A dark secret she was supposed to forget

It started with a buzzing late at night. Ashley had just woken up from a nightmare with a headache, and had rolled out of bed to go fetch a glass of water. When she returned to her bed in the back of the armory, that was when she noticed it. It was the kind of buzz that you'd hear from an old florescent light. She dismissed it as being some kind of electrical issue and decided she'd have maintenance look at it in the morning. She was more troubled by her dream.

She'd dreamt that she was in some kind of pod, unable to move. She could see through the foggy glass that made up the front of the pod. Beyond it, there was only darkness. After a moment's panic and struggle inside the pod, the darkness was suddenly illuminated by dozens of glowing lights. It didn't take her long to realize what they were.

Eyes.

They drew closer, and closer, and closer until one of the creatures those eyes belonged to reached out and opened the pod from the side. Fog filled her vision and the next thing she knew she was awake.

With this buzzing in her ear.

"EDI?" She walked over to the terminal. A little globe appeared on it.

"Yes Lt. Commander?" The A.I. responded.

"I've got a weird buzzing in the armory. Is there something wrong with the ship's power output? I don't need a spark setting anything off in here."

"Understood. Please stand by." There was a pause, then the globe blinked once. "Preliminary diagnostics show nothing amiss, Lt. Commander. I will run a complete scan. I will report back to you when I have the results." She flickered out.

"Great..." Ashley groaned.

For some reason she couldn't just tune it out. It was like a bee hovering over a flower just out of sight, an obedient drone doing as it is told, before returning to the hive to serve its magnificent queen... She shook her head. Where had that come from? She hated bugs, especially since Horizon, when the Collectors released their swarms from their ship, paralyzing her and the colonists.

That was where she'd seen it, she realized. The pod was from the Collector Ship. Where they'd taken her and the other colonists when they... No, wait, that wasn't right. She wasn't captured with the rest of them. She'd escaped; she'd broken free of the stasis and that was where she first encountered Shepard again. She never saw...

Her head suddenly throbbed with mind-numbing pain as the buzzing intensified. She buckled over, letting out a soft gasp of air. Images filled her head. Images of Collectors finding her, cocooning her in one of those pods and bringing her aboard their vessel as it hovered over the colony. They were going to take her somewhere, but then... They released her? She clutched the sides of her head, struggling to stand up right. The buzzing was in her head, she realized that now, but there was nothing to be done for it. Through it, she could recall a voice speaking to her. A booming, intimidating voice.

"You are Ashley Madeline Williams," it had said to her. "You are her, and you are more. Shepard is coming to this colony. She shares a special bond with you. You will sever it. Her resolve must be weakened before she is made to submit."

She fell to her knees. Her head felt like it was on fire. She saw... herself, lying still in one of the Collector pods. This time she was on the outside, looking in.

"Do it," the voice commanded. A name came to mind. She knew it belonged to the voice.

Harbinger.

Without any hesitation, she reached out and placed her hand upon a console. Within a moment, the other her in the machine began to melt, dissolving into nothing more than organic paste, which rapidly drained from the pod, flowing along with countless others into the greater whole which would one day include every man, woman, and child in the human race.

She let go of her head. Her arms fell limply to her side, and her head tilted backwards. Her brown eyes were filled with blue light.

She remembered clearly now. Harbinger knew Ashley Williams was on Horizon. She had been their target, the colonists were just a bonus. They had captured her on Horizon, brought her aboard the ship, where Harbinger extracted her memories and placed them in an exact duplicate who he personally programmed to plant the seeds of doubt in Commander Shepard. After she had done that, they brought her to the Collector Base, where she personally disposed of the original, joining her with the Human Reaper.

Harbinger had sent "Ashley" back to infiltrate the Alliance military, her memories of being a clone suppressed. She assumed her progenitor's life flawlessly. She presumed that Harbinger had intended to activate her when the Reapers came in ****, but of course that never happened. The Reapers never came, so she was never activated.

Until now.

She stood back up, straightened her neck, and a smile stretched across her face. The glow in her eyes faded, leaving behind only bright blue irises. It was almost funny. Here she had been, paranoid about clone imposters and enemy spies, when she had been one all along! Maybe it was her true self shining through, trying to protect itself while it waited for the right opportunity to reemerge.

She ran her fingers along her body, carefully tracing every curve, just to feel how it had come along in her absence. She filled out this new suit quite a bit better than her old one. She brushed the hair out of her eyes. It was longer than she remembered it being, loose and free. Overall, she'd taken good care of herself, now it was time to put her body to use. Though the Reapers were gone, the covert technology they had implanted in their little sleeper agent remained, as did their final directive.

Infiltrate. Indoctrinate. Assimilate. Await.

The thought of carrying it out filled her with perverse excitement. She would start with those who trusted her, take them someplace private, maybe even seduce them, and then when she had them at their most ****, she would spring her trap. She would then watch as the look of confusion and betrayal became one of mindless devotion to her and her absent gods.

Then she would take her enemies. She not waste her time with pleasantries on them. No, she would dominate them, break their resistance, and remake them into perfectly docile servants who would do anything she asked of them, because they no longer had the capacity to say "no".

EDI reappeared behind her.

"Lt. Commander," she said. "A full scan revealed nothing abnormal. Are you sure that you were hearing something?"

"Hmm? Oh. No EDI. Everything's fine now," she grinned to herself. "Everything is just fine..."