#cloneshep

*

"I told them," Shepard said, staring at the photograph in her armoured hand. "I told them I'd never work for Cerberus. And you showed me that sometimes you need to stand outside the law. That's what Spectres are for." A rueful grin. "Doubt they'll have me back though. Not after this."

She kissed the glass, and carefully put Nihlus' picture back on the desk.

*

"You're sick," said Lawson. They'd caught her without a gun, but blue light clotted and curled around her fingers. Biotics were never unarmed. "You're actually insane. I told him it'd cause brain damage, I told him it was too soon to bring you out of cryo -"

"You have a choice," Shepard interrupted. "Option one is to hand over the codes to the ship's AI and we'll drop you off at Omega in one piece. Option two is you say anything other than Yes, ma'am, and so help me I will send you back to your father in a box."

Lawson snarled. Shepard levelled her pistol.

"Don't shoot," said a wretched voice from the door. "I know the codes."

"Get them off him, Jack," Shepard said without turning around, and heard the whirr of an omni-tool behind her.

"Jacob Taylor," Lawson spat. "You coward. You sentimental idiot -"

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "He just saved your ass, Miranda."

"He's a coward and a traitor," Lawson said, folding her arms, and looked past Shepard to Taylor.. "Do you have any clue what you're doing, Jacob? This is on you, whatever bloody mess comes out of this. This is on you."

"Got the codes," chipped in Jack.

"Good," said Shepard. "I was getting tired of the commentary."

*

"This isn't the Normandy," Shepard said, standing with Lawson's blood still on her gloves. "Normandy's in pieces in a snowdrift on Alchera. You can't just build another one and say it's the same. Ships have souls, and the Normandy's dead. This one -" she ran a proprietary hand along the rail overlooking the galaxy map "- Cerberus may have built her, but that doesn't make her theirs. That makes her mine."

Joker had looked as if he wanted to say something, but hadn't.

"First thing," Shepard ordered, "I want everyone who can wear a hardsuit out on the hull. Get the goddamn Cerberus insignia off. Second thing, we're giving her a new name. And then we're going to hunt down the Collectors and blow them into hell."

"What do you plan to call her?" Garrus had asked quietly.

Shepard turned without taking her hand off the rail. "Nihlus' Revenge."

*

Grace Shepard had red hair and red armour and these days she had red eyes, the fierce glow of burning suns and burning starships permanently reflected in her visor and spilling from the scars that lined her cheekbones and brow.

She wasn't reckoned a bad captain, by the standards of the Terminus Systems. For one thing, she'd only shot the actual Cerberus operatives when she took the ship. Then she'd docked at Omega and announced that anyone not willing to serve under her flag could get off then and there. They'd lost both medics, which was unfortunate, and both the Cerberus specialist engineers. (She'd expected Daniels to go; she'd been more surprised when Donnelly followed. Shame.)

But she had Garrus, and Grunt, and Zaeed Massani, and the unshackled - and fast-learning - intelligence that called itself EDI. And she had Jack.

They hunted Cerberus ships. They hunted Collectors with maps patched together from EDI's databanks and the desperate confessions of Cerberus prisoners. They laughed, and they sang, and they left the skies red in their wake.

*

"Who the hell are you?"

"Genetically, you." The stranger holstered her gun and folded her arms. There was something eerily familiar about the motion. " You know Cerberus cloned you, in case you needed - oh, a spare leg or a new eye or something? I was still on ice when you came back. Then when you went off the rails, they woke me up and tried to get me to be part of their little conspiracy." She grinned. "I said no."

"I like her," said Jack from somewhere behind Shepard's shoulder. "Hey, Cap. Can we keep her?"

"You got a name?" Shepard asked, staring. The clone was fresh-faced, without the awful scars, and her eyes were green.

"Call me Mercy," said the clone, and extended a hand. "I heard it recently. Liked the sound."

"Mercy Shepard," Grace breathed, still unbelieving as she reached out to shake the clone's hand, "you and I are going to change the goddamn world."

*

They'd stopped at Horizon to refuel and sell some of their latest cargo. It was a small colony, and the colonists usually had a need for 'salvage' and a willingness not to ask too many questions.

It wasn't until they'd made landfall and trekked into the colony town that she saw the blue-and-white Alliance shuttle tucked in behind the shield generator complex. "EDI. Since when has there been an Alliance presence here?"

"My orbital scans picked up nothing," EDI said a moment later. "I am scanning at a greater level of detail now."

And that was when the squad of Alliance marines walked into the town square.

"Grace Shepard," said Ashley Williams, "You're under arrest."

"Does that include me?" said Mercy, as her tactical cloak came off.

*

"Damn, Shepard," Garrus said after they were back on the Revenge. "That was … cold, even for you."

Grace paused, halfway through stripping down her rifle, and shrugged. "She was in my way."

*

"Forgive me staring," said the black-eyed woman in the high-collared jumpsuit. "I see twins so rarely. Multiple births are unusual amongst asari."

"We're used to it," said Grace.

"Buy me a drink and you can stare as much as you like," Mercy said, staring back almost as avidly.

"It'd be my pleasure," said the asari.

She returned a minute later with drinks for all three of them, and settled back into the padded seat of the booth, crossing her legs at the knee. "I'm fascinated to meet you. My name's Morinth."

"I'm Captain Grace Shepard of the Nihlus' Revenge," said Grace. "This is my sister, Mercy."

Morinth's eyes widened very slightly. "I've heard of you, Captain. The tales of your exploits are … diverting."

"I've heard of you, Morinth," Grace said, watching the asari's face. "I hear you're unusual amongst asari yourself, and I like having unusual talents on my crew. I also hear you might want to be somewhere other than here when the justicar I just met in the docks comes through."

"Where are you bound?" Morinth said.

"Long way from here," Mercy said, laconically.

"I'm intrigued," Morinth purred. "I'm extremely intrigued." She leaned forward. "I would be delighted to accept."

*

The derelict Reaper gave Shepard claustrophobia of the mind. Morinth on her left hand, Jack on her right, she stopped to knead both temples with her knuckles and said "I feel … is this any easier for you?"

The two biotics both shook their heads.

"I hate this fucking place," said Jack.

"It's dead, and yet I feel it watching," Morinth whispered. "I can feel it running its fingers through my mind. I've never felt anything like it."

*

"We are not keeping the geth," Grace said flatly.

"Like I said," put in Jack, "space the fucker."

Morinth was stroking the inert machine's carapace, head cocked as if listening. "It would be a pity to destroy it. A geth that speaks is a fascinating curiosity. A geth with a true mind - if it has one - would be unique."

"We are not keeping the geth," Grace repeated, in the same tone as before.

"Sell it," volunteered Mercy.

"Who the hell's going to buy a geth?" demanded Jack. "One reckless owner, some damage, big hole through its entire damn chest -"

"I have a suggestion," said EDI from the console at the table's end. "Admiral Daro'Xen of the Quarian Migrant Fleet is known for her pioneering research into geth systems. I am certain she would pay handsomely for a specimen as close to intact as this."

*

"Beautiful," Xen said, her voice so soft it was almost lost in the helmet's static. "I am in your debt, Captain." She stepped back from the pallet that held the inert geth, and looked Shepard up and down with undisguised interest. "The promotion suits you. And I did not know you had a twin."

"She's actually my clone," Shepard said, and to Mercy, "Xen's in charge of research and development for almost the entire fleet. She takes an interest in this kind of thing."

"Alas," Xen said, "I am an engineer. My biology training is minimal. But the two of you would make for a fascinating research study."

"I could've told you that," Jack said, not quite inaudibly.

"Admiral," Grace said. "I used to serve with a quarian. Tali'Zorah nar Rayya. Is she -?"

"I'm sorry," the Admiral said. "She was lost on a field mission not long ago. But she spoke highly of you."

*

Omega glowed outside the observation window like a used-up thermal clip. Beyond it, the Omega-4 relay was a hard spark of red light in the distance.

"What is it?" Mercy's voice was low and urgent. "Don't you want -"

"Of course I want," Morinth said, equally low. "But listen to me, Shepard. My - talent. My condition -"

"I have as much steel in me as Grace has," Mercy said. "I'm tougher than most. And dammit, Morinth, tomorrow we could both be dead anyway -"

"You would die," Morinth said, ice in every word. "I could reach into your mind now and take you apart, and you would revel in every moment of it. And it would kill you."

"Try me," Mercy said softly, and reached for her.

*

In Shepard's cabin, half the bedsheets were on the floor. Shepard lay curled on her side, red hair wild around her, eyes closed.

Jack stared at the ceiling, and wondered how many stars had had to align to bring them here.

"Do you ever regret it?" she asked, suddenly.

Grace stirred sleepily beside her. "Regret what?"

"All of it," Jack said. "All this."