Review replies: I will mostly only be replying to reviews which pose questions, express concerns about certain elements, or point out suggestions. If I haven't replied to your review, I still really appreciate you posting your thoughts and feelings.

MystiYew:
He'll be continuing his own track for quite a little while. There might be a little bit of character intersecting one another, but no big team up dealio. Glad you're enjoying!

Qrs-jg:
Thank you! It's so easy to want to get all excited about writing a fun story and take it off the rails. I fight the urge! Haha I'm trying to push character growth in all of the characters', but I really want to make sure that growth feels in character for them. This Chapter is a Normandy-centric one mainly around character growth, so I hope I've balanced it well.

NovaNinjaz:
I feel like she's really misinterpreted as a character on FanFiction. The way you just described her, to me, is what she's all about. Someone who's poised, narcissistic but perhaps a little rightly so, certainly not modest, but not arrogant, it could go on… But I'm hoping to push her forward into being more than what the games gave us of her and grow her a lot, but keep it feeling genuine to what we experienced from her.
Chief will have a grand total one 1 permanent crewmember for the ME2 leg of the story.

Wom1:
I should rephrase that about speed. Within normal space, Halo's vessels, even the Forerunner ones, are leashed by the laws of physics as we know them. They could never compete with the speed of Mass Effect/Element Zero powered ships in sub-light speeds. But Mass Effect's typical FTL speed is surmised in the wiki as being between 10-15LY in a 24 hour period, which isn't the nearly instant (this seems to be discussed and largely conjecture) speed via Mass Relays.
Before Halo 4/5, the UNSC's speeds via Slipspace vary between 2-10LY per 24 hours. It's not exactly stated what their modern speeds are, but given that they have examined loads of Forerunner drives and Covenant ones, it would stand to reason that they can now reach something between 800-1100LY per 24 hours. Regardless of that, however, ME ships would still be faster and more manoeuvrable in sub-light speeds due to the nature of their physics breaking tech.

T.P . Masters:
Thank you! And I agree wholeheartedly. She's definitely standoffish in the game and not afraid to put a few barbs out, but I never quite interpreted her as antagonistic either. One of my main reasons for including her like this in my story was for if at some point it could seem natural or right to give Chief a pairing, but that gave me a fun excuse to explore her character a lot more. This chapter is really almost entirely about her and Shepard growing as characters, and in a little way about Jack. I was worried I might have pushed some of it too far too fast… So please be the judge of that.

GrandAssassin95:
Thanks! I'll do my damnedest to keep it engaging and narratively progressive.
And I agree. Even the best ME/Halo fics I read where Chief joins the MEverse, it followed the same route of him joining the Shep-Squad. While there are some like that which I really enjoyed and thought were excellently written, they also became somewhat predictable and I felt like it stifled possible character growth.
I shan't have him joining Sheppy though. I want to keep the story fresh, even if I drop the odd cliché here and there.

bladebrony:
I'll have John (Chief) having trouble with certain elements of change throughout at least the first half of the story. Like wondering about the hierarchy structures which aren't often followed to the letter. A lot of things in Mass Effect are a lot less formal than they are in the Haloverse, and John was trained to execute things to the letter whilst observing others who do the same, so I'll try to keep that as a developing theme.
I'll admit, I cooooouuuuld have made the meeting with Anderson more realistic. But I think to do that, I would have had to extend that scene across 2 or 3 chapters, and I feel like that would have bogged the narrative down more than needed.
As replied in the message – His this is an arrowhead shape from birdeye view. From side on the top half is like an arrowhead. The bottom is smooth. So imagine a half convex arrow with engine nozzles (like the Normandy's) coming off the rear fins.
I have a somewhat nifty hand at photoshop, I was thinking I might make a series of images depicting elements (like the Orvar) that I'm inserting into it and putting it on Deviantart.

pointvee:
I'm definitely not expressly pointing the story in that direction. But I want to keep the possibility open, because Miranda will grow as a character herself and be a pivotal character in helping John grow as well. If at that pointy end of character growth and development it does seem right to have a pairing, then I will do my best to ensure it feels in character for them both, and it doesn't become a ridiculous sex trope.

TheMagicShroom:
Thanks! I'm a little embarrassed… I could put a greater amount of effort in. Divided attention and energy dissuades me though :/ But I do put a bit of thought into the characters and where to take the story to keep them realistic feeling, so I'm happy to hear that you appreciate it

Batman9117:
I think I've read that one! On one hand –if it's the one I'm thinking of- I loved it in how well written it was. But I did feel like it was fulfilling some of the typical troupes of the MEXHalo genre, which made it somewhat more predictable in where the story was going, until it stopped of course. Not that you want a story to be random and jumping all over the place… But surprises scattered throughout are nice. The characterisations were great though, although I think I felt Miranda was a bit too close to the more FanFiction typical of her being a bit of an antagonist. I'm trying to imagine all of the characters with more than the surface of what we get in the games. Some of them went a little deeper, but some stopped just shy of really fulfilling progress.

The Space Wizard Storybook:
So who is your account named after? :P
I think I'll stick to vagueness when I bring comparative elements of tech into the story, except for parts that are more natively similar, like suit mechanics and stuff. The sciences that drive the bigger points are just incompatible, so I'll avoid going into details on them and structure it more around personal conjecture.
Environment description mid-character dialogue remains my weak point, especially in places where we see in the game. A part of my brain nudges toward laziness and assumption that reader will just plop themselves into the scenery that they know. A majority of this chapter is discussion though in spaces that we know. Which I hope I did a. . . Comfortable? Job of describing.

AzureChevalier:
Phew! I didn't want to write the progress dragging out too long, mostly for my own enjoyment of writing it, but I definitely didn't want it to be too slow. Last chapter was kind of a test run to see how my pacing of that sort of exposition was accepted.

Insignia Vortex:
My mind went in the same direction… I pretty much answered those thoughts in my reply to "The Space Wizard Storybook" two replies up, so I think we're on the same page.

Authors Notes:
A couple of quick points -
Firstly, this is a character growth chapter and very really happens. I really wanted to push Shepard and Miranda forward from what I have presented so far, and I wrote this marginally concerned that I pushed it too far at once. I wanted to show that they each have their dualities and struggle with them whilst still being true to the core of themselves.
So please, if you think I've overdone, underdone, or whatever, any of this, shed your opinion into a review or a DM and I'll try to learn from it and enhance what I can present.
Secondly, this chapter covers Jack's loyalty mission. I do not stick it exactly true to what happens in the game, either in the precise layout of the mission nor the amount of Blood Pack they fight. I was going to keep it closer to that when I started, but then I started thinking about Aresh and trying to figure out how on earth a single dude who seems a little disturbed could convince an entire regiment/platoon/company or whatever they call their deployment typical numbers, of Blood Pack into helping him to be paid by speculative salvage. So there's A LOT less action in this mission than there is in the game. I'd think of the group Aresh convinced into his employ as being more like a scouting group there to see if the talk of salvage is real and if it is then more would come… And more than likely kill Aresh.

Chapter Four

:: The Truth Always Outs ::

The ship hummed its vibrant, almost happy tune. At least, that was how Shepard liked to think of it. The constant gentle background hum told him that his ship was alive and well, and by extension, so where his crew within. He smiled coolly to himself just at the thinking of it and ceased his casually paced stroll down the gangway toward the forward batteries.

He crouched down and eased his open calloused palms onto the metal grating and stilled, feeling the soft and constant vibration on his nerves for a silent minute. Shepard allowed all the thoughts that the pulse gleaned come naturally to him. First came Tali; it was only prudent that she sprung to his mind first.

They shared themselves with one another, and even more importantly for his ship, she shared her heart with it too. Under her watchful and serenely intelligent gaze, the Normandy managed to give more of herself. Shepard smiled ruefully and realised that he was probably romanticising engineering to a ridiculous degree.

Next, Garrus came to mind, the Turian he was about to see. The Alliance Marine didn't quite know how to feel about Garus recently. Shepard wouldn't call himself a simpleton by any means, but he would admit himself as naive to new ways of feeling about the world.

He had survived in the underbelly in Vancouver as a boy, and the world had simple rules then. He'd survived for long enough and was smart enough to take the opportunity of joining the Marines and eventually getting an N7 commendation.

The Alliance suited him too. He had escaped the poverty of his youth for it, and it had sharpened and honed him. It had taught and moulded him. It had given him brothers and sisters that the streets before never could have. Its rules were less straightforward than the basic survival rule that he'd grown up with. But as a Marine, he had a code and answered to an authority.

Authority was the ultimate concept in his mind, in one form or another. It was through the Marine's that he'd been able to witness civilian life above the poverty line throughout the galaxy. As a youth, Shepard had not once stopped to think about politics. He could never see himself being a politician of any kind, 'Like Anderson didn't?' Shepard admonished his short-sighted thought with a smirk and rolled from his crouch to sitting on his rear and leaning back on his hands in the middle of the dimly lit gangway.

His mind delved back into his thoughts. Authority was essential to him in all ways. He served someone above him in the military structure; they served someone above, and so on until it reached the orders of the Alliance Government, or the Citadel one. Their authority was democratic. It was moral and fair, and he spiritually bound his sense of identity and purpose to the ideal of systems within a democracy.

Shepard winced as the thought rolled through his head. He had been learning otherwise since becoming a Spectre. 'No,' He thought with a scowl, corruption was alive and well.

Whether it was the Spectre status or not, or just acquiring greater rank and being exposed to greater truths, he was learning increasingly that governing authority wasn't quite what he had thought –and simplified to himself- it was.

It had been simple in the Marines before the Normandy. Even on Torfan when he gave hard orders. Sometimes, Marines under his command might waver, but not because of lacking loyalty. It was one of the most primal responses, and one that he knew how to manage in others; fear.

Shepard would drive the fear from his men and lead them to victory. It came by way of words of belief, words of strength, and passion. And exemplifying the qualities he asked from his men.

The hunt for Saren had started to muddy the waters for him. He was given a target, his equipment and crew, and a clear mission. The Marine in him, accustomed to certain authorities, felt shocked to his core when those above him didn't believe his first-hand account of the events, even with the ample amounts of evidence, including his suit camera.

Never had he been involved in any chain of command where the failings in leadership had been so dire. The shock had mingled with fear, and he still fought anger over it—fear for the fact that the command chains which had failed were the ones at the very top.

But Shepard was a Marine, and he was set on being the best one in the galaxy if he could. So when he was ordered to shut up and go to work against the Geth, he did. Maybe he didn't entirely shut up, but he spoke more quietly and got on with the job he was ordered to do while keening for new opportunities to stop the Reapers. That was, of course, until the particle beam which had almost snuffed him from existence.

And then his world came to an end. With that thought, he didn't mean his literal death; it was his reawakening. Shepard shook his head at his melodramatic mental eddies and cooled his thinking. He was still learning and growing as a Marine, a man, and a leader.

He was too idealistic and principled for his own good, and he knew it. But he could self-analyse, he could grow- would grow- was growing. He needed to be everything he could to do anything he could to stop the Reapers.

He'd found a friend and brother in arms in Garrus. They had complimented each other in every way that a friend could and should. So when he'd discovered that Archangel, the first individual on his list of merry men, women, and freaks, was, in fact, Garrus, he'd been both ecstatic and troubled.

The back story that his Turian brother in arms gave about how he'd come to be Archangel didn't sit well with Shepard either. He shook his head to clear the looming vexation over the topic, it kept on reoccurring, and he kept on pushing it down. Tali, and even Miranda, had each consoled him that this was likely a part of him learning to be a better leader.

Shepard clenched his jaw and resolved to bond the rift between himself and Garrus, which Garrus didn't even know existed. He pushed his weight forward and rose from his hands and knees, and then walked the final few meters through the rectangle bulkhead and was greeted by the Turian he was seeking on the floor in front of the primary calibration controls.

The Turian's legs were tucked under his body awkwardly, and his body was kept upright by its position leaning against the base of the console. His head lulled to the left, and a string of mucus connected Garrus's mouth to the top of his armour, like a glistening web which looked like it would be more at home on a toddler.

Shepard's lips curled in immediate amusement, and all negative thoughts vanished. He quickly pulled his omni-tool and took a snap and sent it to Tali, suppressing a chuckle as he did so. He, Tali, and Garrus had only returned from a raid on a Blue Suns base no less than five hours earlier, and Garrus had come between Shepard and an unexpected Batarian.

There had been a fierce exchange of blows between them, but Garrus came out on top and more than a little tired. Shepard crouched, then rolled onto his butt like he had on the gangway, and pushed out with his boot to nudge Garus.

"Mrrr 'vorite shtoree onn the Garus'del."

Shepard tried not to laugh at the slurred dream state words and pushed his boot against Garrus harder.

The Turian jerked awake, and from his collapsed sleeping position, his posture straightened suddenly, sending the string of mucus flying toward Shepard. The man's eyes widened, and he ducked just fast enough for the results of Turian exhaustion to fly over his shoulder and splatter unpleasantly against the bulkhead.

"Gross," Shepard laughed with a smirk.

"Ahh- Ehh- Uhmm- Sorry about that, Commander," Garrus chuckled softly and brushed the back of each of his hands against his face to clear any excess drool which could have remained from his exhausted slumber.

Shepard watched for a moment longer and then broke into a low chuckle, deciding on the spot that even if he disagreed with the choices that the Turian former C-Sec officer had made after leaving the SR-1, that he could understand them. They were clear attempts at achieving something good. That thanks to those things, and the comfortable bond he shared with the once and brief enemy of Humanity, there was more than enough reason to simply let go of the pervasively upsetting emotions he'd been harbouring.

Garrus joined in on Shepard's chuckle but with an obviously cautious tone of embarrassment. The slight smile on the Humans lips reached his eyes, and he nudged Garrus with his outstretched foot again, "How're you holding up?"

Garrus rolled his shoulders experimentally and smirked that Turian smirk that always seemed so exaggerated to Shepard.

"Was a bit rough when we got back, but I'm feeling a lot better now."

"Good."

A silence settled between the two, making the smile in Shepard's eyes recede and a curious frown took its place. "Is there something wrong?" He asked slowly.

Garrus shrugged, "Tali thought we could have a drink together when we got back to help me feel better about almost dying-"

"-Pfft," Shepard snorted the muffled laugh.

"She got a little tipsy," Garrus smirked at the raw recounting, then his face turned more cautious. "I got more than a little tipsy."

Shepard shrugged with a smirk, having deduced that from the state he'd found the Turian in.

"But she… You know… Might have told me you've been a bit –uh- annoyed with me?"

Shepard's brow suddenly rose, and his eyes widened. Just when he'd thought he'd put his feelings about Garrus's transgressions behind him, here it was slapping him in the face. He scowled lightly and let the idea of going on a shipwide hunt to find and chuck anything alcoholic from the airlock.

Garrus continued hurriedly as the scowl settled lightly on Shepard's lips.

"Commander- Shepard," He corrected himself to the more familiar. "I know how I handled everything with my squad was wrong. That's why I had to put it right. If I could go back to that last moment I was aboard the first Normandy and make a different decision, I would." He shook his head and broke eye contact and stated his last at the floor between them, "What happened with Sidonis, it was eating me up inside like a Tranthor beast in a Grall yard. I hated that I wasn't focused, that my priorities weren't on the real enemy."

Garrus quickly looked back into Shepard's eyes. The plea for forgiveness was the one and only expression present in his dark bird-like eyes.

Shepard pulled a corner of his mouth back and nodded. He had no idea what a Tranthor beast or a Grall was, but he understood the context, and the irony of it was only too rich. He'd allowed his own emotional turmoil about Garrus's own issue to haunt him.

"I know, Garrus."

"There were a dozen better choices I could have- Oh, what?" Garrus halted his prepared defence and blinked at Shepard.

"I know how hard our personal lives, and mistakes, can be to manage. I've been learning that in a different way, and I'm just happy I've got you on my six."

Garrus eyed the humbled looking Human shrewdly for a long minute as though looking for some kind of trap. Finally, his eyes softened, and he smirked, "I've got your seven. Remember, Turian culture beats Human culture, and our day has twenty-eight hours."

"Pfft," Shepard snorted a laugh again.

"Everyone on the ship lets you think that, Vakarian." He added a few snorts of laughter later.

Garrus joined the laughter again for a few seconds before it faded out, and Shepard let a thankful smile occupy his face. "…So… We are all good?" Garrus attempted after a pause.

Shepard nodded with his smile still present, "We were before I even walked in. I just wanted to come see how you were doing."

Garrus smirked and shrugged, "The bruises weren't great, but Tali talking me into trying ryncol just to laugh at me was worse."

Shepard snorted a chuckle until his eyes filled with mirthful tears. He wondered if Tali was sleeping off her hangover, if she had one, and if the surprise message of the unsavoury image of Garrus would validate her trickery when she awoke.

They settled into anther silence, this one devoid of tension. Shepard had missed spending time with Garrus without tension between them, even if it had only been one-sided. He propped himself up from the floor and stood, offering a hand back to Garrus.

"Gently!" Garrus warned, taking the hand and being hauled up with none of the gentleness he'd asked for. "Wooo, urrhhh," Garrus pressed one hand over his mouth and the other over his armour atop where his stomach was situated.

He stumbled back to his cot and sat back on it against the grey metal wall and clenched his eyes, "That was cruel, Shepard." He groaned after a moment.

"Just a warning for if you try to take a hit for me again, Vakarian," Shepard warned, only half-serious.

Garrus smirked, burped, and clutched at his mouth and rocked back to rest the top of his crest against the thankfully cold metal. "You better go get a wholesale account for ryncol then, Shepard," He groaned around a gurgle with an oddly sickening attempt at joviality.

Shepard just smirked and headed back the way he'd come, "Maybe I will," He grunted thoughtfully just before the bulkhead separated the two. He proceeded halfway down the dim gangway before pausing to look back at the door and let another quiet smile arrive upon his face for a moment. He nodded once in self-affirmation and turned toward the mess hall and stepped down into the brightly lit area.

Rupert waved to him from his station over a steaming cauldron of who could know what which always somehow tasted delicious. Shepard gave the incorrigible cook a nod of greeting and then passed the same greeting to the five crewmen sitting around the central table tucking into their bowls over quiet chatter.

They all smiled and flicked casual salutes to him as he moved by them toward the crew quarters. The bulkhead allowed him seamless entrance, and he navigated the bunks, half of them filled with the quiet deep breaths of the sleeping first shift crew.

He stopped by the final bunk situated next to the glass wall which overlooked the ships blue pulsing core. In the bottom bunk was a curled up quarian with a unique hand weaved body-length blanket with a bright yellow splotch in the middle, radiating out in warmer tones, from the yellow to burnt orange to rust red and then ending on a deep ochre.

The blanket bunched around Tali's body, hugging her form from her toes to her neck and stopping halfway up her mask. Shepard knelt to the floor so that he was closer to her, and he instinctively reached a hand forward, slid it under the blanket, a gift from Shaala, and found his partners hand resting over her sternum.

He didn't weave his fingers between hers, as after the first fifty or so times they'd held hands in private she'd finally griped about it. Shepard learnt that the grip made tiny bunches of the rubberised lining of her glove form in the spaces between her fingers and it would annoy her for hours -or days- until she got to the point of carefully removing them to straighten it out.

Instead, he wrapped his grip around the ball of her hand. Despite being asleep, the grip touched Tali's instincts, and she gripped back. Shepard stayed like that for at least half an hour, the small tug on his lips stayed too.

Tali moved to roll away under her blanket, meeting the resistance of Shepard's grip on her hand, she instinctively opted to roll toward him, muttering Quarian slang under her breath groggily but not appearing to rise for her slumber.

Shepard looked into her opaque mask and gently eased his hand from hers before slipping it up her body and letting it rest on the top of her neck just below her jaw, akin to cupping her cheek, as he'd learnt she found to be particularly intimate whilst within her suit.

"You make me a better man, Tali'Zorah," He thanked her softly, staying still in the comfortable presence of his sleeping lover for several more minutes before quietly rising and making his way back out of the crew quarters.

He took an immediate right and strode calmly into Samara's procured observation deck, mentally prepared for a story surely full of wisdom that he should heed. As always, the lithe and graceful blue woman was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the room.

"Shepard, I'm glad you came."

It was the greeting that she always gave -or at least a variant of it. Shepard appreciated her crisp, professional, and positive demeanour and regretted feeling so angered at the time about being told he'd need to help her kill her daughter to solidify her focus and loyalty.

He had tried a multitude of times since then to imagine how she saw it. His cheeks briefly blushed as he thought of himself as a child, of sorts, next to her. With a thought upon his discipline, the blush faded, and the Commander whom he was seeking more and more within, rose to the surface.

"Samara," He greeted back, striding around her and then lowering himself to the floor, sitting on his rear with his knees raised in front of him so that he could lean forward on them. He shuffled his position slightly so that he was facing the window more and could converse, looking from the shifting space beyond to her via their partially reflected images. "How are you feeling?"

"I am well, Shepard," The blue glow evaporated entirely, and she found his face in the reflection, smiling softly. "I have been thinking a lot about my life lately. About my code, and what it means to be a Justicar in these dark times."

Shepard nodded to prompt her onward.

"For many years, it was an easy choice for me. The code made life simple, all decisions were black and white, I simply had to surrender myself to it."

As she spoke, Shepard found her words reflected his current turmoil. He winced slightly as that settled in, and where he would usually respond to her; to question her choices or try to see the world from her perspective, he chose silence and listened for the exposed nerve of her spiritual thoughts.

"I killed many souls, thinking that it was right because I was following the code," Her eyes travelled from Shepard's reflected face morosely, and her gaze drifted from focus. "What has happened with my daughters is terrible, what I have done to Morinth makes me an apparition of death –But, the path, the journey of that choice was more than just the code, I tread the path hunting her and learnt myself again. The code made me do one last thing on that path, and now I am forever fractured by it."

Silent tears trickled down the Asari's flawless blue skin, and she smiled despite them. Her voice steadied out from the sadness that had expressed through her former words, and she looked back to Shepard's expression in the glass, her tones now clear and peacefully melodic, "I am one of the final Justicar'."

It sounded like a relief for her to reveal, by Shepard's patient approximation. His eyes widened slightly at the revelation, and he looked away from the translucent to the real version of Samara. His eyes softened, and his lips pressed into an apologetic smile.

"I shall hope to be the last of them, as they were. This journey I have navigated has shown me that codes must change over time, compassion is the essential characteristic of life. You showed me that, Shepard."

Shepard's blue eyes widened in surprise at the acknowledgement, then his brow fell in question.

Samara smiled gently at him and leaned forward to rest a firm but gentle hand on his closest knee, "Your code as a soldier doesn't speak of the kind of choices you've had to make on this mission. Nor the choices that you have made in helping all of our team, you have helped make me a better individual, Shepard. Such an interesting species; Humans."

The Human in question looked at Samara with curious and confused eyes. She'd struck a nerve that he didn't know was present and he pushed for a laugh of humility to try and shrug off the heartfelt acknowledgement, but it came out throaty with feeling, and he averted his gaze into the glass.

The brief conversation had been loaded with far more insight and wisdom than the Spectre could have prepared for and his feeling of guilt over having been angry about the very experience Samara had grown from reverberated through him. He opened his mouth to speak, to seek forgiveness for the anger he hadn't expressed, but the hand still on his knee squeezed gently.

"There is nothing more to say on this, Shepard. You are an honourable warrior. I am proud to fight by your side."

Feeling welled up in Shepard and his blue eyes bored into her's. He swallowed to clear his throat but found words unwilling to come. He gave her a small smile and a nod before rising silently and moving around her to depart the observation room.

The door excluded him from the Justicar, and he stood statue-still to let what had just been said roll through his mind and soul. After a quiet minute, with great effort and visible strain on his face, he forced a laugh and realised thus far in his current routine, speaking with all of his fighting crew, each interaction had pulled on his heartstrings.

He gulped the thought away and affirmed with a nod that he'd continue. He paced directly forward down the grated deck plating of the corridor, passed the elevator and straight to the opposing observation bay.

Shepard marched in and half expected to find Kasumi weeping over the recovered grey box from her deceased partner. Instead, he found her laying on the floor, her legs elevated on the couch, left arm raised overhead, her omni-tool screen alight.

"Oooh, hey, Shep!" She called and waved at him with a foot, flicking it almost like a hand.

He smirked at Kasumi's ever-present playfulness and thanked whatever possible powers that may be for her never being hard to communicate with. "How's it going?"

"Oh, come see!"

Shepard followed the invitation and dropped onto the floor next to her and pushed his rear against the foot of the couch so he could place his legs on it next to the slim thief and watch whatever she was.

"Really, Kasumi?" Shepard deadpanned as soon as his eyes landed on the security camera feed showing Jacob in the middle of finishing topless pushups on the floor of his armoury next to the window overlooking the core.

The topless man rose from his position, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths, and then he made to reach for his black kevlar lined shirt on the ground. He stopped mid-stoop and cocked his head in thought, then rather than retrieving his clothing, lowered himself back to the deck plates and rolled onto his back to begin situps, apparently undeterred by the cold on his skin.

"Oooo, he just doesn't stop! Isn't it great," Kasumi coed and gave Shepard a sly smile. "I should show Miranda this, she'd really get into it!"

Shepard's deadpan expression turned into a bemused and disbelieving one, "Haha, Kasumi… Miranda isn't really like that."

Kasumi looked away from her perving to pout at Shepard. The pout only lasted a moment before it became a sly grin, "Everyone's like that, Shep." She teased with a wink. "Just need to find theeee perfect vice for them to indulge."

Shepard laughed behind closed lips and let his smirk evolve into a bemused smile, "So how did she go on Bekenstein?" He sought, knowing that it had been a success in more ways than the simple objective.

"A lady doesn't kiss and tell."

"But you're not a lady," Shepard countered the omissive tease.

Kasum poked her tongue out at Shepard and sniffled a chuckle. "Oh Sheppy, such a seductive talker!"

"Mmhmm."

"Awww, no fun, don't want to play along?"

"Don't know what you're talking about."

Kasumi pouted again and laughed, "She went great. I think I was, like, way wrong when I said I needed you at first. I totally needed her!" Kasumi described amiably. "She knew her way around all of the tech and tricks, she slipped into a different character for the role, and never had to pull a gun!" Kasumi waggled her brow under her hood and winked at Shepard. "Would have taken way longer with you."

"Huh," Shepard scoffed with a smirk. He was happy to admit that Miranda probably was the right person for Kasumi's mission, but that didn't mean he had to take such prodding laying down. "Would have been more stylish with me, though."

Kasumi poked her tongue out and winked again, "More stylish; maybe. But not as sexy! Have you seen that woman in a dress! Oh, she turned heads!"

Shepard's lips turned in a laugh, "I'm sure," then he slapped his flank just above his glute, "Don't think I'd turn heads?"

The Japanese woman snorted an unrestrained laugh and dropped her omni-tool viewing to giggle her answer, "Wrong crowd, Shep."

He snorted and waited for the woman to let out her giggles. She stopped after another few seconds and glanced left at him before rolling her shoulders, "Miranda came through nicely. Whatever you've been speaking to her about has made a difference, she's a great asset for the Normandy and your crew, Shep."

Shepard eyed Kasumi carefully and then nodded, thankful for the succinctly shortened briefing. "Well… I should go."

Kasumi cringed and chuckled, "You really need to work on your goodbyes', Shep."

"Heh," He answered and rolled out of the relaxed position to head back out and toward the elevator, slapping his glute and calling as he departed, "Next time you need my help, I'll turn up in my tightest getup."

Kasumi laughed him out like an excitable blue jay in song. The doors shut the laughter off from Shepard, and he took five paces forward until stopping in front of the life support systems cabin, preferring to tap the holographic to send a polite chime to the occupant within before opening the door.

The control pulsed as he tapped the bottom right, indicating that it had alerted the room's occupant. Shepard pressed his palm against the circular central control and stepped in as the bulkhead withdrew into the surrounding wall structure.

Thane was mid-exercise in a fashion entirely unlike Jacobs exhibitionist style anabolic stressing pushups, situps and lunges. The Drell was poised with his legs spread facing his gun case. His backfoot was in a sideways braced position, and his forward foot pointed at the wall. Both arms were raised palms facing forward, one ahead of the other with thumbs folded into his palms.

"Shepard," Thane whispered and rolled his right shoulder forward and down as though dodging an invisible strike. Arms flowing with the movement; Thane planted both hands on the floor in a stunning display of flexibility then swung into a handstand, spun his weight around and striking his heels in an assault on imagined foes.

The momentum continued, and Thane pushed off the floor and spun his weight through his legs and landed back on his feet, just as poised as he'd begun.

"I've just been practising from watching one of your Human martial styles. I believe it was called Wushu?"

Shepard shrugged and smiled apologetically with the corner of his mouth, "I wouldn't know, hah-" He rubbed the back of his feeling bashful discussing fighting techniques with a martial master. "I did street brawling growing up. Then the Alliance just taught a kind of mixed martial arts, it's mostly based around boxing and grappling styles."

"Your people lament their fractured past, but it has built a wonderful future," Thane wondered aloud. "All other species in the galaxy were united as one from an early age pre-spaceflight."

"That is one of the reasons why the other species all found advanced space flight so quickly, though," Shepard countered, crossing his arms over his chest with a slight smile. Thane's interactions always gave him passing enjoyment and unique perspective.

"Of course, you are correct. But your people are reaping-" Thane winced at his word choice and gained an apologetic smile, "…Lavishing? Yes; lavishing, in the benefits from it now."

Shepard shrugged acquiescence. After a moment of silence, he spied the silver photo frame with Kolyat pictured in it, sitting on Thane's desk, "How's he going? Actually, how are you going? It must have been hard to deal with afterwards?"

Thane moved to his desk and collected the image. His eyes lingered on it for several moments and his eyes creased in a smile, "The greatest difficulty would have been to do nothing at all. Captain Bailey has e-mailed me an update; apparently, Kolyat is, 'vibing,' with the other youth in C-Sec? I assume that is a good thing? Bailey's tone was pleased."

Shepard smirked and nodded, "It's a good thing, Thane. He must be making friends if Bailey put it like that."

Thane elevated a webbed hand to his chest and held it there, a calm smile wearing him more than he wore it, "If Kolyat is well; if he is happy, then I have no pain to feel. Kalahira will guide my soul in comfort, knowing I am free of regrets."

Shepard suppressed his wince and tried his best at a supportive smile, and Thane naturally saw the cover-up, knowing well from all of their previous discussions that Shepard didn't quite agree with some of the spiritual concepts that Thane carried. Their shared open-mindedness toward each other's beliefs, despite differing so starkly, provided an odd friendship. "I appreciate your understanding, Shepard."

"…Iiiiii-" Shepard drew out identifying himself as his mind fished for anything to add but came up blank, "-Should go…"

Thane smiled and gave a simple nod, "I shall return to studying the disciplines of your people."

Shepard pressed his lips into a thin smile, turned away from the Drell and departed the low humidity room. He stopped in front of the elevator and was about to step forward into the opening capsule when Grunt stamped out. Shepard swung his hips and shoulders to the left to avoid the mountain of Krogan, "Woo woo, what's got you all riled up?"

Grunt started with surprised eyes, apparently not even having noticed his Commander turned Battlemaster. "Shepaaaaard," He drawled out the name and his broad toothy mouth split into a crude grin, "Heh-heh-heh, I need a meal to watch a good fight!"

"What?" Shepard's brow tightened.

The Krogan's crude grin grew until his upper lip curled, "The two Human females, the feisty ones, they're about to engage in battle-"

"-Goddamit, Miranda!" Shepard grunted angrily and paced around the behemoth and into the elevator, slamming his hand against the controls repeatedly until the doors to the capsule closed and started the annoyingly slow descent. The seconds ticked by and Shepard crossed his arms, tapping the fingers of his right hand on his left forearm as he shook his head in annoyance at having to keep the most composed of his crew away from the most volatile.

After what felt like an eternity to the Marine, the doors split open, and he rushed out, took a right and paced the deck plating before veering right again toward engineering and almost stumbling down the buffed silver stairwell toward where he heard familiar voices raised in argument.

He landed on the balls of his feet on the final step and rushed toward the red-lit engineering cargo hold and walked right into a biotic fist just as the light began to shift red. He grunted and rolled with the force onto the ground and coming back up with flushed surprised cheeks and eyes narrowed and ready for action. "STOP IT NOW!" He roared, noticing Miranda dressed in her white catsuit again, oddly minus the Cerberus logo, just to his left.

His piercing gaze landed on Jack, directly in front of him, her chest heaving up and down angrily, the belt that she wore in place of a shirt or bra straining to stay in place and her body wrapped in blue energy.

Shepard controlled his frustration and quickly glanced to Miranda, who wore an expression of apology at him and an odd tinge of guilt in her eyes. He figured from his unexpected arrival that Miranda had somehow accidentally triggered the biotic psychotic and was merely trying to avoid the confrontation that followed.

"Shepard!" Jack seethed his name like poison, "This bitch! This fucking filthy, whoring, lying bitch is trying to trick me! She's trying to fuck with my head!"

Shepard scowled and glanced to Miranda. Her brow dropped in a frown, and her eyes were narrowed. Shepard put the questions for her in his mind aside, and straightened out of his defensive posture, squared his shoulders and stepped up to the slim biotic powerhouse until hardly a centimetre separated them.

Jack craned her neck to glare up into his face, enraged, while he stood imposingly over her, impassive and threatening with his jaw clenched and his eyes hardened. He mightn't have the bulk of a Krogan, but Shepard was no slim or small man. His broad shoulders dwarfed the petite biotic, and his shadow left her in a darkness that seemed just as symbolic as it was literal.

They stared each other down for a full minute until Jack snarled and diverted her dark eyes to the deck grates. The skin around her nose crinkled in a snarl despite her submissive posturing and Shepard knew that it wasn't over. "Now…." He drew the word out, loading it with every ounce of every moment of authority that he had ever learnt to wield.

He turned his head to look at Miranda and analyse her presence. She had her arms overlapped over her bust, and Shepard immediately noted it to be an unusual stature for the normally bold and unapologetic woman. Where normally she would keep her defensive stance grounded in the ability to push for a level of seduction or boast with her arms under her breasts; this stance showed a more vulnerable attempt to defend herself.

Her lips, whilst doing their best to keep a neutral and calm line, were slightly curled down at the edges, and her fair brow seemed to be trying to knit together in some form of concern. It was seemingly only her best efforts to quench her emotional half that kept a full-blown legitimate emotional response at bay.

The corner of Shepard's mouth pulled back in a half frown as he looked back down at Jack, who still refused to meet his eyes. He was thankful for the fact that she'd submitted to his authority like this, but he also hated that it seemed to be the only way to keep her in hand. "Jack, I want you to tell me what's going on here."

Jack's head shot up in surprise at being called upon first and her eyes widened before quickly narrowing, and all of her ingrained cynicism came rushing back, "What, so you can lure me into some Cerberus bullshit too?"

Her voice dripped with venom. Her face rippled and quivered with hardly controlled myriad emotion.

Shepard simply stared down at her again until she finally snarled a sigh and stepped back, crossing her arms tightly, much like Miranda, and peeking around Shepard to sneer at the XO.

"Fine," She spat the word. "That BITCH came down here for a little pleasant chat…" She peeked around Shepard again to sneer at Miranda. "-Fucking bitch," She snarled under her breath, and then glared back at Shepard's face, "Said that she fucking got it! GOT IT! How fucking bad I had it because her fucking fuck daddy of a fucking toss boss wanted to fuck with kids and make fucking monsters; exhibit fucking A!"

Jack finished her concisely organised angry recounting, and her body almost vibrated in pent up rage, jabbing her own thumbs into her chest in the process. Shepard just starred her down again, entirely unflinching, for another few minutes until Jack lost the ability to keep her rage present.

Shepard let the moment stretch on until he could practically feel both women shifting in discomfort, and then finally turned his neck to look at Miranda. He gave her a long and hard glare which warned her that stepping out of line WOULD have consequences.

She didn't glare back at him, however. The raven-haired woman met his gaze briefly before averting her eyes and pushing a tiny, but apologetic, smile. "Shepard…" She attempted to start, but she bit her bottom lip and chewed for a moment. "I- I just wanted to help. Jack is a part of your crew, I'm the XO. And…"

"And?" Shepard repeated it with a frown of confusion. Tali had told him on several unexpected occasions that Miranda seemed to be changing. He'd definitely noticed it from the moment it had started with the Cerberus operative uncomfortably joining the crew in the mess hall for meals. But for the Quarian who advertised her hatred for Cerberus and all things related, to point out something shifting in the ships Cerberus XO, it had to mean something really was.

"I have been reading about Teltin…" Miranda admitted; her voice icy. She clenched her eyes and gently shook her head, making her locks cascade over the edges of her face. "I have been reading about all of it, bloody every single thing. The Rachni experiments, the Thorian experiments, the bloody husk experiments." Her accented tones came out a quiet hiss, and she suddenly unwrapped her chest from her arms and clenched her fists by her sides.

The black-gloved hands clenched and unclenched while her eyes remained pinched shut with the occasional tiny head shake. "How did I go so wrong?" Miranda whispered it.

The ship hummed around them, vibrant and eager to travel, and entirely aware in the form of a mechanical intelligence watching, but not desiring to become involved in the dirtied Human conflict, drawing its' own opinions from the information presented and reacted to.

Shepard's brow shot up in confusion as he thought he spied an imperceptible quiver in Miranda's lips. Any evidence of her guilt, upset or frustration washed away as fast as it had come, and her eyes snapped open.

Miranda momentarily clenched her jaw then parted her plump lips to speak with a disciplined certainty which didn't usually fit within her tone. "Shepard, I can't…" She shook her head once at her word choice. "I won't defend Cerberus. I never will defend Cerberus."

"What are you saying?" Shepard asked in a slow growl. They had discussed trust, and he had genuinely believed her, but some levels ran deeper, and now he suddenly felt like they were submerged in the deep end.

Miranda looked at the disbelieving and irreverent Jack first and then at Shepard. She squared her shoulders, straightened her posture and kept her arms straight by her sides. "I am Miranda Lawson, the XO of the SSV Normandy, serving under Commander John Shepard, Alliance Marine and Spectre."

Shepard dared not turn his back on Jack, least she take it the wrong way, and her hair-trigger anger come roaring back. So he opted to simply narrow his eyes at Miranda in cautious wonder. She met his eyes without flinching for several seconds, punctuated by Jack huffing angrily to herself under her breath.

Finally, he nodded, "XO Lawson, return to your quarters. We'll discuss your position later."

Miranda nodded once sharply and made to leave, but paused and faced Shepard more fully. A wave of indecision crossed her face for a full second until she raised an uncomfortable salute. Shepard wanted to stumble in surprise at the decidedly un-military woman making the gesture, and he felt the sudden absolute need to know what this was.

She stayed still, despite her evident discomfort with the posture and gesture.

"Pfft, fucking bullshit manipulation…" Jack muttered.

Shepard ignored the derisive comment and slightly rotated his shoulders so he was facing his XO more fully and he raised a salute, held it for a moment, and flicked it off. The gesture brought an unexpected wave of relief as it occurred to him the only salutes he'd had since being revived had been a few sarcastic ones from Joker, two from Anderson on their couple of meetings, and a couple from C-Sec officers. Shepard dismissed the instant recollection of Jacobs' near incessant salutes. He may have just reconciled his own issues toward Garrus and some, or most, of the crew, but Jacob struck a different and more raw nerve thanks to their shared past as Marines.

It reduced Shepard's capability to empathise with the once Marine for his choices in joining Cerberus because of his opinion on the bureaucratic structure which governed them.

Miranda dropped hers and paced to the stairs and took them two at a time until disappearing from sight. Shepard wanted to look after the woman and let his attention fade from the present to contemplate what her behaviour had just meant, but he dared not ignore the fire that was Jack.

He turned and looked back down to her; she'd stepped back several paces and was leering at him with curled lips and exposed teeth. Shepard watched longer yet, waiting quietly like a predator would while stalking its prey. However, this hunt wasn't to the death, but it was toward a breakdown of barriers and energy.

Jack's glowering continued for another five minutes until the rage started taking its toll. The already mascara darkened skin around Jacks' eyes darkened further and bags formed; anger was a tiring emotion to wear for long, and Shepard knew if he stood unflinching in Jack's revelry of it, that it would eventually snuff itself out.

That moment came as her shoulders slumped in and she dropped her head, bringing her hands to her face and burying herself as much as she could. It was moments like these that she wished she wore regular clothing to hide within, not that moments like this occurred often.

Jack pressed the ball of her left thumb into her mouth, and she sunk her teeth into the flesh to muffle herself and let out a muffled, and wretched, screech of frustration and pain. Her right palm covered her eyes, and the fingernails dug into her forehead and scalp, and she screeched again.

Shepard froze for several seconds as Jack repeated it and drops of blood began to flow from the slim woman's hand being bitten, down her wrist and elbow and dropping to the floor. This was several shades away from the kind of breakdown he'd expected. He had always wondered, since meeting the vaunted Subject Zero, how long it would be until she did have some sort of meltdown.

But he had always assumed that would come in the form of attacking someone else or abandoning their mission to go serve some selfish and ultimately self-sabotaging interest. He had never factored in Miranda changing and attempting to emulate his own attempts of charisma with his crew.

And he was sure that Jack would never have expected the Cerberus operate to empathise with her.

Jack's fifth muffled and now bloody screech moved Shepard into action, and he suddenly stopped seeing the dangerous unstoppable monstrous and murderous biotic. He looked at her slim form, heaving in muffled sobs of pain, and saw a civilian; a girl who had been abused and subjected to horrors.

Shepard knew that even now in this instance, she was dangerous. But she was also vulnerable, it suddenly occurred to him that this was the kind of person who he had sworn to protect when he'd become a Marine. He moved forward in a blur and reached out and wrapped the defeated woman in his arms, pulling her into the sweat scented grey of his Alliance stamped t-shirt.

She stiffened as he pulled her into his chest, just as he'd expected, but he kept her enclosed as though he were a Marine in the battlefield trying to protect a civilian. She carried the battlefield in her, and he was the Marine, even if he doubted his current leadership.

"Th-th-the fu-fuck you th-think you're doin', Shepard." She wheezed but didn't struggle to separate from the embrace that sought to protect her.

Shepard was a military man, and the rousing speeches he knew he was capable of were structured around the core of that lifestyle. He briefly winced at the thought and realised that learning to rouse the spirits of anyone off the battlefield was a new arrow he needed to add to his quiver. "You're my crew- No-" He started, stopping to think in the precious seconds he was sure he had with the nerve centre of Jack's madness exposed. "You're my friend. All of you on the crew are my family. I swore an oath to protect people like you." It was a clumsy attempt, and Shepard knew it, but he held onto the slim biotic and kept her pressed against his chest.

Several seconds passed, and Shepard felt small hands turn and press on the underside of his chest, not harshly, but hard enough to prompt him to ease his embrace. He did so, and Jack drew back slightly, but not so far to have separated the contact. She refused to look up at him, and her shoulders stayed slumped, but her voice came with an edge of her snarky attitude that seemed ingrained, "That speech fucking sucked, boy scout."

"Heh," Shepard couldn't resist the short and quiet laugh.

Jack mirrored it but kept her hands on his chest and her face downturned.

"Jack," Shepard whispered emphatically. "You don't make it easy to like you. But I wouldn't keep you around if you weren't worth the effort. You are a part of my crew and if I need to die for you, I will. I don't know what Miranda said to you, but you know who you are…" His tone came earnest until he trailed away in indecision. He cleared his throat and spoke just above a whisper with more alacrity, "You know who you can be and what you can have if you're that person."

Jack snorted and finally looked up within his arms. Mascara had run down her cheeks in rivulets, and a trickle of red remained from the left corner of her mouth to her chin, "Who's that?"

A small smirk played on Shepard's lips, and he thanked whatever powers may be that the lucky streak he'd been on recently seemed to be continuing and Jack was being so open toward anything that wasn't rage. "You have to decide that."

Jack scowled instantly, but it was free from any malice, and after several moments she scoffed and pushed lightly against Shepard's chest. He took the request immediately and withdrew his arms, and she shuffled back several paces. Her hands came to her face again, but this time to wipe at the evidence of her breakdown.

Shepard remained silent, not wanting to make any observation on it in fear of regressing any progress he may have made with her. She finished palming and rubbing at her face and looked at the deck at his feet, shrugging as she spoke, "I- Look," She winced and flicked her discomfort out with her wrists, "Shepard, you're a good guy," Her wince morphed into a full cringe. "I- I- This shit, it's all new to me. I feel angry. Like you're all attacking me. I know you're not, I know, or at least I think I do… I know you're trying to help me. It hasn't been-"

"-Jack," Shepard declared her name and silenced her. She winced but went silent, "You don't need to tell me. Just think about things, no one on the crew is rushing you. But you know we're here."

She nodded quietly and managed a rare raise of her lips before taking the line as a dismissal and pacing back into her red-lit space. She disappeared from Shepard's sight around one of the bulkheads which blocked her nook off from a clear line of sight from the stairwell, and Shepard heard the sound of Jack's cot creaking from sudden pressure, and the rustle of fabric being moved.

The Spectre wanted to sigh at the strange events of this particular days round of socialising with the crew, but he resisted and pressed his lips into a thin line, settling for a proud and firm nod to himself before quietly turning and leaving the hold to see if he had the bravery to face his XO.

XxxX

Miranda pursed her lips before chewing on her bottom one. She scowled at the habit-forming from her uncomfortable reaction to changing her mindset surrounding ethics and social behaviours. 'Bloody Shepard trying to turn me into a bloody Shepard-automaton,' She snorted a derisive laugh to herself at the idiomatic thought, shaking her head before finally drawing her eyes back to the alight screen on her desk.

Where the desk was usually neat, it was now mid-research; strewn with datapads all displaying different information sources.

What had started five days earlier, immediately after leaving the Citadel, with the unexpectedly fortuitous meeting with the anomaly that had absorbed at least half of her intellectual interest, bold and heavy in her mind. She hated to admit it to herself, but the meeting had only raised more questions and answered abso-bloody-lutely none of them -at least not with certainty.

The parts just didn't fit together; this man, if that was really the truth of him, had been sent to Omega by the Alliance. The Alliance -like every other major power in the galaxy- had always made a point of not stepping into terminus matters; except where Batarians' were concerned.

And Omega was a world away from being a Batarian colony or political tool.

But this… thing, this seemingly man, this… Master Chief. He identified himself only by his rank, and the Alliance was the only military in the galaxy with that rank in it. That's where Miranda had started her research; Master Chief Petty Officers were far from the most common rank to bump into in the Alliance Navy.

There were only three MCPO's that she could find on Alliance public record and they all served on Alliance ships that had been involved in the liberation of the Citadel from Geth forces during Sovereign's invasion. Heroic and exemplary NCO's, all, but none of them standing over two meters tall.

Miranda knew that there was the apparent possibility that she was wrong and that there could be a plethora of other MCPO's whose identities were sealed from the public record for security reasons. But then that begged the question; why would the Alliance send an MCPO to so obviously upset the power balance on Omega?

Which lead her to question the next obvious; he hadn't even been identified as a Master Chief Petty Officer, but had been identified as a Master Chief Commander. The rank didn't exist. She'd turned over all of the virtual rocks, it was another damn anomaly.

Miranda felt as though she'd scowled for hours mulling the thought over. Her flawless skin was marred by mental exhaustion with bags under her eyes and stress lines seemingly drawn-on around her mouth.

They wouldn't, the Alliance just would not do what she kept coming back to. The balance of power in the galaxy was just too fragile for them to risk that action. Miranda entertained the idea that they could possibly attempt such a thing with covert operatives, but that wasn't what had happened.

She was left with only a single option: creatively and analytically applied hypothesis; a prospect which didn't give her a great deal of joy. The concrete details were thin: this person was first recorded by way of a brief radio exchange with the Omega docks.

Miranda had been surprised by the coincidence of that. At the time she'd thought nothing of it, recalling being with Shepard and Samara talking to Aria about information around the Ardat-Yakshi. Aria had suggested to just shoot whatever or whoever it was out of space, but Shepard had interrupted her and said that she should send a shuttle out. Instead, Aria had huffed about not caring either way and then nothing more had come of it at the time.

Using security hacking, Miranda had been able to trace just about every step, and in some cases, words that the Master Chief had taken and expressed. The information didn't help her research as much as she had hoped. For a time, the titan in armour had been the community organised one-man police force –another detail that told Miranda that he hadn't come to Omega under the orders of Alliance brass.

She'd watched footage, often slowed to frame by frame, of him dismantling opponents with frightening speed and shockingly efficient brutality. And then, he'd vanished. But his mark hadn't left Omega. It seemed as though something had tipped him off about being seen publically and he managed to avoid all of the watching mechanical eyes whilst cleaning up Omega, one corpse at a time.

The only three other feeds over the two weeks of his optically reduced presence came from two raids taken from camera's inside of Blood Pack hideouts. On each occasion, the sliding double doors had been breached and had been sent catapulting into the first barracks-like room lined with weapons lockers.

The lack of combustion and the immediate blur of sandy green whooshing in behind the torn and now weaponised fragments that remained of the doors told Miranda that the Master Chief had broken the doors in by sheer physical force. He then proceeded to cut through anyone in each of the rooms in the feeds she'd had available. Namely, Krogan and Batarians, and then moved deeper into the hideouts into rooms and passageways evidentially free from cameras.

Then the third scrap of footage came from the docks. The bulky sandy green armour emerged for a sky car and went to the private charter concierge. After mere minutes apparently discussing passage with the Turian attendant, he'd been escorted along the catwalks to a small yacht shaped like a ball on the end of a squashed cone with two cylindrical engine nozzles protruding from either side of the flanged back.

Then all footage that Miranda was able to access stopped and she'd been left with only her direct witnessing of him to fill the void of her hypothesis. Miranda couldn't count how many times she'd shaken her head either. Nothing made sense. Admiral turned Councillor Anderson had tried to tempt this person to give up his technology; 'So he couldn't be from the Alliance to begin with, could he?'

Miranda was happy to admit her skill in being creative on the battlefield, innovative in the lab and imaginative with problem-solving known issues. But she couldn't conjure up answers out of thin air with almost no concrete facts. So she did the only thing that could draw new facts; she'd drafted a short message which she'd sent on day two of frustration.

From: Miranda Lawson.
To: Master Chief Commander
Subject: Trade?
Master Chief, would you like to trade information about your mission for information about ours? I can offer all of our scientific knowledge about the Collectors?
Regards,
Miranda Lawson

Her frustration had bubbled over into habitual coffee drinking in her office while awaiting a response which she had expected to be swift. On the next day, she had cursed herself for asking for Jacob's assessment of her virtual letter, for a possible reason why she hadn't received a reply.

Jacob had shrugged after reading it, and to his credit hadn't asked who this person was or why she would trade with him. But he'd asked for a basic description of the personality of the recipient. Miranda's only available response was that he appeared to be strictly military.

Jacob had shrugged and told her that she should try being more strictly military herself if she wanted communication.

The semi-Cerberus operative had returned to her office and pinched the bridge of her nose at what she saw as pettiness, but what she was also sure he saw as protocol; given the stiffness of the address she'd seen him give Anderson. So she redrafted her email, forcing the disapproving turn of her lips away in the process.

Mike-Lima-1 to MCC
I would like to trade sensitive information about the Collectors in return for information about your mission. We can help each other.

The reply had come within an hour; drawing a humourless laugh from Miranda; that Jacob had been correct, to a point.

MCC to Mike-Lima-1
Mission parameters: Study threats to galactic security. Prevent/neutralise threats.

Miranda's narrowed her eyes and mulled over the incredibly simplified response. 'Does that mean that he has operational freedom to do whatever he wants, or sees fit? Is that why he has some kind of new rank?'

Her thoughts didn't help her curiosity, nor did his answer. Her imagination had run wild at the mere thinking of this man, 'Who was he? Where was he from? It's like he was sculpted by Prometheus himself… Ridiculous hyperbole.'

Mike-Lima-1 to MCC
Data attached is guidance in how to adjust your suits electronic emissions to make you invisible to Collector Seeker drones.

Miranda had waited out the remainder of day three from leaving the Citadel, in her office, awaiting further information. But none had come, and she eventually forced herself to set aside her research, hopeless as it was, about the anomalous Alliance man.

Her time drifted next to studying and going over everything they knew so far about the Collectors and Reapers until that drove her to new frustrations. Once more, there was nothing more to be gleaned from what they had gathered; they required more exposure to their enemy if they were to yield new information.

So she found herself on the only kind of research available to her, and the one thing she had avoided looking too closely into; Cerberus.

It was the parent of Miranda's current sense of self, or recently former -she decided quickly. Shepard and EDI had both been all too happy to forward Miranda all available intelligence on Cerberus, and the differences in perspective had startled her desire to see things as black and white.

Where EDI described the information resulting from studying the Rachni, the Thorian, and the Reaper indoctrination and husk devices as successful in yielded information. Shepard's described witnessing these things from the perspective of an ethical and moral individual.

Kaiden Alenko, Liara T'soni, the late Ashley Williams, and even the now Urdnot clan leader all submitted their own reports on the Cerberus bases that they had encountered during their campaign against Saren, and not one of them had been remotely positive.

Miranda had been with Cerberus for years at that point, but she couldn't deny that she had been wilfully indoctrinated. She could blame The Illusive Man for showing her what he had wanted to guide her talents in that direction, but that irresponsibility would have been just as wilful as her indoctrination.

Finally, she landed precisely where she wanted to least; Teltin. The resulting Jack grated on her nerves on any matter relating to their mission, and until recently, Miranda couldn't have imagined a future where she empathised with Subject Zero.

Miranda read the reports of the lead researchers, of the visiting psychologists and sociologists, and of the information analysts in The Illusive Man's central operations. Her face felt heavier and her heart darker with every finished paragraph, until finally, she chose to dim the display, push the datapads roughly to the edge of her desk, and fall into her overlapped arms on the cold surface.

"This was just meant to be a mission to go after the Collectors…" She muttered into her arms. "There was only meant to be one enemy…"

She pushed her arms out further so that her forehead could rest on the table's surface instead. "Teltin was just meant to be Jack's bloody problem."

Miranda's admission didn't relieve her conflicted heart, and after a handful of minutes resting in the uncomfortable position, she sat upright with a slight frown. She pursed her lips before wiping the emotion from her face and standing. Her gloved hands travelled her body and pinched out any collections of fabric in her white hexagonally patterned suit that she found.

Her fingers stopped on her collar, and she tucked her chin in to look down to where she could feel her Cerberus badge. She had been honoured, elated even, to wear it once. Now she felt dirty with the logo pressed against her, hardly a handspan from her heart.

She scowled and gripped it, pulled it free and tearing the fabric it had been pinned to underneath in the process. She ignored the imperfection in her suit and tossed the symbol into her deskside trash can before pacing out of her office and heading directly for the elevator.

The ride down didn't come with any of the anxiety that she had expected or feared. She continued out into the engineering deck passageway before stepping toward the reactor and taking a right down the stairs into the dimmed cargo space below.

"What's it now, Shepard?"

Jack's tone was surprised, vexed, and defeated, clearly expecting her current Commanding officer to come and beat down her emotional barriers again. The fact that Jack even greeted the person whom she'd incorrectly assumed to be Shepard amended Miranda's opinion that Shepard was wasting his time on individuals like Jack.

"Actually…" Miranda diverted Jack's expectation with a cautiously assertive tone, and she stopped as soon as she entered the red-lit underbelly of engineering, a single long stride away in either direction from the white light leading to the stairwells out of this trap.

Jack surged from her cot, her face alight in sudden anger, "What the fuck do you think you're doing here, Cerberus Bitch! Time to do some kind of fucking report to your boss, huh? Is that it?"

Miranda pushed the forming frown and reclaimed her calm, at least externally, and wrapped her left hand around the wrist of her right and kept them just above her navel. Her instincts screamed at her to stand in a more defensive posture, arms crossed over her chest, but her intellect knew that if she hoped for any kind of dialogue, that she needed to open her body language up.

She shook her head once, "Jack, I owe you an apology."

Jack deadpanned at Miranda for only a second before throwing her head back in an exaggerated laugh before looking back and snorting, "Fucking what? What for?... Ooooh, you mean the torture?"

Miranda winced and shook her head, "I had no idea that was happening-" She shook her head again, this time at herself. "-No… I'm not apologising for Cerberus. I'm apologising for what I have said about you, and to you, whilst aboard the Normandy. You were right, and I was wrong."

Jack snorted again and a snarl settled on her lips, "So you won't even say fucking oopsie daisy my organisation did a wrong bad thing and tortured you? But saying, 'ooooh, my bad, I didn't mean to personally offend you,' huh?" She hissed in a cockney-like approximation of Miranda's accent.

Miranda clenched her eyes shut briefly to stave off her urge to defend herself and her hand enclosing her wrist clenched to maintain control. "Cerberus was wrong. Cerberus ARE wrong, I can't apologise for them, Jack. But…"

"JUST FUCK OFF!" Jack suddenly screamed and stamped into Miranda's personal space, stopping only a hand span away so she could glare hatefully directly into Miranda's less than sure expression. "You've done e-fucking-nough, fucking bitch!" She finished in a hiss between clenched teeth.

Miranda once would have dealt with this kind of situation by either simply leaving without a care for the consequent emotional fallout or by asserting dominance. But neither would work here, and she no longer felt the pull toward either action. 'Damn being Shepardised.' Miranda mentally chided herself.

"Jack…" She said the untamed biotics name carefully, neutrally. "I understand what you have gone through. What happened to you was wrong, you aren't a mistake, you're a victim-"

"Graaaah!" Jack roared in sudden rage and struck at Miranda's face with a cocked elbow strike.

Miranda thanked a lifetime of training and instinctively peddled back, dodging the strike, and then dodging a fist which scrapped the top of her shoulder, and then catching and diverting an attempted punch to her gut down and wide. She stumbled back to make room between them, and Jack called forth her biotic mastery and tendrils of vengeful energy swirled angrily.

Jack's snarl was animalistic, and she rushed forward to meet Miranda. The intelligence operative pitched to her left in a rolling dive and came back up in a crouch in the white lit landing to the engineering cargo space and caught sight of Shepard suddenly beside her, having taken the hit intended for her and rolling with it.

Miranda looked at Shepard's face in a moment of shock, a sudden tidal wave of concern and embarrassment rolled through her. So much of how she had come to behave as the ships XO had been about acquiescing that Shepard was head and shoulders above her when it came to battlefield tactics and broader strategy, and also at applying those actions. But he was not -despite becoming more so- adept at dealing with personal and shipboard stresses, at least not with nuance.

So her role had become important in the direction of doing whatever she could to help keep the crew off his plate, not that she was going to go so far as to delude herself that her efforts had met with a great deal of success. And yet, here she was, following the line of her own personal sense of guilt and responsibility and making a new pile of stress for her Commander.

His cheeks were flushed, but his eyes were sharp when he looked at her, and she schooled the concern on her own face to look like the calm XO he needed her to be. He glanced back to Jack, still looking enraged before he summoned the Commander authority; "STOP IT, NOW!"

Miranda winced, and the guilt returned at hearing the tone. She didn't have a problem with being disciplined if she'd done something to deserve it. But she hated the evidence of the man with far too much already on his shoulders sounding further stressed.

Shepard was looking back at Jack, and Miranda did her utmost to control the microscopic waves of guilty expression, and apologetic lip turns that came unbidden to her as Jack sneered.

"Shepard!" Subject Zero- 'No, Jack' the Raven-haired woman corrected herself mentally as Jack vibrated with anger, "This bitch! This fucking filthy, whoring, lying bitch is trying to trick me! She's trying to fuck with my head!"

Another passing wince came under Miranda's control before she could fall victim her emotions and the constant urge to defend herself.

Shepard looked at her again, analysing. She let a small wave of how she really felt signal to him that she wasn't here to antagonise. He frowned in slight confusion and then turned back to Jack and stepped up to dwarf her. They remained silent for several minutes, and Miranda could only see her Commander's back, but she deduced from the lack of yelling or fighting going on that this was a battle of wills.

"Now…"

Shepard drew the word out, making it clear that this was a debriefing of the unexpected conflict. He looked back at Miranda, and she self-consciously wrapped her arms across her chest to protect her sense of dignity. She felt naked, somehow, both by the eviction of the logo from her chest and the way that she'd come here to expose her sense of guilt.

He analysed her for several uncomfortable minutes longer until his eyes narrowed shrewdly and then looked back at Jack. "Jack, I want you to tell me what's going on here."

Jack was quiet for a moment from the other side of Shepard, and Miranda imagined angry confusion on her face.

"What, so you can lure me into some Cerberus bullshit too?"

Miranda winced again, almost hating herself at this point for the amount of submissive or apologetic expressions she'd had just in the last thirty minutes. 'The cost of learning you're not right all of the bloody time, I suppose.'

Miranda spied jack poke her head around Shepard's bulk, and she tried to smooth the expressions away with a quick intake of air to calm herself.

"Fine!" The acquiescence was said like an insult. "The BITCH came down here for a pleasant chat…"

Miranda frowned as Jack poked her head around Shepard again to glare daggers at her briefly, before resuming her posture to continue. "Said that she fucking got it! GOT IT! How fucking bad I had it because her fucking fuck daddy of a fucking toss boss wanted to fuck with kids and making fucking monsters; exhibit fucking A!"

Miranda frowned but couldn't deny the slight feeling of revelry at hearing The Illusive Man characterised as such.

There was silence again, weaponised by Shepard's commanding authority and Miranda did her best to not let it affect her. Before the Shepardising, it wouldn't have. She might've gotten impatient, at worst, but now she felt her heart thrum in anxiety, despite controlling it so that all she did was shift her weight and tighten her arms over her chest.

The Commander looked back at her again with his face under perfect control, like stone dictating the law chiselled there. She momentarily looked into his blue eyes and then averted her own and trying to draw the right words up, "Shepard…" There had to be more for her to say to put everything right. "I- I just wanted to help." She nodded whilst saying it. "Jack is a part of your crew, I'm the XO. And…"

"-And?" He cut her off as she dawdled out words which under different circumstances would have come fast and certain.

"I have been reading about Teltin…" Just saying the name of the place made Miranda want to sneer in disgust, "I have been reading about all of it, bloody every single thing. The Rachni experiments, the Thorian experiments, the bloody husk experiments!" Her voice rose into a hiss, and her posture naturally shifted from feeling so vulnerable to feeling anger well up.

Suddenly Miranda found her fists clenched by her sides and her expression angrier and more formidable than she expected, which was still subtle by the measurement of the rest of the crew. Still, she felt suddenly unsettled by the brief lack of control. "How did I go so wrong?" She muttered quietly, thinking beyond just her ideas and allegiances of Cerberus and to the point now where she felt so unsettled by anything less than perfect emotional control –or suppression.

Her attention drew back to Shepard, and he frowned at her in confusion and a drop of concern.

The XO found her commanding nerve and her eyes hardened again, "Shepard, I can't… I won't defend Cerberus. I never will defend Cerberus."

"What are you saying?" Shepard asked her in a carefully authoritative growl.

Miranda glanced to Jack, now visible again, and let a wave of apology be present and soften her eyes. She looked back to Shepard and squared her posture into what she'd seen him doing in military matters; like she'd seen the anomalous man do when conversing with Anderson.

"I am Miranda Lawson, the XO of the SSV Normandy, serving under Commander John Shepard, Alliance Marine and Spectre." She chanted it with controlled passion, and her eyes alight with self-affirmation. She finally felt as though she had identified herself, rather than someone else determine who she was or should be.

Jack huffed angrily but picked up enough of the Commander's present state to not overstep any boundaries.

Shepard just regarded her with growing curiosity as caution receded. "XO Lawson, return to your quarters. We'll discuss your position later."

Miranda didn't know what the ideal outcome to this could have been, but this certainly wasn't the most unideal one. She was in the process of pivoting away to move toward the stairs and leave when her mind flashed with the recent mental image of the salute that the Master Chief gave to Anderson and the respect that looked to sparkle in Anderson's eyes from the action.

She halted her motion away and straightened herself back at Shepard, raising her arm rigidly and holding the tips of her fingers just shy of her forehead in a salute not native to her. Shepard's thick eyebrows rose in an emotional display of surprise.

"Pfft, fucking bullshit manipulation…" Jack scowled, sneering at Miranda.

Miranda kept herself stony-faced with a look of pride. She mightn't be Alliance, and she now mightn't be Cerberus, but she was with the Normandy, and she was with Humanity.

Shepard seemed to regard her in a severe curiosity for several long seconds before rotating on the spot on his heel to face her. He loaded his salute like on a parade ground and held it for a second before lowering. Miranda let the smallest smile settle on the edge of her lips as she dropped hers and gave a tiny nod of thanks, then turned for the stairs, opposite to the ones she'd descended on earlier, and took them two at a time up into the engineering access way.

She navigated the Normandy's engineering deck lithely and hurriedly took the elevator back to the crew deck and ignored Grunt's displeased chants for a fight from where he was trying to force Rupert out of the kitchen- the cook putting up a surprising amount of resistance.

When the isolation of her office consumed her again, she engaged the doors lock and leaned back against it before sliding down to the cold deck plating and sighing long and slow.

'Miranda, what the bloody hell are you meant to do now? You just renounced Cerberus? Don't you think The Illusive Man isn't watching? And where do I go after we get this done, if we survive? Can't exactly go running back to Father… Oh God, what about Oriana!" Miranda looked up sharply as her genetic twin sibling came to her mind, and she lurched forward to her feet and hurried around her desk to sit and find the latest records on her sister.

She sighed in relief, despite knowing that her immediate fear had been irrational, and found everything about her sisters' well-insulated life to be in careful order. So her mind moved to Shepard next and another sigh expressed from her lungs, and her gloved hands found a now common hold on her forehead so that she could twin her fingers into her hair and massage her scalp.

There'd be no avoiding some kind of probing conversation with her commanding officer now, and she didn't know if she feared it or longed for it. She couldn't work out if she felt like she was being stripped naked by her world-altering shifting state of mind, or if it felt like she was being armour plated by the pride and open-mindedness it was bringing to her.

X

The elephant in the room may have been silent, but it was heavy, and it was huge, and Shepard didn't know if he'd be able to squeeze out passed it when they landed. He was encased in his N7 armour, polished to the point that the grey-black textured surface caught the light from the overhead cabin in glints.

He sat immediately next to the shuttle pilots cabin, where he often preferred to be able to quickly join the pilot if need be, or if he just wanted to pop the hatch open to directly order the pilot rather than use his omni-tool. Right now, as much as he yearned to pop the hatch and the escape the tension in the cabin, he knew he'd be wracked by guilt for subjecting the unassuming woman to the heated pressure that he was hardly able to stay afloat in.

Immediately to Shepard's left on the Starboard side, Miranda sat. Where on all previous missions the operative had sat with her right leg lifted and draped over her left in an elegant display, now she couldn't. Joining her recent line up in shifts of preferential looks, behaviours and choice words, she had opted to dress in armour on this occasion.

Typical to character, it was cleaned even better than his, even with his years of experience in servicing his N7 issued bodily protection. It was standard make for a medium-weight piece of female body armour with a breast-moulded chest piece –not moulded to the same feminine calibre as he'd have expected of it- with overlapping layers of sternum down to abdominal plates culminating in the cod-piece, all jet black without any highlights as was typically worn to signify some kind of allegiance.

Her greaves rested calmly on her hips with her armoured gloves clasped together over her crotch. Her face was impassive, but Shepard had gotten to know her enough that he could perceive the emotional battle going on beneath.

He corrected his thinking about her changing; she was still the same woman. She just saw old things with new information and was feeling betrayed and used by those who she had felt the most loyalty toward.

Across from the armoured woman was a decidedly not armoured one. Jack was in her usual attire, body only clad in tattoos besides the thin leather belt which left nothing to the imagination and cargo pants. She glared daggers at Miranda and muttered the occasional curse under her breath.

Shepard ignored the thick tension as best he could.

After the falling out between the two, three days earlier, he had spoken to Miranda at length until he finally decided that she genuinely had changed her loyalties and that her attempt at reconciling a relationship with Jack had been real.

Shepard was still working out how to manage relationships between the crew, so he naturally decided that the best way to have the two reconcile would be to have them fight side by side, or at least have one support the other in a crucial emotional exercise.

So here they were, crammed into a Kodiak cabin which should be big enough for twenty, but felt tight with the three of them. Shepard narrowed his eyes thoughtfully and looked at Jack for a moment to judge her mental readiness. After several moments his eyes migrated to Miranda, and he found her steel-blue irises piecing into his own warm-blue ones.

Her expression was calm, collected, and discerning, and Shepard appreciated her level-headed demeanour once more. They held each other's gaze silently for a moment before the pilots' calm tone described their approach, "I'm putting down on the roof in two minutes."

The two Normandy superiors broke eye contact, and Shepard stood, hefting his Mattock rifle from his back and running the routine of checking its thermal pot and clip ejector. Finding it predictably in order, he glanced to Miranda to see her with an Avenger assault rifle, an unusual choice for her. She'd finished checking her own weapon and was still sitting. Across from Miranda, Jack had also done a quick check of her bulky Paladin pistol modded with a barrel extender.

"Jack, I need you with me, so I know what to expect," Shepard ordered flatly.

"Right," Jack agreed neutrally and stood up, taking two steps across the cabin to join him at the bay door. She tapped on the console built into the door, and it showed the external camera feed as they closed the final several hundred meters to the hardly visible rooftop amongst the jungle.

"I fucking hate this place," She grumbled her first judgement of the site and sneered, "Fucking jungle grows like a meter a day, but those assholes build their shit to last." She flicked her head toward Miranda.

Shepard didn't rise to the bait and waited for her to go on.

"Look… I don't really remember this place- it- it brings up bad memories- bad feelings… I'll know it as I see it."

Shepard held her eyes with their shifting emotion with his disciplined and hard ones. It was only seconds, but to him, the eye contact felt a lot longer until he nodded, and as though timed by a writer, the bay door slid open, and the three were assaulted by a howling wind driving a pelting rain.

"FUCK THIS PLANET!" Jack bleated and jumped from the bay just before the Kodiak settled on the weather-worn grey metallic surface.

Shepard waited for the craft to touch down and stepped after the Normandy's psychotic biotic, squinting in an attempt to reduce the amount of stinging rain that impacted around his eyes.

"They had to put the fucking landing pad on the roof because how fast the jungle grows here!" Jack explained in a yell over the gale. She stumbled forward under assault from the weather across the rooftop toward a ledge leading off the side of the structure.

"Someone tell the Rainforest Coffee Growers Alliance, back on Earth. Sounds like the perfect place for them to grow," Shepard grumbled as he trudged forward, his rifle tucked into his shoulder but pointed at the metallic ceramic composite.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Miranda, stoic as she could be, a pace behind him but facing in a different direction and moving along with him in a back step to keep her eyes fixed on their rear.

Shepard clenched his jaw briefly and lamented his current lack of military objectivity. Within another ten seconds, they all stepped onto the grated metal ledge and started taking the stairs downward. As soon as they cleared the rooftop, the building offered them shelter, and the howling wind subsided to a dull background roar.

They reached a landing with a broken-in doorway and entered the structure, finding it predictably dilapidated, whilst it still somehow looked typically Cerberus within. The grey-white metal tiles were in many cases, lifted or split with rifts of dirt and moss collected and growing.

Drips ran down the walls leaving dirty brown stains, and thin streams of dripping dirty water fell from cracks in the ceiling, landing in rippling puddles.

Jack muttered to herself about her disdain for the place, and Shepard and Miranda both followed silently. They navigated several more rooms decorated in the same state of disarray before stepping into a larger hall, the walls flanked with an elevated steel grated causeway which had rusted through in a multitude of place.

"I remember escaping into this room… Nothing between me and freedom besides a scared shitless guard too limp dick to use his gun," Jack sneered and lead the other two down the metal ramp. They weaved around the cracked and half eroded concrete barriers and metal shipping crates that divided the hall into more of a passageway.

Before reaching the doorway at the end of the hall, Jack came to a trembling stop and stared blankly into a ring of eroded barriers, the tiles in the middle split in a spider web of cracks.

Shepard briefly frowned in concern about Jack's sudden ceasation of movement and stepped forward to place a gloved hand on her exposed and shivering shoulder.

She glanced to him in surprising vulnerability before it was hidden under her hardened shell, and she snarled back at the ringed space, "They used to stage fights here." She explained, her snarl turning into a smirk, "Pit me against the other kids. I fucking loved it, the only time I got out of my cell."

Shepard looked at Jack and pushed to soften his analytical gaze, but before he could speak, Miranda's calm and collected voice carried passed him. "Do you know what they were trying to study?"

Jack sneered at Miranda by way of immediate response and narrowed her eyes, accusingly, "You should know, Cerberus slut."

Shepard made a quick side step and blocked the two from viewing each other, or more specifically, Jack from viewing Miranda. And he mirrored Miranda's question with an edge of sternness, "What were they trying to get out of this?"

Jack's snarl subsided, and she shrugged coldly, "The fuck if I know. Maybe they got their kicks this way." She shrugged, "Let's keep going, get this done." She shifted her focus back in the direction they were moving and paced onward, toward the sound of a Varren howl.

Shepard pivoted from his shoulders and gave Miranda a, "Don't push her too far," look.

The corner of Miranda's mouth turned down for a moment, but they were soon following after Jack around the crates into a room with a pile of dead Varren in one corner by a flickering terminal with two living ones howling and stalking toward them.

Jack cried a guttural shriek and glowed blue, reaching forward; the lead Varren was enshrouded in energy and slammed upward into the slick mossy ceiling in a crunch of bones and thwack of meat. Shepard pulled the trigger of his rifle in three nearly instant pulls, and dark red-almost black blood splattered out the back of the second Varren's exploded open skull, and the beast dropped on the spot.

"Who the fuck killed those ones!" Jack cried angrily, storming over to the already dead and neatly put away stack of the invasive hunting species.

Shepard moved toward the terminal and a holographic message auto-played. Jack's expression dropped and darkened as the armoured character displayed in the fuzzy image described the end of Teltin by way of Jack's escape and the directive to not harm her.

"That's not how it happened!" She hissed. "They all fucking hated me. The guards attacked me, the other kids attacked me, they all wanted to kill me!"

Shepard glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes at Miranda, warning her not to make a comment, and then swiftly refocused on Jack; "Maybe there was more going on than you knew? If Cerberus put so much effort into making you, why would they want to put you down?"

"…Fuck!" Jack spat the word at the floor with a head shake, her shoulders quivering in her anxiety.

Shepard half frowned in concern and fell back on the old Marine doctrine of, 'movement is life,' and moved away from the terminal to march further into the broken facility. His doctrine proved right and Jack's mood smoothed out in seconds. She once more found her way to the head of their three-person formation to offer running –if miserable- commentary about her recollection of Teltin and her observations about mounting evidence that it wasn't run the way she'd always perceived.

They continued through ruined rooms and corridors for another five minutes; Jack's tone grew more defeated and cornered with each observed memory. After another five minutes in the dreary musky structure, they marched into a long room with dirtied desks running parallel through it flanked by shattered windows looking into what appeared to be laboratories.

An assembly of red armoured Krogan and Vorcha awaited them. The largest Krogan of the group paced back and forward in front of the only other door into or out of the room and had his hand to his ear, making no attempts are subterfuge or subtlty.

"Hey, Aresh!" He ground the name out loudly, as though he wanted to advertise his superior, or employer. "It's Kureck. The intruders are here. You wan'em dead, we've gotta talk creds. You promised us salvage, but this place is a waste."

Shepard rolled his shoulders in readiness, and Miranda shouldered her rifle, while Jack started to glow blue like a biotic engine, pulsing in the desire to be revved.

"Fine! We'll put them down, then we're talking salvage-"

Kureck's warning to Aresh over the radio was cut short. In tandem, Shepard and Miranda both opened fire on the beefy red and silver armoured Krogan in a hail of glowing red munitions. It only took seconds for the hump-backs' barriers to overload and vanish before his armour was consumed in the modified combustible ammunition and he roared in pain.

Jack reached out with her biotics and sent a freight train of bombarding energy toward the three screeching Vorcha who were bringing their own rifles to bear on the three Normandy crew, throwing them lifelessly into the walls like they were made of card. Miranda pitched right into a roll to avoid a cloud of buckshot from one of the remaining Krogan and thrust her left palm forward, launching a vortex of biotic energy which impacted the Krogan mid-chest.

The lumbering alien stumbled from the impact and Miranda took a knee and swept her fingers across the side of her Avenger, and the colourisation over the thermal port shifted from red to blue. She pulled the trigger and blue tracers connected with the Krogan, bringing its shields down in moments. Still, the creature lurched forward at her with increasing speed, and she pitched the muzzle of her rifle down and pulled the trigger in pulses; once, twice, thrice.

The Krogan's knees exploded from under it in a cloud of bone and blood, and it crumpled forward in a roll, screaming in beastly agony. Miranda scowled but kept her face as straight as she could and stalked toward the downed alien to take away its pain with another quick sustained burst of fire directly into its bone-plated cranium.

Shepard had rolled left and fired two successive concussive blasts into the chest of the other Krogan, then traced a line from the top of its hump down to its feet with a quick series of trigger pulls. The final shot broke through the creatures kinetic barriers and its' foot vanished into an explosion of red meat and yellow blood and the tile beneath it, and Jack stepped over to it to begin smashing her cloaked biotic fists into its exposed face and neck.

Silence settled upon the room, besides the ambient pattering of rain on the roof and the creaking of the straining structure. Shepard quickly swept his rifle over the six alien corpses before marching toward the door at the end that the Krogan had been guarding.

"Whoever the fuck Aresh is, is going to feel my knuckles so far down his fucking throat he'll want to shit them out!"

Shepard and Miranda both shared a dubious glance at Jack's pejorative threat but kept themselves focused and weapons trained ahead, moving with a more cautious stride than they had before. "They looked like Blood Pack," Miranda surmised upon reaching the door.

Shepard stopped before the door and grunted at the burnt Krogan corpse, the red of its armour having been mostly burnt away. He scowled after a moment and glanced to Jack, instead of Miranda, "Any idea why anyone would want to bring Blood Pack here?"

"Cuz they're fucked in the head."

Shepard narrowed his eyes and glanced to Miranda again. Nothing ever seemed simple with helping his crew. As much as it had grated on his nerves at the time, at least Garrus's assignation mission had been nice and easy. No unexpected surprises or twisted intel.

Instead of leading his squad through the door which would lead to their targets, he took a left into one of the decrepid labs. Shepard had to credit Jack's observation, and The Illusive Man's acquisition of quality engineering; Cerberus did build things to last.

The lab was in the same state of erosion as the rest of the structure, but a terminal in the corner flickered with the barest hints of life, drawing Shepard's attention. He paced toward it and keyed its playback like the last one they'd confronted, and another orange hologram fizzed to life in front of the assembled three in low resolution.

This one was not dressed in armour but was garbed in a tunic-like lab-coat which zipped up along his left flank. His hair was kept short and near, and he had a protruding nose. Shepard fought the urge to snort to himself as he derisively typicalised all or most of the Cerberus scientists he'd seen to date looking like gnarled and evil wizards.

"The latest iteration of PergNim went poorly. Subjects One, Four and Six died. No biotic changes in the survivors. We then lowered the core temperatures of all survivors in an attempt to stimulate uptake and conversion of the medication. As a result, all of the subjects died. So we will not try that on Zero. Hopefully, our supply of biotic capable subjects stays up, we are going through them fast." The hologram spoke journalistically.

Jack sneered at it despite the anxiety that crawled across her body language. She shook her head and snapped a heated gaze at Shepard, "Bullshit! I had it worse than anyone here! They weren't experimenting on others for my safety!"

Shepard subtly waved his left hand around the side of his left hip where only Miranda could see to signal her to remain silent. He gave Jack an empathetic smile verging on a frown, which he was sure she most likely would interpret as pity, "It looks like they wanted you to succeed, that doesn't mean you had it easy."

Jack scowled held her tongue, and Shepard reached for the terminal again to continue to the next log.

"It's all fallen to pieces!" The scientist exclaimed through a layer of static. "All of the subjects are rampaging… And Zero is loose! A complete disaster, this will destroy Teltin! At least we'll be able to infiltrate the Alliance's Ascension program so that our research here won't be a- wait... Subject Zero…" Fear entered the hook-nosed scientists' voice, and he looked at something beyond the projector. "Please, wait!" His sternum suddenly caved in, and then his body was thrown from the projection into nothingness.

"Shepard, they've started up somewhere else!" Jack spluttered in disbelief.

Shepard observed her eyes for a moment to see her inner scared child emerge at the idea of the monsters of her childhood being alive and well. He didn't allow the moment to fester for more than a few seconds and shook his head, "The Ascension program is a school for biotic kids," He explained with a placating wave of his hands, "They do not torture kids there."

Jack clenched her eyes shut and stumbled back a few paces. She looked to the probable spot where the scientist had died by her hand and blinked away sudden tears, "This- a lot of this… It isn't the way I remember it.."

"You were a kid, Jack. Scared, terrified, trying to escape, you can't blame yourself for getting some of it wrong."

"I was pathetic! Stupid!" Jack hissed, "I'm not now, now I always shoot first. Let's keep moving!" Jack brooked no argument and paced back through the door and over the burnt corpse of the Blood Pack Krogan to the doorway beyond.

Shepard waved off a look that he was sure Miranda was giving him and moved quickly after the focal point of Teltin. They rushed through a passageway beyond lined with crates, dispatching the Vorcha who used them for cover without any effort and arrived at a single door at the end.

Jack froze. She blinked suddenly bleary eyes clear and sneered toward Shepard, "This is it… My cell."

Shepard nodded, "Open it."

He and Miranda both lifted the muzzles of their rifles and Jack tenderly pressed her hand into the holographic control. It spun, and the door hissed, splitting into two down the middle and retracting into the wall allowing the rot of mould to waft out into their faces.

Jack instantly had her Paladin raised and pointed at the unarmed man dressed in a brown pair of full-length overalls. He frowned simply at them and crossed his arms over his chest, "Subject Zero…" He grimaced her designation between gritted teeth. "You're breaking into my home."

"Aresh, I take it?" Miranda queried in a cool and collected tone.

"-What do you mean, your home?" Shepard asked on the same beat, racking his weapon on his back and crossing his arms in an attempt to visually dissuade Jack from pointing her gun at the clearly unarmed and non-threatening man.

Aresh's face darkened, and he quivered, taking a deep breath and shaking his head, "So many years have passed," He forced the words through a strained voice, his emotion heavy. "I thought I was the only survivor."

Shepard's effort went unnoticed, and Jack assumed a more emotionally volatile posture.

Jack's shoulders were open with her chest rising and falling in aggravated breaths, and her right arm extended at Aresh's chest, her Paladin pistol pointed at his heart, "How the hell do you know me?"

Her voice was laden with contempt, and Shepard carefully shuffled closer to the biotic while Miranda edged closer to Aresh.

"We all knew your face, Zero. They inflicted horrors on us so their experiments wouldn't kill you," Aresh explained, almost placid, "You were the question, and I'm still looking for the answer."

"It looks like you weren't the only one drawn back here, Jack." Shepard interjected, seeking more clarity from Aresh and to open a dialogue with Jack.

"I tried to forget this place. I tried again, and again, and again. Drugs, crime, nothing made this memory stop… A place like this; it follows you," Aresh hummed, his calm taking over the former fear at having a gun pointed at him. "I hired the Blood Pack mercs a year ago; we've been rebuilding Teltin, piece by piece. I need this place to have been worth something. It had to be for something, what else did we go through it for? Unlocking true biotic potential in Human's, that… That's a true dream that still lives here."

Jacks lip curls and her gun arm shook in anger, she looked at Shepard briefly, "I wanted a fucking hole in the ground," Her eyes turned back to Aresh whose own expression had shifted to one of acceptance. "This asshole wants to use it, to justify the shit that went on here."

Aresh remained silent for a long second, punctuating the hopelessness that seemed to sit in the air. Shepard and Miranda each fought the urge to crinkle their noses in disgust at the putrid scent of rot and mould in the air. Jack seemed ignorant of it, and Shepard tucked the assumption away of her being subjected to worse aroma's in her life of crime in area's dominated by Batarian's.

The light from the electronic sources which worked, worked barely. It flickered faintly like a fluorescent tube light of old, illuminating the run down prison-turned boot camp just enough to exemplify the state of decay. No surface, not even the ones with Cerberus's insistent logo, were clean or clear of caked in grime.

"We'll run things different, this time," Aresh began with an air of apprehension. Shepard looked at him harshly, as did Miranda from where she was still edging closer and closer, hardly a single stride away. "Some of us were kidnapped, some were sold from slavers. I came from Batarian pirates. This time, we'll offer an open home to any orphans with biotic potential. They'll be told that they can't leave once they come here."

"Are you fucking nuts?" Jack deadpanned.

"It will be glorious! We will truly unlock the Human biotic potential." Aresh's former apprehension evaporated for sudden elation.

Shepard scowled at the quickly changing moods and figured that Aresh was disturbed. "Jack," He called to his biotic charge. She glanced at him doubtfully and met her gaze with his firm one. "He- Aresh, he can't escape this place. You can, you can't let yourself be trapped by this. Aresh could be you, if you kill him, it'll make you carry this place even deeper for longer."

"He's right, Jack," Miranda added in a lecturers tone. "Aresh needs help, not a bullet."

"A bullet is help!" Jack snapped harshly at Miranda's attempt to talk her down.

"-Just… Just leave me here." Aresh sobered and then frowned. "I am stuck here. I always will be."

"Hear that? Huh?" Jack sneered and steadied her pistol to point at the middle of Aresh's chest.

Shepard sprang into action first, Miranda hardly a heartbeat later. Shepard's hands latched onto Jack's wrists to pull her weapon from being trained on Aresh and Miranda made to tackle the intended target out of the way. The gun reported a single shot, both Jack and Miranda grunted.

Jack sneered at Shepard, struggling in his grasp, but he twisted her wrist and forced the pistol from her hands and spun on the spot with Jack held firm to see Miranda on her hands and knees over the top of Aresh. Both of them were wheezing for breath, and a rivulet of bright red ran from Miranda's middle and splashed across Aresh's brown overalls, painting them darker in the flickering dim light.

Miranda coughed and pressed her left hand over the wound and rocked back onto her knees, grimacing as she did. She brought her hand around from her abdomen to see her black glove slick with blood; she grimaced again then clenched her jaw and keyed her omni-tool before slapping it over the wound.

It injected a dose of medi-gel, and the blood flow slowed into a thick drip. Miranda grimaced at the new kind of cold pain overlapping the hot agonising throb of the bullet wound, and carefully traced her hand around her flank to press it over the exit wound and did another quick medi-gel application.

She silently grimaced again and then turned her attention to the gulping and wheezing man on the ground between her knees.

His eyes were wide and fearful, and his skin had gone deathly pale with a cold sweat beading on his forehead. "Oh, god… What- wha- what happened?"

Shepard snarled angrily at Jack and thrust her back toward the door. The slim woman seemed stunned by the results of her actions, and she stumbled onto her rear while Shepard stooped to run his omni-tool over Aresh. Miranda, despite her injury, had beaten him to the inspection and she winced and looked into Shepard's angry eyes.

"The round shattered against his spine… We don't have enough medi-gel to keep him stable."

"It's-it's-it's o-o-o-okay," Aresh stammered, gulped and forced a smile up at the two faces above him. "I'm where I sh-should be. I don't blame Zer-Zero." He gulped again and gurgled, some red spilling out from between his lips and trickling into his rough beard.

"Fragments must have punctured his lungs," Miranda hissed to Shepard, pain attempting to control her voice, but her discipline winning out as she kept her mentality on the task at hand.

Shepard spied the rough bullet hole in the more thinly armoured abdominal plates around Miranda's middle and gave her a concerned glance. Miranda turned her lips down, agreeing silently that she'd need help soon, but looked back to Aresh whose life was ebbing from his eyes.

"She'll carry me with her too, kkrruhgg," He wheezed a cough, splatting a spray of blood up into the two above. "You both have my thanks," He spluttered between lips which were growing bloodier by the moment. "Yo-you both tried to stop it. May-maybe if I'd met people like you sooner?" His body lifted and dropped in a sudden spasm of coughs which turned into gurgles. His eyes bulged, and Miranda whipped out a slim dagger from under her breast plate and plunged it through Aresh's chest into his heart.

Aresh stopped thrashing, and in his final effort amongst the living, he mouthed 'Thank you,' to Miranda whose ashen face was drawn in pained guilt.

The room went silent again, and this time the disgusting elements of the degrading base didn't climb into the thoughts of either of the emotionally functional Normandy crew as they came to terms with the events of the past few minutes.

"He got what he fucking deserved!" Jack grumbled angrily behind the two commanding officers.

Miranda stayed still for several more seconds; looking into the now lifeless expanded pupils of the man she'd just killed to ease his final moments of suffering. Guilt wracked her, as irrational as it was. He was the victim of the actions of Cerberus, just as Jack was, and this was the mess it had created.

Shepard's hand landed on her shoulder, and she carefully looked into his solemn eyes. He pressed his mouth into a thin smile, and after a second of eye contact, Miranda nodded and in a swift pull, removed her knife from Aresh's chest. She wiped it clean on her inner thigh's padded under armour and then slid it back into its sheath hidden under her breastplate, before wincing and standing with both of her hands pressed over her slowly weeping wound.

Shepard looked at her for a moment, "Are you okay?"

Miranda clenched her eyes for a moment and nodded, "Let's do what we came here for, Commander."

Shepard pressed his mouth into a thin disapproving smile before nodding and pivoting away from Miranda to Jack. The slim biotic had risen back to her feet and had holstered her pistol on her hip. She was standing facing Shepard with her arms crossed over her chest and a temperamental glare on her face, "So fucking what? We kill people all the time."

The emotion washed from Shepard's face, and he strode toward her, stopping a single foot from her and looking down into her intimidated, skittish and fearful eyes, "We kill armed enemies. We kill threats. We HELP people who need it."

"Pfft," Jack snorted, glaring at Shepard's armoured chest rather than his hard eyes. "Guy was fucking insane."

"GUY!" Shepard shouted, "Was fucking tormented. JUST. LIKE. YOU. Should we kill you too?"

Jack's eyes suddenly turned more fearful, and they snapped up into Shepard's cold and calculating anger.

"Say what you want about Miranda being Cerberus-" Shepard shook his head, choosing to believe the words and actions of his XO, "-Ex-Cerberus. But she just took a bullet, from YOU, to try and save someone, LIKE YOU!" Shepard's jabbed a finger harshly into the middle of Jack's chest, making her stumble back with a wince and sharp intake of breath.

Shepard took a tiny step forward to tower over her. "YOU ARE ON MY SHIP!" He jabbed her again. "YOU THREATEN MY CREW!" Another hard jab, "I, and all of the crew, EVEN Miranda, help you, talk to you, ask your opinion." He jabbed her harder than the first three times, and she tripped on her own feet and crawled back against the suddenly unresponsive door to cower from the anger she'd never seen on Shepard's face. "How much do all of us need to hurt for you? You think Aresh was insane, take a damn look in the mir-"

Miranda suddenly came between Shepard's bulk and the now fearful and cowering Jack. She fought the pain with a grimace and clenched jaw, but stood firmly over Jack and faced Shepard.

"Commander Shepard," She annunciated his title clearly without preamble, "This isn't the time or place," She rotated slightly to look at an inexorably surprised Jack and then back to a somewhat less surprised Shepard whose anger had faded under his discipline, "We came here to do a job. Let's complete the mission."

Surprised flittered across Shepard's face again, and he looked a question into Miranda's steel-blue eyes. She gave him no form of an answer, however, beyond the contained wince at the corners of her eyes telling him that she was in pain. After several long seconds Shepard turned the corner of his mouth down but nodded and stepped back.

Miranda turned to Jack, and despite the pain she was wearing, she extended a hand. Jack frowned disbelievingly and looked back and forward several times between the offered hand and the pained and paled face it belonged to. Finally, with a scowl which didn't reach her confused eyes, she took the hand and came back to her feet just as Shepard pulled the explosive device he carried off the small of his back.

When Jack came back to her feet, she held onto Miranda's hand for a moment longer and gave her a slow look in a broken effort to express apology. When she finally released her grip, she splayed her fingers, red with Miranda's blood, and looked absently at them.

Miranda turned back to the middle of the room where Shepard had placed the micro-nuclear warhead and straightened Aresh's corpse with the man's hands placed over his navel, and his eyelids eased shut. Miranda limped several paces to look over Shepard running the device through its priming sequence.

She watched quietly until Shepard straightened and held out his left arm to her. Miranda thinned her lips but stepped into Shepard's grip so that he could wrap his arm around her body, and she could wrap her right hand up around his shoulder to help support her movement.

"We're moving out now." Shepard said with a flat glare at Jack.

The biotic just nodded dumbly and kept pace behind the two Normandy Officers. Shepard heaved Miranda back through the passages and rooms they'd traversed on the way in, no longer interested in or caring about the contents; Miranda's feet started to stumble and fail the closer to their entrance they drew.

After another five minutes, they stumbled back out into Pragia's gale and rain and lurched up the slippery external stairs. They reached the roof and moved as swiftly as they were able across the rooftop and into the waiting troop bay of the Kodiak. Shepard deposited Miranda on one of the benches and slammed his fist against the hatch to the pilots' cabin, and the bay door whooshed shut, and they rocketed upward into the sky.

The bay suddenly bucked and rattled, and Shepard turned to see Jack fixated on her omni-tool watching the explosion through the Kodiak's aft camera. The biotic's face was a mixture of pain, remorse, and relief, and her eyes dropped lines of tears, her lips turned down in upset.

Where Shepard would typically want to comfort her, to express that she did have a crew who would support her; he currently couldn't muster the level of care for her. Instead, he turned to Miranda and activated his medi-gel applicator in his omni-tool and pressed it into her abdomen.

She hissed in pain, gulped and nodded a tired thanks at him, "I'll be fine, Commander," Miranda wheezed, closing her eyes and letting her head rest back. "Just need a bloody good doctor to tell me I can have a bloody nice wine tonight."

Shepard snorted at the unexpected humour and caught her smirk. "XO, you pull through this, and I'll get you the best wine I can."

She snorted back, but without much energy, "Sorry, Commander, but I don't think you'll even know what good wine is."

"Hah," He laughed, thankful that his XO was keeping herself in good spirits. He would kick himself for thinking that she'd get down by an injury that wasn't imminently life-threatening, "I'll get Tali to help choose something."

Miranda just smiled tiredly, dark lines having formed under her eyes and down her cheeks, and the strain around her mouth leaving creases. The rest of the atmospheric to orbital flight to the Normandy passed in silence.

XxxX

"You will issue me a landing location, and I will land to begin an investigation."

John's tone was rough and straightforward. He brooked no argument, and he expected acquiescence. But his expectations were not being met, and the sparsely grown red beard on the man on the other end of the screen shook in an exaggerated expression of no.

The man huffed, and his nostrils flared, John took another moment to examine him, having already read Professor Cameron Harrison's Alliance profile, including the history of his life's works. The man was prideful, and if his academic record had any part to play, then John was sure that Cameron had every right to be; he was sure that even Halsey would be impressed.

The Professor was in his sixties and was as physically unremarkable as all the Doctors and Professors John had ever met with an almost egg-shaped head with a scruffy-patchy red beard which joined into a receding hairline by way of his jaw. He had a short stubby nose and thing lips which could move faster in speech than John had been prepared for when Cameron first opened his mouth.

"You absolutely will not be landing here! Mr I don't know who!" Camaron wailed in his nasal tone, his nostrils flaring again over the display.

John fought off frustration and abolished the tiny frown on his lips within his helmet. He'd spent several days after leaving the Citadel in his newly issued Orvar Class corvette sitting hidden in the blue-white nebula near the Citadel just reading and researching, trying to determine what his best course of action would be.

The Slipspace drive was the UNSC's single most expensive piece of equipment, and they fielded thousands and lamented the loss of each one. Even if he could somehow get an Alliance science team to construct one here, with little to no technical know-how support from himself, how could they hope to fund it given the Alliance's hierarchical infighting and apparently already strained budget?

He'd quickly figured that he would be here for the long haul and tucked the thought away to not be dealt with again. At least, not until new information entered the picture and options opened to him. So since he was stuck here, he may as well participate in ensuring the galactic stability that Admiral Anderson had begged he help with- in a manner that John was personally acquainted with; that of a man who couldn't afford to be obviously identified as begging.

So he'd resolved to research the galaxy, and what he had found hadn't given him as much hope as he would have liked, but it was enough to think there was a way to get the job done. He'd always got the job done with every single odd stacked against him.

John had contacted Hackett and Anderson for clearance for information and access to all Alliance assets with his ships micro-QEC built into the control console in the tight cockpit. The cockpit reminded him of a Pelicans', however, the sloping glass canopy angled downward from the middle to match the slope of the hull externally.

A flight chair and control system which were not entirely dissimilar to the Pelicans, or even a simplified Prowlers, sat arm's length from the forward most point of the cockpit and the entire cabin was painted a bland tactical grey with LED strips around the control console and the rear walls nearer the door so that the lights and sights beyond the hardened glass could pass into the pilots eyes undiluted.

Both of the Admirals had agreed to give him access to anything relating to his mission objectives. Which translated as Alliance information relating to Shepard, to the Reapers, Collectors, and the Prothean's, and access to any sites connected to those topics.

It was clear to John, given his studying of Shepard's reported material, and the Alliance's own recordings of units conducting actions against the Collectors, that on any individual battlefield against the probable kind of soldiers that the Reapers would field, that he would be of immense help.

But as advanced as John's armour systems and even augmentations were in comparison to those available in this reality, he wouldn't stand a chance against one of the two-kilometre tall space-born metal squids.

What it boiled down to was a technological divide that needed to be bridged in space warfare for there to be any hope of this reality's species, or this cycle's species -as he'd read Shepard refer to them as- being able to pull through.

Even if he was of the mind to expose the informative specs of his suit to Alliance scientists, it was no blueprint for them to follow to build more. Let alone being able to put bodies that could survive the suit into them. Even if he had the mind to give up his micro-fusion cell and the shield unit it powered, there was no guarantee that it could be replicated with any speed and even if it was if it would help in any kind of substantial manner.

So John looked back to the source, the Holy Grail, of technology in this realm. The Prothean's technology, as degraded and aged as any of the surviving elements of it that remained were, was still considered to be the height of technological development in the galaxy. Not including the Reaper's own technology, which John had also become aware of being dangerous for its capability of indoctrinating those exposed to it.

He drew comparisons to the Gravemind and his experiences on High Charity and on Instillation 08 where the primordial had spoken directly into his mind.

He'd read available information on Element Zero, the way that it was used in ships, weapons, and the even more exotic concept of biotic telekinetic powers. That had led into reading about the Mass Relay's and then the recovered Prothean technology which functioned in the same way and had been the roadmap to all of the current era's technology to advance.

It was clear to the Spartan that the Mass Relays were of Reaper design, despite what the common societal thought on that was.

That made it even more clear to him that the Relays were placed for the express purpose of technological coercion. Given what Shepard had learnt to be a cyclical process, almost all of the former cycles surviving technology was intentional to cement the development of the next cycle.

Hackett had forwarded the Spartan a paper published eighty years earlier about higher dimensional space and it being used for extended travel. But it had never been funded thanks to the focus on Element Zero based technology.

John could not rewind the clock on the technological route of the Alliance, but he could backtrack the path of technology derived from Prothean discoveries. After three days on the Prothean line of research, he'd landed on Mars, and the extensive archives and even ships that had been found there buried just under the surface of the southern pole.

His mind had boggled in disbelief when he'd read a cursory report from the very same Professor he was currently trying to persuade, stating that the Alliance had likely only filtered fifteen to twenty per cent of the data stored in the Archives. There were more than likely more physical databanks yet to be uncovered.

Upon reading that particular report, he'd messaged Hackett for clarification. John learnt, to his deepening concern, the perspectives driving leadership in this version of Humanity were not nearly as nationalistic as his own. That the Alliance had been roped into a quiet treaty with the Asari and Salarians.

The treaty amounted to not pushing their Prothean research ahead from the Mars archives, and in return they would receive preferential economic treatment on the galactic market.

It was a damning idea, as far as the Spartan was concerned. All resources should be mobilised for defence, and if possible, a pre-emptive strike. He'd shot off through the Relay and arrived back in Sol system and sped for Mars, coming into geosynchronous orbit above the south pole where the Archives were embedded.

But it was increasingly evident that there were many lines of disconnect within the organisational hierarchy inside the Alliance.

As was being exhibited by the fact that in his digital credentials issued by Admiral Anderson and confirmed by Admiral Hackett stating expressly that he was cleared to enter the Archives and any other Prothean dig site. Yet, the Professor who was in charge of the outpost fervently disagreed.

"Professor," John commanded the title, urging the intellectual to pay heed. "I am here to assist in analysing the Archives. I have been given authority to do so by Admiral's Hackett and Anderson."

The Professor took three rapid breaths, and his cheeks flushed, "You could be Cerberus! Or some kind of spy!"

"I am not."

"You might be here to destroy the Archives!" Cameron's nostrils flared again, "You might be one of those anti-Prothean nut jobs!"

The command hierarchy in this version of Humanity was appalling, John decided. But he held his gruff poise and answered in a language that he knew all Humans spoke, and all scientists needed. "I have come to assist in your research, I have financial resources to fund an expansion of your team."

"ASSIST!" Cameron snorted and then spluttered, "Fund expansion… You mean you've come from the Alliance funding department? You don't like an accountant, if I didn't know better, in your armour, you look like a super-soldier…"

John inclined his helmet slightly, "I have been given a mission to acquire information about the Reapers. I believe that information will be available in the Archives, can you issue-"

"REAPERS!" Cameron spluttered the title, and his eyes flared wide. "Just last month Udina showed up to get special researcher access permissions, Anderson not long after, what was this about the Alliance denying the Reaper threat, hmm?

John lifted and dropped his right shoulder a fraction. The ridiculous politics weren't his concern.

"Fine!" Cameron hissed after a long pensive pause. He narrowed his eyes shrewdly through the monitor. "If Anderson AND Hackett both approve of your being here, then okay. BUT I will be contacting them immediately for confirmation."

"Professor," John acknowledged by way of thanks with a slight incline of his helmet.

"Landing pads' Alpha zero one through alpha zero seventeen are available, take your pick. Sending you coordinates now."

"Thank you, Professor," John said flatly and with a flick of his left hand turned off the connection and grasped the throttle. He waited several minutes until the same small screen that the Professor had inhabited filled with navigation text. Then it superimposed a waypoint marker on the glass canopy indicating for him to descend. He pushed the throttle forward, and the horizon of the dusty orange-red planet filled his view. Then the view became entirely dusty orange-red as his angle of descent sharpened, and the ship started to vibrate from the aggressively efficient planetfall.