Author's Note: I got this done in unbelievable time, don't think I'll be updating this often all the time. I don't have much to say for this one, just enjoy it and let me know if you see a mistake I missed or if something's too confusing, and I'll try to fix it.

You know how sometimes when you wake up, you keep your eyes closed to savor that last little bit of sleep? I tried that. The only problem is that it's pretty hard to get comfortable when you're lying on a cold metal floor. I placed my arm underneath my head. Where's my pillow? I rolled over from my stomach to my side. When did my bed get so hard? And cold? I open my eyes and look at my watch on my arm so I can see the time. Good, it's still early. I lower my arm and close my eyes so I can go to sleep again. Wait a second... My eyes snap open, and I quickly take in my surroundings. I'm in some sort of dead-end hallway with metal plating covering the walls and floor, but the dim lighting made it hard to see any further than the immediate area. This isn't my room! Where am I?

I suddenly heard something move behind me, and I sat up and whipped around to see half a dozen forms lying on the ground, one of them moving. I waited a few seconds to see if they'd leap up and attack or something, and after I determined that said shapes were not a threat of any kind, I took the most logical choice of action. I poked one. It rolled over and muttered something inaudible when I jabbed my finger into a particularly squishy part of it. Even though it didn't say anything comprehensible, I recognized the odd accent of its mumbling. The voice belonged to Timothy Ta.

Thoughts flew through me like...like butter melted in a microwave. Ok, that metaphor sucked. The discovery of Timmy really did freak me out though. What's he doing here? Why am I here? Where is here? Most importantly, why was he sleeping next to me? I quietly got up and checked the other shapes. Upon close examination, they turned out to be Tillman, Ricky, Jake, Alex, and Evon. I scratched my head in bewilderment. What happened last night? Why are these guys here? Wait...wait a second... The memories of what had happened last night, or whenever it happened, came flooding back. Along with the headache.

I winced at the sudden pain. It wasn't as bad as when the Marker did whatever the hell it was doing before, but it was still one of the more terrible headaches I'd ever had. I thought for a moment about the recent events. Several questions immediately popped into my head, along with the images of people being massacred in the distance while I ran around the school, but I shook my head to clear it. Better discuss those things with the guys before I go drawing any conclusions on my own, they might have different ideas. Not to mention we could figure out how we got here, wherever that is, without being killed by necromorphs or the Convergence. There was a guy in the game who ended up with half his body looking like it had been blown up after he was right next to a Marker when it went through Convergence, so I was a little curious as to why that didn't happen to us, but I wasn't complaining about it.

I went around quietly shaking and nudging people to let them wake up on their own. I learned my lesson about startling people awake when I accidentally did that to my mom a few years back. I ended up getting punched in the face because she thought I was a burglar or something, not a fun experience. As my friends slowly began to wake up, they all had the same questions.

"Where am I? What's going on?"

Standard questions for when you wake up in a strange place, I'm assuming, seeing as I thought the same. I refused to answer any questions I was asked until everyone was up and moving.

My friends and I stood in a rough circle, everyone silent as we thought about the events of last night. At least, I think it was last night. I really had absolutely no idea how long we'd been asleep. After a few minutes of standing around and thinking, Evon finally spoke up.

"Ok, did that actually happen, or were we all dreaming?"

I scoffed at that idea.

"Yeah, because we all had the same exact dream. That kind of thing is only in Inception, Evon."

"What if this is Inception," Evon asked. That question just totally threw me off.

"Huh?"

"What if this is all a dream? I mean, monsters show up, kill everyone except us, we black out, and magically wake up somewhere else? What if the monsters were the first level of the dream, and this is the second?"

I shake my head, this is just getting stupid. "Impossible. There's no way-"

Evon cuts me off, getting more and more excited. Or agitated, I can't really tell. "What if in order to get out of this, we have to kill ourselves?"

Alright, that's it. I stepped forward and grabbed him by the shoulders.

"Evon," I said. "Listen to yourself. You sound ridiculous! We have to die? What kind of thinking is that?"

His resolve in his idea faltered. "I...yeah, you're right. Sorry...I shouldn't have said that. Sorry."

I give him a quick nod, then turn to face the others.

"Now, we're going to figure this out from the beginning, so..." I look directly at Ricky with my head, since in the dim lighting, you can't see where a person's eyes are looking, and gesture with my hand, indicating that he should be the one to start.

"Oh! Right," he said. "Uhh...ok. Well, I was sitting at my desk being bored like always when there was this, like, really big flash of light, what felt like a small earthquake, and a big crash from outside. Our class ran outside and we found that big pointy rock-"

"Marker," I interjected.

Ricky nodded excitedly. "Yeah, that! We found it in the crater."

Jake said, "That explains how it got there."

I turned my attention to him. "How so?"

"If there's a crater, that means it hit the ground pretty hard. So it must have come from high up, probably even from space."

I nod. "Ok, makes sense. That must be the way it-"

Tillman totally interrupted me at that moment. Jerk. "Look, big whoop, we know how it got where it did, but the more important question is how we ended up here?"

Alex looked up at me. "He's got a point. And how did you know about the Convergence happening?"

I frowned. "You were right there, you didn't see her?"

Alex copied my facial expression. "See who?"

My mind ran wild with thoughts. How did he not see her? She was right there! You don't miss someone who walks through a horde of necromorphs unscathed! Wait a second...necros didn't attack her...no one else saw her...she warned me about Convergence, something she shouldn't even have known about...oh. Oh, this isn't good.

I finally found my voice. "Ok, I'm assuming the Convergence brought us here, because the game doesn't actually go over what Convergence actually does, and we weren't killed by it or the necromorphs, so it must have brought us here. Wherever that is. As to how I knew it would happen..." I faltered. Should I tell them? I don't think it'd sit well with them if I said "Oh, a hallucination told me."

In the end, I went with the simplest option. "I, uh...I touched the Marker," I said lamely. "It forced these visions of what would happen into my mind. It just didn't go past the actual Convergence occuring."

I could feel my face going red from telling such a direct lie to my friends. Parents are one thing, but friends... Hopefully, the dim light would keep them from noticing. They all seemed to mull this bit of information over, then Tillman shrugged.

"Works for me," he said. Phew. Everyone else nodded in agreement. Oh, that's a relief. I clapped my hands together.

"Well," I said. "Let's go find out where we are, shall we?" I turned and started walking down the corridor with my friends following behind me.

We'd been walking back and forth down this stupid fifty foot long corridor for at least half an hour, our hands feeling all over the walls for a door, an indent, anything, really, just trying to find a way out. I made it all the way down towards the area we'd started in AGAIN. This is ridiculous! There's nothing here! I slammed my head into the end of the hallway, somehow, I'd missed the corner of the wall with my hands and I walked right into it.

"Shit!" I yelled out, half because of pain and half because of frustration. I heard Alex yell back with a distant "Fuck!" and I turned and smiled. I waited a second or two, then yelled out "Die!" at the same time as Alex did. We both started chuckling at that.

Timmy, who was right next to me, gave me an odd look. I think one of his eyebrows was raised. It was either that, or it was gone. He asked me, "Eh, Joe?"

I looked back at him, the smile still on my face. "Yeah?"

He stayed silent. It took me a second to realize he was wondering what that little "exchange" between Alex and I was. "Oh yeah, you guys are probably wondering what that was!"

I hear Jake's voice echo throughout the tunnel somewhere. "Not really."

I yell back, "Shut up, Albright!", and hear a laugh, then turn back to Timmy. "It's this little joke we have that always cheers us up," I said. "There was this one time in Dead Space 2, I fought off a necromorph ambush and started stomping their bodies. When you stomp a lot in that game, the guy you play as, Issac, starts cussing away, so this one time I was stomping bodies, I did it for a while then started walking away. There must have been a delay in the game though, because as I'm walking away, Issac decides to randomly shout out "Shit, fuck, die!", and the two of us always thought it was funny."

I noticed that EVERYONE had shown up to hear my story, and they were dead silent. "Ok, granted, the story itself isn't that funny, but it's become like an internet meme between the both of us." Silence. "Yeah...ok. I'm done." Everyone turned back to looking for an exit. I started running my hands over the walls again. This is so stupid! There's no exit anywhere! Then my hand ran over a small protrusion in the wall. Hello...what's this?

I turned my head and yelled, "I found something!" It was like being mobbed by insects, they were all on top of me so fast. Ricky tackled me out of the way, being the football player he is, and placed his finger on the button.

He yelled, "We're getting outta here, finally!" He pressed the button.

I crawled out of the pile of garbage that we all fell into after Ricky opened some sort of hatch in the floor. Of course, us being packed together next to the switch meant we all fell down it at the same time. I'm amazed that we didn't get stuck in the chute actually. I heard Evon yell out, "Good going, Ricky! Idiot..."

"I heard that," said a muffled voice. My ears picked up on some sort of dull thuds coming from the walls in between the voices of everybody speaking, but it's pretty hard to hear it over the muttering and grumbling.

"Hey, everyone," I call out. "Listen!" We all fall silent, and quiet techno music can be heard coming from the walls. I, along with all the others, start frantically looking for an exit while we try to get out of the trash.

Tillman shouted, "Found it!", and everyone tried to get over to the direction he had pointed in as fast as they could. You can't really run down a mountain of garbage though, so we all ended up falling down and rolling towards the bottom. I stood up and brushed myself off as the did the rest of us before we ran to the door.

As we neared the door, I announced, "Ok, let's go find out where we've been for the past I don't know how long!", to a chorus of agreements. I turned, eyes still on my pals as the door opened automatically, and I stepped through. And promptly bumped into a large armored figure.

"Ah! Sorry!", I said, as I stumbled backwards, watching my feet to make sure I didn't trip. A deep, gravelly voice made me freeze however.

"Watch it, human!"

It wasn't what he said that made my freeze, but rather, his voice...I recognized the sound. Batarian. I looked up, still unable to move from where I stood, into the four eyes of an honest-to-God, real live batarian. We stared at each other for a few moments before he spoke again.

"You got a problem with me, human?"

I had to swallow a couple of times before I could actually speak. "No," I squeaked. Wow, that was pitiful. The batarian leaned forward and whispered menacingly into my ear.

"Then why don't you get out of my way?"

I nodded as fast as I could. "Ok. Yeah. We'll just get out of your way, sir." I turned to my friends and saw the same stunned expression on their faces that I knew was on mine. I motioned for them to follow me, then practically sprinted out the door with my pals behind me. The batarian watched us leave, then shook his head.

"Stupid humans."

Our escape from the garbage room sent us into more confusing hallways, but at least the lights were bright enough to the point where you could actually run without a fear of tripping over something you didn't see. The shock of seeing that batarian, a species unseen by my friends, except for Alex and I, had apparently scared everyone into silence. While everybody else was probably wondering about what they had just seen, I thought about what it meant. A batarian. A real batarian. This is impossible. No. Actually, you know what? Of course it's possible. First, the Marker shows up, creates necromorphs that kill everyone, and now I'm encountering batarians. I honestly don't think I'd be surprised if John Marston rode up on a unicorn and told me I eat babies. I rounded a corner and came across a large open space. Well, large compared to all the passages I'd been going through lately. I came to a dead stop, realizing that I knew this one specific place I was standing. Sadly, no one else decided to stop like I did.

They all crashed into me, knocking me to the floor and piling on top of me. Everybody started grumbling again as Timmy, being on the top of the pile, leapt to his feet and began helping everybody to their feet.

"Maybe next time, you'll have learned to not stop in front of a group of people running.", he said with a huge grin on his face as he helped me up. I shot him a dirty glare as I stood up.

Alex asked, "Why'd you stop?" I looked at him in disbelief. "You don't recognize this?"

He shook his head. You've played ME2, come on! "The reddish lighting? The techno music?" An expressionless face looked at me. Fine. I prepared my Australian accent for the word I prepared to say.

"The fact that it's a PISSHOLE?" A look of dawning realization came upon his face. Wow, quoting Miranda actually worked! I hope I don't go saying things like "priiiiiize" all over the place, no one would understand it. Knowing that Alex had figured out where we were, I turned to the others and spread my arms.

"My friends, we are on Omega!" I recieved blank stares in response. As if explaining Dead Space to them earlier wasn't complicated enough...

I lowered my arms. "Omega," I asked. I studied everyone's faces. Was that...no, they don't know anything. Looks like I'll have to explain everything. Again. I sighed.

"Omega is from Mass Effect 2." That got some response. Everybody except Alex, who had the game like me, and Tillman, who knew nothing about the game, opened their eyes in surprise. Spending all that time talking to them about video games in class didn't go to waste after all! Jake said, in disbelief, "You mean this world, the one we're on right now, is in Mass Effect?"

"Well, technically, it's a space station," I said. "But yes, it's in Mass Effect." I gave him a dark look. "We should probably talk about this somewhere more privately."

I shifted in my seat in a booth in Upper Afterlife. Fortunately, there was no wait to get inside, and though we got some weird looks for our clothes, nobody cared. We were anonymous. Good thing we're on Omega instead of someplace like the Citadel. We'd stick out like a sore thumb there. I looked over at Evon and Ricky. They were both staring at the same asari dancer, and I could easily guess what they were both thinking.

Evon asked me for the SEVENTH time, "What are those again?" I sighed and looked at my watch. I'd been answering these stupid questions for two hours. Two. Hours. I looked back at Evon.

"They're called asari," I said. "They're an all-female race that reproduce by melding with other species." A devious smile grew over my face. "In fact, from what I've heard, melding is better than-"

Alex cut me off with a warning. "Joseph..." I look over at him and see a face that just screams "Don't do it!" I stick my tongue out at him and go back to looking around the club, bored as ever. After the novelty of actually being in Afterlife for the first time in real life wears off, it actually gets kinda boring. I glance over at Alex and notice him looking around the club.

"Looking for someone," I ask him.

"I wanna see a krogan!" I sigh. This kid's unbelievable. We're in a different world, no way back that we know of, and all he can think about is seeing a real krogan. He notices me staring at him, and looks back at me.

"Why do you ask," he says with a big smile on his face. Uh oh, I see what he's doing...

"Uh, no reason," I say hurridly. He keeps his gaze locked on mine.

"Looking for a certain quarian?" Crap. I knew that telling him I'm a Talimancer before this all happened would somehow get me in a situation like this. Ricky managed to tear his eyes of the asari he was watching to join in on our conversation.

"He asks, "What's a quarian?" I sigh. Great, here we go with the questions. Actually, no. I'm done with the questions. I scan the room to look for a public extranet terminal. Then it hits me that I don't actually know what they look like. ARGH! That's what I get for being a PS3 fan, I only got to play the 2nd Mass Effect. I know what happens in the first, I just don't know the ambush spots and the best decisions to make like I do in the 2nd. I look at Ricky.

"Can I answer that later? I want to..." WAIT A SECOND. I don't know the date. Oh. Oh no. This could be very bad. VERY VERY bad. I quickly stand up.

"I just remembered I have to go to the bathroom." Lamest excuse ever, besides my dog ate my homework. Which, believe it or not, actually happened to me once. I hurry off in the direction of Lower Afterlife, my intention to meet with Patriarch. From the little I dealt with him in the 2nd, it seems like he'd be the right guy to go to. I'm not going to Aria, that'd be stupid. I'd probably get shot just for wanting to speak with her, I doubt she'll talk to a nobody who just wants to know what the date is. I jog down the ramp and enter Lower Afterlife. Ok...where's that door? He's in here somewhere. I slowly move into the club, scanning the walls. I notice an asari dancer sitting on a table, beckoning me over, but I don't have time for that. I'm a man on a mission!

I finally located the door and walk inside. Alright, now, just walk up and ask him what the date is. If it's close to the attack on Eden Prime, then I'll have to find someway onto the Citadel. If we have to wait a few weeks or so, then we will. But our only chance of surviving lies with Shepard. I walk down the stairs and find Patriarch talking with...is that the same two people he's talking to in the second game? Really? Then his size finally registers in my mind. Wow. Krogan. Big. I shake my head. I can't screw this up, I just have to walk up and ask him. I stand behind him for a few seconds. I always had trouble talking to strangers, and this is the worst time for me to chicken out on it. I take a deep breath and step forward.

"Excuse me," I said. "Mr. Patriarch?" The krogan turns around and looks me in the eye. So...intimidating...

"And what can I do for you," he says. Well, at least he's friendly.

"This may sound stupid, but, um...what's the date?" Patriarch looks at me with confusion.

"I don't know. Things like that don't really matter to me anymore. Not since Aria beat me." I didn't plan for this! Not good! Not good!

"Uhh...ok. Ok. Alright then, do you know the year?" Please say yes, please say yes...

Patriarch lets out a full-belted guffaw at that. "You don't know what year it is? Ah ha ha ha ha!" I stand there, bouncing up and down on my feet, almost scared because I'm so nervous of what his answer will be. The krogan finally finishes laughing and looks at me.

"You really don't know?" I slowly shake my head. "Oh." He scratches his head plate, though it's probably just to look like he's confused.

"It's uh...it's 21...I know this. I know this, hold on." Ok, maybe he's scratching his head because HE doesn't know.

"I remember!", he exclaims happily. "It's 2178." My mind reels from that. I can't even...I can't think about what this means.

"Ok," I say quietly. "Thanks."

"Anytime, human!" Then he turns around back to the people he was speaking to. I do the same and slowly start heading up back up to Upper Afterlife. I need to tell the guys about this. We're stuck 5 years before Mass Effect actually happens.

Ricky leans over to yell in Evon's ear, the music is so loud, you can barely hear the person next to you.

"Hey, Evon," he yells. "Which one is your favorite?"

Evon turns his head towards Ricky while still watching the asari dancers. "I like the one on the left, you see her?"

Ricky cranes his neck around, catching sight of the asari in question. "Her? No, look at the one in the back, she's the best!"

Alex sat back in his seat, chuckling at the two of them. They're so stupid. Then Alex saw the door on the far end of the room open and Joseph walk back in. Alex noticed that Joseph looked strangely...out of it. Last time Alex had seen him like this was... There wasn't a last time.

I drifted over towards the table the guys were sitting in, trying to absorb the information I just learned. We're on Omega, no money, no where to live, no jobs, and we're 5 years away from the possibilty of Shepard recruiting us. FIVE years. I made it back to the table, and Alex and Jake were already at my side, asking what was wrong. You have no idea... I decided to be blunt about it, you can't sugarcoat the fact that we're doomed. I looked up from the floor to them.

"I have some bad news," I said in a strangled voice.

Everyone sat frozen around the table. Nobody spoke, nobody moved, we all just tried to comprehend the fact that we had 5 years to kill. Hopefully, before they killed us.

Alex was the first to speak. "We have no money. No food. No place to stay. And we can't meet up with Shepard for five years."

I nodded numbly. As if losing everybody in our lives was bad enough, the universe has to go screw it up this way.

Tillman raised a hand. We all looked at him, and he spoke up. "If we're stuck here for five years, then we need to get back to Earth."

Evon agreed with him. "We've got no chance here, we don't know about this universe at all. At least Earth is familiar territory."

Everyone quietly agreed with him. Then they all looked at me. Oh. I have to make a plan. Yeah. I cleared my throat.

"The way I see it, there's only one thing we can do." Everyone stared at me. "We beg." More silence. If it wasn't for the situation, all my dramatic statements being answered with silence would be funny. I got out of my seat and started pacing back and forth. "We go around the club begging random people to take the 7 of us to Earth. We can't pay people, so we beg. The faster we get this done, the faster we can plan our next move." Everyone looked at each other, then back at me and nodded. I took a deep breath. Here we go.

I ran from Upper Afterlife down to Lower Afterlife with Alex. Ok, in hindsight, asking a krogan to do something for free was a bad move, but we were desperate! At least he got to see his krogan... We made it down to the corridor that connected Upper and Lower Afterlife and were running to the stairs when a human man stepped out from around the corner, stopping us from moving.

"I couldn't help but notice you running back and forth down this hallway," he said. "Are you looking for someone?" I looked at Alex, and could see he was thinking the same thing I was. We found our guy. I nodded at Alex, who ran off to gather the other guys, and turned to the man.

"You could say it's something like that."

The man raised an eyebrow. "What's the problem?" He had a very nice sounding voice, like he wanted to help us out.

"Well," I said. "My 6 friends and I, we, uh, we ended up here somehow. I don't know how, but we woke up on Omega, no money, nowhere to go, and we need to get back to Earth. The problem is, we've been running around asking random people for free rides becau-"

"Because you have no money," he said with a smile. "Well, look no further. I was just about to head there with a shipment of minerals, I could take you there. My name's Victor, by the way." He stuck out his hand.

I grabbed it and shook it. "Joseph Smeltzer. My friends'll be here any moment, and then we can head out." I let out a shaky breath. "Thank you so much. You've probably just saved our lives."

"Aw, it's no problem at all, don't worry about it," Victor said. "We'll leave the moment your friends get here."

We all sat in the cargo bay of Victor's ship when his voice came on over the intercom.

"We'll be arriving at the Mass Relay in about 20 minutes, kids."

We all breathed a collective sigh of relief. We were gonna make it. I stood up and faced everyone.

"My people," I began. "Sons and daughters of Helghan." I looked over at Alex and smiled. Boy, unless the others learn about all these little jokes, our lives are going to be a lot less interesting. I started over.

"Everyone, I want to suggest something. I realize we're stuck in a new world, no one from our lives left except for each other, no one left to trust except each other, and we're headed to a new Earth, one we've never seen before. So, I suggest that we promise to stick together, never abandon each other, and always help each other, no matter what. I'm guessing I'm not the only one?" I finished my mini speech with a smile.

Everyone rose as one, and we all went around shaking each other's hand. Not everybody knew each other well, but that would change in the coming years. We'd need to stick together to survive. That's when an explosion rocked the ship.

We all stumbled around, bumping into each other and falling down. Victor's voice came on over the intercom again.

"We're under attack by batarian raiders! They're boarding the ship! I'm sorr-" His voice cut out, due to the sound of a gunshot. Everyone looked at each other with a serious look in our eyes. If we're going down, we're going down fighting. We faced the cargo bay doors and waited. And waited. And waited. This is annoying. Suddenly, the lights cut out. I heard Timmy shout out.

"Hey! Face us like men, cowards!" Then I heard a loud smack, and someone hit the floor. I gasped. They're in the room with us. I heard the same sound five other times around the room. All within seconds of each other. They aren't shooting. They're taking us alive. Then, I got hit in the side of the head. It was like the Marker all over again, my head exploding in pain, my vision fading. At least, I think it was fading. It's hard to tell when your vision's going dark in a pitch-black room. As I drifted slowly into unconsciousness, I heard a couple of batarians talking.

"Sir, these humans don't have any identification on them, or omni-tools. They have nothing except these odd clothes."

"Hm. I don't trust these humans. They might be undercover military." It was so hard to focus on what they were saying!

"So what should we do? Slavery?

There was a moment's pause before the leader spoke again. "No. Send them to the prison." Oh no...

And then I blacked out. Again.

Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed this more than I did writing the final quarter, it always ends up feeling...rushed, or something like that, to me. If you haven't noticed, I changed my writing style! Let me know which type you like better, if it's chapter 2 style, I can go back and rework chapter one so it's like the style of this chapter. I hope I make the next chapter sufficently awesome enough, since I'm putting in a certain character deserving of the awesomeness.
Additonal note: Well, I get to thank eezoman again for "advertising" my story in his most recent chapter, I didn't see that coming. And I can't believe no one's made a comment on the Marston-unicorn-eating babies line, I thought that was hilarious! Granted, there are only 7 reviews, but SOMEONE could have said something...