander Shepard. Your just an old crippled veteran who's finally about to be retired." Brookes sneered as she typed a few commands into the console.
"Speaking of the Normandy. I've got a ship to prep… I should go." The clone said before the vault pod's doors closed.
"Remind me, didn't we use to win these things?" Wrex asked Shepard.
"Oh, please. Don't count us out just yet." Tali said, typing away furiously on her omnitool. If she could find a frequency whose wavelength could make its way through the iridium, she could contact C-Sec to come get them out. She would need to work quickly, though. They probably only had an hour's worth of air. Maybe less. It irked her that she was the only one worried about this. Her boyfriend and Wrex were wasting their oxygen talking about the clone's "I should go" comment rather than helping. "Can you please focus? We need to get out of here!"
"Oh, right." Shepard said nonchalantly before calling out, "GLYPH!"
Really, he was calling out for Liara's info drone. He wasn't even using his comm! Honestly, her boyfriend could be such a dense bosh'tet-
"I am here Commander." Glyph said from outside the pod.
"Get us out of here! And then find and free the others. No one steals my ship… not even me." Shepard said that last bit more to himself than Glyph as the drone gave an affirmation.
"How… How did that even work? How did you know he'd be close enough to hear us!" Tali said in disbelief.
"Glyph was tracking us along with the Team Hammerhead and Mako. With the iridium blocking our omnitools' signatures it would only make sense he would go to our last recorded location to look for us." Shepard said, smiling, as the vault's doors slowly slid open. "I just needed to wait long enough until he was close enough to hear me."
—-
"Alright, I got room for Shepard and two more. Who's coming?" Joker said from the skycar's pilot seat.
Shepard paused, surveying his crew. He was debating who would be best in a fight against… well, himself. However, when he opened his mouth to speak he was caught off guard at who beat him to the punch.
"Garrus, Wrex, you two are with me!" Tali said, gesturing to the waiting vehicle.
"Tali, what are you doing?" Shepard asked in bewilderment. "There's no way all four of us can fit into that car."
"I know that," Tali said, looking him in the eyes. While the majority of her face was obscured, Shepard could perfectly see a firm, determined glint in his girlfriend's glowing mercury eyes. "Which is why you're not going."
Shepard's jaw dropped, followed shortly by everyone else's except EDI's. Whenever the AI encountered a mind-boggling situation that defied all logical thought, like this one, her runtimes would freeze for a few seconds, and her mobile platform would revert to a T-Pose until she could fully process the information. And truly, nothing was more jaw-dropping or T-Pose-inducing than one of Shepard's own crew telling him that he was off a mission. Even if it was Tali. Especially because it was Tali.
"Excuse me," Shepard asked. His voice took on the tone of the soldier who had broken the fortress moon of Torfan. The tone of the hunter who had tracked Saren to the forgotten world of Ilos. The tone of the tactician who had led a suicide mission through the Omega-4 relay resulted in zero casualties. The tone of the warrior who had broken the Reapers and their cycle. He had taken on the voice of the Commander.
Tali didn't even blink.
"You aren't going," Tali said as if it was the most casual thing in the galaxy. "You're staying here with everyone else."
"Tali. This is my clone that we're dealing with it's my responsibility to-"
"To let us take care of this one, Shepard," Garrus interjected. He had been the first to recover and speak up. "You aren't in any condition to fight yourself right now. Cerberus wanted to resurrect you exactly as you were which means that clone is in the exact same condition you were in after we stopped Sovereign. I don't have any doubt that you'd be able to outsmart him if we had prep time, but we don't."
"I'll think of something on the way." Shepard retorted.
"Shepard. I respect your bloodlust. Hell, if my clone tried to lock me in an iridium coffin, I'd wanna shoot him too. But you don't have Krogan vitality, Shepard. If you came with us, you'd get your ass beat black and blue at best." Wrex responded.
"Shepard… You've been there to help each and every single one of us. You helped me prove my innocence to the Admiralty board without betraying my father's memory. You saved my people and got us a home world!" Tali said, taking hold of Shepard's hands.
"Not to mention you cured the Genophage. The Krogan have a future because of you. Yeah, the Salarian doctor helped but you pushed the politicians into making it happen." Wrex added.
"While it's not on quite as grandiose, you also helped a certain Turian get some closure with the friends that he lost… and helped him realize it wasn't his fault," Garrus said solemnly.
"You helped me save Feron from the Shadow Broker and comforted me after Thessia fell… and you gave my mother a clean death. I'm not sure anyone else would have taken the time to do that, considering the circumstances." Liara added softly.
"And even though I gave up on you after Horizon… you never gave up on me Shepard," Ashley said, smiling. "You helped get it through my thick skull that you never stopped fighting for what's right."
"You helped me finally come to terms with my husband's death… You helped me find peace." Steve said.
"You helped me find out what it means to be alive," EDI added.
"You pushed me to be a better soldier." Said James.
"You destroyed the Reapers and won the victory for my people that we could never have," Javik said.
"You have helped so many people, John. Please. Let us help you for a change." Tali finished, gently knocking the top of her visor against his forehead.
Shepard was silent for a long time. "He's not going to go down easy, you know…"
"I know. But I know you. And I know that he could never compare to you. That's why we're going to win." Tali murmured, cupping his cheek in her three-fingered hand, her thumb running across his unshaven stubble.
"Alright. Just… come back to me." Shepard whispered so low that only she could hear.
"I will. I promise."