Author's note: This is not a sequel to my other fic, Duet.

Tap.

"...some movement, Miranda. Fifth digit of the left hand."

"Any others?"

"No. I'm seeing afferent activity, but no efferent."

"There's a pattern."

"What?"

"To her tapping."

"There's no way she - "

"Shepard. Can you hear me?"

Tap.

"It's all right, Shepard. You're safe."

Tap, tap.

"Can we get you anything?"

Tap.

"Miranda, we're in the middle of - "

"Shut up, Wilson. Shepard, can you spell it out? One tap for A to M, two for N to Z."

Tap.

"All right. One for A to F, two for G to M."

Tap.

"A?"

Tap, tap.

"B?"

Tap, tap.

"C?"

Tap.

"Are you cold?"

Tap.

"Get her another blanket."

"You really think Wilson's capable of something like that?"

"Anyone is, under the right circumstances. Maybe the Broker or the Collectors got to him somehow. Maybe he was a deep-cover agent to begin with. Maybe he just decided we're not paying him enough."

"You saw his dossier. No family, no close friends. No expensive habits. Psych profile was clean. And his civilian career was focused on research, not money. He was more interested in Lazarus than Cerberus in general, but that's fine for what we've got him doing."

"What he's doing is probing the security systems without authorization. And he's too good at it to just be curious. We'd never even have caught it if we hadn't added the hidden cache for the audit logs."

"If you hadn't, you mean. Sounds like your mind is made up."

"I know security is your job, Jacob. But we can't afford to take the risk. We're too close. Besides, we don't need him. I can finish the work myself."

"All right. I'll take care of it right away."

"Good. Then start the preparations for evacuation. This facility is compromised. I want us out of here by 2200."

Shepard awoke with a raging thirst and a terrible headache. She'd been dreaming, miserably, about wandering the endless, empty passageways of the Normandy, trying in vain to find any of her crew, or some medi-gel, or a glass of water.

Miranda watched her sleeping patient twitch and grimace, but made no move to wake her. She had gradually phased out the sedatives, but Shepard had to come up on her own. Miranda's eyes flicked to the readouts. They faced away from Shepard's bed and were out of reach. Miranda had also taken care to remove or cover any reflective surfaces in the room. Because Shepard looked awful.

Better than she had when they first found her, of course. Miranda was no stranger to gore, but she still had nightmares about that. Now, at least, Shepard had eyes again. They hadn't seeded her hair yet. Her face was crisscrossed with scars that were even more angry in contrast to her ghostly pale skin.

At last the blue eyes struggled open for the first time in nearly eighteen months. They stared, blank and unfocused, for several moments, before registering Miranda. Then they just watched her, dully.

"Shepard," Miranda said. "Can you hear me?"

The eyelashes flickered and the pupils dilated.

"Yes, I'm real. You're awake. You're safe."

The cracked lips moved, as if trying to remember how to form words.

"You can't talk with the tracheal tube in, Shepard. I can read your lips, though."

It wasn't easy. There was only a slight pursing of the lips. But Miranda understood at once. Crew. Of course, that was the first thing Shepard would ask.

"Yes, your crew is safe." Mostly. No need to go into that yet.

Shepard's lower lip moved, then her tongue flicked the roof of her mouth. W and T. Water.

Miranda shook her head. "You can't eat or drink until we get that tube out. You're getting nutrition through your IV."

Shepard's lips pursed again, then the T again, then a hiss. Hurts.

"We're giving you as many painkillers as we safely can. The pain will recede in time. You're getting better."

They eyes were drifting closed again.

"Everything is going to be all right, Shepard." Another partial truth. "Take it easy."

Shepard sank back into the hell of pain and confusion and thirst. But at least there were people there now. Ashley, and Kaidan, and the strange woman with dark hair and blue eyes all drifted in and out. But the woman seemed more real than the others. Shepard asked her for water, again and again, to no avail. Once the woman did give her a glass, but it was empty. Another time, it contained water, and Shepard thrust it to her lips and greedily drank and drank, but the water dissolved into mist in her mouth.

"Shepard?"

Shepard struggled up out of the fog again. She seemed to come farther out of it this time. The woman was there again.

"Shepard, I want to get that tube out of you, so you can have some water. But I need you to breathe first."

Shepard's fists tightened, twisting the sheets under her. Why was this so hard? All she wanted was water.

"It's all right. Try to breathe in rhythm with the machine at first."

Shepard would get out of the bed and get her own water, then. Her hands tried to reach for the tube, to pull it out, but her wrists were fastened to the bed frame. Her heart began pounding. A red haze ringed her vision. The monitors next to her thumped and beeped frantically.

"You're all right, Shepard. Don't panic. Just breathe."

She wasn't all right. Her spacesuit had ruptured, and she was falling. The air was rushing out, and the planet reached up to roast her alive in its atmosphere or smash her against the hard ground miles below. The bed rattled as she tried to reach for her helmet seals. She fought for air.

The black mists receded. Her descent seemed to slow, then stop, as she realized she was in someone's arms. The woman had slipped one arm under her shoulders, and the other was across her waist, holding her hand. "You're all right," she was saying, again and again. "I've got you. You're breathing. You're all right." As she looked up into those blue eyes, she realized the monitors had fallen silent.

Miranda waited until Shepard was asleep again. She marched past a surprised Taylor as she went downstairs, all the way to the wine cellar, and shut the door behind her. Her omni-tool was linked to Shepard's monitors and would warn her if anything happened. She could be back upstairs in twenty seconds. The wine cellar was better for pacing, and cursing.

Twenty minutes later, Taylor walked in.

"You've still got the timing just right," she said.

Her anger rolled off him. He leaned against the door, hands in his pockets. "What happened?"

"She had some kind of - flashback while I was trying to get her to breathe. The Normandy, probably."

"Hard to see how you could avoid that. She had to start breathing on her own again."

"I should have seen this coming. Warned her beforehand. Given her more sedatives."

"She's barely awake as it is. And something like this, we're all learning as we go. You're doing the best you can."

"It wasn't good enough." Miranda's voice was a wall of fury. "She has to be exactly as she was. Exactly. And the first thing I do is traumatize her. I could have compromised the entire - "

She stopped as he stepped over and took her by the shoulders. His voice was gentle. "Miranda. For the past two years, she's just been a project. But now she's a human being. She has hopes, and fears, and needs. Those are what you need to look at now. Not just the checklists and test results."

"I do. I sit with her all the time. When she's awake, I talk to her. Encourage her." Miranda wondered why she felt so defensive.

"Try talking to her when she's not awake. Read something to her, maybe."

"Nonsense. She can't hear - "

"It's not just for her."

"I screwed up. Singing lullabyes to her isn't going to change that, or make me feel better about it. I just have to do better. Learn more." She sighed. "All right, I'll try."

"'Natural science,'" Miranda read, "'does not render the future predictable. It makes it possible to foretell the results to be obtained by definite actions. But it leaves unpredictable two spheres: that of insufficiently known natural phenomena and that of human acts of choice. Our ignorance with regard to these two spheres taints all human actions with uncertainty.'"

Miranda felt more than a little silly. And, after a while, resentful. No one did this for her when she was younger. (As she saw it, she'd never been a child.) Her education had been shoved down her throat. Hours and hours of maths, physics, biology, economics. And she sure as hell didn't get to read for recreation. Things like literature and philosophy were only included so she would seem well-rounded.

She had plastered Shepard with as many sedatives, painkillers, and muscle relaxants as she safely could, and removed the breathing tube while she slept. Shepard coughed a few times as Miranda watched anxiously, then her head turned and rested against the pillow, her chest still rising and falling evenly. A ray of sunlight fell across her face. A little color had returned to the sharp cheekbones since the first time she'd woken up, and the scars were a little less angry. Miranda stood and closed the curtains more tightly, darkening the room.

She'd been reading for an hour already. No need to do any more. She had reports to write, and...

She sighed and sat back in her chair beside Shepard's bed. She called Jacob and told him to bring her a drink. This was his idea, after all, so he could keep her comfortable while she did it.

Jacob came in with a bottle of wine and a glass.

Miranda looked up. "Not going to join me?"

He smiled. "Thanks, but not on duty." They'd been adding to the staff slowly and painstakingly, and were still shorthanded. Jacob and Miranda were the only ones who knew Shepard was here.

He glanced at the heavy book on her lap. One of the many amenities here was a library with real books. He read, "'Apodictic certainty is only within the orbit of the deductive system of aprioristic theory. The most that can be attained with regard to reality is probability.' Just a little light reading, huh?"

She looked at him, puzzled. "But it is light. One of the masterpieces of epistemology, but very basic."

"Well, have fun. I've gotta get back to it." He saluted and left.

Miranda glanced at Shepard, who was still deep in sleep. "You're safe with him here," she said. Talking out loud was becoming a habit. Shepard didn't even twitch. Her chest rose and fell slowly, evenly. They'd finally seeded her hair. It was still short and wiry, dark red against the white pillow. Her closed eyes were shaped like almonds. Her nose was thin and her mouth was flat, serious, yet with just enough of a pout to be sensual.

Beautiful, Miranda thought, despite the livid scarring. She was, of course, just admiring her handiwork. She sighed. She put down her book and picked up another one, one Shepard was said to like. Fluff, in her opinion.

"'Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves...'"