Maya Brooks

"They were all mistakes. We were a pro-human group looking to aliens for help. So I bided my time, and when I found another you who agreed...I woke him/her up."

- Maya Brooks to Commander Shepard

Maya Brooks is the hidden second main antagonist of the Citadel DLC in Mass Effect 3 and a protagonist villain of comic series Mass Effect:Foundation. She's responsible for waking up Shepard's clone. Initially introduced as a Staff Analyst for the Alliance, she is later revealed to be an former agent of Cerberus, as well as the one who put together all the dossiers for Shepard's fight against the Collectors. She left Cerberus and awakened the Clone for a hope of launching a pro-human agenda. Her true name is unknown; 'Maya Brooks' is an admitted alias and she has used at least three other names while working with Cerberus: "Captain Channing", "Hope Lilium", and "Rasa". She herself says that her real name doesn't matter as never keeps the same one for more than a few days.

She is voiced by Siobhan Hewlett.

History
Brooks first comes to Shepard to warn him/her that there are new people (other than Cerberus and the Reapers) trying to kill him/her and that she came to this conclusion when she discovered that someone was hacking his/her account. However, before she can explain, CAT6 troops come in and start shooting up everything in the sushi bar that Shepard and Joker were sitting in. After getting a gun, Shepard defeats the mercenaries but not at the cost of Brooks being shot. After applying medi-gel, Brooks guides Shepard through to Cison Motors and warns Shepard to stay off his/her comm, saying it's hacked. Whether or not this was a trick to leave Shepard vulnerable is unclear, though it is very likely.

After Shepard is rescued, Brooks returns with Shepard to the Commander's Personal Apartment where they meet up with the most of the Normandy crew. Liara uses her resources to identify Shepard's attackers as belonging to CAT6 and discovers that they were sold weapons by a casino owner named Elijah Khan. Brooks becomes part of the team that infiltrates the casino to question the man. Despite finding Khan dead, the team manages to recover some data drives that point to a CAT6 raid on the Citadel Archives.

Brooks joins the rest of Shepard's crew in a counter-assault on the Archives where the mysterious identity thief is revealed to be Shepard's Cerberus-created clone. Later while chasing the Clone through the Archives, Brooks leads Shepard into a trap and is revealed as the Clone's accomplice. Brooks does not actually work for the Alliance but is in fact ex-Cerberus, the one who put together all of the dossiers for Shepard's suicide mission; she was disgusted that Cerberus would look to aliens for help and left the organization as the Illusive Man began his slow crawl to indoctrination. Brooks reveals she is the one who orchestrated the mercenary ambush in the Wards to intercept Shepard's Spectre code and the one who killed Khan. With the Clone's theft of Shepard's identity complete, Brooks and the Clone seal Shepard and the squad in an iridium vault and leave them to suffocate to death.

Shepard's squad escapes and catches up to Brooks and the Clone as the hijacked Normandy SR-2 takes off. A firefight ensues in the cargo hold, eventually ending with Shepard and the Clone hanging off the edge of the open boarding ramp. While the Commander's squadmates help Shepard up, Brooks chooses to abandon the Clone; who falls to its death. Brooks is then arrested but secretly begins hacking her bonds. Shepard can either persuade her to go into custody peacefully, ending her escape attempt, or she will successfully hack her restraints; leading either a squadmate or Shepard to shoot her down as she flees.

Personality
When first introduced, Brooks imposed a cautious and modest personality. She knew her place and frequently corrected herself when she said something proud. She was a talented actress, being able to act all jumpy like a person that had never been shot before when it is likely she had been shot several times. She pretended to look up to the crew of the Normandy, calling them 'legends to the rest of the Alliance' and saying the friendship between them was their secret weapon.

However, after Brooks revealed her intentions, her true personality was also revealed; that of an arrogant, xenophobic and ambitious extremist who left Cerberus after the Illusive Man became indoctrinated. She considered the alien dossiers to be mistakes and was disgusted that Cerberus would look to aliens for help, showing a deep and definite hatred of them. She was very hard to intimidate and casually brushed off Shepard's threats when he/she was imprisoned, even going so far as to say that he/she wasn't Shepard anymore. The fact that she didn't seem bothered at all when it was discovered that Shepard sneaked onto the ship or even when she was about to be taken away further shows how hard it was to intimidate her. Despite her arrogant nature, she still referred to Shepard and the others as legends on occasion, albeit in a mocking tone. When shackled, she defended her actions by saying she was 'young and naive' and even tried to make Shepard admit that part of him/her liked having her around. However, Brooks did have a reasonable side and thanked Paragon-Shepard for sparing her life, remarking that the Clone wouldn't have been as kind.