Chapter 1 - Worry

I was worried of Josh.

I was too young to remember when we met, but I've been told that other kids in the park had ganged against me to the point I was crying, when Josh had come to me. He was furious that other kids would keep throwing sand at me even when they could see that I was getting more and more hurt. He was few years older than the rest of us, so when he told the others to drop it, they did. Back then an age gap of three years was a great deal.

Joshua had never been stable. I know his parents well, and his older and younger siblings, and none of them has any kind of mental disorders. His mother told me once that the pregnancy had been easy, and there had been no complications at birth. But something wasn't quite right in Josh's brains: he never filtered his words, was impulsive to the point of self-destructiveness, and developed many obsessions during the years. I didn't really pay attention to his queerness unless it was becoming hazardous, I figured it all was a part of the 'Josh package.'

But now, after the third Mass Effect game, I was starting to get worried.

Josh had a huge tantrum when he finished the game, something to do with it's ending I think. He had loved the first two games, and I had watched him play them sometimes. (Scanning the planets seemed so boring, I had no idea what he saw in those games.) It was only when Steam had one of it's huge summer sales that I bought the first two games to my PC and paid almost nothing of them.

Yeah. I fell in love, especially the first game. I was furious that there was a little glitch when Alenko and Shepard had one of their first chats, and I still wasn't sure if I had missed some of their dialogue because of it. But ME2 had it's own glitches: it was hard to look at the romantic scenes when the character's eyeballs came through their eyelids, and I'm sure that once I saw Illusive Man's face as a part of a wall at the collectors place.

But no matter how much I loved Mass Effect (and hated the scanning), Joshua had taken it to a whole another level.

His walls were covered in ME posters, articles and screenshots. (If he hadn't lived at his parents, I think all of the house would have been covered in them. He couldn't keep his jobs long enough to risk leaving home.) He kept playing the games through, creating Shepard after Shepard. He created one that looked a bit like me (there wasn't a hair long enough to make us look really alike), and played the games through how he imagined I would have. He said it was hard sometimes, because in reality I would never be able to command people. I had been insulted at first (even though I'm used to his honest opinions), but after I started playing myself I understood how well he knew me. Shepard had sometimes choice options which none felt right, and sometimes choices I could never decide on my own. (I still feel guilty about choosing Alenko over Williams on my first play-through. I feel like Shepard's feelings for Alenko clouded my judgement at the time.)

Ah, yes, back to Josh. He used his free time on ME forums, sent mail to the development team every so often to make them change the ending in third game, and all he really talked about with me was, guess what, Mass Effect. It annoyed him that I hadn't played the last part yet and had told him not to spoil it for me: I didn't own any gaming platforms other than my PC and ME3 wasn't available on Steam. I had spoken to this parents and promised them I'd try to get him snap out of his obsession, but my tries to take him with me to the real world had failed miserably. Two of my closest friends want nothing to do with me because of his behavior when we met.

Now I'm just trying to get him talk about other things whenever we meet. I live three hours away nowadays, and I make him feel little guilt whenever I tell him that I'm offended that he doesn't want to talk about how I am doing, since we rarely see each other face to face anymore. I don't like it when he feels uncomfortable, but it has made him come out of his bubble a little bit.

ooOoo

I had been visiting my home and Josh for a fev days, and managed to go to have a couple with him at our favorite bar. I had returned to my place earlier tonight, and had quickly fallen asleep. Travelling always exhausts me. I woke up when my phone rang, and it took me couple of tries to answer. It was so dark.

"H-hello?" I croaked to the phone.

"Haidee?" It was Josh's mom. I felt a knot in my gut. "I am really sorry to disturb you at this hour, but I really need to know if you have heard anything from Joshua?"

I struggled to have my back against the board and sit up. "I, uh- I haven't heard- what's the... "I tried to look at the clock, but my eyes could hardly see it through the darkness, much less tell me how much it was. "Is Josh ok?"

"He is not in his room." I hated to hear the fear in her voice, hard she tried to conceal it. "We woke up to a loud noise around four, and thought there was a burglar in the house. We couldn't find the source of the noise, and then we realized Josh was gone." Her voice had fallen into a whisper. "All his stuff are in their place, his shoes are where he left them earlier, and we just don't know... He's never done anything like that."

"Have you called the police?" I asked, rocking slightly in my sheets. She answered with a no: a man of 28 years, goes out at night, what would they do about it?"

"Exaggerate his condition, tell them he isn't mentally stable. If they don't start searching for him, they'll at least keep an eye out," I said to her. We shared a few more words and then we hang up.

I stared a moment at my phone, and then turned my eyes to my window, covered by curtains. I wasn't really looking anywhere. I tried not to think about the phone call. I needed to go to work tomorrow. I felt a stab of quilt when I layed myself to my bed and slowly fell asleep.

ooOoo

When my alarm woke me up I immediately called back to Joshua's mother. There was still no sign of him. I hadn't noticed anything unusual when I last saw him, and told her as much. When I got to work I told my boss about the situation. He told me he couldn't let me leave before my shift ended, but he'd try and get someone cover for me if I wanted to take some time off untill my friend was found. I thanked him and told him I'd return to my home town later that day.

After the long hours sitting on the train I was finally at Josh's house. Still no word from him. His father was already looking for him, and as I arrived, his mother left too. I was left there in case Josh would come back, or call home. (They still had a home phone, even though all of them had cell phones. I had a cute old phone at my apartment but it was not connected to phone lines.)

I paced around his room. Everything was more or less the same as always. Posters of characters I knew stared at me, as did the ones that I yet knew only by their name. I tried to get to his computer but it was protected by a password. I didn't know if I would have found anything helpful from it, and made a quick search on my phone about getting around passwords. I wasn't tech whiz and hardly understood half what the sites told me. I shut my browser a tad more frustrated.

I leaned my jaw to my palm and rocked slightly on his chair, staring at the two photographs on his table. The other one was his mother and father after they got married, holding a little baby in their arms. Another child was at their feet, Josh's older brother. I stared at the baby. I couldn't recognize Josh's features on him. The baby was ugly and crying.

I turned my gaze to the other photo, a photo of Josh and me. He would change the photo every time he got a new one, but the frames always remained the same. I stared at us, he smiling wildly after our day at amusement park. My red-tainted hair was a wild mess aroud my face. We had taken so many rides on the roller coaster I had lost count. I traced my finger around the frame. There were dents, stickers, little sketches we had added to it during the years. I wondered If he had stored the old photos somewhere.

I heard a bleep I knew well. I turned on the chair to look at the Xbox controller on the floor that was almost out of battery. I turned my head to the console, to see it was still running, but the tv wasn't on. I stood up. I guess Josh's parents had turned the tv off, but didn't know to shut the console.

I put the contoller battery to it's load deck and put a new full one to it's place. I sat down in front of the tv and turned it on. He had been playing the first Mass Effect, and I felt little disappointed. I had hoped he'd played something else. I realized the game had frozen when I tried to get to the menu screen to save and quit. I tried a couple of more times and then reseted the console (and apologized to it in my mind) the hard way.

I stared at his profile for a while after I powered the console up again. I put the game on, I wanted to see where he had left off. I wouldn't mess with his saves, I just wanted to know if he was in any emotional part of the game. Maybe that could have triggered him some way?

I tried to access his latest game file, and the console crashed. Oo-kay.

So did the following fifteen files. I was starting to worry I had somehow corrupted the game when I reseted the console earlier.

At career 22 I felt like throwing the controller out of the window.

Soon there was only the last file left, the very first playthrough he ever did. I pressed a button, and to my suprise I saw one of the first conversations to play. Joker wasn't too fond of having a Spectre on 'his' ship. Alenko told him to suck it up.

When it was about time for Shepard to have his first choice in the dialogue, the screen froze. I threw the controller at the tv screen.

Or, I would have, but I couldn't move muscle in my body.

I was frozen, just like the game in front of me. Seconds went by, and I didn't feel my heart beat, or my lungs moving. It wasn't hurting, but I was starting to freak out.

Then I started to feel a pull. At the same time, I was still sitting on that very spot on Josh's carpet, but I could feel myself moving closer to the screen. The screen seemed to move towards me as well. If I could have, I'd started hyperventilating. My thoughts were screaming in my head.

Was I having a seizure?

The pull became stronger, and the screen filled my vision. I could no longer see it properly, it was too close to concentrate my gaze to.

I felt an electric shock, and everything was white.

ooOoo

It wasn't that bad, at least I could breath again, and blood was rushing through my veins. Moving caused another shock to go through me, and I bit my teeth together. I layed still until my pulse was more or less back to normal, and my breathing even. I moved my left hand carefully. No shock. I moved my other limbs. No shocks. I opened my eyes and batted my lids harshly to get my eyes adjusted to the light.

When I'd gotten to Joshua's, it had been well past sunset. Now sun was shining bright into my eyes. Struggled to get into a sitting position. I had definitely been in Josh's room when I got electrocuted, but now I was in woods, and nothing looked familiar to me.

I sat there for a while, trying to understand what the hell had happened.

Authors notes:

English is not my first language, and I apologize any inconveniences. I also don't own Xbox, and am not sure if I used correct terms when I wrote about it. I also don't know if there's a limit to how many careers one can save on ME.

Thus said, I'd be happy to have someone as my beta. I don't have the courage to show my fics to anyone I know in real life. I'd wish for my beta to know about Mass Effect's universe, and the difference between 'your' and 'you're'. If you would like to be my beta and have any fics online, be warned, I will check.

I wanted to make a self-insert, but found myself too boring. I'm trying my best to make Haidee a good and deep oc, not another Mary Sue. (Btw, if you haven't yet read the original Mary Sue fic, I strongly recommend it. I was entertained.)

This is the only claim I'll ever make about copyrights and credits on this fic:

Admitting that I don't own the ME characters but Bioware does does not grant me any kind of immunity against the fact that I have taken somebody else's characters and universe and used them on my work of fiction, and it is ridiculous to say no harm was intended, even though it is the truth. If you can recall yourself ever writing 'I own nothing' anywhere please go and erase it. Be better than that.

That said, I have no one to credit on giving me opinions and helping me with this fic. I hope to have created unique characters and to get to know them better chapter after chapter, and a unique storyline in this world filled with stories.

This fic will contain spoilers about ME 1 and 2. I honestly haven't played ME 3 yet, so I only know so little about it. I hope Haidee gets to meet ME characters as soon as possible, but I try to keep things realistic.

And lastly, I hope you will give me your honest opinion on this fic. I have not really written fics before, much less in English. It is okay to tell me if you liked or disliked my piece of fiction, but I welcome real constructive critic the best. (Also, I'm kinda akward when it comes to replying to comments (especially ones that really don't say anything) so, uh, bear with me.)

Rated T for now, might change into M later on. If opinions on rating please let me know, I never really understood this system.

There are many more things I'd like to say, but this note is long enough, and my laptop's living on a prayer. I have enjoyed the various ME fics, and try to commit my love in return.