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Slaves of Cerberus	By : NakedOwlMan Category: +M through R > Mass Effect Views: 138070 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: Mass Effect and all the characters in it are owned by people that are not me. I have not made a cent off this work of fiction

Chapter List
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They may not have been directing rude comments at her like they had the first time, but Miranda still felt the stares from the filthy Cerberus crew as they made their way down the hall.

Ten minutes ago, she and Oriana had been sitting in their cells, staring at the walls and waiting for the next indignity to be visited onto them. Then the man who was currently leading them through the hallways of the station had appeared outside of their cell's forcefield. Something about him looked so out of place in the grimy, horrifying circumstances of Cerberus's new home: he wore a clean, wrinkle-free business suit, and his words were polite and softly spoken.

"Please follow me," he had said, as he deactivated the containment field. "My employer would like a word with you two."

She knew there was little point in protesting, so she and Oriana had followed the man out of their cell. Bowers, the head of the guards, had watched the man lead them away without comment. Whoever this man was, he apparently had enough sway around here that he could come and fetch prisoners without any hassle. Not to mention that, as he walked Miranda and Oriana down the hallway, the Cerberus members they passed remained silent, stepping aside deferentially to allow the man to pass. So who was this guy? And who was his employer, that could engender so much respect even among the hardened thugs of this "new Cerberus?"

"Where are you taking us?" Oriana asked. It hurt Miranda's heart to hear the tone of Oriana's voice: weak and defeated. It was bad enough that they were torturing Miranda for her betrayal. To drag Oriana into this filled Miranda with barely-contained fury.

"As I said, my employer wishes to speak with you," the man said.

"Well, why didn't your employer come to get us, then?" Oriana pressed him. "Why did he send you?"

The man smiled slightly. "My employer has appointed me to be a personal liaison to Cerberus. I act as my employer's representative in all matters pertaining to Cerberus operations. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the restricted area of this station is not exactly the sort of place my employer would desire to spend any amount of time in."

"How wonderful for your employer," Miranda said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "They are aware of what's going on down here, aren't they? About what these sick bastards are doing to me and my sister? And to Shepard and all the rest?"

"Quite aware, yes," the man in the suit responded.

"And yet they allow it to happen," Miranda said. "How typical. Acting in accordance with monsters, while believing themselves above the muck. Your employer sounds like a pathetic human being, Mr..."

"Quinlan, Miss Lawson," he responded. "Arthur Quinlan. And in regards to my employer... everything will become clear very shortly."

They came to a stop at the door to a lift. From the opposite direction came one of the station's reprogrammed AIUs, approaching them with her arms full. "Your destination is at the top of this lift," Arthur explained. "But before you go up, my employer thought you might want to look a bit more..." he looked down at their naked bodies with a dispassionate glance, "presentable."

Miranda walked over to the robot, and scowled as she saw what was in her arms: two sets of neatly folded uniforms, with the Cerberus logo stitched into the fabric.

"If it's all the same, I'd rather go naked than wear that ever again," Miranda said disdainfully to Arthur, trying to seem as confident as she could even as she stood stark-naked in the middle of this Cerberus cesspit.

Arthur turned to Oriana with a quizzical look, and when she shook her head he responded with a slight shrug. "Suit yourselves, then," he said. As the AIU bot walked away, Arthur entered in a combination on the keypad next to the lift door, then pressed his hand into the display panel. In response to his palm print, the door slid open. "Please make your way into the lift," Arthur said, moving to the side of the door and crossing his hands behind his back. "I shall await your return down here."

As the two Lawson sisters stepped towards the lift, Miranda paused next to Arthur. "Mr. Quinlan, you seem like a reasonably intelligent man. No doubt well-versed in history. As such, I'm sure you remember what happened to the last incarnation of this organization?"

"I do," Arthur responded.

"Then you have to know that you and your employer are doomed to failure," Miranda spoke firmly. "Maya Brooks, or whatever she chooses to call herself, is an unstable individual. And her clone partner is even worse. As much as I may have come to hate him at the end, I will not deny that the Illusive Man was a calculating and brilliant individual. If even he could not help but lead Cerberus into infamy and ruin... what hope do you suppose these women have?"

The dignified man showed no apparent reaction to Miranda's words. "My employer's reasons for backing Cerberus are none of my concern, Miss Lawson. I do not question. I simply obey."

"Yes. I remember when I was like you, Mr. Quinlan," Miranda said. "And then I opened my eyes." Turning away from him, Miranda stepped into the lift, and stood beside her sister as the doors slid shut.

Neither of them spoke during the ride upward, but as the lift carried them up to their uncertain destination, Miranda felt Oriana's fingers against her palm. Immediately, Miranda clasped her sister's hand in hers, and together they waited with as much courage as they could muster.

Miranda had no idea what she would see when the door opened. Whatever it was, though, she would do and say whatever it took to keep Ori safe. That was the only thing she lived for now. The only thing she truly cared about anymore. After so many years of watching out for her sister's welfare, she wasn't about to stop now.

Slowly, the lift coasted to a stop. As the doors slid open, Miranda and Oriana were hit with the sound of classical strings.

Cautiously, still hand-in-hand with Oriana, Miranda stepped out of the lift into a lush, well-appointed office. Bookshelves lined the walls, and high-class furniture had been arranged into several sitting areas. Directly in front of them, a small set of stairs led up to an elevated platform where a mahogany desk and high-backed leather chair had been placed. The room was barely lit, and several of the walls were hidden away in shadows.

As Miranda and Oriana walked in, there was a voice from the top of the platform. "Stop." It was a woman's voice, young from the sound of it. With no other choice but to obey, Miranda paused, Oriana standing next to her. The two of them must have looked absurd: two bare-naked women standing in the middle of this beautifully decorated office space.

"Who are you?" Miranda called up to the desk. "I want to see the face of the person who has signed off on this insanity."

"Do you know this piece?" the woman said, seemingly ignoring the question to draw attention to the music filling the room. "Don't worry if you don't. It is a bit obscure after all. It's by Dmitri Shostakovich, a Russian composer from the mid-20th century. The Gadfly Suite, quite a lovely composition. One of my favorites, actually. Not just for the music, but the story of the man behind it. Shostakovich was quite a talented composer, who was unlucky enough to have lived in the Soviet Union during the height of Stalin's regime. He spent all of his life wanting to express his genius, but was held back by the oppressive regime he had been born into. He tried his best to express himself in secret through his music, while being denounced by the Communist Party and being forced to conform to their will on so many occasions. Rumor had it that when he finally joined the Party, there were tears in his eyes, and that it nearly drove him to suicide. Quite a sad story, wouldn't you say? A man with brilliant ideas, held back by fools who feared and hated his superior mind and wanted to crush him into their mold."

"Is there a point to this speech? Or does Cerberus plan to bore us to death?" Miranda asked.

"The point, you might say, is genius. Genius appreciated, and genius destroyed," the woman responded. "The latter of which is why you are here today. To pay the price that you deserve for robbing the galaxy of one of its greatest individuals. A crime perpetuated by you, Miranda... your sister... and Commander Shepard. And a crime I will see you punished for."

"What are you..." Miranda started to ask, before she heard a soft click. To her left, a light suddenly blazed on, and when she saw what was hidden in the shadows, her eyes narrowed. "God... dammit."

It was a statue, standing six foot tall and sculpted out of marble. The artist was skilled, indeed... even if their skills had been used to sculpt an image of such a hateful individual.

The face there was the face Miranda had remembered bitterly for the years she had spent hiding herself and her sister. The face of the man who had ordered his men to fire on her, after she had told him she had no intention of playing any further part in his plans.

And most of all, it was the face of the man who had created her. The man whose DNA she and Oriana carried around with them every day of their lives. The man who, in some twisted fashion, could be thought of as her father.

Miranda stared with smoldering rage at the statue of her father, Henry Lawson.

"Do you feel it, Miranda?" the woman on the top of the platform. "Seeing him again like this, even as a lifeless statue, do you feel the guilt of knowing how badly you betrayed him? How you, Oriana, and Shepard brutally murdered such a brilliant, one-of-a-kind individual?"

"A one-of-a-kind madman, is more like it," Miranda responded. "Whoever you are, you obviously didn't know Henry Lawson the way I did. If you did, you would smash this statue into rubble and never look back. The man was a psychopath, obsessed with preserving his genetic legacy. My father was not a..."

"NO!" the woman on the other side of the chair suddenly shouted, her previously calm voice shrill and enraged. "You do NOT call him that! You two do not have the RIGHT to call yourselves Henry Lawson's daughters! You lost that right the day you MURDERED him!"

"Please, listen to us!" Oriana suddenly spoke up. "He was performing experiments on humans! Twisting and indoctrinating them! He had to..."

Miranda held up a hand at her sister, quieting her. "I'll ask you again: who are you?" Miranda said. "An associate of his? A lover, perhaps? Who are you to defend the honor of that bastard?"

When the woman spoke again, she had calmed herself down from her earlier outburst. "There was another work by Shostakovich that I quite admired. The score he composed for a 1971 film version of King Lear. Not the best version of the play, to be sure, but tracking down Shostakovich's body of work led to me discovering the score to that film, and the works of Shakespeare as a result. Even after reading them all, though, Lear still remains my favorite. You do recall how that play begins, do you not, Miranda? An old king asks his three daughters which one of them loves him the best, so that he might divide up his kingdom among them. The two elder daughters, Goneril and Regan, offer false flattery and utter lies in their desire to deceive their father and claim his legacy for themselves. But the youngest daughter, she does not lie. She tells her father she loves him, but refuses to pile on the empty declarations of overinflated piety as her sisters had. And the king, deceived by his elder daughters, banishes the youngest daughter and pins his hopes on Goneril and Regan. But the two deceitful sisters backstab him in the end, and the youngest is the only one who stays true to her father despite his betrayal. And in the end, the king realizes his mistake, and his youngest daughter forgives him."

Slowly the chair at the other side of the desk swiveled, revealing the woman sitting there: a blond woman in her early twenties, wearing a drab grey business suit, hair pulled back in a tight bun. She stared down at Miranda and Oriana with a look of unmasked contempt, and as Miranda stared back at her, she started seeing the common features. Not the exact same face as her and Oriana, but similar enough that she finally understood the woman's anger.

"Goneril. Regan," the woman said to the two of them. "So nice to finally meet you. I am my father's faithful daughter. His true daughter, unlike you two." She narrowed her eyes at them and spat out. "You may call me Cordelia. Cordelia Lawson."
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Slaves of Cerberus