Two years later ...
There are spoilers after the break. Continue reading at your own risk.
Location: Lazarus Project Facility/Cerberus Facility
I am lost. Everything is too loud. My body aches. My head aches. My soul aches. My world is caving in. Who do you become when you are brought back from the grave? What do does it make you when it is technology, and not God, which breaths life back into your cells, organs, and lungs? A human? A robot? A zombie? A mix of the three? I am told that the Lazarus Project brought me back. What an apropos name. The first person I saw face to face, after awakening, was the mercenary, Jacob Taylor. He expressed surprise at seeing me running around. He called me a "work in progress." He told me I was "rebuilt." That is certainly how I feel - a half-built work in progress, a result of mad science, an "other" that should not be.
Do not mistake me. I am glad to be alive - if that is what you can call my current state of being. It is just that I have lost so much time. I used to know who I was. I used to know what I wanted. I used to know how the world worked. Now, however, the world is made anew. My memories are still intact, and my emotions, it seems, are as well. Yet, my existence feels cockeyed and unbalanced. There is a two-year slice of knowledge and life experience missing from my brain. The world moved on while I was lying on a laboratory table and now I must play catch-up. In addition, people want things from me that I'm not certain i can give. Jacob all but cries out for someone trustworthy to follow. Miranda Lawson seems to want a pawn, and the Illusive Man ... well he seems to want one too ... only the Illusive Man wants a special kind of pawn. He wants one who can save the world. Again.
It seems like only yesterday that I was having to commit treason just so my team could save Citadel Space. Once upon a time, the Council gave me a ship and Spectre status, but they refused to trust my instincts. The Illusive Man, it seems, likewise wishes to bestow me with both monetary resources and power. He also appears to trust me to get the job done - no matter what my methods be. It is all so alluring, which is quite possibly why this all feels so very wrong. It has to be a trap. He says that they resurrected me because I know what humanity is up against, and now that human colonies are disappearing, well, I am what Cerberus needs to take care of the Reapers once and for all. We cannot, he insists, sit around waiting for the Council to make up their minds and do something. If we do that, there will be no more human colonies left to save.
I do not disagree with him, but I still cannot shake this feeling that I am nothing but a tool in a much bigger, much obscured, larger picture. I think that my old self, the one from two years ago, would have noted these feelings of unease, but zeroed in on common purpose. Since there is little else I can do at the moment, this newly risen me will also play along - for now. I refuse, however, to be a pawn. If I am going to do this, to save humanity from extinction, then it is going to be done on my terms. I will be in control of the missions for their duration, and I will command my team. If Miranda and Jacob, along with anyone else we might pick up along the way, does not wish to listen to me, then they can get out. I may not have had a say in whether I was brought back to life or not. I can have a say, though, in what I do with this second existence.
In the long run, insisting on command gives me more control over the situation and hopefully its final outcome. Yet more immediately, this instance on control will give me the space to figure out just where I fit in all of this. Who am I now that my world has been torn apart, and then stitched back together by strangers? I am surrounded by no one I trust, therefore I can trust no one but myself. As a child I fought for everything I had, and learned to rely on no one but myself. That mentality carried well into my career with the Alliance military, through Torfan, and into my time as a Spectre. If it had not been for Garrus, Joker, and Ashley (and a number of others on the Normandy) I would not know anything different today. Yet having known what it was like to trust and share the burden of responsibility with others, it is almost painful to suddenly be without that support. Maybe I am not actually lost after all. Maybe I am simply drowning in loss.
Do not mistake me. I am glad to be alive - if that is what you can call my current state of being. It is just that I have lost so much time. I used to know who I was. I used to know what I wanted. I used to know how the world worked. Now, however, the world is made anew. My memories are still intact, and my emotions, it seems, are as well. Yet, my existence feels cockeyed and unbalanced. There is a two-year slice of knowledge and life experience missing from my brain. The world moved on while I was lying on a laboratory table and now I must play catch-up. In addition, people want things from me that I'm not certain i can give. Jacob all but cries out for someone trustworthy to follow. Miranda Lawson seems to want a pawn, and the Illusive Man ... well he seems to want one too ... only the Illusive Man wants a special kind of pawn. He wants one who can save the world. Again.
It seems like only yesterday that I was having to commit treason just so my team could save Citadel Space. Once upon a time, the Council gave me a ship and Spectre status, but they refused to trust my instincts. The Illusive Man, it seems, likewise wishes to bestow me with both monetary resources and power. He also appears to trust me to get the job done - no matter what my methods be. It is all so alluring, which is quite possibly why this all feels so very wrong. It has to be a trap. He says that they resurrected me because I know what humanity is up against, and now that human colonies are disappearing, well, I am what Cerberus needs to take care of the Reapers once and for all. We cannot, he insists, sit around waiting for the Council to make up their minds and do something. If we do that, there will be no more human colonies left to save.
I do not disagree with him, but I still cannot shake this feeling that I am nothing but a tool in a much bigger, much obscured, larger picture. I think that my old self, the one from two years ago, would have noted these feelings of unease, but zeroed in on common purpose. Since there is little else I can do at the moment, this newly risen me will also play along - for now. I refuse, however, to be a pawn. If I am going to do this, to save humanity from extinction, then it is going to be done on my terms. I will be in control of the missions for their duration, and I will command my team. If Miranda and Jacob, along with anyone else we might pick up along the way, does not wish to listen to me, then they can get out. I may not have had a say in whether I was brought back to life or not. I can have a say, though, in what I do with this second existence.
In the long run, insisting on command gives me more control over the situation and hopefully its final outcome. Yet more immediately, this instance on control will give me the space to figure out just where I fit in all of this. Who am I now that my world has been torn apart, and then stitched back together by strangers? I am surrounded by no one I trust, therefore I can trust no one but myself. As a child I fought for everything I had, and learned to rely on no one but myself. That mentality carried well into my career with the Alliance military, through Torfan, and into my time as a Spectre. If it had not been for Garrus, Joker, and Ashley (and a number of others on the Normandy) I would not know anything different today. Yet having known what it was like to trust and share the burden of responsibility with others, it is almost painful to suddenly be without that support. Maybe I am not actually lost after all. Maybe I am simply drowning in loss.
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