Author's Note:
Hey everyone, just a quick word before we begin. The story is set in the same Universe as KatKiller-V's "Another Realm" Series. I strongly suggest that you get your asses over there to give it a read if you haven't already. Since it's a part of the same universe this story will feature some of the same characters and locations but from another's perspective.
I would also be remiss to thank KatKiller-V for beta-ing this story and helping it to become a part of the version of Mass Effect that he has created.
As per usual; Disclaimer - I do not own the Mass Effect IP
Act 1: Trouble in Paradise
Chapter 1: Transference
I groaned.
It wasn't a voluntary groan by any means. It was something I simply did as a sort of non-release for the tension that my body had accrued since going to sleep. And for the pounding headache that I had.
I'd been in bed for a while now, having been made a double amputee by a car crash a few months back. It wasn't pleasant in the slightest. The bones in my lower legs had been crushed into little more than dust by the collapsing engine block of the car, and the flesh had already had the preliminary signs of infection by the time I'd made it to the hospital. I mean, I don't really remember any of that, but that's what I was told.
It had been several days later before I came into a semi-conscious state. The police and hospital staff had surrounded me at first. Hospital staff to make sure that I was lucid, and the police needed a statement from me, as well as asking whether or not I was going to press charges.
My family had a lot to say about that one but in the end we had. I felt kind of bad for the guy, but I was also pissed as hell at him. He'd crippled me because he was too stupid to realise that you shouldn't be driving and having a conversation on the phone while under the influence of whatever the hell kind of drugs the police had said he'd been taking.
But then, that's life for you.
I suppose, I should've taken that as a sign that no matter how much shit life can throw at you, it can always throw more.
I risked opening my eyes against the harsh light that was threatening to break through my shut eyelids, and I wasn't met with the sight I was expecting. I was expecting to be in my hospital room, awaiting a nurse to come and help me off the bed before taking me to my physical therapy. However, what I instead received was a sharp light cast from a bedside lamp, which gave a low glow to my surroundings and a rather different looking room. Something that looked more akin to a hotel room, than a hospital one.
Propping myself up I slowly looked around the room, wondering if I was in a dream, or perhaps I'd been transferred while I was asleep? No, I was dreaming. I must be.
The bed was against the back wall, with a door off to the side where I assumed was a bathroom, although I couldn't see any way to access it. The opposite wall was a single, enormous window, revealing the nighttime city skyline. What surprised me the most about the view wasn't that fact that it looked like I'd been moved to Eastern Europe, what surprised me was the fact that I could faintly make out objects moving against the dark backdrop of the sky. Were they planes? Or was I merely imagining things?
That revelation was probably the only thing that stopped me from noticing the body in the bed next to me as soon as I should have.
My gaze was brought abruptly downwards as I leaned across to get a better view through the window and my hand brushed against something solid under the covers. Fortunately they were clothed. That, I could feel as my hand slid over their form under the bedsheets, but they didn't seem to be breathing. And as dread began to fill me, I noticed that there was blood on their face. Their decidedly inhuman face.
I could feel myself going into shock as adrenaline coursed through my body and my head cleared almost instantly, the grogginess of sleep and the aches and pains of lying in one position too long vanishing in a split second as I reeled back and tried to get out of bed, only to fall onto the floor, phantom pain slashing at my non-existent shins as I tried to make my legs work to put as much distance between myself and the dead alien lying on the bed.
Where had that body come from? Had it always been there? Had I killed it? No, surely I hadn't, I'd been asleep… Was someone playing a practical joke on me? Yeah, that's what it was, a joke. Someone thought they were funny. Well har har, you got me.
I felt myself starting to shake. It felt like I was crying, and then my nose started to run at roughly the same time as something began to come out of my ears. I put my hand to my face, tentatively touching the warm wetness that I could feel there. I let out a quiet whimper at what I saw.
It was my own blood.
The adrenaline rush that had hit me like a bullet train was leaving just as fast, a rough pounding in my head filling its place. I let out a garbled sound of panic as I faded, and I thought I saw the door opening, but I was out before it had even begun to move.
When I awoke again, I wasn't alone.
My eyes opened with a start and I drew in a deep ragged breath before hacking it back up, clearing whatever it was in my throat. More blood most likely. That thought passed largely unnoticed by the rest of my mind, and as my breathing slowed and returned to normal, I realised that there was a figure sitting in the hotel room's chair.
My breathing started to speed back up and the panic that I felt only seemed to intensify as I realised that the figure was alien. It was… impossible. I… I recognised what it was though, and that was the thing that shocked me most of all. I'd like to say that the alien I'd met had been something incomprehensible, something grotesque and unimaginable. That would at least confirm that I was dreaming. But… it wasn't. It was an Asari.
An honest to God, goddamn Asari. From the fictional world of Mass Effect.
My eyes darted between her and the bed, the deceased Alien body outlined by the sheets, the dark purple blood seeping through the covers, a few flies flitting over the corpse, unable to get to the decaying flesh to no doubt lay their spawn in.
There was daylight now, streaming in from outside. The swarm of… flying cars hadn't stopped moving since I'd passed out against the wall last night.
"I see you've finally decided to wake up." Some part of my head didn't quite understand what she was saying at first, instead, choosing to listen purely to the sounds that were coming out of her mouth - a sort of rolling musical sound, kind of like I was listening to the sea.
Her blue skin seemed almost teal in the sunlight, her nondescript clothing managing to give off an air of wealth and authority despite the lack of embellishments. The same could be said for the woman herself. I was ready to deny both her presence and her nature with every fibre of my being, but I knew what she was.
Somehow she must have sensed recognition in me. Perhaps she'd seen it in my face. Did it mean that she's done this before? I couldn't say.
"I take it you know what I am." She asked, tilting her head to the side as she tried to convey a sense of reassurance, or rather what looked like reassurance anyway.
"Asari." The word barely made it out of my mouth as a whisper, but she heard it nonetheless.
It couldn't be real. I must have been having some sort of hallucination, a delayed reaction to the painkillers I'd been on? Perhaps there'd been a mixup and instead of painkillers I'd received some sort of hallucinogen instead?
It would certainly explain a lot.
"In the past, I have been gentle with the telling of just how it is that you came to be here, but that has had rather dire consequences" I could almost hear the unspoken 'I'm bored of it.' "Instead, I will be blunt." She paused to gauge my reaction - or perhaps it was simply for dramatic effect. "You are not where you think you are. The year is 2180, and you are currently situated on the planet Bekenstein In the Serpent Nebula, quite a way from home, I'm sure. I'm afraid that it might be a bit much to take in, but you were brought here across dimensions."
Across dimensions? I mean… Mass Effect was a game. A game for God's sake. Sure I enjoyed it… but that didn't mean I wanted to be inside it! The world fucking ends for crying out loud! This had to be a ruse of some sort… Some sort of trick. Something, anything other than being real.
"This can't be real. The hospital must have made a mistake yesterday." I muttered to myself, but she obviously heard me.
"Unfortunately, no, they didn't make a mistake." She said gently, with a shake of her head.
A sudden thought occurred to me. "What happened to me in the other dimension?"
"We don't know. The prevailing theory is that it is as though you never existed at all." She didn't seem that comforting for someone who was, I thought, supposed to be easing my transition.
"But I could be lying dead in my hospital bed? I could have simply disappeared and people will be searching for me?" I could feel my ire beginning to rise, bubbling just under the surface, but I held it back, the beginnings of what felt like static making the hairs on my arms begin to rise.
"Yes, that is a possibility." She said in return. Any illusion of her comfort seemed to evaporate with the lack of sincerity in her voice.
"Can you send me back? Please?" I could feel tears threaten to overcome my eyes as I struggled to process everything. Perhaps if I could get back home, then it wouldn't be so bad. Maybe I would just be able to stay for a while, experience a little bit of fiction in the flesh, and then go home where it was safe and I wasn't about to be atomised by giant cthulhu ships.
But that hope came crashing down around me with a single word.
"No." She said quietly, but firmly. "Unfortunately, she was the only one who knew when and where you were before coming here." She said, gesturing with her hand to the dead Asari that had been lying next to me.
"Well what then?" I asked, looking at her expectantly.
"I'm sorry?" She asked back in confusion, leaning forward slightly as she did so.
"What do you want me to do? What do you expect me to do? I don't have any fucking legs, it's not like I can do anything as I am. You managed to bring me here, accident or not, I didn't fucking ask to be brought here." She seemed to be about to speak, but I raised my voice before she could get the words out. "I'm just going to assume that you know the shit that's going down in a few years time." She gave a slight nod as she closed her mouth again. "Right. So, here's the problems I have with this. I have no legs, I have practically no employability, not because of my physical state, but because of the fact that I didn't have a fucking profession before you dragged me here. At least, I don't remember having one anyway. I don't know anyone in this stupid galaxy so that puts me even further up shit creek. Not only that, but the whole fucking galaxy is fucking fucked in less than a decade." I fumed, raising my hand and counting off the different points I was making on my fingers, my voice steadily rising as I grew increasingly irate. "So thanks for changing my condition from crippled, to fucking terminal."
I don't know what it was, but despite how angry I was at the whole thing, there was a part of me that wanted to laugh. There I was, completely alone, crippled, and sat on the floor with blood on my face, ranting to an Asari - someone that not only were a work of fiction, but were also over one hundred and fifty years into the future.
I was alone.
That thought seemed to reverberate in my mind as I realised that it was the truth now. Before, sure I'd had lonely days where I wouldn't have a visitor and not even the company of my physio seemed like actual company, but I had never been truly alone. I had never, not once in my entire life, not known a single person.
I knew that if I let it, I would be crushed under the weight of that loneliness. It would literally tear me apart.
"Another one…" She seemed to mutter as her eyes drifted for a split second before her eyes refocused on me.
"I'm going to have to apologise to you for this, but you were indeed brought here by accident. And I truly do mean by accident. Myself and my order have learned to peer through dimensions and do the impossible. Bring a soul from the other side." Her voice sounded as though she wanted me to be impressed. I suppose, in a way, it is impressive. But if you don't have any control over who you bring across, it's a useless skill. She spared a long glance at the dead alien. "Unfortunately it is proving to be quite costly. A life, for a life as it were."
"By accident?" I repeated, without looking in her direction, merely gazing out the window at nothing as the sky cars flew lazily by in the distance, the occasional few moving around closer to the building. A harsh bark of laughter escaped my lips before I muttered "No shit."
I hadn't been brought here on purpose? How fucked up can this situation get? No. Don't answer that - especially you, Universe, you sick fuck. I let out a huff of air that could have passed as a quiet snort. What the fuck.
"So what now then?" I asked quietly. "What plans do you have for the future?"
"We have been searching for someone on your side of the dimensions. Someone who will help the saviour of our own." I knew that she meant Shepard. Who the hell else would it be? "Unfortunately you, are not that person."
"Of course not. Look at me." I said, interrupting her.
"I can however, help you to acclimatise to your new location. Perhaps I can even change your condition from Terminal to… healthy? Before I help you though, you must help me." I looked at her as she finished, questions in my eyes as she continued. "What's your name?"
"Greg… Greg Morley." I said after a moment, slightly unsure if I was making the right choice or not, but with the prospect of being able to control my own destiny again… I had no choice, really. And I hated that.
"And what were you doing in your… previous life."
"Well… I… I remember I was still a student when you fucking dropped me here but... I was an artist. I… Fuck, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. I pissed about with computers, I drew shit, I exercised." It wasn't a specific answer, but I didn't have one. It was the best that I could give her.
"Did you learn how to fight?" She persisted.
I looked at her warily before nodding. "I guess… I mean, I've had training, but I haven't really been in a fight for my life yet."
"It is better than nothing. I'm sure you will quickly gain experience in this life." She said with a small smile.
"You know, that's not exactly reassuring." I replied, my voice deadpan.
"Do not worry, there are people on world who are indebted to me. I will make sure that you have what you need." I merely nodded my thanks in return as she continued. "You will need a job if you are to survive, I'm sure my contacts will be able to help you in that regard." Again, I merely nodded. "Your documents are already in the process of being forged, I'm sure they will be ready shortly. Before we depart, I must warn you. Do not try and become intimate with another of my species. I am sure you are aware of how we mate?" At my lack of confused expression, she continued. "She -" She pointed to the dead Asari "was an Ardat Yakshi who took an interest in you, but I managed to pull her off before you became catatonic. You are now a survivor of floating mind syndrome. If you try to meld with another, you will die in a manner not dissimilar to how you passed out last night. It will be painful."
I sat for what seemed like an eternity, disbelief etched almost permanently onto my features before I schooled them and relaxed my face. This is happening. Maybe it could be fun? Dangerous, no doubt… but… I mean, it's not like I can go back and get my fami- no. I better not go down that road. At least… not yet anyway. Not in present company. I thought to myself sourly.
"I think perhaps it is time I helped you get settled here." She said after about a minute or so of quiet. She stood and opened the hotel room door, quietly murmuring something for someone on the other side of the doorway, before she stepped aside and a small troop of Asari walked through, all wearing nondescript clothing without any markings or tattoos on their faces.
"If you come with me I can make sure that your… condition is changed. And perhaps you will find that the odds aren't as terrible as you make them out to be."
"I'll believe that when I see it." I said. Having to hold in a snort at the irony of the situation. If someone had told me a year ago, that I'd be in a car crash which would result in me getting dragged into a fictional universe… I would have told them they'd gone mental and that there was quite literally, no way that that was possible.
Then again… I'm here, aren't I?
Two more aliens entered and picked up the body of the Asari with a look of slight disdain as they glanced in my direction, but otherwise didn't say anything. A third was pushing a wheelchair that looked like something Professor X might roll around in, coming straight towards me before stopping next to me and moving around the chair to put me in it.
Not wanting to be manhandled I deftly swatted her hands away as I walked on the stumps of my legs, wincing with each impact on the ground and balancing with my arms. It was only a couple of 'steps' until I reached the wheelchair, thankfully, but when I reached it I pulled myself up and onto it, before placing my hands on the wheels and manually twisting myself around and approaching the Asari who was almost certainly in charge of the lot of them.
"Must you be so stubborn?" She asked me with a slight smirk on her face.
"I'm not a damn charity case. I don't need your pity." I retorted, perhaps a bit more venomously than I should have, but I was not one to appear weak. At least, not on purpose anyway. Not only that but I didn't trust anyone in this room further than I could throw them. And at the moment, that wasn't exactly a great distance. "Lead on." I said, my voice half inviting, half commanding as I cut the conversation.
Thankfully nobody said anything until we'd gotten down the lobby of the hotel that we were in, the elevator ride held in slightly awkward silence as the Asari's entourage shuffled occasionally. I merely opted to stare out at the luscious view of the planet, somewhere in the back of my mind remembering the second game's dlc for Kasumi. I hate to admit it, but I was very aware of their positioning in the elevator though. Slightly too close to me for my liking but I didn't want to seem as though I was being delusional. The open hall that served to greet people was surprisingly devoid of said people - even the receptionists seemed to be hiding somewhere which was odd, but I put it down to the enigmatic Matriarch, who had probably cleared the entire hotel of everyone as soon as she'd found out I had been brought into this dimension.
We moved outside and waited off to the side of the building where what was essentially a giant Helipad was situated. It even had the giant 'H', although it also had symbols written in various languages in marginally smaller lettering in the four corners of the oversized launchpad.
Besides the H, the only other symbol I recognised was a very flowy-looking thing that reminded me of something written in Chinese or perhaps Japanese.
"How can I understand you?" I asked suddenly, as the realisation that I'd been conversing with an Alien for the past ten minutes or so smacked me in the face. "Translator?" I asked, hoping I was right.
"The transference tends to leave an imprint in the mind of whoever is brought across. You can understand me, because you understand Asari dialect. You can talk to me, because you can speak the Asari dialect. Well, you can speak Thessian standard anyway." The nonchalant way in which she informed me of my ability to speak a new language shocked me into silence.
It irked me that she could be so casual about all of this. Here I was some guy from the twenty first century and she was just acting as though all of this was completely normal. Although it probably was, for her at least.
We didn't have to wait very long after that before a shuttle touched down and we entered. A ramp was lowered so that I didn't have to get out of the wheelchair, and the Asari didn't have to bother with hefting me up the foot or so height into the shuttle. Practically as soon as we were inside the shuttle we took off, heading for wherever the hell we were going.
"I don't trust you." I said quietly, looking intently at the woman who I'd woken up to. She was powerful, that much was obvious, but it was hard to say just how much power and influence she had - and whether or not that sort of power and influence was the open kind or not. Although I wasn't dumb enough to think that she was the sort of person who did anything in the open, as it were.
She smiled lightly, as if a joke had managed to reach her ears but wasn't amusing enough to laugh.
"You aren't as stupid as you look then… Greg." She said, leaning forwards so that she could speak more quietly as her expression became grim. "Let me tell you this though. If you have any delusions of grandeur, any whim to go and find and help the saviour of this universe… You will not. You will stay away from them. And should a chance meeting occur, you will interact with them as little as possible. I'm sure you understand what would happen should you choose to ignore this warning."
I couldn't help but nod my head in understanding. If I try to join up with Shepard… I'm dead. The speech though, it seemed rehearsed. Perhaps it wasn't the exact same speech that she'd given to any others, but the main focus was still the same.
"How many others are there?" I almost whispered.
"That… I cannot tell you." Of course… I sighed internally, and didn't bother to look at the Asari sitting opposite me. Of course there were others. Whether or not they were alive, was another matter. I would have to try and find out on my own, but if her response was anything to go by, there were definitely other people like me, people who'd been brought into this universe against their will. And she didn't want us banding together.
The shuttle ride took maybe an hour before we landed, the shuttle touching down inside a compound that I couldn't see until the doors opened and the ramp was let down so that I could get out.
What greeted us was a pair of Salarians who looked rather pissed off, if the way that their bulbous eyes were furrowed was anything to go by.
"Sugorn." The Asari beside me said. "Where's Victus?"
"Matriarch." Sugorn, the Salarian on the right, replied coldly. His large eyes practically turned to slits as he viewed her, though she didn't seem to react in any such way. "He's inside, training the cubs."
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards one side of the compound which appeared to hold some sort of gymnasium. As well as a firing range if the muted cracks were anything to go by.
"Thank you. If you please." As she spoke she bowed her head slightly and gestured in the same direction with a slow wave of her hand. The Salarian muttered something as he turned and lead us towards the doors of the building, his companion eyeing us with suspicion as he stepped aside to let us past.
As we entered the building the Asari turned to me, and in a tone that left no room for argument, told me to stay put.
It was a minute or so later before the second Salarian came and stood beside me, his wiry frame reaching to what I assumed was a little over six feet.
"You owe Matriarch something too?" He said quietly as he leaned against the wall beside me. I didn't know much about his race in reality, but he seemed a lot thinner than what the games described. Although total accuracy wasn't to be expected I supposed.
"More like she owes me after this shit, but I doubt she'll see it that way." I grunted back, disapproval colouring my tone.
"Not likely." He grunted back. "If you're staying here, I doubt you'll be in that chair for very long." I glanced at him, cocking an eyebrow in disbelief before going back to glaring at the door 'Matriarch' had disappeared through.
"You got a name?" He asked after a minute's silence.
"Greg." I replied curtly, glancing at him again before adding "You?"
"Jistok. But most people call me Ratchet." He seemed like a decent enough guy, even if he was an alien that I didn't know anything about. I decided to indulge him for the time being.
"You an engineer Ratchet?" I asked, turning to face him for the first time that conversation.
"That's me. Along with Clank." I couldn't help but chuckle at that. "I wouldn't let him catch you laughing at his name." He smiled. "Clank's a krogan."
I couldn't help but carry on my chuckle for a moment before deciding to explain what the joke was. "It's not that. It's just… Ratchet and Clank was an old human video game. One of them was an engineer while the other was a little robot."
He shared a little chuckle with me before his expression turned a little more serious. "You got a profession Greg?"
I shook my head and he frowned. "I was a student… not long ago." I said, unwilling to give away too much history to someone I didn't know if I could trust. "Wanted to be an Artist. I wasn't half bad too, if my friends and teachers were to be believed. Was in a car collision a few months back. Stopped me from doing anything except trying to get back to the way things were for a while… And now this shit's happening."
"Sounds rough." He said with a sympathetic look on his face, but my unamused glare quickly made him change it. "You, uh… You know how to fight?"
I narrowed my eyes at the question, but nodded. "Better than most. Although… I don't know about that anymore." I said with a gesture at my legs, which were little more than stumps since they'd amputated above the knee. While it was true, when I had my legs I had been a black belt in Tao Te, which took me 13 years to achieve. But I'd also dabbled in Taekwondo, Karate, Judo and Kickboxing. I enjoyed it because it kept me active. That, coupled with gymnastics gave me a party trick or two that I could use to show off to my friends.
But despite all my training, the biggest fight that I'd been in ended in less than a couple of seconds when me and my friend were in a club. I'd sidestepped the guy attacking and left my leg out which he promptly tripped over and fell into the back of a bouncer. My friend - someone much more built than I had simply opted to get the first hit in as soon as it looked like the guy was about to attack, and handed him a nap.
Add all this to the fact that I hadn't had my legs in the better part of a year and… I didn't know anymore.
"Ever fired a gun before?" I gave him a curious look but nodded slowly.
"Semi-auto only though. And occasionally a shotgun. It was uh... a school thing. I was better with a bow." I didn't elaborate more than that since I didn't know if the Cadet Forces were still a thing in this day and age, let alone the fact that I hadn't shot any 'modern' guns. And nobody used bows and arrows anymore. I didn't even know if it was still a sport. It suddenly hit me that I was giving this guy all of this personal information and I knew next to nothing about him besides the fact that he was an Engineer people called Ratchet.
"Gonna have to change that pretty soon." He said quietly to me as the Matriarch and a hunched Turian using a staff to help him move around exited the doors.
"Ratchet, you may return to your work." The Turian said kindly to the Salarian beside me, his flanging voice slightly gravelly, but his tone gentle nonetheless. He took off briskly, no doubt eager to get away from the Asari, but took one final glance back and waved at me before he disappeared from view.
"So you're the survivor, huh." He gave me an appraising look. It was slightly unnerving, but I held my ground and nodded once.
"Well, I don't think I've seen worse in a long time." He said scratching his chin before turning to the Matriarch. "We're even after this." He simply said, before calling for Sugorn and speaking to him quietly for a second. I could see Sugorn open his mouth in protest, but he was cut off before he could voice anything and nodded curtly before turning on his heel and heading out of sight.
"This is where I leave you." Matriarch said to me, as she stood between me and the door. "I shall be back soon to check on you." She gave a meaningful look at the Turian before walking out, her entourage quickly falling in behind her.
"Good riddance." I muttered to myself.