Weapon X Part 4

 The Marrat Massacre

The Kodiak’s bay doors hissed open, and the scorched, sulfurous air of the desert floor rushed in. Susan took a sharp, steadying breath, the weight of the new gauntlets a comforting presence on her forearms. She was about to step out when she felt a firm, gentle hand on her arm.

She turned to find Ashley looking at her, eyes searching, full of a fierce, protective love. Ash leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to Susan's cheek, and whispered, "Don’t hold back, my warrior. Give them hell."

Susan felt a spark of that internal fire—the controlled version—flicker in her chest. She gave Ash a confident wink. "I’ll try and leave some for you."

She leaped from the shuttle, hitting the red sand in a low crouch. The Kodiak banked hard, its engines roaring as it sped toward the second drop point to deposit the rest of the team. Susan didn't wait. She rose and began to sprint, her boots eating up the distance to the canyon entrance with an unnatural, heavy speed that only the adamantium strengthened muscle could provide.

The Lone Assault

Inside the shuttle, the silence was heavy. James Vega was checking his thermal clips, but he caught the look on Ashley’s face—a mix of dread and raw nerves. He nudged her shoulder as he pulled his helmet on.

"Hey, Sparks. Don't sweat it. Boss is basically bulletproof at this point. Those Cerberus punks don't know the mountain is coming for 'em."

Ashley managed a weak smile, checking her own rifle. "True. But it doesn't stop me from being nervous, James. Let's get into position."

The shuttle touched down, and the trio spilled out, moving with practiced N7 precision toward the flank. As soon as Kaidan signaled the "Ready" on the comms, the entire canyon erupted.

Shepard’s perspective was a blur of high-velocity violence. The moment she hit the first perimeter line, she didn't take cover. She became the cover. A Cerberus turret opened up, the heavy rounds sparking harmlessly off her kinetic barriers and the reinforced plating of her chest. She didn't fire back. She charged.

With a mental flick, her blades shucked out. She reached the turret in seconds, her reinforced fist smashing through the armoured casing before she sheared the entire assembly off its mount with a single, brutal horizontal sweep of her gauntlet.

Then came the first shield generator. It was protected by a squad of Cerberus Centurions. Shepard didn't stop. She vaulted over a barricade, her increased mass making the landing a literal shockwave that knocked the nearest soldier off his feet. She caught a Centurion by the throat, his armour crunching under her grip like a tin can, and threw him into his comrades.

She reached the generator's core. She didn't use an omni-tool bypass. She unclipped a high-explosive grenade, jammed it directly into the cooling vent, and kicked the entire housing. The explosion was a beautiful, deafening roar of blue energy as the first sector's shields collapsed.

Thirty minutes later, the battle had turned into a nightmare for Cerberus. Shepard was a ghost in the smoke. She moved through the facility's corridors like a tectonic plate, smashing through reinforced doors that should have required C4. She cornered a Cerberus Atlas mech in the secondary courtyard. As the mech tried to bring its cannon to bear, she dove under its legs, grabbed the hydraulic piston of the knee joint, and ripped it out. As the machine toppled, she leaped onto the cockpit glass, her adamantium blades screaming as they carved a 'V' into the reinforced canopy before she dropped a grenade inside.

The Regroup

Forty minutes after the initial drop, Ashley, Kaidan, and Vega fought their way through the decimated flank to the central plaza. They were prepared for a firefight, but what they found stopped them in their tracks.

The plaza was a graveyard of Cerberus tech. A burning tank hissed nearby, its turret melted and lopsided. In the centre of the carnage, Shepard was leaning casually against the tank's tread.

As the squad drew closer, the "amazing" part of Shepard's appearance quickly gave way to the "horrified."

It wasn't just paint scuffs. The heavy ceramic plating on her shoulders was shattered, and several large-caliber rounds had punched jagged, smoking holes right through the N7 chest piece. Dark, oxygenated blood seeped from a puncture in her side, but as Ashley watched, the flow didn't just slow—it stopped. The skin beneath the torn fabric knit together with a faint, wet sound, the nanites and her biological acceleration working in a frantic, visible harmony.

Shepard reached up and ripped a piece of useless, sparking metal from her shoulder. "Shield generators are fried," she grunted, tossing the scorched component into the dirt. "Took a direct hit from a disruptor pulse near the third tower. My barriers are down to twenty percent and cycling slow."

She looked down at the hole in her thigh where a sniper round had passed clean through. The exit wound was already closing into smooth skin. "Armour's compromised, too. The plates are taking too much structural stress."

"Susan... you're bleeding from a dozen places," Kaidan said, his voice dropping an octave in concern. He reached for his medigel, but Shepard held up a hand.

"Don't waste it. I’m already healing," she said, though the strain was visible in the tightness of her jaw. "But the kinetic dampeners in the suit are shot. The next few levels, I’m going to be feeling every hit."

The pouch on her hip was empty. Two of the massive, tower-like shield generators were missing entirely, reduced to smoking craters in the canyon wall. She was calmly reloading her Tempest submachine guns, the mechanical click-clack of the thermal clips the only sound in the sudden silence.

She looked up, seeing the stunned faces of her team. A slow, lopsided grin—the one Ashley loved and feared—spread across her face.

"What took you so long?" she asked, her voice a bit gravelly from the smoke. "I was starting to think I’d have to finish the interior on my own."

Vega let out a low whistle, looking at the decimated tank. "Remind me never to get on your bad side, Loco. You did all this with just those stickers on your hands?"

Ashley stepped forward, her eyes scanning Susan for any real injuries. Finding none, she let out a shaky breath, a smirk finally touching her lips. "I told you to leave some for us, Sue. You’re a terrible listener."

Shepard stood up, the light of the burning facility reflecting in her clear, focused eyes. "The source code is in the sub level. Let’s go end this."

The Descent

They moved into the elevator, the air growing colder as they descended into the sub-levels where the "Pheonix" source code was housed. The elevator groaned, the lights flickering between white and a warning amber.

"EDI," Shepard spoke into her comms, "status on the facility's internal sensors."

"Commander, the destruction of the exterior generators has triggered a local lockdown. Security forces are converging on the main lab. Be advised, my scans show a high concentration of biotic dampeners in the lower halls. Lieutenant Alenko's abilities may be suppressed."

Kaidan cursed under his breath. "They knew we'd come for the data."

The elevator doors shuddered open to reveal a long, sterile white corridor. But it wasn't empty. At the far end stood a figure Shepard recognized from the dossiers. Jacob Taylor, his face set in a grim mask of duty, stood behind a reinforced glass partition, flanked by two Cerberus Phantoms whose swords hummed with a lethal, shimmering energy.

"Commander," Jacob's voice echoed through the hallway's intercom. "You shouldn't have come here. You're a miracle of science, but you're a rogue element now. The Illusive Man wants you brought back—intact or in pieces."

Shepard stepped out of the elevator, her heavy boots thudding on the tile. Without her shields, the air felt dangerously thin around her. She looked at the Phantoms, then at the reinforced door.

"Jacob," Shepard called out, her voice cold and devoid of any lingering fatigue. "I'm going to give you one chance to walk away. You saw what I did to the tanks outside. Imagine what I’ll do to a man."

Jacob didn't move. He tapped a console, and a series of ceiling-mounted turrets dropped down, tracking the squad. "I have my orders, Shepard. Protect the code at all costs."

Shepard didn't wait for him to finish. She turned to Ashley and Kaidan. "Stay behind me. Cover the flanks. I’m going through the middle."

"Sue, your shields are nearly gone!" Ashley yelled, raising her Avenger.

"Then I'll just have to move faster," Shepard replied.

She lunged.

The turrets opened up instantly. Without her barriers to deflect the rounds, the sound of lead hitting her armour and flesh was sickeningly clear—a rhythmic thwip-thwip-thack. She didn't flinch. Every bullet that entered her body was met by the adamantium mesh and the immediate, aggressive repair of her cells. She was a biological juggernaut, a woman of blood and silver sprinting through a storm of fire.

She reached the first Phantom before the assassin could even blink. The Phantom's monomolecular blade swung in a deadly arc, slicing deep into Shepard’s forearm. Shepard didn't pull back; she used the injury to trap the blade against her bone, then drove her gauntlet-encased fist—blades extended—straight through the Phantom's chest plate.

The second Phantom lunged, but a burst of fire from Ashley’s rifle knocked the assassin off balance. Shepard pivoted, her shotgun coming up in one hand. BOOM. The Scimitar roared, the recoil absorbed by her reinforced shoulder as the Phantom was blasted back against the wall.

Shepard stood in the centre of the hall, several new bullet holes weeping red on her armour, her breathing heavy but rhythmic. She looked at the glass partition where Jacob was frantically entering a self-destruct sequence.

"Kaidan! The console!" she barked.

Kaidan dove for the side terminal, his fingers flying. "I'm on it! I can stall the wipe, but I need you to break that encryption—physically!"

Shepard looked at the reinforced, three-inch-thick blast glass separating them from the main lab. She didn't reach for a grenade. She pulled back her right fist, the adamantium gauntlet shimmering, and focused every ounce of her rage and strength into a single point.

"Get back!" she roared.

The Shattered Seal

Shepard roared, a guttural sound torn from deep in her chest. She pulled back her right fist, the adamantium gauntlet shimmering with latent power, and focused every ounce of her rage and strength into a single point.

"Get back!" she commanded, her voice raw.

Ashley and Kaidan instinctively dove for cover as Shepard launched herself at the reinforced blast glass. Her fist connected with the almost imperceptible thwumph of a kinetic impactor, but instead of just cracking, the entire three-inch-thick partition detonated.

A massive explosion of glass shards erupted inward, propelled by the sheer force of the impact. The air shrieked, and a deafening wave of sound blasted through the corridor. The shards, each one a razor-edged projectile, ripped through the console and the air beyond, embedding themselves into the walls of the main lab.

Jacob Taylor, standing behind the console, had barely a second to react. The force of the impact slammed him backward, but before he could even register the pain, Shepard was through the now-empty frame of the window.

She moved with terrifying speed, her right gauntlet still extended, blades gleaming. As Jacob stumbled, his hand still on the self-destruct trigger, Shepard’s claws ripped through the air, surgically precise despite her berserker fury. With a sickening wet tear, Jacob's right hand was severed clean from his wrist, still clutching the console. The hand, with its mangled fingers, fell to the floor, triggering a geyser of blood.

Shepard didn't stop. Her blades continued their arc, bisecting the console itself with a shower of sparks and severed wires. The data wipe sequence vanished from the screen, replaced by the grim "ERROR: SYSTEM OFFLINE." The self-destruct timer blinked once, then went dark.

Her eyes, blazing with an internal fire, were fixed on Jacob, who was now screaming, clutching his spurting stump. She raised her left gauntlet, blades extended, intent on finishing what she started. Her posture was that of a predator, coiled and ready to strike.

"SUE! NO!"

Ashley's voice, piercing through the ringing in Shepard's ears, was the only thing that could have broken through the red haze. It was her pet name, a soft, human sound, a desperate plea for control.

The roar of rage in Shepard's mind fractured. The image of Ashley's face flashed, pushing back the primal fury. Her arm, already arcing down, froze mid-strike. She shuddered, the raw, violent energy that had just demolished the wall receding, leaving her trembling with the effort of holding it back.

She glared at Jacob, who was now collapsed on the floor, bleeding profusely. With a snarl of disgust, Shepard grabbed him by the throat with her undamaged left hand and, with a surge of strength, threw him back down the corridor toward Kaidan.

"Kaidan! Get him on a stretcher! Make sure he doesn't bleed out! I still need him to talk!"

Kaidan, still wide-eyed from the raw display of force, scrambled to secure Jacob, applying emergency medi gel to the severed limb. Ashley rushed up to Shepard, gently placing a hand on her armoured shoulder, her eyes full of concern. Shepard took a deep, shuddering breath, her chest still heaving. She turned from the chaos of the main lab, giving the now-silent Jacob one last, withering glare, then kicked the main lab doors, which had been previously sealed by the lockdown, open with a single, brutal boot. The heavy metal groaned on its hinges.

The Valkyrie Revealed

The interior of the lab was sterile, brightly lit, and utterly chilling. It wasn't just a data storage facility. This was a breeding ground.

Along the walls, behind reinforced glass panels, stood dozens of humanoid figures in various stages of development. Some were skeletal forms immersed in nutrient vats, others more fully formed, their bodies crisscrossed with glowing biometric cables. Each tank had a designation: "Project Valkyrie: Subject Alpha-7," "Subject Beta-12," and so on.

The main console in the centre of the lab was intact. Kaidan, having stabilized Jacob, rushed in and began downloading the files. Ashley stood by Shepard, her hand still on her shoulder, both staring at the horrifying display.

"My god, Sue," Ashley whispered, her voice barely audible. "Svetlana wasn't just developing the nanite triggers... she was creating an army of you."

Shepard walked slowly toward one of the tanks. Inside, a pale, female figure floated, her eyes closed, skin smooth and unmarred. But the bone structure, the subtle contours of the face, were eerily familiar. It was a perfect genetic replica of herself.

"No," Shepard growled, her voice tight with a cold fury far deeper than the rage she'd purged in the simulator. "She wasn't creating an army of me. She was trying to create an army of replacements."

Kaidan finished the data download, his face pale as he read the summary. "Commander... it's worse. These are not just clones. Svetlana was attempting to transfer consciousness. To upload a copy of your mind, your memories, into these bodies if the original 'asset' became compromised. 'Project Valkyrie' was her failsafe. If she lost you, she would just upload a new 'Shepard' into a new body."

Shepard stared at the clone, then at the severed wires of the destroyed console, where the self-destruct had been stopped. A dark, terrifying thought solidified in her mind.

"She wasn't trying to save me. She was trying to own me," Shepard said, her voice laced with venom. "And if she couldn't own me, she'd make a new one." She turned to Kaidan. "Is the data secure?"

"Yes, Commander. Everything. Schematics, genetic markers, consciousness transfer protocols... it's all ours."

"Good," Shepard replied, her eyes sweeping over the rows of frozen, lifeless duplicates. "Then let's make sure this project dies with its creator's ambitions."

She raised her modified Scimitar shotgun. The first shot shattered the glass of a clone tank, spilling nutrient fluid onto the floor. The clone within slumped, lifeless. Ashley and Kaidan knew what they had to do. They joined her, systematically destroying every tank, every vat, every piece of research data, ensuring that "Project Valkyrie" would never see the light of day.

The systematic destruction of the lab was nearly complete. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, shattered glass, and the chemical tang of spilled nutrient fluid.

"Commander, I've got a bypass into the thermal core," Kaidan called out from a secondary terminal. "James and I can daisy-chain the self-destruct. It’ll level the whole canyon. Five minutes."

"Do it," Shepard rasped, her voice sounding like grinding stone.

She began to turn toward the exit, but then she froze. Her hearing, sharpened by the nanites to a supernatural degree, picked up a sound that shouldn't have been there. Amidst the hiss of steam and the crackle of shorting electronics, there was a shuddering, wet breath. Ashley saw the change in Susan’s posture immediately—the way her head tilted, tracking a sound in the back of the lab. Ashley followed, her Avenger raised, her heart hammering against her ribs.

Behind a fallen piece of ceiling tile and a shattered cooling unit, they found her.

One of the tanks had been cracked by the earlier glass detonation, but not fully destroyed. The fluid had drained out slowly rather than bursting. Inside, a woman—a perfect, terrifying mirror image of Susan—lay curled on the floor of the tank. She was trembling violently, her skin a deathly, translucent white. As Susan approached, the clone’s eyes fluttered open. They weren't the icy, predatory eyes of the weapon they were wide, dark, and filled with a raw, primal terror. She looked up at Shepard, her double, and her lip trembled. She was shivering so hard her teeth rattled. Slowly, with a coordination that seemed fragile and new, she gingerly held out a hand toward the Commander.

"Please... help me," the clone whispered, her voice a thin, raspy thread of sound.

Susan’s finger tightened on the trigger of her Tempest. This was the "Replacement." This was the thing Svetlana wanted to use to erase her. She saw thin, shallow cuts on the clone's raised arm from the glass—red and angry. Susan waited for them to knit together, for the silver glow of the nanites to seal the skin.

The cuts remained open. The blood didn't stop.

She wasn't a weapon. She was just a girl. She had Susan's face and Susan's DNA, but she didn't have the adamantium or the rage. She was the version of Susan Shepard that might have been if the world hadn't been so cruel—vulnerable and human.

The hatred in Susan’s chest flickered and died, replaced by a fierce, protective instinct. She slammed her submachine gun back into its magnetic holster.

"Ash, get that lab coat!" Susan barked.

She reached onto a nearby hook, snatched a heavy white lab coat, and wrapped it around the shivering woman. Then, with a tenderness that made Ashley’s throat tighten, Susan reached into the tank and lifted the clone into her arms. The girl weighed almost nothing compared to the dense, metallic weight of Susan’s own body.

The Escape

When Shepard stepped back into the main corridor carrying her own double, the reaction was instantaneous.

"Jesus, Loco!" Vega yelled, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. "Is that... is she...?"

"She's a survivor," Shepard said, her tone brook no argument. "Kaidan, tell me that timer is running."

"Thirty seconds, Commander! We have to move!"

The squad sprinted through the facility, Shepard carrying the clone like a precious, fragile cargo. They reached the elevator, then the surface, where the red sun of Marrat was beginning to dip below the horizon. The Kodiak was already there, hovering inches above the sand, its door open and engine screaming.

They scrambled aboard. Shepard sat on the floor of the shuttle, cradling the clone against her chest to keep her warm. Ashley sat right beside them, her hand resting on Susan’s shoulder, her gaze alternating between the woman she loved and the broken mirror image in her arms.

"Mark!" Kaidan shouted over the comms to the pilot.

The Kodiak banked hard and accelerated, pulling away from the canyon at maximum thrust. A second later, the ground beneath the facility buckled. A blinding pillar of white light erupted from the earth as the thermal core went critical. A massive, rolling shockwave of fire and dust consumed the base, vaporizing Svetlana’s laboratory and every remaining secret within it.

As the warm wind of the detonation washed over the shuttle’s hull, rattling the frame, the silence inside the bay was absolute. Shepard looked down at the girl in her arms. The clone had closed her eyes again, her breathing shallow but steadying as she felt the heat from Susan's body.

"We're going home," Susan whispered, more to herself than anyone else.

Ashley leaned over and pressed her forehead against Susan's. "We're going home," she echoed.

The Kodiak broke the atmosphere, the sky turning from red to the infinite, comforting black of space, setting a course for the Normandy and the reckoning that was still to come.

The Reckoning in Med bay

The doors to the Normandy’s Medbay hissed open with a violent snap. Admiral Svetlana Shepard, already pale and confined to her recovery bed, looked up—and the breath died in her throat.

Susan Shepard marched in, a vision of absolute carnage. She was drenched in a mixture of red blood and blue nutrient fluid, her armour shattered and weeping steam. But it was what she carried that froze Svetlana’s heart. Susan gently placed the trembling, teenage girl onto a spare medical bed.

"Chakwas! Look after her. Now!" Susan barked.

Dr. Karin Chakwas didn't ask questions; the shock on her face was quickly replaced by decades of professional discipline as she rushed to the girl's side.

A moment later, the door cycled again. Kaidan shoved a mangled, one-handed Jacob Taylor into the room, forcing him into a chair. Ashley followed close behind, her face flushed, brushing sweat-damp hair back from her eyes.

Svetlana’s eyes darted frantically from the bleeding Taylor to the teenage girl on the bed, but they eventually snapped back to Susan, who was approaching her with a slow, predatory gait. Susan stopped inches from Svetlana’s face, her voice a terrifyingly dead, hollow rasp.

"I wasn't good enough for you that you needed to make replacements?"

The arrogance that had sustained Svetlana for days finally shattered. Her eyes went wide, reflecting the blood-streaked face of the sister she had betrayed.

Susan’s body began to vibrate, the nanites humming with a high-pitched, lethal frequency as her claws extended slowly, inch by inch, from her gauntlets.

"I looked after you," Susan panted, sweat and blood dripping from her chin onto Svetlana’s sheets. "My younger sister... I loved you. And you didn't just give me up for torture. You didn't just let them twist my body, knowing exactly what they would do... you created copies of me in case you had to dispose of the original!"

Susan leaned in, her blades hovering over Svetlana’s throat. "You didn't want a sister. You wanted a product."

With a snarl, Susan raised her fist, the blades gleaming under the surgical lights, ready to plunge them into Svetlana’s chest.

"SUE! STOP!" Ashley’s voice was a whip-crack, echoing off the metallic walls. She lunged forward, grabbing Susan’s armoured arm with both hands. "Stop, please! If you kill her, we lose everything! We need her alive for the trial, for Hackett, for the truth!"

The tip of the centre blade pierced Svetlana’s skin, drawing a single, bright bead of blood from her sternum. Susan froze, her muscles locked in a titanic struggle between the biological urge to kill and the voice of the woman she loved.

She leaned in one last time, whispering so low only Svetlana could hear: "She kept you alive."

Susan retracted her blades with a sharp clack, stepped back, and stalked out of the med bay without a backward glance, heading straight for the Simulator Suite on Deck 5 to bury her rage in holographic ghosts.

The Interrogation

The silence left in Susan's wake was heavy. Ashley and Kaidan didn't give Svetlana a moment to breathe. They moved in like wolves.

"Start talking, Admiral," Kaidan said, his voice cold as ice. "Project Valkyrie. How does it tie into Phoenix? How many more labs are there?"

Terrified and seeing the monster she had created nearly end her life, Svetlana spilled everything. She spoke of the "Resurrection Protocol," how Valkyrie was designed to ensure the Alliance—or Cerberus—never lost their greatest tactical asset. Taylor, clutching his bandaged stump, added details about the encryption keys and the locations of the remaining mobile lab ships, hoping his cooperation might save him from the airlock.

While they worked, James Vega, now showered and in his clean fatigues, stepped into the med bay. He walked over to where Dr. Chakwas was scanning the clone.

"How is she, Doc?" Vega asked softly.

Chakwas looked up, her expression a mix of scientific fascination and deep moral disgust. "Physically? She is a perfect genetic copy of Susan Shepard at approximately seventeen years of age. She hasn't been augmented with the adamantium or the nanite triggers yet."

The Doctor paused, turning a diagnostic screen toward Vega. "But look at this, James. These are her brain waves. They aren't just similar... they are an identical match to Commander Shepard’s EEG readings from before her capture six months ago. The 'Consciousness Transfer' Svetlana mentioned... it worked. This girl doesn't just look like Susan. She is Susan. Or at least, she’s the version of Susan that existed before Cerberus broke her."

Vega looked at the sleeping girl, then turned a look of pure, unadulterated loathing toward Svetlana and Taylor.

"Is there no depth you people won't sink to?" he growled, his hands balling into fists. "You stole her life, and then you tried to bottle the leftovers."

A Warning from the Frontier

The War Room hummed as Kaidan Alenko activated the Quantum Entanglement Communicator. The blue particles swirled into the life-sized, flickering image of Colonel Alec Ryder. The N7 legend looked tired, his brow furrowed as he stood in a darkened room somewhere in the fringe systems.

"Lieutenant Alenko," Ryder’s voice crackled through the quantum link. "I’ve seen the news. Arcturus is screaming 'high treason.' Every Alliance channel has branded the Normandy a rogue element. What the hell happened?"

"Colonel, we found the rot," Kaidan said, his face illuminated by the blue glow. "Admiral Svetlana Shepard wasn't just working with Cerberus; she was the architect of Project Phoenix. We just returned from a Marrat asteroid base. We have the data, the source code, and we have the Admiral in our medbay."

Ryder’s eyes widened. "You captured her? That’s a bold play, son. But Arcturus is already spinning it as a kidnapping by a mentally unstable Commander Shepard."

"It’s worse than that, sir," Kaidan said, his voice dropping. "I’m sending you a packet now. It included details of Project Phoenix and Project Valkyrie. They were cloning the Commander to create replaceable, controllable super-soldiers. They even mapped her pre-capture consciousness."

The data transferred in a blur of light. Ryder looked off-screen as he scanned the initial headers. Even through the low-res hologram, Kaidan could see the Colonel’s jaw tighten. "God in heaven... this is a war crime on a galactic scale."

"We need you to get this to Admiral Hackett," Kaidan urged. "But we can't trust standard comms. They'll intercept it."

Ryder looked back at Kaidan, his expression grim. "Listen to me, Alenko. You and the Commander need to vanish. Go to ground in the Terminus Systems or the Traverse. Don't respond to any Alliance hails. I’ll study this data and find a way to reach Hackett through a secure N7 courier. If I go to him now, they might scrub both of us. Stay hidden. Ryder out."

The hologram collapsed into sparks. Kaidan leaned against the map table, the weight of being a fugitive finally sinking in.

The Simulator: Purging the Red

On Deck 5, the Simulation Suite was screaming.

Susan Shepard was a whirlwind of steel. She wasn't using guns. She was moving through a swarm of holographic Cerberus shock troops with nothing but her hands. Every time a holographic Phantom lunged, Susan didn't just parry; she tore. Her mind was a chaotic loop of Svetlana’s face and the terrified eyes of the girl in the med bay.

“I wasn't good enough for you?” The thought fueled a brutal roundhouse kick that vaporized a holographic trooper.

“She kept you alive.” A double-handed strike shattered the chest of a simulated Atlas mech.

She fought until her lungs burned and the floor was slick with sweat. Finally, the "Simulation Over" chime rang out. Susan stood in the centre of the room, panting, the red haze finally receding. She looked down at herself.

Her custom N7 armour the suit the armoury team had spent weeks on—was a total loss. The plates were cracked, riddled with holes, and stained with dried blood and nutrient fluid. The Quartermaster, who had been watching from the booth, stepped out with a look of pure devastation. "Commander... the suit..."

Susan didn't look up. She began unbuckling the shattered plates, letting them fall to the deck with heavy, metallic thuds. Only the adamantium gauntlets and boots remained intact, though they were caked in grime.

"Clean the gauntlets," Susan said, her voice hollow. "Scrap the rest. It's tainted."

She walked past him in her torn thermal under-suit, heading for the elevator. She needed the burning heat of her private shower to wash away the feeling of Svetlana’s betrayal and the ghost of the girl she used to be.

The Med bay: The Girl in the Mirror

In the Med bay, the atmosphere was thick with tension. James Vega and a team of heavily armed marines stood guard as they transferred a handcuffed, weeping Svetlana and a stoic Jacob Taylor toward the brig. Vega didn't say a word, but the look he gave Svetlana as the doors closed could have melted hull plating. On the primary medical bed, the clone stirred.

Ashley Williams was there immediately, sitting on a stool by the bedside. Dr. Chakwas checked the monitors, which showed the girl’s vitals stabilizing.

The clone’s eyes opened. She looked at the sterile ceiling, then at Ashley. She didn't have the "N7 stare"—her eyes were soft, darting around in confusion. She clutched the lab coat Susan had wrapped around her as if it were a shield.

"Where... where am I?" she whispered. Her voice was an exact match for Susan's, but without the years of command and trauma.

"You're on the Normandy," Ashley said softly, her voice filled with a gentleness she usually reserved only for Susan. "You're safe now. I'm Ashley. This is Dr. Chakwas."

The girl looked at Ashley’s Alliance fatigues, then at the IV in her arm. "The woman... the one who looked like me. But older. She was so... angry. Is she coming back?"

Ashley looked at Dr. Chakwas, then back to the girl. "She isn't angry at you. She's angry at the people who did this to you. Her name is Susan. She’s... she’s the one who saved you."

The girl’s hand trembled as she touched her own face, her fingers tracing the jawline that matched the Commander's. "I remember things. A farm on Mindoir. A dog named Dusty. But I remember them like they happened yesterday. I was... I was just going to bed, and then I woke up in that tank."

Chakwas sighed, a look of profound sorrow on her face. "That's because, to your mind, it was yesterday. They took the Commander's memories from years ago and gave them to you."

The girl looked at Ashley, tears welling in her eyes. "Who am I? Am I her?"

Ashley reached out and took the girl’s hand. It was warm, soft, and lacked the callouses of a soldier. "No. You're someone new. And we're going to help you figure out exactly who that is."

Running and Hiding

Two hours into the nebula's embrace, the Normandy felt like a ghost ship. The thick, ionized gases of the Terminus nebula scraped against the hull, creating a low, eerie static that echoed through the War Room.

The core team stood around the galaxy map, the blue light reflecting off their weary faces. A new layer of data—smuggled by Ryder—flickered on the display, showing a terrifying grid of Alliance blockade runners and patrol routes.

"We’re boxed in," Kaidan said, crossing his arms. "If we stay in the Traverse, we’re target practice. My vote is we stay deep in the Terminus. Keep the stealth drive running until the heat dies down. We can't be fugitives if they can't find us."

James Vega shook his head, leaning over the table. "Hiding is just waiting to get caught, Lieutenant. We need gear. We need fuel. I say we hit Omega. Aria T'Loak doesn't give a damn about Alliance warrants. In fact, she’d probably give us a discount just for pissing off Arcturus. It’s the perfect place to disappear into the noise."

Ashley looked at the map, her finger tracing a route toward the Asari heartlands. "Illium might be better. It’s civilized, but the bureaucracy is so thick we could bribe our way into a drydock. We could get the ship repaired without 'Cerberus' or 'Alliance' appearing on any manifests."

They all turned to Susan, who had been uncharacteristically quiet. She looked at the centre of the map—the Citadel.

"The Citadel," she said, her voice low. "If we want to end this, we go to the heart of it. We find Hackett’s people in the Embassies. We force the Council to look at the Valkyrie data."

"It's a suicide mission, Sue," Ashley whispered. "The C-Sec net is tighter than a drum."

The discussion grew spirited, the air thick with the tension of being hunted. After twenty minutes of debating the risks of a Council betrayal versus the lawlessness of the Terminus, Shepard finally made the call.

"We go to Omega," Susan decided, her eyes hardening. "James is right—we need to 'test the waters.' If we can't survive Aria's station, we won't survive the Citadel. It's a friendly enough port for the desperate."

She tapped the comms. "Joker, set a slow, stealthy course for Omega. Keep the heat sinks at maximum capacity. I want us to be a shadow."

"Copy that, Commander. Sneaking into the biggest hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy. Just another Tuesday," Joker’s voice crackled back.

A Moment of Truth

As the map faded, Kaidan excused himself to check on the engines. James lingered, moving toward Susan. He placed a gentle, steadying hand on her forearm.

"When you get a minute, Boss... the Quartermaster is waiting for you on Deck 5. He’s got that look in his eye—the one where he’s stayed up all night tinkering. I think he’s got something for you."

Susan managed a small, tired nod. "Thanks, James. I'll get down there."

Vega gave her a supportive squeeze and headed for the elevator, leaving Susan and Ashley alone in the blue-lit silence of the War Room. Susan leaned heavily against the galaxy map table, her shoulders dropping for the first time since Marrat.

"You're thinking about her," Ashley said softly, stepping into Susan’s space.

"I don't know what to do with her, Ash," Susan admitted, her voice trembling slightly. "Looking at her... it’s like looking at a ghost. She’s innocent. She has my memories of Mindoir, but none of the blood on her hands. She’s... she’s a better version of me. The version that never had to become a monster."

Ashley stepped closer, taking Susan’s hands in hers. "You are not a monster, Susan. You’re a survivor. And that girl? She’s not a 'better' version. She’s just a version that hasn't been tested yet."

"I have to protect her," Susan said fiercely, her eyes snapping to Ashley’s. "Cerberus, Svetlana... they want to use her as a template. A spare part. I won't let them touch her. I won't let the galaxy break her the way it broke me."

Ashley reached up, cupping Susan’s cheek, her thumb brushing over a small, healing cut. "Then we protect her together. But you have to talk to her, Sue. She’s terrified, and the only person she recognizes in this whole universe is the woman who looks just like her."

Susan took a deep breath, leaning into Ashley’s touch. "Alright. Let's go see her."

Together, they turned and walked toward the elevator, moving from the war-room planning to the much more difficult task of facing the living reminder of a lost past.

The atmosphere in the medbay had shifted from clinical tension to something more intimate and fragile. As Susan and Ashley approached the bed, the young girl—now sitting up and wrapped in a thick Alliance fleece—watched them with wide, inquisitive eyes.

A Name for the Ghost

The conversation started slowly. Susan sat on the edge of the bed, her presence grounding the younger girl. They spoke for nearly an hour, navigating the strange labyrinth of shared memories. The girl spoke of the heat of the Mindoir sun and the smell of the colony's orchards, memories that Susan had buried under layers of scar tissue and military discipline.

"I remember the way the kitchen floor creaked near the pantry," the girl whispered, looking at her hands. "But I don't remember the fire. I don't remember... the screaming."

"That's because those memories belong to a different path," Susan said softly. "You were kept in a dream, while I lived through the nightmare."

Ashley stepped forward, leaning against the medical monitor. "If we’re going to be a crew—a family—you can't just be 'The Subject.' You need a name of your own. Something that belongs to you, not to a project."

Susan looked at the girl and saw a flicker of that same defiant spirit that had carried her through the N7 program. She gave a small, mischievous glint—a look Ashley knew usually preceded a daring tactical manoeuvre.

"Lara," the girl said suddenly, catching Susan's eye. "I'll be Lara Shepard. Susan’s new little sister!"

Susan burst into a genuine, hearty laugh, the first one the crew had heard in days. Lara beamed back, her smile an exact, youthful mirror of the Commander's. They shared a careful, tentative hug—Susan being mindful of her own dense strength and Lara’s fragile state.

Ashley stood by, looking entirely bewildered. "Lara? I mean, it’s a lovely name, but... am I missing a joke here?"

Susan and Lara looked at Ashley then each other and laughed again.

The Legend of the Tomb

Later, as the elevator hummed on its way down to the Engineering deck, Ashley couldn't hold it in anymore. "Okay, spill. Why did 'Lara' turn the med bay into a comedy club? Is it some Mindoir thing?"

Susan leaned against the elevator wall, a nostalgic softness in her eyes. "When I was a kid—long before the raids, before I even thought about the military—my dad found an old, antique data-storage drive in a colony trade. It had a collection of 20th-century 'flat-screen' games."

She chuckled, shaking her head. "There was this one character. Lara Croft. A British archaeologist who ran around ancient ruins, climbed impossible cliffs, and shot at everything from mercenaries to dinosaurs. I used to spend hours 'exploring' with her. I told myself if I ever got off Mindoir, I’d be just like her."

Ashley started to grin. "So, the most dangerous woman in the Alliance named her sister after a pre-spaceflight tomb raider?"

"Hey, she was tough, smart, and didn't take crap from anyone," Susan defended with a wink. "Perfect for a Shepard."

The Vengeance Suit

The elevator doors opened to Deck 5. The Quartermaster, a grizzled veteran named Chief Hadley, was waiting for them near the armour lockers. He looked like he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours, his hands stained with carbon scoring and hydraulic fluid.

"Commander," he said, his voice gravelly. "The N7 gear was a loss, and the standard-issue stuff wouldn't handle your... unique physiology. So, the team and I took some liberties."

He hit a switch, and the shutters on the main display case slid back. Susan stopped dead. Even Ashley let out a low whistle of appreciation.

It wasn't just armour, it was a masterpiece of kinetic engineering. The suit was a deep, matte charcoal grey, almost black, but with a subtle iridescent sheen that suggested a high weave of carbon nanotubes. The iconic N7 stripe was gone, replaced by a single, sharp crimson line that ran vertically over the heart—a "Vengeance" mark.

"It’s reinforced with a high-density ceramic-tungsten alloy," Hadley explained, his pride evident. "We’ve integrated a specialized power grid to feed your gauntlets and boots directly. The internal seals are triple-layered to account for your accelerated healing—the suit will vent heat and excess fluids if you're taking heavy fire, keeping your vision clear."

He stepped closer, his voice softening. "We call it the Aegis of Vengence. It’s built to take the hits your shields can't."

Susan reached out, her fingers trembling slightly as she touched the cold, reinforced chest plate. She felt the weight of the crew's loyalty in every weld and bolt. This wasn't just equipment; it was a promise that they stood behind her, no matter who branded them fugitives.

"Chief..." Susan’s voice was thick with emotion. She cleared her throat, blinking back tears. "Thank the team. It’s... it’s more than I deserve."

"With all due respect, Commander," Hadley replied, "after what you did on Marrat? It’s exactly what you need."