Kaidan woke up with a start. He was all alone in a deserted medbay of some sort. A fine layer of dust coated almost everything, a concept foreign to a man who had grown up in the sterile world of the future. Memories rushed back to him as he tried to get up, but he was immediately leveled again by the searing pain running through his side. He looked down to see a recently stitched wound on his right, where a piece of metal the size of a grain of sand had been propelled to nearly the speed of light by mass effect fields, had earlier ripped through his side. Stitching was a bit old fashioned, but looking around the room Kaidan guessed that it had been a while since the Medigel had been restocked.
He tried to rise again, slowly this time, ready for the pain. It came, just as strong as last time, but Kaidan welcomed it this round, for at least he could confirm that he wasn't dead. The reverie did not last long though, as pain was pain; it hurt. He cleared his mind and tried to take stock of the situation. He was alive, but unsure to what degree his situation had improved. He was in the Terminus systems after all; he might have been 'saved' by slavers.
The room was filled with devices and instruments that he had never seen before, but the language printed on the machinery was in familiar characters. He remembered the humans on the shuttle. It was clear that these humans had little use for a medbay, which either points to this being an infrequently flown ship, or they rarely flew far from a port. A set of civilian clothes were draped over a chair near the bed; they were about Kaidan's size, so he took the gamble they were for him and decided that if he was going to explore the creepy mysterious ship, he wouldn't do it in his skivvies.
He stepped out of the bay into a long hallway lined with doors with large bold signs hanging over each. He couldn't read the writing, but the symbols were clear enough. The stairs to the bridge sat at the end of the hall to his left and a large set of doors that looked to open into the hangar were at the far end of the hall to his right. He crept to the left, unnerved by the quiet of the ship, feeling as if it would be some sort of capital offense to break the uneasy silence. Starships shouldn't be this silent. A ship this size needed a crew.
The stairway was in keeping with the theme of 'eerie silence' as the dim lights illuminated a short set of steps that ended in the door to the bridge. The doors noiselessly slid open to an impressive bridge with massive open observation screens that covered at least half of the bridge, looking like windows into space. The lower decks of the bridge was filled with at least a dozen battle stations, and on top of a platform in the middle sat the captain's chair. Kaidan wanted to be in awe of the beautiful but deadly bridge, but confusion won the battle for his mind, as he finally found the only humans on board this vessel. One captain, sitting stern faced and battle ready in his chair, and four people sitting at a table behind the dutiful captain playing cards.
Maybe he did die. This was too strange to be reality.
Then men looked up at Kaidan's gawking presence, but they didn't seem startled. They didn't jump up to take him away. "He's finally awake! Come join us, we're about to deal another hand!", One of the men said. Kaidan said nothing. He didn't move. "I hope he doesn't pass out again…" one of the women muttered to the others. The captain stirred for the first time, "for heaven's sake, give the man a seat. He's clearly a bit overwhelmed."
Kaidan finally found his voice, "Am I alive?"
Even the stern faced captain laughed at that.