A/N: The Mass Effect universe, characters, creations, and general storyline is the property of Bioware. I'm simply having fun with some ideas.

This is an AU story with various liberties being taken. This story will be useing the unreliable narrator trope.

Shepard is more anti-hero than hero in this. He's done bad things for good reasons (according to him). I repeat this is renegade Shepard who's made bad, bloody, costly choices and will continue to do so. If that doesn't interest you then you should abandon this story now.

I will Rise

By Spectre4hire

Alert

"Bitch!"

Miranda Lawson let out a tired sigh. It was going to be one of those days.

Three weeks, it had been three weeks since she reluctantly inherited a Cerberus cell that had skated on going rogue. They were closer to incompetence.

The cell had jeopardized years of research and sufficient funds. The responsibility had fallen on Miranda to clean up the mess while at the same time try to comb through the remnants of information and experiment logs in an attempt to salvage the hefty investment.

Most of the workers already hated her. None of them were fond of her need to hold them accountable and wanting results after so much had been invested into this cell.

I'm not here to coddle them. She was given a job, and she was going to squeeze every last drop of useful information and intel out of this place.

The name calling didn't upset her. Miranda Lawson spent most of her life hearing such insults and snide remarks directed towards her. Envy is an ugly little thing.

The bitch which she assumed was aimed at her had been shouted from the mess hall which was up ahead of her. She thought it was likely some of the scientists had taken sanctuary in there to allow themselves an opportunity to rant and rave with their equally fuming colleagues about her and the various reasons why they despised her.

The mess hall doors were already open when Miranda reached it. She peered in quickly detecting a glowering mood that hung in the air above the packed cafeteria tables. They were grumbling and gossiping to one another, slandering and venting their frustration.

She was ready to leave when she noticed that she actually wasn't the target of their anger, but a projection. Miranda slid quietly into the mess hall, keeping to the shadows, but it still gave her the proper view of what everyone in the mess hall was watching.

The projection was of a human female reporter her name flashed at the bottom of the screen, but Miranda wasn't paying attention to the rather absurdly long name. Her focus was on who she was interviewing. It was Commander John Shepard, Humanity's first Spectre.

"You would think she would have humanity's best interests!" complained one man, that Miranda knew worked security. His name escaped her, but his job performance hadn't. He was one of the few above average workers at this base.

The cook was walking between the tables, gathering the dirty plates and bowls. "What do you expect from a reporter? They're all leeches!"

That got smattering of agreement while others added more colorful terms to describe the reporter. None of them knew this Commander Shepard, but they were quick to defend him. Men and women he'd consider enemies since they were not foolish enough to bow to the demands of the Citadel. That wouldn't matter to them, she thought, he was the first spectre for humanity. His actions had still earned their respect.

Miranda looked at the man closely wanting to study his every feature. This was the Lion of Elysium, she remembered reading the first hand reports of the Cerberus Operatives who had been on the ground before and after the Battle of Elysium. Shepard had done the impossible, he rallied civilians and tourists to not only fight skilled mercenaries and raiders, but to successfully defend the colony until Alliance reinforcements arrived.

At seeing how those in the mess hall rallied to Shepard's defense from this reporter's attempt to besmirch his name, she could see the man's charisma and charm able to pull off that same belief, confidence, and fervent energy at Elysium during the attack.

That wasn't even including how Shepard nearly single handedly held the man line when it had been breached. It was an impressive accomplishment that bordered on legendary. Those months after Elysium you couldn't turn on the Holos or the Extra-Net without his image and story popping up. It couldn't be contained to just a human interest, it had spread throughout the Traverse and the other council species.

Brave, charismatic, resourceful, she was unable to deny the man his due. These were the skills that Cerberus sought out in their own recruits.

Then it all changed in Shepard's next major battle. It was on that day that he was given a new title-The Butcher of Torfan.

A tad dramatic, Miranda easily saw the ploy by the media to try to vilify the Alliance poster boy. They had built him up and were now eager to tear him back down.

The only thing they loved more than a hero was a fallen one.

Miranda hadn't seen that battle or Shepard's role in it the same way the rest of the galaxy did. He had done his duty. He did what the Alliance asked him to do. Getting results no matter the mission or the cost was something she took pride in throughout her years with Cerberus. When it was given to her she'd do whatever it took to accomplish it. Miranda saw that Shepard didn't seem too different from her in that regard.

Torfan was the Batarian's last serious attempt at making noise in the Traverse in their slaving and raiding of Human colonies. That was Shepard's accomplishment. Colonies were now flourishing, unhindered or worried over potential threats from the Batarian Hegemony because Shepard did what needed to be done.

Few if any would give Shepard his due in the aftermath of that battle. When they should've been grateful, they were spiteful. They vilified him, christening him the Butcher for all the men and women who died on that moon under his command. They left out the part where Shepard was right beside them the whole time.

In typical Alliance fashion they bowed to the political pressure. They performed a vanishing act on Shepard making his disappear from the spotlight over night.

She frowned at the cowardice shown by the Alliance. Another reminder that its politics not people that they care about most. The Alliance would rather stay in the good graces of the Citadel like a dog waiting for scraps then do what they needed to, to put humanity on equal footing with the other council species.

The Council has their own methods to preserve and protect their interests. The salarians have the STGs, the turians have the Black Watch, and the asari have their commandos. They couldn't allow humanity to have what they needed. They want us toothless.

Pushing away those bitter thoughts and feelings she put her attention once more on the holo-image of Shepard. She inspected him closely, wanting a better look at the man who's made so much history in these last few years.

He was broad shouldered, tall, and muscular. He carried himself with an easy confidence and his stance was disciplined. He was at ease, but she saw that this was someone who could pounce at a moment's notice. When he turned to face the camera to end the interview she saw his most noticeable feature which were his ensnaring blue eyes. They seemed to see right through her which left her feeling vulnerable, a feeling she hated. She turned away from the holo, slipping out of the mess hall before she could be noticed and went in the direction of her office.

This particular cell was made up of four underground facilities that were all connected by a series of underground tunnels. Three of the facilities were for research, containing the cells of their test subjects. As well as their mainframe, this remained locked and supervised at all time. It was in this VI mainframe that they were able to store all of the information gathered in their months of research. These three facilities also included the rooms and offices of a number of scientists and assistants. The fourth facility where she was headed, contained the cell's director's office, the barracks for the security personnel, mess hall, storage units, cargo bay, and the rarely used hangar due to the planet's conditions. They were lucky if they received two supply freighters in eight months.

While walking to her office she thought of the predecessor she had replaced and the circumstances that brought her here. They were becoming bolder in their experiments. Flushed with confidence and credits they chose to broaden their test subjects to include Alliance soldiers. That foolish choice led to a hasty over correction which involved killing an Alliance admiral.

Mistake after mistake they made, she thought with disgust, killing alliance marines was stupid enough, but an admiral too?

These are the people that hurt Cerberus' image. These were the actions that the Alliance and the media would use to paint a broad picture to discredit Cerberus.

Their actions had been inexcusable so she was pleased to be the one who got to hold them accountable. I gave them exactly what they deserved.

After disposing of the leadership, she shifted her attention to the troves of research that they had been gathering. She downloaded as much as she could into her omni-tool in hopes of trying to learn everything there was to learn about this project as quickly as she could. There were still all sorts of files and reports on subjects and experiments that she needed to look through. This cell was responsible for sensitive data and subjects which included thorian creepers and rachni.

It had been a startling revelation, but one she quickly recovered from so she could pour more of her focus onto them. I'll never forget my first encounter with those 'creepers.'

Obedient, and hollow, she observed, it was unnerving how soulless they looked and acted. They'd follow every order both the mundane such as a simple retrieval of a mug from across the room to the suicidal, attacking automated turrets with nothing but their hands for weapons.

It was a terrible sight to see them charge an attacker. Docile, but incredibly dangerous, she believed even the hardiest asari commando would be bothered at such an enemy. Those creepers could provide to be the perfect shock troopers. The tool humanity needed to protect them from their enemies.

The rachni were quite a different story, she turned a corridor. Pleased, that she hadn't had to pass any of her colleagues. Some would offer fake smiles and even faker pleasantries, most would just judge her in stony silence.

Since Miranda had become the project director, the rachni had killed two workers. That would add to their total of deaths they caused before she arrived.

Those deaths were not in vain, she reminded herself, Miranda believed valuable information had been discerned from the unexpected events that led to those employees death.

It had been an accident not an execution. So she did what she had to, to press forward with her assignment. Her office was barely larger than a closet. She took her seat behind her desk, feeling crammed and annoyed at the tight space she was confined in. Miranda turned on her terminal to distract herself from her surroundings and began to look over the notes that had been forwarded to her from the last experiment.

They had tried to communicate with the rachni through a series of recordings that they had previously recorded from an earlier session. The tests showed initial promise until the recordings began to skip. This caused the rachni to go ballistic. This time they were sealed in fortified cages so there were no casualties or injuries to report.

Miranda Lawson found the rachni an intriguing, but frustrating riddle to crack. The rachni nearly brought the Council to ruin, if not for the timely intervention of the Krogan. One would imagine that there would or should be a plethora of information on the species, but sadly it seemed the direct opposite was true. The Council thought it would be far easier to just eliminate the species, without studying the promising species. When they finally defeated them, they didn't just want to wipe them out on the battlefield, they wanted to wipe them from memory.

The Citadel's loss will be our gain. That brought a thin smile to her lips.

"Director Lawson."

Miranda recognized the voice immediately. It belonged to the head of this cell's security- Oscar Stackhouse.

A veteran Alliance soldier who had been persuaded to join Cerberus only a few months ago with the events of Eden Prime being his main motivation. He was a soldier who had become restless with the boring grind of a security guard. He stood nearly six feet tall, shaved head, alert brown eyes. His face riddled with scars from his duties fighting batarian pirates in the Traverse and fresh ones from the Geth encounters on Eden Prime.

"Yes, Stackhouse?" She didn't look up to greet him, keeping her attention on the emails from the lab. That couldn't stop her from feeling his eyes roaming over her body.

"I just got back from the Cargo Bay; apparently our supplies are going to be delayed."

Miranda sighed. She should have been expecting this.

The planet they were on had several benefits. The isolation and distance from the nearest populated world made it ideal to perform experiments without worrying about interference or discovery. It carried its own faults too. It was a frozen wasteland. It constantly snowed with gusts of winds that easily reached high velocity, with blizzard like conditions and deathly chills always a constant threat.

Cerberus decided to minimize those flaws by having the entire facility built underground. It shielded them from the nastier conditions of the planet, but their supply frigates were not so lucky. They still had to fly and weather these conditions to deliver their needed supplies.

The disappointing news got Miranda to glance up from her notes. She caught the head of security openly staring at her chest. Chief Stackhouse at least had the decency to look away at being caught. "Do not forget proper procedure, Stackhouse," Her tone was as chilly as the snowy winds on the planet's surface.

"Sorry, mam," The apology sounded genuine.

She looked back to her terminal to finish the email she was reading. My father's legacy haunts me even when I'm beyond his clutches.

"Did they estimate when they would be able to get past this storm?"

"A week or so."

"Typical," Miranda closed the email.

He shrugged. "That's what happens when you want to stay off the radar."

Miranda nodded, "Then security should begin the next rotation, since they won't be needed to unload supplies."

"We'll leave shortly. I'm letting the men finish watching the Holos," he replied, before amending. "Will that be okay, Director?"

"Are they watching the Shepard interview?"

"Yeah, can't say I don't blame 'em."

Miranda recognized the respect that slipped out of the gruff security chief. "You saw him in action didn't you, Stackhouse?"

Stackhouse straightened up immediately at the question, a look of pride on his face. "I was on one of the responding teams for Elysium. I remember walking the streets where the battle had occurred." He paused, "And I remember the bodies…" A distant look clouded his expression. "There was so many of the dead bastards. They were stacked upon each other. The piles were as tall as me."

She remembered reading similar reports from the operatives on the ground. She had seen the gruesome pictures too that had been taken. The ones that the public were never allowed to see.

"I was at Eden Prime too. We weren't one of the details that got hit the hardest, but I did see the Geth and…" he paused, with a slight shiver. "Well, I don't know what you would call those… those things, but they looked an awful lot like the creepers we have here."

"Really?" Miranda hadn't gotten the usual amount of information on Eden Prime. He doesn't want me to get distracted from my work here.

"Yeah, but the difference between the creepers and those…husks was that the husks were made on these things we ended up calling Dragon's teeth."

"Dragon's teeth?" She was familiar with the Greek mythology that surrounded the name. Her father had spared no expense in her education wanting her to be as informed on the classics as she was the present. His legacy had to be perfect. I-I had to be perfect.

"Yeah," Stackhouse shifted uncomfortably, "From what I was told by the survivors the Geth…well they impaled the colonists on these pikes and they… they transformed into these husks."

That's…horrifying, She was careful to keep her expression from cracking. She continued to wear a look of icy indifference, but inside she was squirming at the revelation of these geth made husks.

A loud siren punctured her thoughts before her office was bathed in red light.

The facility alarms had been triggered.

A voice soon crackled over their omni-tools. "This is Doctor Okana, Thorian creepers are out of control! Abandon the facility!"

"Shit!" Chief Stackhouse cursed. He was already typing on his omni-tool frantically. No doubt, trying to rally up security personnel in hopes of containing the damage. The Thorian creeper facility was the closest to the mess hall. If they were on a rampage then it would be a bloodbath to any of the unexpected off duty Cerberus workers who were there.

In order for them to reach the mess hall, they would have to pass, Miranda stopped that grim train of thought from continuing. "We need to secure the other facilities, immediately." She pushed herself from her desk, her chair whacking the wall behind her.

"I've have already sent out the alert," Stackhouse was at the door.

"Good, I'll assemble all non-security and usher them into the safe room." She pulled out her hand cannon and automated pistol.

"Meet you there."

The doors opened allowing Miranda to watch Stackhouse's head being severed from his body by a waiting creeper. Blood was spurting from the neck like a fountain while the body fell backwards, she lost track of where the head had rolled.

Without thought or hesitation, she raised her hand cannon and fired, peppering the creeper in the chest. It stumbled backwards before collapsing into the corridor.

Miranda stepped around her desk and over the headless Stackhouse. It wasn't remorse or sadness that she felt towards the man since she wasn't close to him or any of those stationed with her in this facility. No, what she felt was disappointment, because she had lost the second best fighter in this entire facility.

Before she could make it in the doorway she spotted the three oncoming creepers.

They were an unsettling sight when they were docile servants with their resemblance and similar movements to humans. They had sickly looking grayish skin with large black eyes as dark as the void itself. Their fingers more resembled knives or claws with what should've been their index finger the worst since it was a claw as long and sharp as a butcher's knife. It wasn't just their appearance that was distracting, but the noises they made. The creepers communicated with one another in low, ghoulish groans.

The speech of the dead, that was how it was described in one of the reports.

Miranda called up her biotics, feeling the pulsating energy envelop her her. She snapped her arm forward, summoning a powerful warp to the nearest creeper. It was picked off its feet to be smashed into the wall. The body exploded to shower the room in sappy blood and dried flesh.

The loss of one of their own didn't deter the remaining creepers. They pressed forward, swiping the air with their sharp and long claws, trying to wound or grab her.

She used her automated pistol to finish them off tearing through the two remaining creepers in seconds with a flurry of bullets.

Her Omni-tool buzzed with the automated voice of the facility's VI drone following it. "Facility two and three have been compromised, rachni are loose. All Cerberus personnel make for the safe room."

"Contact Cerberus Command," Miranda ordered.

"Impossible, all long range communications with Cerberus have been disabled."

"Send an encrypted distress signal through our other channel," Miranda knew there was a certain level of risk with this decision. Their second channel could easily be hacked into. That signal could hypothetically be received by any passing ship in the area.

She took the risk because this information was too important on losing. Even if it was received by a non-Cerberus vessel she liked her odds against them.

Miranda didn't stop or shudder while she made her way through the corridor when she heard the screams and the shouts of the dying. Her focus was on surviving not saving non-personnel. She kept her pistol raised and ready to fire at the slightest hint or sign of an enemy. Her omni-tool glowed. "Prepare recordings for distress signal."

"Preparing…" The VI replied.

One of the doors she just passed opened suddenly with a soft swish, Miranda spun around prepared to fire. There was no waiting creeper or attacking rachni. She realized it was the door to the mess hall. She looked inside to see the cafeteria had turned into a battlefield. The tables had been turned over to form makeshift barriers to try to repel their attackers in their desperate last stand.

It hadn't mattered. They had lost the battle.

The walls were splattered with blood dribbling down to make it look as if they were weeping. The floor was littered with limbs, and corpses, while intestines were strewn along the floor looking like still, pale snakes.

A frantic whimper stopped her from leaving. Miranda took a step forward her eyes on one of the overturned tables where she was certain the noise had come from. "Who's there?' Her pistol was drawn and ready to answer in case she didn't like the response she got.

"Director Lawson, thank God!" shouted a woman jumping out from her hiding spot. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her clothes were splattered with blood. "It was awful! Three of them came in out of nowhere before we could even react they had already killed Freddie and Ramirez."

Miranda knew the woman in front of her to be a lab assistant. "Where are they now?" She didn't want to be bothered by the details of these nameless corpses. She needed to know where those damn creepers were.

The only answer she got was a yelp.

Miranda spun around to find herself face to face with one of the creepers. The creature swiped at her abdomen, she tried to side step the attack, but the claws were still able to slash through her shirt and flesh. She winced before calling on her biotics. She directed the energy to wrap itself around the creeper, containing it in a bluish tint prison. With a move of her head, she directed the floating creeper towards the ceiling before sending it downwards with sickening speed causing it to smash into the ground turning it into a pulpy mess.

There was no moment of reprieve since there were two other creepers coming through the doorway. Miranda kept them at a distance, backpedaling while she raised her pistol to fire, without kinetic barriers or armor, the bullets easily tore through the creature's flesh.

Satisfied, for the moment of peace that got her, Miranda turned her attention to the cut on her waist. It didn't appear very deep. It appeared it had been more a graze than a slash, trying to grab her not maim her. That was a disquieting observation into the creature's motivation. She applied the right amount of medi-gel to numb the pain. The wound was already beginning to heal as a result. In a matter of hours, there wouldn't even be a scar on her flawless pale skin.

Father would never allow for a chance to let even a single blemish mar his desire for perfection.

She could hear the utterly worthless assistant crying and cowering behind one of the tables. Her incompetence had nearly cost Miranda her life. She left the mess hall without word. Unfortunately, the woman finally summoned the courage to do something, but it was only to follow Miranda like some lost puppy. She even let out the occasional whimper and sniffle. Miranda didn't look back or try to talk to her. Her attention was on her omni-tool.

"Recording is ready to begin," informed the VI.

She took a deep breath, reciting the scripted words in her head before she spoke them. "This is Doctor Miranda Lawson. I'm sending this distress signal because our facility has been attacked. We have already lost two-thirds of our staff. We are running low on supplies and will not be able to hold out much longer. We are requesting immediate assistance. Coordinates are as follows…"

"Distress signal is launched," the VI announced after a few seconds had passed when it was busy recording, processing, and then sending the signal.

The assistant whimpered. "Is someone going to come?"

"Yes," Miranda answered, "It's just a matter if we're alive when they do."