"She's waking up."
There are no words to describe the things I feel- "pure pain" comes close, possibly- as my eyelids flutter open slowly. Fuzzy, formless shapes materialize in front of my eyes for a few seconds before an incredible flaming pain stings them. It feels as if my eyeballs are being doused with liquid nitrogen. I want to scream- only I can't. I can't even tell what's going on.
"Shepard. Don't try to move."
The voice sounds muffled, like she's talking through cotton. Suddenly, I see her- dark hair, pale blue eyes, a warm yet concerned expression on her face. I wonder if possibly I've arrived at the heaven I never even believed in, and this is an angel preparing me for an eternity of pleasure and divine perfection. But the relentless pain strikes me again, and I can tell that this is no heaven. Maybe it's just the opposite, and she's a demon in some type of intricate disguise. The devil's finest strands of silk were woven together over a rotting corpse to form flawless skin that looks milky and soft to the touch, but upon touching it you'll burst into flames. I want to cry out, but I can't even move. The most I can do is twist my face into a grimace as shocks of pain attack every point on my body.
The voices muffle even more as they quickly work to get the situation under control, and before I know it, I'm slipping into unconsciousness again, falling into a dreamless sleep that feels more like a coma to me.
The heaviness of sleep is beginning to drip off of me. It almost feels like I'm coming down from some sort of bad high. I'm waking up...
It's a sentiment that seems almost alien to me for a reason I can't comprehend. The warm silence around me slowly begins to fade away and it's replaced by the angry blaring of a siren. Within a few minutes, I'm awake. Where I expected to feel pain, I feel some sort of odd complacency in my muscles that can only be described as perfect efficiency. I sit up on the table and glance down at my hands, turning them over and inspecting every inch of my skin. It's completely unmarred. I know that there should be wounds, but I can't exactly recall why. I have no idea how I ended up here or where I've been. Everything is foggy.
A voice comes over the intercom. "Shepard, can you hear me? Go to the cabinet and get the pistol."
I hop off the table and walk over to the nearest cabinet and pull out a small pistol. Nothing spectacular. I follow the woman's instructions and take cover before an explosion throws open the doors at the end of the room. She leads me past a few hacked mechs, which are no challenge for me. Firing the gun feels like second nature, but something about it feels different than typical muscle memory. It's as if my nerves and muscle cells have almost been programmed for this. Like it's too easy. It feels like I've been asleep for far too long for it to be this easy.
Finally I come into a large room and a man turns to face me. He looks like he's maybe in his twenties, with dark skin and almond shaped eyes. His eyes widen slightly and a stray bullet causes him to duck for cover behind the glass ledge. I dash forward and duck for cover beside him.
"Shepard? Wow, things must really be bad if Miranda woke you up." His voice is full of incredulity. He seems to be inspecting me.
"Not to sound rude, but who are you? Mind tell me what's going on?"
"Jacob Taylor. And it's hard for me to say right now. All I can tell is that somebody's been messing around with the mechs."
"Where are we?"
"You must have a lot of questions, huh." He glances at the LOKI mechs and chews his lower lip for second, successfully dodging my question. "Alright, let me give you the short version. Your ship went down in flames after being attacked two years ago. You died, but we found your body floating around like space junk and Project Lazarus brought you back. It's taken two years to restore you back to working condition."
You died.
Two years.
His words echo in my mind for a few seconds like gusts of wind trapped in a tunnel. Now it all makes sense. All of a sudden I remember almost everything; the attack on the Normandy, herding the crew into space shuttles and floating through space, suffocating. Have I really been gone for two years? What happened to my crew members?
"I've been dead for two years?"
"Yeah, and you were in really rough shape when they brought you in too. Look, we can discuss this all you want after if you help me get us out of here. Deal?"
"Deal."
I shoot down a few of the rogue mechs and Jacob manages to stem the flow with a biotic attack. After a couple of minutes we've managed to get the situation under control. We stand up and he holsters his gun then throws his hands up in mock defeat. "Alright, I promised you I'd give you some answers. So what do you wanna know?"
"What happened to my crew?"
"Most of them made it out alive, but a few of them didn't make it."
"You don't look like a member of the Alliance."
"Well, I used to be. Not anymore."
I can probably think of a million more questions I'd like to ask him, but now's not the time. Obviously something's up- mechs don't just go rogue and start attacking out of the blue. Curiosity is nagging at me, but I push it to the back of my mind for now. Something tells me this is the start of something a lot bigger than I can even imagine- a new destiny.
"Alright, that's all I need to know right now. Let's get out of here."
"Glad to hear it. There's a shuttle station not too far from here. Come on, I'll lead the way."