Emony
Her head hurt - that sharp pain like a series of tiny needles burning holes from her forehead through to the back of her skull. She wondered what the Prothean mind must have been like. Their technology was obviously tuned to their physiology, and it was no surprise that each encounter caused some pain (along with the usual confusion and dizziness) but it would have been really nice if they could have made their beacons a little more accommodating. She had actually spent a lot of her downtime wondering what made her mind able to understand their technology - she was just a soldier, and yet after Eden Prime, her life had been thrown into a fast flowing river of events. Only occasionally would she be able to fork from that flow, alter her path, but the general flow seemed to pull her ever onwards, no matter what she did. Was she being guided, after all this time? Was her mind still her own, did she still have free will? Liara had enjoyed digging into her brain a couple of times, and both times Emony had tried to hide those thoughts from her - having someone in your head, even if they were on your side, was just not something she was comfortable with.
And now, here she was in this place, with three other people. This was not at all like a regular Prothean device - this experience felt real, coherent, and controlled. She lifted her hand, looked at her fingers, clenched and released her fist. She could feel her hands move normally in her armor. The air was still, and it was neither warm nor cold.
Obvious questions almost formed in her mouth, but she paused before asking any of them - where was she? Who were these people? Why was this experience different from the others? Was this actually a Prothean device or was this some sort of Reaper device after all? That thought made her pause. If this was a Reaper device, she'd need to be very careful about what she said, in case these people before her were not actually N7 Alliance.
She decided there were two main questions that she could ask. What is this place? and who are you? Keep it simple, reveal nothing.
She made her decision. And as the words came out of her mouth, she saw that the man standing in front of her said the exact same thing. "What is this place?" they chorused in unison.
About a second later, both the woman with black hair and black armor and the woman with short auburn hair and white armor came back with "Who are you?"
Alan
Alan felt out of his depth all of a sudden - so no-one here knew what was going on? Ok, careful, let's see where this goes. "So, that was weird." He offered. As he looked around he felt sure that these were real people near him, but that wasn't possible, was it? This must all be in his head, which made him a little more concerned. The woman with black hair stared at him with emerald green eyes and smiled slightly as she spoke "weird, yes, but then nothing about this place seems normal. I don't know about you guys but I'm getting the impression that none of us know where we are, exactly."
Alan decided to open up the conversation a little "So, wherever we are, we're able to converse with each other, we see each other, we're all human, not Prothean. We all seem to wear N7 armor, and that's not exactly common." he sighed, held up his hands then just plain asked "Are you guys real? or is this some sort of hallucination?"
The woman in white and blue held up a hand "feels real to me, but this isn't what I was expecting." she paused as she thought about it some more... "No, this isn't what I expected. I'd assumed this was some form of data recorder, but this doesn't feel like a recording." She was right about that - the expectation when he'd touched the sphere was that there would be some kind of stabbing pain as images of the Prothean empire burned into his skull. Well, his head did indeed hurt, but there was no flood of images. He was now here, wherever here was. While the others were looking as confused as he was, he couldn't be sure they weren't VIs or AIs or images manipulated from his brain. He rubbed his temples and sighed, "Miranda said I shouldn't have touched that thing".
Kate
Miranda? Must be a coincidence, but Kate was curious "What thing?" The man looked up at her and seemed to be considering his next words carefully. Eventually he decided to follow up on her inquiry "a Prothean artifact" he said. The woman in red jumped in "A sphere?" Kate rubbed her temples and wondered if Biotics got headaches like this - she remembered Kaidan used to get migraines, but that was supposedly just an L2 thing. "A woman named Miranda told you, in your N7 armor, not to touch a Prothean sphere... and you touched it anyway?" she asked, not really believing this was happening, or perhaps it was, damn this headache.
The man continued "yeah, that's about right. Then I was here." Kate felt a chill, even though she was pretty sure the air hadn't actually changed temperature. This was too much of a coincidence. The N7 program was an elite group of the Alliance military, special forces operatives with the highest levels of proficiency who had graduated from the Interplanetary Combatives Training (ICT) program. There weren't many of them - Shepard herself was among them, Admiral Anderson was another. She knew most of the graduates on sight, and yet she didn't recognize any of these people.
But a Prothean sphere - to the best of her knowledge, she was the only one who had ever successfully interacted with any Prothean technology. And this was no regular sphere. "So, hands-up who else touched a sphere today?" and the hands went up.
Andrea
"Ok, look, this sounds really familiar, and there aren't many people who have successfully touched one of those things and survived with a shred of sanity. Whoever you guys are, wherever we are, we need to figure out how to get out, and whether we should actually head out of here immediately or not."
As Andrea finished her thought she felt even more confused than before - she wasn't even sure that made sense. No, it had to make sense... we need an exit, always need an exit. We... but no, wait, I... there's no threat here. No hostile intention from anyone, and everyone's reluctant to speak, there's no voice directing us to do anything, and surely if this were some form of indoctrination there would be voices, ideas. No-one's armed, I don't even have a pistol, and my amp... doesn't even seem to be working
Andrea tried to bring up her barrier but failed. Her amp was still there, but something was interfering. Made sense, if you're here because of some Prothean device messing with your brain.
Red spoke up "Most Prothean encounters end on their own - though if this is some kind of Prothean encounter, then it's a new one. So you mentioned Miranda - what if I say the name Garrus?" Andrea and the other two said "Vakarian?" in unison. Andrea's jaw involuntarily fell open - Garrus knows some other N7 who can interact with Prothean spheres? What the... she looked over at Red "So how do you know Garrus?" she managed.
