The Dresden Effect

Shepard heads off to debrief with the Illusive Man when they get back to Cerberus Station (as Shepard has taken to calling it). The plan is fairly simple, for the moment: she's to put together a team of specialists to help fight the Collectors, while the Illusive Man tries to find out where the Collectors are going to strike next. Initially, Shepard argues for getting her old team back together, but after the Illusive Man makes it clear that none of them will be able to join her, she gives up and agrees to the people the Illusive Man has suggested on the dossiers.

She's about to leave when the Illusive Man says, "Two things before you go."

She pauses. "Yeah?"

"First: head to Omega and find Dr. Mordin Solus. He's a brilliant Salarian scientist. Our intelligence suggests he may know how to counter-act the Collectors' paralyzing seeker swarms."

"Sounds good. What else?"

"I've found a pilot I think you might like," he answers. "I hear he's one of the best." He gives her a tiny, enigmatic smile. "Someone you can trust."

The connection cuts, leaving Shepard slightly confused and arching one eyebrow, glancing around a little.

After taking a moment to talk to everyone, Shepard leads the way back to the shuttles, and the group departs for Freedom's Progress without further ado.

The trip is rather lengthy; after while, Miranda finally says, "We should be arriving shortly. The Illusive Man put us under your command; do you have any orders?"

Shepard arches an eyebrow at her. "Are you sure you'll be comfortable following my orders?"

"We didn't bring you back just to second guess you, Commander," Jacob replies. "If the Illusive Man says you're in charge, then you're in charge."

Shepard narrows her eyes. "We're going to find whoever did this and take them down. Nothing gets in our way. Understood?"

"Perfectly, Commander," Miranda replies immediately.

"Good to have you with us, Shepard," Jacob adds.

A few minutes later, they arrive at Freedom's Progress, the shuttle dropping them off near an open area before a set of large doors. Shepard steps out and gazes around herself, brows knit. It's deserted, quiet, and all too eerie. Cautiously, she draws out her shotgun.

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Gunshots echo in Shepard's ears, distant and indistinct. Everything's hazy, clouded over with sleep. Something shakes... whatever she's lying on (it's soft and warm; a bed?), rocking her gently back and forth.

"Wake up, Commander!" Says a woman's voice, vaguely familiar to her; a soprano, from the sound of it, with a thick but cultured English accent. Her mind can't place the precise origin of the accent. That's okay, though, 'cause Shepard's going to ignore it and try to go back to sleep.

Another shake. Shepard blinks blearily a few times. She wants nothing more than to return to sleep.

"Shepard, do you hear me?" The woman demands. Shepard blinks her eyes open, then lets them flutter back closed. "Get out of that bed now! This facility is under attack!" The woman continues. This time, her brain is able to associate a name with the voice, and she knows she's heard it before. Miranda.

Shepard's eyes blink open at the word "Attack". A dull, aching pain is present through her entire body, and the skin on her face feels... odd. Too stretchy in places. She lifts a hand to rub her jaw and is quite alarmed to find little cuts there, not very wide but rather deep.

"Shepard. Your scars aren't healed, but I need you to get moving. This facility is under attack."

More commands from Miranda. Shepard sits up and grasps at her side as pain shoots through it, choking down a scream of pain. She glances around the room, mind taking in details; sterile white, brightly lit... like a surgical theatre? What the Hell am I doing in a surgical theatre?! There's a window in front of her, and her eyes widen as several bullets speed past it. We're under attack!

(The narration would like to note that Shepard isn't precisely coherent at the moment.)

Shepard grits her teeth against the pain and gets to her feet as Miranda informs her, "There's a pistol in the locker on the other side of the room! Hurry!" A burst of adrenalin hits Shepard's system, and she limps over to the locker, finding both the pistol Miranda mentioned and a suit of dark grey armour, the familiar N7 emblem emblazoned in white and red over the breastplate. The pain starts to recede a bit as she gingerly dons the armour, fastening each piece in place with complete assurance. Though it's heavier than the armour she's used to wearing, but after putting on armour every day for more than twelve years, the process is imprinted in her muscle memory.

The pistol is the only gun in the locker; worse, it has no ammunition. Oh, lovely, she thinks, before snapping, "This pistol doesn't have a thermal clip!"

"It's a med-bay. We'll get a clip from—" A hissing sound interrupts Miranda, causing Shepard to snap her head in the direction of the noise. "Dammit! The canisters over by the door are going to explo—"

"Got it!" Shepard interrupts, dashing behind a sturdy glass wall which is currently surrounding a set of crates.

A moment later, there's a bang and a flash of red-orange light. She stands and heads for the door, while Miranda says, "Someone's hacking security trying to kill you. Look for a thermal clip for your pistol."

Not a second after she's through the door, Shepard spots one, beside a downed security mech. "Finally," she growls to herself, picking up the clip and slapping it into the pistol. She feels naked with just one gun; she's used to having a full complement of weapons strapped to her suit, both guns and grenades.

Adrenalin is rushing through her system, erasing all traces of weariness, dulling the pain she's been feeling a little more. Exhilaration floods through her, and she grins broadly as she proceeds forward.

Shepard has intermittent dreams, from time to time. (And yes, the narration realizes this is redundant phrasing. At the moment, it doesn't care.) Mostly she dreams Harry was with her when she faced Saren. Sometimes she dreams about the Protheans. Sometimes she relives the vision from the Beacons.

Most of the time, though, she's entirely unaware of everything.

So, when blurred vision begins to return to her, she thinks she's dreaming again. The pain quickly annihilates that supposition, though. Everything in her is on fire, and not in that nice, pleasurable way either. Her breath comes in hard, shallow pants.

A female voice, soprano-pitched, with a thick English accent that Shepard can't place in her delirium, comes through the haze, faint and muffled. "There. On the monitor. Something's wrong."

"She's... reacting to outside stimuli," answers a gruff tenor. Not Harry, Shepard thinks immediately. "Showing an awareness of her surroundings." A pause. "Oh my God, Miranda... I think she's waking up..."

A blurry female figure (and, Shepard's befuddled brain somehow manages to observe, a very, very sexy female figure) hovers over her for a second on her right before turning away. "Dammit, Wilson, she's not ready yet! Give her the sedative!"

Shepard's heart is racing even faster now, far beyond even its normal, active pace. She's breathing still faster, head pounding, heart pounding, absolutely everything in agony. She tries to lift her left arm, only to have someone clamp onto her wrist and push it back down. "Shepard. Don't try to move, just lie still," the woman tells her, English-accented voice attempting to be calm and soothing. Not that it's really working. Something causes a vague pressure inside one of Shepard's arms, and her heart speeds up even more.

"Brain activity's off the charts," says the rough male voice, panic evident there. "Heart rate's still rising, stats pushing into the red zone. It's not working!"

"Another dose! Now!" The woman—Miranda?—commands, turning to face the source of the voice.

More pressure in her arm, and then Shepard's vision starts to cloud over again, voices becoming more distorted again, heart slowing its pace. She struggles to stay awake, but that soon proves to be futile.

The man breathes a sigh of relief. "Heart rate's falling. Stats going back to normal. That was too close. We almost lost her..."

"I told you your estimates were off," the woman snaps, clearly angry. "Run the numbers again." Then she turns back to Shepard, wavy brown hair falling over her shoulders. The last thing Shepard sees before the black takes her again is the woman's lovely face and eyes, violet staring into blue-grey before the void embraces her.

Harry Dresden stares down into a glass of something frothy and blue. He’s not usually an alcohol man, but dammit, he just got out of the Normandy memorial ceremony. And Shepard was declared officially dead. He thinks he deserves the chance to get blind drunk.

Joker sits at his elbow, contemplating his own neat row of shot glasses. He picks one up and raises it with splinted fingers. “To the Normandy. Fuckers.”

It’s been hard, these past few weeks. The Alliance doesn’t know what to do with a time displaced wizard, so he’s been getting shuffled around like an unwanted bag. No one wants to ask him to work for them, not so soon after Shepard was lost. They don’t want to risk pissing him off because they don’t know what he’ll do.

Joker, of all people, has stuck by him. His own post has been lost, no new one reassigned, the crew broken up and scattered. This is the first time the survivors have been together since the ambush, but Joker... he was with Harry when they saw Shepard get spaced. That’s something the rest of the crew didn’t have to endure.

And besides, Liara’s fucked off somewhere. She didn’t even come to the ceremony.

“Excuse me. Mister Moreau and Mister Dresden?”

Harry looks up, not happy to be displaced from his thoughts. The woman is beautiful, flawless. He doesn’t care. If she’s not Shepard, she can go to hell. “What?”

“I’m Miranda Lawson,” she introduces herself. Well, how nice for you. “I represent an organization that is interested in acquiring your services. Both of you.”

Joker snorts. “God, whatever. Now’s not the time, really.”

“It’s important,” she insists. “The Council isn’t going to do anything about the Reapers, and they’re still coming. Shepard recruited the best, and that’s what we need to stop them. It’s what she’ll want.”

Harry pauses, and rewinds that last bit. “What she will want?” he asks suspiciously. Shepard was just declared dead. There’s confirmation that a body was found, identified as hers. If someone tries to resurrect her with magic... he doesn’t want to see the result. But on the other hand, she wouldn’t want to be a zombie, so he might as well listen and sabotage the project if he can.

Joker’s attention is caught too, and he glances around to make sure no one else is close enough to the bar to listen in. “What the fuck are you saying?”

Miranda drops her voice. “There is a process underway that will rebuild Commander Shepard. Through cybernetics and surgery, and very careful reconstruction, we are bringing her back exactly how she was. Not only physically, but mentally as well, we hope. Once she is back on her feet, my organization is willing to give her a ship, a crew, and all the resources she needs to take down the Reapers. If you come work for us, you will be transferred to her command once she is healed.”

“Fucking done deal,” Joker says immediately.

Harry hesitates. “How do we know you’re telling us the truth? This could just be free labor to you.”

“I’ll take you to the facility where we’re rebuilding her myself,” Miranda promises. “You can have access to come down and see her whenever you’re on-base, so long as you don’t interfere with the process. You won’t be able to be in the same room as her without protective equipment until we have her immune system working, but there’s an observation room overlooking the lab.”

Harry is fully aware that by telling him this, she’s endangering the project. He could alert the Alliance and get it shut down, or confiscate her body. But she knows damn well that he can’t say no. Not to this.

“All right.”

Outside the viewport on Cerberus station, the gases that make up the surface of the system's star swirl around in almost hypnotic patterns. The edges of the star, at least from here, appear to be blue, maybe even a little purple, while the rest is warm orange and yellow. It's a strange star, and somehow that seems the perfect place for the headquarters of Cerberus.

The Illusive Man watches the star though cybernetic eyes, which glow eerily with bright blue light, even in the shadowed setting. Which is probably what makes them eerie. Middle-aged, or perhaps in his mid-fifties, his brown hair is already starting to go grey.

Miranda Lawson paces back and forth behind the holographic screens in front of the Illusive Man, barely paying attention to the sight of the multi-coloured star out the window. She's agitated. Very, very agitated.

"Shepard did everything right," she tells the Illusive Man. "More than we could've hoped for. Saving the Citadel, but leaving the Council to die. Humanity's place in the galaxy is stronger than ever. And still it's not enough."

The Illusive man lights and takes a drag from a cigarette. He knows it's not a healthy habit to be in. He doesn't care. "Humans may control the Council, but Shepard is still our best hope." He pauses. "Even if she did disappear without explanation for a year." He's read the reports Shepard made about her time in the Rift, though he's not quite sure he believes it. However, there seems to be little else in the way of explanation.

"But they're sending her to fight Geth. Geth!" Miranda turns to face the Illusive Man, stepping through the holographic screens as she does. She's a gorgeous woman, curvy, with long, wavy brown hair, blue-grey eyes, and dressed all in white and black leather that emphasizes her curves, and does it well. "We both know they're not the real threat. The Reapers are still out there."

The Illusive Man takes another, deep drag from the cigarette. "Then it's up to us to stop them." He exhales the smoke just as deeply as he took it in.

"The Council will never trust Cerberus; they'll never accept our help, even after all humanity has accomplished. But Shepard..." Miranda smirks a little. "They'll follow her. She's a hero, a bloody icon." Miranda's voice turns just a touch sad as she continues, "But she's just one woman. If we lose her, humanity may well follow."

The Illusive Man puts out the cigarette in the ashtray on the arm of his chair and leaves it there. "Then see to it that we don't lose her," he says, and his tone of voice makes it a very firm, unyielding order.
* * *
The Normandy comes out of FTL travel in the Amada system, hovering near the planet Alchera. On the command deck, the staff bustles around; one crew member passes a datapad to Dr. Chakwas, who takes it with her down to the crew deck. Navigator Pressly strides down the corridor bearing the heat load monitors, heading towards the cockpit, another datapad in his hand.

"We're wasting our time," he says, annoyance in his voice. "Four days searching up and down this cluster and we haven't found any signs of Geth activity." He stops just behind Joker, and his words are very clearly directed at the ship's helmsman.

Mun: Ael (martyfan)		Mun: Kat (darkjediprinces)
	Harry Dresden (thepizzalord)		Amarantha Shepard (fightyourfoes)
	Garrus Vakarian (turianspectre)		Tali'Zorah vas Neema (creatortalizora)
	Jeff "Joker" Moreau (brittle_wings)		Normandy SR-2 crew/Cerberus (asloyalascanbe)
	Legion (mark_5_9)		Mouse (dogasaurus_foo)
	Urdnot Grunt (iamkrogan)		Bob the Skull (pervyskullcreep)
	Harbinger/Collectors (weareharbinger)		Ebenezar McCoy (blackstaffmccoy)