Miranda

Miranda Lawson is a human Cerberus Officer. Miranda is very well traveled and has many contacts, extending from Citadel space and the Terminus Systems, to as far as the hostile Nemean Abyss. Her vast network of contacts may be explained by the fact Miranda is a known Cerberus operative, one who still has friends — or at least friends of friends — in the Alliance military. She has served at various times as a contact for Jacob Taylor and a member of Commander Shepard's crew.

Miranda was born in 2150. As she explains to Shepard, Miranda never had a mother, only a father who is extremely influential, wealthy, and ego-maniacal. Using a modified copy of his own genome, Miranda was genetically engineered to be a specimen of human perfection. She never had a mother, as she was not conceived naturally. She was not the first "daughter" he ever designed, just the first he kept. Everything, from her intelligence, physical constitution, biotic abilities, to her appearance were designed before birth to be excellent. She boasts about being able to shoot a mech's head off from 100 meters away or just as easily crush it with her biotic powers. Miranda also heals faster than other humans and will probably live half a lifespan longer. If Shepard accuses her of being cocky, she retorts that she's only stating the facts.

However, Miranda’s gifts were a burden growing up. Despite her accomplishments, Miranda’s perfectionist father never showed approval or pride towards his daughter. He always expected more and better from her, forever chiding her to be greater than she already was. He also imposed a very strict lifestyle on Miranda, and forbade her from making friends and having a social life. Miranda remarks that he didn't want a daughter as much as a dynasty, which was why he used his own genetic template to create her. The constant pressure and lack of affection led Miranda to relinquish her privileged lifestyle and run away from home as soon as she could—although some gunfire was involved. Her father used his extensive network of contacts to chase her across the galaxy, but she managed to elude him nonetheless.

At some point Miranda approached Cerberus and joined them in exchange for protection. Miranda knew of them since her father sympathized with their human-centric agenda and was a major backer. When she enlisted with Cerberus, he stopped pursuing her but severed his ties to the group. Despite their past dealings with her father, Miranda agrees with Cerberus' desire to help humanity. Miranda also enjoys the opportunity to work with people as smart as she is and the amount of latitude their clandestine operations afford her; she is given an objective, all the resources she needs, and nothing more. Evidently, Miranda has advanced far enough to become one of the few in the organization, much less the galaxy, that meets and answers directly to the Illusive Man, who appreciates her abilities.

After Cerberus gains possession of Commander Shepard's corpse, the Illusive Man selects Miranda to be the head of the Lazarus Cell and puts her in charge of the Lazarus Project. Over the course of two years, Miranda oversees the development and implementation of Cerberus' vast resources towards bringing Shepard back to life. When Shepard briefly wakes for the first time, Miranda is the first and last person seen by Shepard before falling back to sleep. At some point, the research base comes under attack by a saboteur. Miranda wakes Shepard over an intercom and guides the Commander to the base's last shuttle. Miranda takes Shepard to be briefed by the Illusive Man, but not before killing the traitor who instigated the attack.

When Shepard goes to investigate the colony of Freedom's Progress, Miranda becomes a permanent squad member. Aboard the Normandy SR-2 she functions as Shepard's second-in-command, but she also serves as a proxy for the Illusive Man, to whom she reports regularly. According to EDI, Miranda is the leading operative of the Lazarus Cell which is headquartered on the Normandy.

Initially, Miranda expresses skepticism towards the level of importance the Illusive Man has placed on Shepard, especially since the Lazarus Project required a huge investment of Cerberus's resources and her own time. She also notes that she wanted to implant Shepard with a control device to regulate the Commander's actions, but the Illusive Man declined her suggestion. Soon after their mission gets underway, Miranda admits that the Illusive Man's estimation of Shepard's value to their cause was accurate.

Unfortunately, Miranda still retains some of the insecurities that drove her from home; despite leading an illustrious career, Miranda doesn’t believe she’s truly earned her accomplishments. Because of her father's genetic tampering which gave her the innate advantage to succeed, she still feels like she's living under his shadow, and that her failures are the only thing she truly owns. Miranda admits this has made her somewhat jealous of Shepard, whose vast accomplishments can be credited to skill, talent, and drive.

When first introduced, Miranda is shown to be very cold and standoffish, as shown by her ruthless execution of Wilson for his betrayal, and insisting that they leave the Lazarus station as soon as possible, calmly countering any arguments Shepard makes to waiting for other (unlikely) survivors, as she prioritizes getting Shepard off the station rather than risk waiting for anyone else. She is so committed to the mission of getting Shepard out alive that she declares everyone else (possibly including herself), to be expendable, though it should be noted that Jacob seconds this, saying that, without Shepard, the past two years of labor would have been for nothing. She also initially appears to be quite arrogant; when Jacob questions her, Miranda claims that she is never wrong and that he should have learned that by now. However, this is shown to not be a complete boast as the Illusive Man himself states that she isn't usually wrong. She is also shown to be very cautious regarding Shepard at first, worrying that he/she may become a liability to Cerberus's cause. Because of this distrust, she initially refuses to open up to Shepard, saying that she's not looking for a friend, but changes her mind after the crew has settled into the Normandy, and opens up to him/her about her father after a couple of conversations.

As Shepard gets to know Miranda, her true personality is revealed; far from arrogant, Miranda is instead a deeply self-loathing woman whose years of abuse by her father as well as the nature of her existence as someone who was "grown" rather than born have left her feeling that she does not deserve credit for any of her accomplishments; her frosty personality and outward self-confidence are simply a façade to hide her insecurities. In her own words, she allows other people to use her talents as a way of finding her place in the universe. Her self-esteem only gets worse when she compares herself to Shepard, whose accomplished far more than she has with no genetic modification of any kind. As she points out to Shepard, while both of them were "engineered for greatness", Shepard was great before he/she was rebuilt, while Miranda's great because of it.

Miranda often presents herself as apathetic or aloof, sometimes to the point of callousness. She is less than sympathetic regarding the Cerberus infiltration of the Migrant Fleet ship Idenna and subsequent killing of the quarians, claiming it was "nothing personal," and attempts to take a traumatized Veetor'Nara over to interrogation, even after Tali suggests simply taking his omni-tool data instead, though she does not protest if Shepard demands that Tali takes him for medical care. Additionally, her reaction to Shepard letting a plague victim choke to death when he/she has the necessary equipment to help him is a simple "I doubt he could have helped us anyway."

On a lesser note, despite referring to Omega as a "pisshole", Miranda is pragmatic about not being able to do anything about it, telling Jacob that Omega has been the way it is for a long time, and nobody's changing it any time soon. Still, Miranda can show empathy, compassion, and moral standards as the situation warrants, not the least of which is her objection to the Illusive Man's plan of keeping the Collector Base intact (a base that had liquefied millions of humans alive). Should Shepard destroy the Collector Base, Miranda applauds the commander's decision, and also outright resigns from Cerberus in response to the Illusive Man's ordering her to stop Shepard. Prior to this she also acknowledges that Cerberus' experiments do cross the line often, showing she is not blind to the fact that Cerberus is capable of wrongdoing even when loyal to them. In particular she admits without hesitation that Cerberus' cruel torture and murder of biotic children at the Teltin facility was without question a mistake (though she also considers it to be more the crimes of a rogue cell rather than all of Cerberus). Miranda also abhors random and sadistic cruelty in general, vocally disapproving of the brutalizing of an inmate by a prison guard on Purgatory and having sufficient empathy to warn a young man on Omega that he needs more than knowing how to use a gun if he wants to survive a battle. She also reminds Shepard early in their working relationship that all of the other members of the Lazarus Project besides her and Jacob lost their lives bringing Shepard back, showing that she does in fact care about the people under her command. This is shown again when she criticizes Joker for failing to stop the Collectors from taking the ship's entire crew. Should any of Shepard's crew perish during the Suicide Mission, Miranda expresses sympathy, and even sounds choked up when she tells Shepard that they have to keep moving.

In addition to all the above, despite being highly loyal to Cerberus for most of Mass Effect 2, Miranda is atypical of the average Cerberus member, being pro-human as opposed to anti-alien, and in fact laments how so many joins Cerberus for no other reason than simple xenophobia. She greatly respects Mordin and the time he spent working with other salarians in the Special Tasks Group, as well as having empathy for the quarian Lia'Vael by agreeing with Tali's anger towards the prejudiced volus Kor Tun, who falsely accuses her of theft. She also has great respect for the asari, describing Illium as a "cultural marvel" and says that humanity can learn a lot from them and their ingenuity. Further contradicting the idea that she is a human supremacist is her acknowledgement that her biotics are "very advanced for a human", indicating that she recognizes that human biotics in general are not superior to those of the asari and other alien races.

Nevertheless, Miranda's loyalty to Cerberus causes friction between her and some other members of Shepard's squad, mostly Jack, who snipes at and baits her regularly and even threatens to kill her during an argument over Cerberus' culpability in Jack's childhood torture. Even Garrus, who is otherwise friendly and accepting of most people, is wary of her, and will argue against making her the fire team leader if Jack isn't present, pointing out that half the squad don't even trust her. Miranda, however, makes a point that whether or not someone is well-liked doesn't matter when people's lives are at stake. Ultimately, most of the squamates appear to ignore Miranda and vice-versa.

Though she professes to be an excellent judge of character, Miranda is not infallible this respect, initially considering the Illusive Man humanity's best advocate before realizing his malevolence and power-lust, and being blindsided by her childhood friend Niket's betrayal despite evidence beforehand suggesting it (though it should be noted that both of these men had gained her trust by then, showing Miranda is susceptible to being manipulated). Either way, Miranda's loyalty to Cerberus gives her (at least initially), a somewhat rose-tinted view of the organization; though acknowledging that Cerberus does often cross the line with their experiments, she nevertheless believes that the good work of the organization outweighs the bad, and that their ultimate goal is advancing humanity rather than hating aliens or amassing power for its own sake. And though she admits that the torture of Jack and other biotic children at Pragia was a mistake, she also concludes (somewhat dubiously), that the cell's members had exceeded their parameters and were then shut down by the Illusive Man when he "found out", even though there is evidence to suggest that the Illusive Man had known all along about the extreme experiments, and had shut them down due to their failure rather than out of morality. Regardless, Miranda's naïve appraisal changes when ordered to keep the Collector Base intact, showing to her that the Illusive Man cares more about personal power than helping humanity as a whole, prompting her to abandon Cerberus in disgust.

Miranda is deeply fond of her genetically identical little sister, Oriana, and has gone to great lengths to keep her safe. However, Miranda's protectiveness is initially done entirely from a distance, with her going so far as to avoid revealing to her sister that she exists. If convinced to form a connection with her, Miranda is so emotionally overwhelmed that she cries at the end of her loyalty mission. Either way, Miranda is fiercely protective of Oriana, and is utterly merciless in dealing with those who threaten her, including their father, who she kills for using Oriana as a human shield.

From the Shadow Broker's files on her, Miranda evidently wishes to become a mother, but tragically is unable to conceive.

Miranda can be a hypocrite at times; she frequently expresses disgust about how her father attempted to control every aspect of her life, and how she therefore couldn't bear to let him do the same thing to Oriana, yet during the Lazarus Project, she was perfectly willing to put a control chip in Shepard's brain as a safeguard (which she justified by the belief that giving Shepard free will was too great of a risk), and would have done so if the Illusive Man hadn't stopped her. At the same time, however, she's smart enough to realize this, and by the time the Reapers arrive in 2186, she deeply regrets having ever wanted the chip, to the point that she practically begs Shepard for forgiveness and says that she always regretted it. When assured by Paragon Shepard that she can't keep beating herself up over the past, she replies 'I usually don't, but this was important', showing truly how sorry she is.

By the time the Reapers arrive, Miranda has become significantly warmer, having lost a lot (if not all) of her former ruthlessness and coldness. No longer under illusions about Cerberus' lack of scruples, she actively works against them, and also warns innocent civilians about Sanctuary being her father's facility.

Leadership High Intelligence Sciences (Biology, Pharmacokinetics, Computers, Mathematics) Espionage Surveillance Stealth Firearms (SMGs, heavy pistols) Markswoman Optimal Finesse Enhanced Human Condition Lightning Reflexes Healing Factor Longevity Attractive Biotic Abilities Tech Abilities