WARNING, WARNING. UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL HAVE BREACHED THE FACILITY.
Anna snaps awake, heart pounding as the alarm blares. Reflexively, she tries to get up, but her hands are bound, her torso strapped down, and her feet cuffed.
She casts wild eyes around the area. The lab, she was still in the lab. She jerks at the bindings, but they haven't gotten any looser since she fell asleep in the restraints. She clenches her fists, hoping against hope that the movie trick would work and the restraints would snap off, but of course they don't. Just like the last ten times she tried that tactic.
THIS IS A CODE RED. REPEAT, THIS IS CODE RED.
"—get the shuttles ready for launch! I'll secure Project Homura!"
The door slams open, and the Caucasian scientist—she assumes he's a scientist, he's always wearing a lab coat—who was always poking and prodding at her bursts in.
"Can't bring her to the shuttle in a bed, no," he mutters frantically, "have to bring her on foot—"
"What's going on? What's happening?" Anna asks.
He ignores her, and unshackles her feet from the railing. Anna kicks out at him, but he pulls a gun on her.
"Don't make this difficult for me, Project Homura," he warns her. "I will shoot you if you don't cooperate."
"You'd never," Anna dares to say. "Kill Project Homura? You'd never."
She's gambling, going off of half-remembered conversations while her consciousness was still swimming in sedatives. What are you doing here? Getting more samples from Project Homura. Still can't isolate what made the experiment work. Let me just dose her again, she's coming awake—
Fear flits across the man's face, but he schools it. "We can heal a shattered kneecap or two, no problem," he says. "Now are you going to behave or not?"
"Or not," Anna spits, and tries to kick out again.
"What's taking you so long?" someone yells from outside the door.
"Project Homura is being uncooperative!" he yells back.
"Project Homura is strapped to a fucking table!"
The scientist snarls, and, keeping his gun trained on Anna, starts to unshackle her left wrist. As soon as it's free, she backhands the man's face, but it's effortlessly blocked.
"Come in and help me!" the scientist yells.
The other man appears at the doorway. "Can't you handle her yourself?"
"Apparently not," Anna snarks.
The other man approaches and pins her hands as the first scientist produces handcuffs. Anna flails, tries to kick the second man, but the man's superior weight keeps her immobile.
"Fucking stay still," he hisses.
"Not on your goddamn life," Anna says.
The cuffs click into place, and the second man lets up. There's only the band around her torso now.
"Keep your gun on her kneecap," the second man says to the first. "Shatter it if she so much as fucking twitches."
The steel of the gun is cool against her bare knee. Anna stays completely still, mind racing.
This is the closest she's ever come to being completely unbound since she woke up in a lab, surrounded by people in lab coats. This is also possibly the closest she'll ever come to escape, what with the alarm blaring and two scientists panicking over getting her out but also keeping her intact.
Think, Anna, think.
Someone'd broken into the facility. She didn't know who that was, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? All the scientists who'd come to draw her blood, cut her tissue, ask her questions etc had spoken American English, and all of them looked non-Asian. So it was probably American SWAT or something.
So she, what, got free and ran towards the people in SWAT uniforms? But how could she get away from Asshole One and Asshole Two?
The band around her torso withdraws.
"Get up," Asshole One orders.
Slowly, she does, the gun trained on her the whole time. Asshole Two clamps on her arm, preventing any sort of escape.
God, please let this work, Anna pleads.
She wobbles to her feet and attempts a couple of steps. Asshole Two moves with her, hand tight around her bicep.
She drops.
The sudden shift of gravity causes Asshole Two to let go of her. Asshole One yells, and fires—but Anna is already rolling out of the way, scrambling to her feet, and hurtling toward the door.
God, God please!
"Stop her!" Asshole One yells. Bullets whizz past Anna, God thank you for making him such a terrible shot, she thinks hysterically, and runs faster.
She's in a dark corridor, lit only by emergency lights, God please don't let me stumble—she veers right on instinct—she can hear Asshole One and Asshole Two yelling, "Which direction did she go? Which?" "Fucking split up then! And don't fucking kill her!"
"I'm not trying to kill her!"
"That would've been a headshot!"
There! An elevator! She puts on a burst of speed and hits the button with her nose. Behind her, the sound of footsteps grows louder.
The elevator doors slide open and Anna scans the buttons frantically. Ground floor might have an exit, but could also be crawling with scientists. She'd have to risk it. She pushes the ground floor button with her nose, then the close door button.
God, God please!
Asshole One rounds the corner, and hollers when he sees her in the elevator, "Stop! Stop right there!" and fires.
Pain blooms in her shoulder. "Fuck!"
The elevator doors slide closed.
She slides to the floor, panting hard. She can't even reach the wound to put pressure on it—that's what you do, right? All the movies say put pressure on the wound—because her fucking hands are fucking cuffed. God. Okay.
Lola, getting shot is not fun, she thinks hysterically.
The elevator says only a few more floors until the ground floor. She'll run out there and—do something, scream for help? Surely there would be people in the SWAT team who didn't go inside the building? They'd have sent in a strike force or something, and backup would wait outside, right? Why the fuck didn't I watch more war movies, Blue is the Warmest Color is not gonna fucking help me right now—
The elevator doors slide open, two floors before it's supposed to.
Anna stares down the barrels of three guns.
"Okay," a person in pink and white armor says. "This is definitely not a Cerberus scientist."
"Are you SWAT?" Anna asks. She scans them, but sees no SWAT vests. She can't see their faces, either—they're all helmeted.
"Pardon?" the person—a woman—in the middle asks, lowering her gun. The other two do the same.
"SWAT," Anna repeats. "The people raiding this place?"
"We're raiding it, but we're not SWAT," the pink-and-white armor woman says.
"She's bleeding!" the person to the left says. A guy in a catsuit? He rushes to her and notices her hands are cuffed. "Someone hand me the omnigel!"
"Omnigel?"
He doesn't answer her, just slaps some weird goo on her cuffs then twists. The cuffs come undone, and with her hands falling to her sides, her shoulder protests in pain.
"Oh, fuck, ouch!"
"Get her to safety, Kaidan," the woman in the middle says. "Ashley and I will take care of the rest of the facility."
The catsuit guy nods. He turns to her.
"Hey. Can you walk?"
Anna struggles to her feet. "Yeah, I think so."
"You better carry her, K," the pink-and-white armor woman says. "Take her to the Mako, we'll catch up."
"Roger that." The catsuit guy, Kaidan, K, looks at her. "But first, I gotta fix that shoulder."
"Thanks," Anna says faintly. "Getting shot…not fun."
The pink-and-white armor woman snorts a laugh.
Catsuit guy Kaidan peers at her shoulder. "I'm gonna peel away the cloth, okay? And put some medigel on the wound."
Medigel, what the fuck is medigel? Some sort of American SWAT specialty, probably, she'd know if she watched any of Lolo's action movies. She nods anyway, and Kaidan pulls away the bloodstained hospital gown. She hisses.
"Bullet's not embedded, must've just grazed you," Kaidan says. He pulls out a canister and puts some gel over the wound. The pain ebbs, the gel numbing the area. Anna manages a smile up at the guy. "Thanks, Kaidan," she says.
"No problem," he says. "Hey, what's your name?"
"Anna," she says.
"I'm gonna carry you to the Mako, okay Anna? You don't look to be in any shape to walk, and we need to be fast."
Anna nods. She can't really argue with that logic. He pulls her up in a fireman's carry, and he speedwalks to—wherever it is they're going.
Anna closes her eyes. Kaidan. Pink and white armor woman. The middle woman. All of them had spoken in accented English, which meant she was probably in a foreign country. God, okay. How was she gonna get home?
"Kaidan?"
"Yes?"
"Where are we?"
"Nepheron," he says. "In the Columbia System."
"Um, where's that?"
"Voyager Cluster."
"I mean like, is it in the USA, or Europe, or something…?"
"Oh, are you from Earth?" Kaidan says. "I'm from Earth too. Vancouver, Canada. Right now we're in—"
"What do you mean, from Earth too?" Anna interrupts. "Where else would you come from?"
Kaidan laughs.
"Well, strictly speaking that's true, all humans come from Earth. Where do you come from, Anna?"
"Quezon City," Anna says.
"And that is…?"
"In the Philippines. Kaidan, where are we?"
"I told you," Kaidan says. "We're on the planet Nepheron, in the Columbia System, Voyager Cluster. We're not on Earth anymore."
"How's she doing, doc?" is the next thing Anna hears.
She's in bed again, but this time there's no alarm blaring and—she wiggles her ankles—she's not bound either. She's warm, too, a comforter pulled up to her shoulders, and she doesn't feel groggy, not like when she would wake up after the scientists would sedate her.
The alarms blaring. Asshole One and Two. Kaidan, pink and white armor woman, the other woman. It all swims back into her consciousness—she's out, she's escaped, she's with the not-SWAT team.
"Physically, she's perfectly fine except for that gunshot wound," a clipped British voice answers. "Cerberus took care of her, it seems. But she has a lot of needle marks, and some scars that indicate scalpel use. Cerberus was taking blood and tissue from her."
"What did they want from her?" another voice intrudes. Pink and white armor woman.
"The commander would know," Kaidan's voice says. Anna tries to open her eyes, and to her surprise succeeds.
She's in a small clinic-like environment, kind of like the university infirmary. A row of white beds lines the opposite end of the room. She casts her eyes about, and sees catsuit guy, pink and white armor woman, and a gray-haired woman holding a—glowing orange pad-thing.
"Where—where am I?" Anna rasps.
The catsuit guy smiles. "Hey. You're on the SSV Normandy, in the medbay."
Catsuit guy is Kaidan. She scrutinizes his face, now that it isn't covered by the helmet. Perfect hair, perfect eyebrows, probably in his thirties. She attempts a smile.
The gray-haired woman steps forward.
"Hello," she says. "I'm Dr. Karin Chakwas, the doctor of the SSV Normandy. How are you feeling?"
Anna mentally inventories herself. Nothing hurts, but the spot where she was shot is more numb than the rest of her body. She says as much, and Dr. Chakwas nods. "That will be the medigel. Anything else?"
"I'd appreciate a glass of water," she says.
Dr. Chakwas nods. "Let me just get some ice chips for you." She does so, and spoons some into Anna's mouth. Then she raises her glowing orange pad-thing.
"What is your name?" Dr. Chakwas asks.
"Anna Salvador," she says.
"How old are you?"
"I'm twenty. November 18, 1998," she adds.
Dead silence.
"Pardon?" Dr. Chakwas says. "Nineteen ninety-eight?"
"Um, yes," Anna says. "Oh my god, hindi na ba—I mean, is it not 2018 anymore? Or 2019? How long did the scientists have me?"
The three exchange looks.
"Around two hundred years?" pink and white armor woman says.
"I'm sorry?"
"Ashley!" Dr. Chakwas chides. "Don't upset my patient! Go get the commander, she'll want to hear about this."
"I'm just saying," pink and white armor woman—Ashley—says, then leaves.
"I don't understand," Anna says. "Is this like in the movies, when you like, wake up from a coma and it's like five years after you first went under? Is that what the scientists did to me?"
"What did the scientists do to you, Anna?" Kaidan asks. "How long did they have you?"
"I don't know," Anna says. "I just—I just remember it was my twentieth birthday, and my grandparents and I went out for dinner and then—I think we left the restaurant—"
And then nothing. And then blackness. And then the next time she woke up, she was strapped to that bed.
She tells them as much, and watches Dr. Chakwas frown. "So they abducted you?"
"I guess? But why would they want me? I'm just a college student, my grandparents aren't like, super rich…And they didn't say anything about ransoming me, either. It was just…a lot of blood drawing, a lot of experiments."
"Experiments?"
Anna raises her arm—oh, the simple joy of being able to raise her arm!—and indicates the needle marks. "They drew a lot of blood," she says. "Um. They called me Project Homura. They took some of my, well, fat, too." She laughs a little. "There was a lot of that for them to take."
"Project Homura," Kaidan murmurs.
"They took a lot of samples," Anna repeats. "The guy who was with me most often, he would talk to himself, and say stuff like 'Can't figure out why the experiment isn't working, we had one success and then nothing,' stuff like that. And then he'd take more samples."
There was silence for a bit, then Dr. Chakwas visibly steels herself. "Very well, Anna Salvador, twenty years old. Can you tell me about how Cerberus treated you? Did they feed you, or were all your nutrients given to you through an IV line?"
Dr. Chakwas asks more questions like that, and Anna does her best to answer from what she can remember. She never had food, she was just fed through an IV. Yes, she was bound all the time, but sometimes a nurse—or what seemed like a nurse—would come in to help her do bed mobility exercises.
"She never told me her name or anything," Anna recalls. "But she was…nice. The only one who smiled at me in that damn place."
She's in the middle of answering how she took baths—sponge baths with the same nurse—when the med bay door hisses open.
"Commander!" Kaidan snaps to attention, and salutes the woman coming in.
It's the middle woman from earlier, without the helmet. Anna's eyes track to her face.
"Maria?" she blurts out.
"Who on earth is Maria?" the woman asks.
Anna scans her face again. No, it's not Maria, but she looks so much like her—friend?—it's uncanny. The same wide forehead, the same stark cheekbones, the curly dark hair wrestled into a bun. But, yes, she was wrong, this is not Maria—this woman is probably thirty-ish, and furthermore Maria has probably never dressed in combat armor. Not like this woman.
"I'm Commander Luz Shepard," the woman introduces herself, and sticks a hand out to shake. Anna grips it and shakes it firmly.
"Anna Salvador," she says.
"I understand you rescued yourself from Cerberus forces, Miss Salvador," Commander Shepard says.
"Is that what they were? Cerberus? Like the three-headed dog?" Anna asks.
"From Greek mythology, yes," Dr. Chakwas says.
"Who were they?" Anna asks. "What did they want from me?"
"Cerberus is a terrorist group, Miss Salvador," Commander Shepard says. "They were conducting experiments on various life-forms. You were in one of their bases, on the planet Nepheron." Her mouth quirks.
"The planet Nepheron?" Anna repeats. "Like…outer space? Like, the solar system?"
"We're not in the Sol system, Anna," Kaidan says patiently. "We're in the Columbia system."
"See, I don't know where that is," Anna informs him. "But like…aren't other systems light years away from the solar system? How did Cerberus get there? Are they like, NASA-funded? US government-funded?"
"Where are you from, Miss Salvador?" Commander Shepard asks.
"Quezon City, Philippines," Anna says. "Earth. We're not on Earth anymore?"
"No, we are not," Commander Shepard confirms.
There's a sinking feeling in Anna's gut. Her earlier words replay in her mind: Is this like in the movies, when you like, wake up from a coma and it's like five years after you first went under? Is that what the scientists did to me?...
…"Around two hundred years?" pink and white armor woman says…
"This isn't 2018," she says miserably. "Is it."
"No, it's not," Commander Shepard says gently.
"What year is it?"
"2183."
Author's note:
Hey. Yeah, I'm starting another fanfic because Mass Effect has been eating my brain for weeks. This is a not-really-a-typical-self-insert because Anna doesn't know she's in Mass Effect, which should be interesting because she has no foreknowledge. One of my inspirations for this is I_Mushi's Home With the Fairies, which is the best Lord of the Rings modern-girl-falls-into-Middle-Earth fic ever. Ever. If I write something half as good for Mass Effect I would be content.
Glossary:
Lola - grandmother
Lolo - grandfather
hindi na ba - is it not
