So, this is an idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while now. Building the character was the hardest part of this particular project, mostly because I'm finicky about self inserts in general. I like reading those kinds of fics, and I always wanted to try my hand at one, but I was... hesitant to commit. Lot of false starts, you know? Either way, I want to give it a crack and see what I can do with it. Here's hoping, and as always, reviews and criticism are most welcome!
On the side, all intellectual rights belong to their appropriate owners. I'm just playing in their sandbox. Just saying.
Chapter 1 Part 1
The Reality of the Situation
~with special guest~
James Harper as The Voice
"Wake up, Mr. Finch. It's time for you to get to work."
"Ugh..." I groaned, laying face first in the ground, pebbles digging into my skin as my eyes fluttered open, letting blurry light in and sending spikes of pain through my head.
"Didn't you hear me, Mr. Finch? It's time for you to wake up. I don't like to repeat myself." There was a pause. "Perhaps you need some... motivation."
On the word I went from dazed exhaustion to absolute clarity as pain like I'd never felt before wracked through me, exploding across my skin and into my muscles, digging deeply into my bones and organs, and wrapping my brain all at once. It was like being lit on fire and frozen and electrified all at once while my bones shattered and all my muscles disintegrated. Every agony I'd ever conceived of all at once, every moment of utter suffering, every thought or preconception of what pain could be was wrapped into one singular instance of sheer torment.
I don't know if it was a blessing or a curse when it cut out, leaving me groaning incoherently, my muscles spasming and twitching from the sensation of god only knew what as it tore through me. In that single moment I had gone through a thousand different agonizing thoughts and then was left gasping and weeping like a child. It was... words failed me. All I knew was that it was Bad, and that it being over was Good. Nothing else mattered.
Needless to say, I was up.
"Awake now, Mr Finch? Or do we need another?" I could practically hear the smug in his voice.
"Yes! Fuck, yes." I scraped out, rolling onto my back with a metallic clacking that I couldn't identify. The last echoes of pain were already fading away, vanishing like dust on the wind as the moments passed.
"Good, good. I was worried that the drugs in your system would cause you trouble. I'm pleased to see that isn't the case." The voice said, more and more familiar with each passing word. I'd heard it before, but I didn't know where, and that bothered me. I usually had a good memory with these things but... now? Nothing. Vague recollections, distant ponderings, like a word just at the tip of my tongue. I had nothing. Shit.
"What's happening? The fuck was that?" I asked, tiredly rubbing at my face. To my surprise I felt the cool touch of metal and synthetic fiber pressing against my forehead when I did. My hand was plated in some kind of gauntlet, black with glowing red lines, I observed distantly, staring at it with no small amount of trepidation.
Suddenly the need to focus became that much more consuming.
"Good to see you coming to, Mr. Finch. I know you must have all sorts of questions, but time really is of the essence and I have much to explain to you." The voice paused, and I thought I could hear something in the background. Shuffling, or static, I don't know. I glanced down at myself in the interim, taking in the fact that my hands weren't the only thing in armor. So too was the rest of me.
I don't know what bothered me more about it. That I was dressed in full plate, or that it was armor and I was wearing it. I'm not stupid. The implications alone... I wouldn't be dressed like this without a reason, and I just knew I wasn't going to like finding it out.
"What you just experienced was a small lesson in Pavlovian mechanics. Consider it the basis of our relationship, you and I. I have work for you. Things I need you to do. When you do them you'll be rewarded. Refuse to comply, and I will punish you. Do you understand, Mr. Finch?" Dulcet tones, so agonizingly familiar, but still so distant, rang in my ear. Now that I could focus, I couldn't help but notice that I was alone, yet I could still hear whoever it was with perfect clarity.
"Yes." My mind raced across a dozen possible thoughts on the matter, but one hit me with a sense of absolute certainty. It was a sub-dermal implant, a transceiver installed in my inner ear. But how did I know that? That kind of thing... it wasn't real. Something strait out of sci-fi. But it made sense, given how I could hear his voice with crystalline clarity yet couldn't see anything like a radio on either my armor or on me.
I rolled into a sitting position before hoisting myself up to my knees, and from there, onto my feet. More clacking, and from what it looked like I was right. I was plated in armor, but it wasn't segmented like you would think, but rather interwoven onto some kind of mesh covering that hugged by body like a cat suit. It was thick, heavy padding, and looked almost like some kind of rubberized polymer while the plates were thick, hard sheets of some kind of metal or ceramic, painted glossy black and framed with glowing streams of incandescent red.
"Good. So long as you remember that, I foresee our relationship being very mutually beneficial. Now then, that having been established, your job will be to retrieve certain things for me. I will direct you, of course, and monitor you as much as I can, providing information and assistance where I deem necessary. To that end, I've taken the time to equip you appropriately for the task at hand. There's going to be violence in your future, Mr. Finch. I advise you to be ready to handle that." He said, and I finally took a moment to get my head on strait. That explained the armor, then. Shit. I wasn't a soldier. I wasn't trained, or even in particularly good shape. Yet here I was, taken anyway. I couldn't stop the questions from bubbling out of my mouth.
"What? Why?" I asked back, glancing around at my surroundings. I was in a forest, far as I could tell. Not humid, but temperate, and I could taste smoke in the air. The ground around me was churned up some, as if something large had rested there just recently and then left, but I couldn't see anything in the sky, which was tainted a deep red. It was twilight, and I had no idea where I was.
"Wondering what, Mr. Finch? Why you? In all honesty, I can't say. I needed someone with your... lets say unique knowledge of what's going on, but I cast a wide net. You were the one that I caught, and so here you are. Bad luck on your part, I suspect, but you know what they say. Shit happens." He dropped off, his voice still touched with that smug edge. He sounded... older. Had a bit of gravel in his voice and a definite southern twang that came out when he got going. Very genteel, if that made sense.
"You gotta know I'm not cut out for uh... violence... right? I'm not a soldier. You understand that?" I said distantly. In all honesty I'd never even held a weapon before, not a real one. Why the hell would he take me if he knew that there was going to be fighting? And what did he mean, unique knowledge? I was a cook. I made food. It was what I was going to school for, for Christ sake. How does that translate? Was it something else I knew? Fuck all what that might be. I was a gamer. I wrote as a hobby. I didn't have much of a life outside of that.
"I know that, but like I said, I had to cast a wide net. You really shouldn't worry yourself, though. I anticipated it might be a problem before hand, and took steps to rectify it." I really didn't like the sound of that. I really, really didn't like the sound of that.
"Steps?" I almost didn't ask.
"Why yes, Mr. Finch. Steps. Raise your hand, and feel the back of your neck." I did, and something not skin met my fingers with a metallic tink. "What you're feeling is my solution to your problem. The metallic plate that you feel is a phenomenally advanced neural interface linked directly into your medulla oblongata. The center of all autonomous action in the body. It's designed to accelerate your reflexes and muscle control subconsciously, replacing the need for muscle memory and training with something of a shortcut. It's also wired into sections of your brain that provide conscious information, feeding you the background details you need to know about your weapons, armor, condition and situation." My eyes went wide. That feeling I had about there being an implant in my ear? Oh shit. I didn't even need to think about it to know he wasn't lying. Oh god. Oh hell. Someone put a thing in my head. They wired something into my brain!
"It's also the mechanism that controls your pain function. Do not try to remove it, the results would be... unpleasant." I paused at that, letting my hand drop back down. If it was true, then that would explain the agony I'd felt when I came to. The fact that he flicked it on with such casual ease was terrifying in a lot of ways. Just the fact that it was there... good god, what happened to me?
"I'm reading a spike in your heart rate Mr. Finch. I advise you to calm down before I calm you down." I can't even begin to describe the sense of terror that single sentence instilled into me. I forced a deep breath down my throat regardless, though. Oh fuck me.
"Why? What did I ever do to you?" I choked out. This was... god, I don't even know.
"Nothing, Mr. Finch. Please understand, this isn't personal. So long as you do what I say, when I say, you have nothing to fear from me. Were it possible, I would have taken someone else, but as it is you're the best I've got. For that I am sorry, but dwelling on it won't do either of us any good. Do you understand?" Bastard didn't even pretend to be remorseful about it. I could hear it in his voice. Detached, smug, cold, and brutal. Not an ounce of humanity in any of it.
I shuddered.
"That said," He began again, and I forced myself to focus. I didn't want to know what would happen if this prick felt he needed to repeat himself. "That said, you have a job to do, and in order to do it I need to get you on the move. Look around you, Mr. Finch. Somewhere nearby should be a helmet. Find it and put it on."
I was moving before the voice even finished speaking. The helmet he was talking about was lying nearby, maybe ten feet from where I'd come to. Lifting it, I took a moment to look it over. Like the armor, it was made from the same glossy black ceramics framed with a red inlay, though it lacked the same glow as the armor itself and sported a distinctly Y-shaped visor in the center. The inside was lined with the same synthetic polymer as the armor, though to a more form-fit degree and molded together with what I assumed were seals of some kind. Altogether, with it's design and it's material, it reminded me of a helmet that you might see in a more medieval period, minus the glossy visor.
The implications didn't bode well. Still, I put it on with a surprising degree of familiarity, my hands moving to clasp the almost invisible locks around the base of the helm, attaching it to the neck brace that went up to my chin, sealing the suit together. I can't begin to say how much the fact that I knew how to do this bothered me, or the fact that I did so with flawless repetition. The interface on my neck had given me the finesse borne of training without the actual training.
Almost immediately my face lit up with a dozen different readouts, all numbers and letters in wildly random variants, before the dark inside of the helmet flashed on. What was opaque flared into crystal clarity, and despite the shape of the visor I could see forward without any problems. Were it not for the feeling of the helmet on my face, it would be like I wasn't wearing anything at all. In seconds the screen flashed again, first linking with the armor itself, showing me a wireframe of the suit itself, each section flaring red, then yellow, then green as it checked the integrity of the suit and the seals. As each section flashed green, I could hear a faint hiss followed by a clank and a sensation of tightening, and in my mind information on the suit filtered in.
The feeling of tightening was the suit's internal exoskeleton reading my dimensions and adjusting to the change in shape, augmenting my strength and movement speed to compensate for my lack of physique, multiplying it by an order of magnitude. The joints fitted into place as well, tightening, loosening, almost breathing as they measured my arch and curve, calculating how much force multiplication I could take before the servos would snap my limbs and adjusting accordingly.
Once done, the suit felt pounds lighter, and the wireframe faded away, replaced by a dozen different readouts. Information that I didn't understand until I looked at it flickered about, measuring my condition and establishing baselines for the suit's internal monitors. It checked everything from my heart rate to my BMI, breaking it all down and then storing it in it's database before moving on to the next aspect of it's activation.
Instantly, an orb of bluish-purple energy flashed into existence around me, looking like rain on a windowpane before humming and vanishing while the first bar of my HUD flickered on, taking it's place in the upper left corner of my vision. It comprised of several blue segments with a number beneath it, reading at an even 400, which was then followed by a solid green bar that read 100%. I knew that they were for shields, and then armor integrity and I was getting to the point where the shock of having information plugged strait into my brain was wearing thin.
Next up came expendable supplies, which took up space on the right corner of my HUD. Five units Medi-Gel, five grenades, thirty units Omni-Gel and a sudden sinking sensation as to what it all meant. It took a moment, but my suit linked up with an omni-tool I didn't know I had, connecting itself to my armor and flaring into existence. As it linked up, an icon appeared on my HUD, with a name attached, Shield Boost, which then shrank down and fitted itself to the bottom of the screen. Incinerate was next, followed by Concussive Shot, Sticky Grenade, Submission Net, and finally Cain Trip Mine, each taking up a numbered slot after Shield Boost.
Finally, the scanner pinged the magnetic locks on my armor, picking up the folded weapons I knew would be there. Each popped up, showing a wireframe of the weapon before shrinking down and settling into the far left corner. An M-99 Saber, first, complete with omni-bayonet and the high-velocity barrel. An M-9 Tempest was next, again with the high-velocity barrel and a recoil compensator, and finally an M-358 Talon, complete with the magazine upgrade and the heavy barrel.
I knew this armor. Those weapons. Those skills and items. Suddenly a lot of things made a sick kind of sense. I knew this place. Knew it's story, it's history, it's heroes and villains. And I also knew something else.
It's secrets.
"Do you like it? As I said, I took the time to compensate for some of the... shall we say discrepancies that would otherwise plague a normal person like yourself in this kind of situation. I assume you've put together where you are?" I could practically feel the cockiness in that bastard's voice. But yes, I had. I finally understood what he meant by "unique knowledge".
"You put me in the Mass Effect universe. God damnit." I sighed, and his laughter echoed through my skull.
"Indeed I did, Mr. Finch. When I cast the net, the only thing I could set it for was someone with a deep understanding of the lore and the world. You fit the bill. Beat the games a few dozen times, found all the little details out. Listened to all the conversations. Put more than two thousand hours into the series total. Read the books, the background, the details, all of it. You loved it, Mr. Finch. It was your obsession, and now, thanks to me, you get to live it too. You're welcome." He laughed, and I shuddered at the detached coldness in his voice. This was insane. I was going insane. There's no way this... this can't be real. It's a dream. It has to be.
Deep down, I knew I was only deluding myself.
"Like I said, I need you to collect a few things for me, Mr. Finch. Your... shall we say, understanding of events gives you the insight you need to do that. There are things here that I want, that you need to get for me. And you will get them for me."
"What? This is insane. You... you kidnap me, you take me here, you drop me off in this fucking fantasy world and just... what, think I'm going to play along? Do you know what happens here? Do you have any fucking clue as to what's coming?" I finally snapped, screaming at him. I could feel my fists clenching tightly as a deep sense of rage, of indignation flooded through me.
And then came nothing but PAIN.
"I do, Mr. Finch, and I would care to mention that taking that tone with me is ill-advised. In all honesty, I don't care what you want to do on the side, so long as you do what you're told in the interim. I put you on Eden Prime for a reason. You're going to join the good Commander Shepard here. You're going to join the fight, because the Commander goes to where I need you to be. And then you will collect what it is I require, because I say you will. I own you, Mr. Finch. You are my prisoner, except in that you will carry your prison with you. You will not share what you know, you will not change things, you will not rock the boat. You will follow the path, and you will do so happily or I will make you regret the day that cunt of a woman you called mother dragged you screaming into the void."
The pain cut out and I bonelessly fell to the ground, tears streaming down my face as I wept from the sheer unadulterated agony I'd just felt. I seized and shuddered and curled into a ball, screaming incoherently for I don't know how long. Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Until it all came crashing down, and left me feeling drained and exhausted.
"Do you understand me, Mr. Finch? Or do we need another lesson?" Any trace of emotion had left the voice while I pulled myself up, barely, forcing myself off the ground with my head hanging between my legs. I wanted to vomit, to scream more, to do anything else.
"Yes." I never hated myself more than in that second.
"Good. I need you to stay alive, Mr. Finch, and I went to no small expense to keep you that way. Yes, you may find some things different from how you remember them. Little details. No heat sinks, since that hasn't been reverse engineered from the Geth quite yet, but the rest is all stock I assure you. Most of it you can find in the Terminus, in fact. For the right price." He carried on like what had happened hadn't. Bastard.
"That said, you will have to make up something in the interim. There will be questions, but I've established a full background for you, Mr. Finch. It will stand up to scrutiny, such as it might be. For now, though, you're a bounty hunter. You're here on a job- a bounty, but your ship was shot down in the field. You've been fighting your way through, following the pattern of Geth patrols, tracking them, seeing what they want. This is your inroad. I suggest you make it believable." I noted that a compass appeared in the upper left corner of my HUD, and that despite the rather brutal shock to my system I was recovering at a geometric rate. A small mercy inbetween the rock and the hard place.
"I've set a waypoint for you on your overhead. It's where you need to go, so I advise getting a move on." Bereft of other options, I knew I had to bow and do it. Still, whatever else there was to think about, and there was a lot, he seemed content to send me on my way. I still had no idea what he was looking for or why, and something bothered me about that as a whole.
He ripped me across dimensions for all I knew, kitted me out in gear that, quite frankly, was a hell of a wide margin above whatever starter gear Shepard would have and set me up with skills and the abilities that I had no right having access to. Then sets me here so I could "connect" to the game's main protagonist and supposedly builds me a background that's up to snuff despite my never having existed in this universe. That's not even mentioning the brain implant, of which still left me feeling gutted when I thought about it, or that goddamn pain trigger he had me by the throat with.
The sheer scope of that... this bastard did the impossible. He put me here, violating everything I thought I knew about how the world worked, basically bending reality in the process, yet there was something he needed me to fetch him? Couldn't he just... I don't know, will it to himself? It would make about as much sense as anything else. So why? What's the difference between that and this? What's stopping him?
I didn't know. I wasn't going to ask either, for that matter. Far as I could tell, he couldn't read my thoughts so there was that, but the flipside is that he could hear what I was saying. I didn't have the option of saying no, didn't have the information I needed to even try arguing the point, and if experience taught me anything this prick might just blast me for pondering it. What's more, he picked me because of how much I knew about Mass Effect, though my being here was anything but intentional if he was to be believed. Knowledge is power, and he knew it, and the stuff I know... it could change the course of history with the right ear. Unfortunately, he knew that too.
He brought me here because... what, I knew the series? He said he needed me to play gopher, and I'm not blind. There are a lot of things in the games that knowing about beforehand would make... if not easier then at least somewhat more manageable. Forewarned is forearmed, right? But what did he need, and why? Clearly something linked to Shepard's mission, but but which events were relevant to that? And which weren't? Shit... all good questions, and they didn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg. I needed to know those answers, and much more besides before I could even start to speculate. Too many variables. Too many possibilities, and this prick wasn't the type to play it straight. Shit. It would have to wait.
For now, I had to do what he said. Had to follow orders.
I didn't have a choice. Not yet, anyway.
Not yet.
