Get a hold of yourself, Shawna. Calm down before you hyperventilate.

I was beginning to shake, and my vision blurred. The calm, analytical part of my mind knew I was going into shock and that I needed to regain control before I passed out, but the rest of my brain was a little preoccupied with the fact that I had either gone insane and started hallucinating or I was in a different universe. I hadn't always been all that mentally stable, but this was something else.

Shit shit shit. Okay. Close your eyes and focus on your breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

After a few moments of that, I felt the shaking stop. I mentally went over the situation in my head. I was either having audio-visual hallucinations, or I had somehow been transported to the Mass Effect universe. I was sent here by what were possibly two of the Endless. I couldn't go home until an unspecified task was completed. I wasn't sure where in the Mass Effect universe I was, hypothetically. I was currently alone. I was wearing what felt like the clothes I had gone to sleep in. I couldn't see or feel anything else of mine here.

I then thought about what I needed to do.

Well, I need to go home. But from the sound of it, that's not happening anytime soon.

A wave of sadness washed over me. I so far away from my family. My boyfriend. My cat. I might not ever get back to them. A pain built up in my chest. I was surprised how much it hurt. I'd sometimes worry about Mom not coming home one day, or my cat getting hit by a car. People always told me I slightly paranoid. But in my imaginings I never anticipated this level of pain. Maybe it was because it was real this time.

Stop it. Move on, there's nothing you can do. If you want to see them again, you need to finish this 'task'. You can't do that if you're moping on the floor.

With a deep breath, I shoved all thoughts of my family to the back of my head. I needed to think about what I needed to do right now. First off, I needed to blend in. If anyone found out where I was from I'd be in some government holding cell, or worse, before I knew it. Secondly, I needed information. Where and when was I in relation to the events of Mass Effect? Suddenly, another thought came to me.

Oh gods above, the Reapers are real! The giant, civilization-destroying, mind-controlling, millions of years old death machines are real. And they're probably coming soon!

And there was the fear, shivering down my spine like a parasite. The inescapable knowledge that this cycle was living on borrowed time, and that I was currently living in it, paralyzed me.

In the commonly accepted canon, Shepard defeated the Reapers. True, it was through a shitty deus-ex machina, but defeat them he or she did. But before he-she-they could there was an unthinkably high body count. Entire planets burned, billions dead.

Maybe that's my 'task'. To reduce the deaths. The man in my vision, who I'm fairly certain was Dream, never said what it was. He also said that he and Delirium would be watching me. Maybe they'll contact me somehow later?

Saving people from the coming hell would probably not be easy or simple, but I could try. My best bet would be to use my knowledge of the game but as the growing pounding in my head reminded me, this was no longer a game. I suspected that most of the base timeline was probably true, but with reality comes a host of variables that I could not account for. Also came the concern that I could end up changing too much, and lose what little advantage I had.

But all these hypotheticals were thinking too far ahead: I needed to get some information and set myself up as a native inhabitant of this universe before I could start going about saving people from space cuttlefish.

I finally got up from the space on the ground I had inhabited for a good ten minutes and took a closer look at my nearby surroundings.

I was in what looked like a small back alley. Just as I had smelled earlier, there was a large container nearby that held what was obviously garbage at the end of the alley. One side was bordered by a deep drop-off with a flimsy guardrail on my left, a graffiti-covered metallic wall on the right. The end opposite the garbage dumpster turned right. The voices I heard came from that direction, so I assumed it went to a more populated area.

My metal checklist of things to do, in order of immediacy, was to acquire a translator of some kind, figure out exactly where I was and what year it was, get my hands on something to defend myself with, find a base of operations and get a steady source of income. I briefly added to find new, or at least inconspicuous, clothing and to learn more about the area as high-priority.

I still wasn't sure how to go about doing those things. On one hand, most of those could probably be accomplished by seeking out people. On the other hand, my clothing was very conspicuous as I doubted that people in the 22nd century wore t-shirts and jeans. Even then I would have trouble talking to them without a translator, and I had difficulties with communication even when we spoke the same language.

Oh god it's going to be even worse now with radically different physiologies and cultures thrown in! And I had a hard enough time reading human faces!

I was hesitant to leave the alley, and instead decided to investigate the garbage dumpster. It was slightly bigger than an Earth dumpster, though its contents were no less disgusting. There was a good deal of rotting food inside, accompanied by bottles, cans, discarded plastic wrap, and other detritus. I cautiously shifted aside some of the garbage to look underneath, but all I saw was more smelly garbage that made bile rise in my throat.

I was about to give up when I saw a bit of strange brown fabric poking out of the junk. I grabbed it and pulled out a coat. It was a full-length coat that would reach my calves at least, and had long sleeves. The material it was made out of was bizarre; it was a dark brown color and felt almost like plastic but was as soft and flexible as cloth. The reason it had been thrown out was evidenced by the many holes and tears, though it didn't seem completely unwearable. I turned it around to look it over. It had some spots of food still on it, which I wiped away with the hem of my shirt. It had a number of pockets, large and small, on both the outside and inside.

Well, this'll work. It'll cover my clothes at least.

I put the coat on and buttoned it up. It sat oddly on my shoulders, like it wasn't made with human body shapes in mind, and was rather baggy on me, but it would serve for my purposes. My strange attire was completely hidden, and I probably looked like a native homeless person. I idly remembered that I didn't have my boots.

I need shoes, too.

Then, something I had completely forgotten about occurred to me: my glasses. From what I could remember, most if not all human babies were genetically altered before birth to correct things like nearsightedness. They probably didn't even make glasses anymore. How the hell would I explain my glasses?

The only solution I could think of was to not have glasses. I experimentally took them off.

The world suddenly got much fuzzier, but I could probably still function enough like this. I wouldn't be reading anything, but I could walk without hitting anything and look someone in the eye if they were close enough. I put my glasses in one of the interior pockets of my new coat.

I'm adding that to the list: find more permanent solution to glasses problem.

Next on said list was a translation device.

I moved to the entrance of the alley and peered around the corner. I couldn't be sure, due to my poor vision, but it looked like the alley stretched on for a bit with one or two more branch-offs, before opening out in front of what looked like a busy store. I could see what I thought was a krogan, an asari and what might have been a few batarians chatting, in at least three different languages, before passing small objects between each other. The batarians left, and the asari put the objects she'd received somewhere underneath the counter she was behind.

Definitely a store.

A sudden surreal feeling swept over me.

Aliens. Those were honest-to-god aliens. Shopping.

Don't think about it. I need to get a move on.

Instead of heading out to the open street, I took a left turn at one of the other alleyways. This one went on straight for a while before coming out in a slightly wider alley. They were thankfully devoid of people, but I saw more garbage bins, broken glass and twice a splatter of liquid that, although not red, seemed very much like blood. I turned down a couple other alleys, always keeping track of the way back to where I first was, before I finally found something. I almost immediately wished I hadn't.

There was what looked like a person lying against the wall at the end of this alley. I couldn't identify a species from the distance, but it wasn't moving. I turned and looked at the other end, but I didn't see anything.

Looking at the person again, I knew I at least need to check and see if it was alive.

Tentatively, I walked up to the person. About three feet away from them, I was finally able to see that it was a human male. I could smell excrement. I couldn't see his chest move. I avoided his open, glassy eyes and inched closer to put my fingers on his cold neck, about where I knew I should have felt a pulse.

There was nothing.

This guy was dead.

I wasn't sure how to feel. I'd never seen a body before. A part of me was sad that this person had lost their life, especially since he seemed young, maybe in his early twenties. But another part of me was apathetic. I didn't know this guy. I had no real reason to mourn him.

All life has value, I reminded myself. This guy had a mother and father. Possibly siblings, friends, a significant other… he had a life. And now he doesn't.

I looked him over for a cause of death. After a moment, I noticed what looked like a gunshot wound in his chest. From the lack of blood on the ground, I figured the bullet hit something vital and killed him instantly, stopping his heart and keeping it from pumping out more blood.

At least it was probably quick.

A sort of morbid curiosity took over and I looked closer at him. He was wearing clothing similar to what I remember some of the guys on Omega wearing: a dark brown tank top, reddish brown vest, cargo pants, fingerless gloves and boots. The bullet had torn a small hole in the top and there was a bit of blood but they were otherwise in good shape. He had a youthful, narrow face and hazel eyes similar to my own. His hair was short and curly, a soft brown color. He looked thin, emaciated, like he hadn't had enough to eat for a while.

As I shifted to look at him from a different angle, I spotted an odd looking device curved over the back of his ear. I was suddenly alert and excited.

Could it be…?

I started to reach for it, but stopped and glanced guiltily at the boy's face.

"I'm sorry," I whispered to the corpse, "I hope you don't hate me for this and wherever you are is better than here, but you don't need this anymore and I do."

The corpse, naturally, didn't respond.

I suppose that's a good sign for my mental health.

I gingerly removed the strange ear piece. It appeared to loop behind the ear to position a small speaker near the ear canal. The device reminded me a of a Bluetooth earpiece. I couldn't see any buttons or lights, so I wiped it off thoroughly on my shirt and put it in.

Suddenly, the echoing voices from the street beyond the alleys were comprehensible.

"Oh, please, the filthy bastard wouldn't-"

"-show those damn humans-"

"That'll be 24 credits-"

I sighed in relief. That was one problem solved.

I looked at the boy again. Perhaps there's more he could help me with…

I carefully searched his pockets, but found nothing. I then peeled off his clothing, thankful that he had either died too soon or too long ago to be in rigor mortis. I left the padded vest, which wouldn't have fit under the coat, and his underwear, which was ruined anyways. Taking another quick look behind me, I removed my top layer of clothes and put his on.

As gross and possibly morally reprehensible as it was, I was glad to have boots again.

I tucked my replaced clothes into my coat, planning to dump them in a garbage can, had a moment of silence for the guy who had helped me so much, and left for the place I had first arrived at, feeling both slightly better and worse.

[Edited on 10/7/2016]