The last Blood Pack mercenary fell to the ground, and Miranda breathed a small sigh of relief. They were almost done with this bloody facility. Jack could get closure, or whatever it was that she wanted, and Miranda could go somewhere more cheerful and lively. Like Ilos. Teltin unnerved her in a way that Freedom's Progress had never done. There had been no ghosts at the colony, only a vast emptiness. If she closed her eyes now, she could almost hear a child whimpering or the sound of bone breaking as it was ripped apart by an uncontrolled mass effect field.

Jack ejected the thermal clip from her pistol. The click sounded unnaturally loud in the silence. "Come on. I want to blow this Aresh's fucking head off, so I can blow this place sky high."

That was almost poetic for Jack. Miranda didn't say anything. She'd long since given up trying to enforce some sort of discipline on Jack. The girl was half-wild, like an animal lashing out at anything that came near her. She was powerful, but she wielded power that was more likely to kill her than her enemies. She'd explode in a haze of hatred and violence. Miranda intended to be far away when that happened.

Jack led the way down a long, narrow corridor that smelled of mildew and dried blood. Miranda fell in step beside Commander Shepard and stole a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. His expression was carefully neutral. Miranda frowned. She'd learned to read him over the last two months: the slight narrowing of his eyes when he was filled with righteous anger over a quarian being oppressed, the way his mouth quirked upward when he was trying not to laugh at something Garrus had said. She had no idea what he was thinking now, and it bothered her.

Rooms -- no, cells -- flanked them on either side. The door to one of the cells had been blown off its hinges, leaving the interior bare for all to see. Vegetation grew up through cracks in the floor. The walls were scarred with dents and gouges, as if someone had attempted to claw their way out, a set of bunk beds on a rickety frame was the only furniture. The mattresses were stained with dried urine and feces. That wasn't what made the bile rise in Miranda's throat; it was the size of the mattresses. They were smaller than the bed she'd slept on as a girl. The people who'd called this cell home couldn't have been more than five or six years old. For the first time, she truly understood. "They kept children here," she rasped. "How could anyone do this?"

Jack looked back at her and sneered. "You oughta know, cheerleader. You work for 'em."

No. This wasn't Cerberus. This wasn't her. This was a perversion: a handful of rogue agents twisting Cerberus' goal of strengthening humanity for their own sick ends. Miranda was no saint. She'd tortured dozens in the course of her missions and killed more, but never innocents. Never children. She hadn't experimented on them in hopes of creating some Nietzschean supermen only to discard them once they've served their purpose. That was the domain of monsters like her father. She had standards. So did the Illusive Man. That was why he'd had this facility shut down.

Jack's old room was at the end of the hall. She slapped the door control and stepped back as the door opened. Miranda tightened her grip on her pistol, half expecting to find another well-armed krogan inside. There wasn't. A middle-aged man squatted in the middle of the floor, staring at the bed pushed against the opposite wall. Miranda could only view his profile, but his face was lined and his eyes had the glassy look of someone who saw more shadows than people. "Had to be something special about her," he muttered. "Just have to figure out what."

Miranda and Shepard shared a look. He shrugged. The varren and the mercs were one thing. Neither of them knew quite what to do with this gibbering, haunted... person. Jack had no such difficulties. She aimed at his head. "Who the hell are you?"

The man rose slowly to his feet but didn't face them. "I know that voice. Subject Zero." He chuckled. "I'm Aresh. You really don't remember me?"

"No." Her words were quick -- almost too quick. You don't remember, or you don't want to?

"I remember you. Don't have a choice, really. The guards and the doctors always reminded us that this --" he gestured at the room -- "was all done for you. We were just the guinea pigs. They had to protect their precious prodigy."

Jack flew at him, gun forgotten. Her skin glowed with biotic power. "You fucking liar! I had it worse than anybody. Nobody protected me!"

Shepard pulled her back. "Stand down!"

Jack glared at him for a long moment, but finally slumped her shoulders and stepped back. Miranda suppressed a twinge of envy. She had authority, but he was authoritative. Shepard merely had to ask and people did whatever he wanted while she had to depend on unspoken threats of the wrath of the Illusive Man to get more than a cup of coffee.

"So, you were a prisoner here," Shepard said. "Why come back with an army of mercenaries?"

Aresh finally turned to face them. His eyes were filled with a wild energy. "I'm going to reopen this place and find the secret of unlocking true human biotic potential."

"What?" Miranda hadn't heard correctly. She couldn't have. Aresh had seen first hand the suffering this Project Zero had wrought. He ought to have been grateful that it was shut down. He ought to have tried to piece together a normal life, maybe become an advocate for additional safeguards in biotic training. He ought to have known better. It was the responsibility of people who'd been abused to ensure others didn't suffer the same fate.

"That's what the docs were trying to do, but they died before they got past the prototype stage. Well, I'm going to finish the job." He closed his eyes, and Miranda could almost see the scared little boy he must have been once upon a time. "Otherwise, everything we -- I -- went through will be for nothing. There had to be a good reason for all this, right?"

Jack let out a primal scream and lunged at Aresh. This time, not even Shepard was quick enough to stop her. Aresh went flying. Jack followed him, screaming curses. "Reason? The only reason Cerberus needed was that they were sick. They made you just as sick as they are." She pursed her lips. "Maybe I ought to kill you, too. Make sure all the loose ends are cleared up."

Aresh looked up at her. Blood trickled from his upper lip. "Loose end? Do I needle your conscience just a little too much? You're the one that made all this possible!"

"Shut up and die! It's what you deserve!" Jack's voice trembled with rage and something else that Miranda recognized. Grief. Guilt. Jack didn't want Aresh dead; she wanted him to go some place where he and what he represented would never hurt her. It was what she had wanted from Niket. Miranda bit her lip. She didn't like having things in common with Jack.

Shepard took a step forward and held out a hand. "Easy. You don't want to kill him. His hired guns are all dead. There's no way he can restore this facility."

Jack half laughed, half sobbed. "How do you know what I want? You don't know what I went through, what it was like."

"Don't I?" Shepard circled around to kneel beside her. When he spoke, his tone was light, almost conversational. "Cerberus screwed up my life, too. My first command was of a squad of marines sent to investigate a missing survey team on Akuze. Ever heard of it?"

She nodded. "Didn't a thresher maw kill a bunch of people or something? Don't tell me that you were there?" She almost sounded impressed

"Yeah. One of two survivors Thought it was an act of God for years, but I found out later that Cerberus set us up so they could conduct some kind of experiment. I killed one of the doctors responsible for it and would've killed more except that another guy got there first."

Miranda opened her mouth to object but thought better of it. There would be time to set the record straight later. Cerberus had nothing to do with the tragedy on Akuze. It was true that she'd sent a memo to the Illusive Man suggesting Cerberus find a way to mass produce its venom to use as a bioweapon after discovering an old STG report describing the creature. Just as well. Cerberus would have suffered too many casualties attempting to acquire one for study. She'd read the reports of marines devoured whole.Rescuers had found Shepard two days later, shivering and covered in his own blood. He hadn't spoken for a week.

"Good for you," Jack said. "This story got a point or are you going to let me get on with ripping Aresh limb from limb?

"The point is that I killed the person responsible and not the one who suffered more than I could ever imagine. Aresh is as much a victim of this as you are, and he looks like he couldn't kill a pyjak. Killing him isn't vengeance. It's murder." He placed a hand on her shoulder and forced her to face him. "That what you want?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," she said without meeting his eyes. A dozen emotions seemed to flit across her face at once. The only sound was Aresh's ragged breathing. Miranda held her breath without knowing why. It meant nothing to her whether or not one broken wreck killed another. Nothing at all. She wasn't responsible. And yet, she held her breath.

Jack bowed her head. "Whatever"She stood, and Aresh scrambled to his feet. His eyes were beginning to their focus again. "What are we going to do with him? I'm still going to blow this place up."

"Leave me here." His voice was hollow and robotic, as if he'd been replaced by a badly written VI. There's nothing left for me anymore." Before anyone could protest, he darted past them and disappeared into the darkness.

Jack watched him go. The whites of her eyes glittered faintly in the dim light. "Screw him," she whispered. "It's not my fault he's fucked up. I need to take one last look around before I set the bomb. Memories, you know?"

"Take all time you need. Miranda and I don't mind waiting in the shuttle."

Miranda didn't mind at all. She'd had enough of this place for a lifetime.

--

Miranda had two messages waiting for her when she finally returned to her quarters that evening. The first was from Oriana. It's almost stream of consciousness. Oriana hopped from topic to topic like a frog. She'd been accepted into the bioengineering program at the Lowell City Institute of Technology. Does Miranda have any advice? Her mother loved her new job as a sales agent for Binary Helix. Dad was thinking of getting a dog. The boy who worked at the coffee shop was really cute.

Miranda smiled. Her sister had the normal life she deserved; thanks to Shepard, Miranda could be a part of that life. She had no idea what to tell her about college. She'd never been to one before. Her father had engaged an army of tutors and minders to instruct his heir. She'd lived off the grid after she'd run away until she'd found Cerberus. After, there had been no time to continue her formal education. She read and talked to experts when she needed to know something for a mission or for her own edification, but that wasn't the same as pulling an all-nighter in the company of people her own age.

She didn't know what to say about the boy either. She'd never had a real relationship as a teenager. Her father had seen to that as well. He'd always had her monitored and made sure she was never alone. God forbid that she needed some boy and ruined his plans for a genetic dynasty. Sex, she understood. She'd used it to manipulate, to relieve stress, to have fun. But the schoolgirl crushes and dinner dates that she sincerely hoped were the limits of her sister's experience with the opposite sex were as foreign to her as rachni. Maybe that was why she kept making a fool of herself in front of Shepard when they were alone. Her inner teenager was taking revenge for decades of neglect.

She settled for asking what breed of dog Oriana's father wanted.

The second message was an encrypted transmission from Cerberus command. It merely confirmed what she already knew: the facility on Teltin had gone rogue. A troubleshooting team had already been dispatched to purge it at the time of the mass breakout. They'd arrived to find most of the staff dead, along with a small army of frightened and confused children. The children had received medical treatment along with a mild amnesiac and passed off as survivors of a batarian slave raid. Cerberus had, as always, made the best of a bad situation.

The door opened, and Jack sauntered in. Her gaze swept around the room. She hadn't changed her clothes and still wore nothing above the waist except those ridiculous bills belts that barely covered her breasts. Miranda knew the value of subtle and provocative clothing. It let you catch most men (and some women) off guard and made it easier to sway them to your cause. There was nothing subtle about Jack's attire though, merely tasteless. Miranda arranged her face into a facsimile of a polite smile. "Can I help you?"

Jack didn't answer right away. She picked up a datapad lying on the corner of the desk and examined it. "'Nielsen and Objektivering: A new approach?' What the hell does that mean?"

"It's a copy of a lecture given at the University of Leipzig. You wouldn't understand a word." Miranda leaned forward in her chair and steepledher fingers. "I'll ask you again: can I help you?"

"I'd tell you to keep your shirt on except to barely do that anyway. Just admiring the view. Nice place you got here. This how you spend the blood money that Cerberus pays you? How many kids do you have to torture to earn a place like this?"

This again. "I didn't torture them. Neither --"

"-- did Cerberus. You sound like a canary, always singing the same old song." She closed the distance between them and leaned in close enough that Miranda could have spit in her face. She didn't. "Well, I've got news for you, cheerleader. They did. The guards even had the logo on their uniforms."

Miranda sighed. She could feel the pressure beginning to build behind her temples. "Project Zero went well beyond mission parameters. What you and the other children endured was neither sanctioned nor condoned by the Illusive Man. Cerberus was not responsible in any way. She shifted her terminal slightly so that Jack could read the screen. "Read this if you don't believe me."

"I don't need to. It's just more political bullshit from your precious Illusive Man, and you keep swallowing it. I bet it's not the only thing from him that you swallow."

Every muscle in Miranda's body tensed. Jack wasn't the first person to accuse her of sleeping her way to the top, but it still rankled. Jealous colleagues took one look at her and thought she didn't deserve to be in charge. They were right in their way. She hadn't earned her position. Everything that made her a valuable agent was due to her genetic tailoring and she had demonstrated her usefulness to Cerberus time and again -- but not on her back. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response."

"That's the same as admitting it. Just say you're a Cerberus whore already. The only reason you're on this mission is because you're fucking the boss. I'll bet you're fucking the commander, too." Jack smirked at her. "It would explain why he's always coming in here and why he can't seem to take a step off this ship without dragging you along. Personally, I don't see why he doesn't just visit one of those asari brothels. They know how to show a person a good time."

Rage poured through her like ice water. "I am not sleeping with Commander Shepard." He was attracted to her, that she knew. His gaze lingered on her a little too long when she entered the room. He leaned in a little too close when he spoke to her. But at least he had the grace to try to be subtle about it, unlike most of the crew. And he spoke to her like he was actually interested in what she had to say. He didn't mock her for her insecurities. He was the one who had urged her to introduce herself to Oriana. He wouldn't treat her like that if all he wanted was sex. Would he? "He and I are very good friends. Not that you'd know anything about that. At least I don't let everyone who's ever tried to get close to me die."

Jack staggered back as if she'd been slapped. "Wha -- what are you talking about?"

Miranda smiled. Her words had been blurted out in anger, but it felt good to be on the attack. "I've read your file. I know everything about you. I know about that little recording your last partner left you. He'd loved you. He was going to build a house for the two of you. And you let him die."

She felt the pain of the datapad striking her in the face before she saw it leaving Jack's hands. Blood trickled down her face. The force was enough to activate the lecture's supplementary audio component, and strains of the Wind Quartet filled the air. Jack wasn't done. Her skin was glowing again, and she shot a ball of biotic force at Miranda "You bitch!"

Miranda knocked it aside and stood. Biotic combat was like judo. Victory rarely went to the person with the most strength. It went to the person who had control over their emotions and Miranda was nothing if not in control. "Let's see how you like it." She readied her own attack. Not much. Just enough to break every bone in her body.

Jack was faster. "Touch me, and I will smear the walls with you, bitch!" She picked up a chair and threw it at Miranda's head. She sidestepped, and the chair slammed into the wall instead.

"What the hell is going on here?"

She and Jack both turned. Commander Shepard stood in the doorway. His uniform was slightly rumpled, as if he'd donned it in a great hurry, and water plastered his hair to his scalp. Behind him, Crewmen Goldstein and Hawthorne were trying and failing to loiter inconspicuously. It was a miracle that Goldstein was able to keep his tongue in his mouth. Men. Though she thought she wouldn't mind so much if Shepard had trouble. It was preferable to him being angry. People tended to die when Shepard was angry.

Jack whipped her head toward him. "The cheerleader still won't admit that what Cerberus did to me was wrong." She sent another wave of energy toward Miranda.

Miranda batted it away. "Now who's 'singing the same old song?' That wasn't Cerberus, not really." She could feel the anger pool in her gut, cold and deadly. "But clearly you were a mistake."

The barb hit home, as Miranda thought it might. Jack's nostrils flared as she closed the distance between them. "Screw you! You have no idea what I went through." She smiled slightly, and Miranda felt her skin grow cold. "Maybe it's time I showed you. I think I'd enjoy hearing you scream."

This time Miranda did spit in her face.

Shepard dashed forward and grabbed Jack roughly by the shoulders to spin her around. His eyes were dark, hard, and glittering. For the first time, Miranda could see, could really see the man who had defeated an entire asari commando unit and slain the Thorian. A different sort of chill passed over her. "When you agreed to work for me, you agreed to be part of a Cerberus mission." He said. "If you ever threaten a member of this crew again, I will personally throw you out the airlock. Is that clear?"

They stared at each other, "Fuck this," Jack muttered under her breath. "I don't need either of you two lovebirds. You can screw each other on the desk for all I care." She stormed out.

Miranda watched her go and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "Thank you. I'm sorry you had to see that. I should have been able to take care of her before you got here."

"No problem."

"Liar." She smiled despite herself. "You look like you just got out of the shower."

"Maybe." He peered at her face. "Is that blood? I can have Dr. Chakwas run some medigel over."

"I'll be fine." She'd been thrown off a two-story building, shot in the leg, and nearly burned alive by a batarian terrorist. The same batarian terrorist. A small cut from a datapad was nothing. She wiped her forehead. "I'd recommend having Jack watched though. Most of the crew isn't as resilient as I am, and she does seem to be unusually irrational and violent lately."

Shepard shook his head. "I don't blame her for being pissed. Cerberus did screw up her life. But I will never let a member of this crew come to harm if I can help it. Especially--" He blushed and dropped his gaze to the floor. "Especially now. We're going to have to be at full strength if we want to survive this."

Well, at least she wasn't the only one in this...relationship who tripped over her words. Sheepish was a good look for him. He should try it more often. It made him look like more of an ordinary man and less like a legend. They were on even footing for once. "It's unfortunate that rogue cells have given Cerberus such a bad name."

"Are they rogue? If ninety percent of an organization is rotten, they stop being rogue." He crossed the room to stare out the window. "I remember the first time I heard the name Cerberus. Admiral Kahoku was scared for his life. I saw the needle marks on his body. He was tortured before he was killed. And that's just the beginning." He counted on his fingers. "An Alliance listening post was nearly wiped out by a species that supposed to be extinct. A human colony was wiped out and turned into husks. Don't forget Akuze. I know I won't."

Akuze. It always came back to Akuze. Miranda moved to stand in front of him. This was the other Commander Shepard: the man who had had to send one of his friends to their death to stop a cure for the genophage and had to choose to let an entire colony be wiped out rather than let a terrorist go free and kill even more the next time. This was the Shepard who had seen his entire unit wiped out during his first command. This was the Shepard who would never quite succeed. "But you killed the people responsible. Though you never struck me as the sort of person to take revenge. You're too bloody noble for your own good half the time." She chuckled, hoping to make him laugh and get out of his dark mood.

He didn't laugh. "Revenge was as close as I get to justice. Killing Wayne was the least I could do for my squad. I don't suppose you knew him?"

"Wayne?" She searched her memory and found something. "Wilson used to talk about an Elijah Wayne. They went to med school together and worked on some bioengineering projects for Cerberus together. Thick as thieves, to hear him tell it. Might explain why he tried to kill you. A traitor and a rogue agent. What a pair. And the people who were responsible for Akuze were rogue." She took his hand in hers. He didn't pull away. "What we're doing, stopping the Collectors, saving the galaxy, that's the real Cerberus. I'm the real Cerberus. One day, I'll make you see that."

"You're wrong." He cupped her cheek with his free hand. His fingers were long and slightly calloused. His breath caressed her face, and Miranda felt her own breathing grow labored. All she had to do was move her head a fraction of an inch, and she could kiss him if she wanted to. There was a very good reason why she shouldn't, but she couldn't think of it. She couldn't think of anything at all. She wondered if this was how Oriana felt about the boy at the coffee shop. "You aren't the real Cerberus."

The spell broke. Miranda dropped his hand and stepped back. How dare he say that she wasn't truly Cerberus? She had devoted her entire adult life to them. She had killed for them. She believed in the Illusive Man's vision of a strong and independent humanity just like her father believed in his own perfection. "I am." She tried to keep the venom from her voice. It didn't work.

"No." His voice was soft and a little sad. "You're too good for them." And with that, he walked out.