Chapter One

The Coming Road

I had been running, eyes wide and mind clear, for the past half of an hour, no clue where precisely my legs were taking me. My only concern was evading the two Turian C-Sec agents who'd made it their day's duty to hunt me down. Trying to blend in as one of the few lone humans surrounded by aliens, wearing severely outdated clothes and a fish-out-of-water look, had proven to be a more difficult task than anticipated.

What are they even chasing me for?, I bitterly thought to myself. Probably some kind of stop-and-frisk bullshit. Then again, in hindsight, running off the moment they glanced in my general direction hadn't been my brightest of ideas. The mind didn't work right when it was still recovering from a night out drinking mixed with a little interdimensional travel.

One of the Turians yelled over the crowds, pushing aside any who obstructed his path without remorse. The other officer called out another demand, and that time I caught the word "Human" in a certainly less than amused tone. I didn't know what they were saying in the alien language, but it wasn't hard to make an educated guess. They for sure weren't asking to take me out on a picnic.

Being in the middle of a heavily crowded area, which I could only assume was somewhere on the Citadel based on the giant nebula and ward arms in the sky, was as much of a curse as it was a life-saving coincidence. The games never showed or mentioned it, but those Turians were able to run, as in Human-Olympic-Runner fast, and it probably had something to do with their predatory biology. I may have stuck out from the rest like a sore thumb, but it was the dozens of bodies they had to navigate through that had stopped them from catching me insofar.

The chase continued on for another few minutes before my stamina began to take its toll. Adrenaline pumping or not, going full sprint for an enduring amount of time would drain the energy out of any normal human person. By that point, I had turned too many corners to count and must have traveled four or five floors lower. The voices of the Turian officers sounding closer than ever reminded me that my options were running out.

Coming up on my right was what looked to be another narrow alley located between two mediocre storefronts. Ducking down to take advantage of the still dense crowd and hinder the Turians' line-of-sight, I pushed through my growing fatigue and sharply turned the corner into the darker back street. Through pouring sweat and panting breaths, my gaze filtered through the new surroundings to eventually find a large industrial garbage bin, similar to those one would see behind restaurants and grocery stores.

Life is cruel, I thought to myself, staring at my only possible salvation.

Mindful of my pursuers, I opened the bin's top lid and climbed inside after a brief hesitation. The foul smell and physical sensations of rotting food and other undesirables immediately overcame my senses, nearly causing me to vomit. It quickly became one of the most humiliating experiences of my life, but I mentally yelled at myself and pushed through. Garbage was better than a jail cell or psychiatric department.

I closed the lid above me and was once again encompassed by darkness, rapidly approaching footsteps stopping nearby soon afterward. A short conversation of alien chatter ensued before I heard the two pairs of feet begin drifting apart. One sounded as if it continued onward through the busy streets, but the other was slowly approaching into the alleyway.

Hearing the Turian in front of the garbage bin made my heart skip a beat. With no other options left, I closed my eyes, put my cleaner hand over my nose and mouth, and sunk down beneath the waist-high layer of garbage. Not a second passed before I heard the bin's lid open. If God truly existed, he must have answered my prayers, for the bin's lid was closed shut a hasty moment later. I waited for the officer's footsteps to drift further away and disappear before jumping up out of the muck with a deep breath. It was a nauseatingly putrid breath, but one I needed to take nonetheless.

I needed to be sure the coast was clear, and when acceptable certainty came, I carefully crawled back out into the alley. A sigh of relief, albeit a weak one, escaped my lips when my legs collapsed from under me. Exhausted and momentarily uncaring of my new coat of muck, I was content with finally having the chance to think.

Five or ten minutes might have passed when I emptied my pockets and mildly scattered the items on the ground between my knees. My wallet, analog wristwatch, smartphone, sixty-four United States Dollars... That was more than I expected to have after last night. Thirty cents in change, my house keys... My hands subconsciously raised to my neck. And my golden cross necklace.

With a sigh, my gaze lingered over the items that happened to be in my black jeans and hoodie when I was transported to this world. No food or water, and not any form of official identification or currency that was worth a damn in this period. Circumstances weren't looking swell. I didn't want to resort to mugging random people on the street, but it wasn't an option I'd discard if push came to shove. Survival was more important than pride. Regardless of my wishes, I still required the bare necessities to brave the coming days.

Solemnly returning my personal belongings to my pockets, an idea suddenly hit me like a rock.

—

The balding man looked at me like I was the craziest thing he'd seen all day, and I probably was. A young man like myself walking into a late 22nd Century store, wearing clothes from the early 21st Century and half-covered in a layer of garbage, was not likely a normal occurrence. He was slowly scratching his graying beard, tired brown eyes lightly narrowed in suspicion. "You okay, kid? You look like shit."

"I feel like shit," I admitted with a lazy nod. "But how about we cut the pleasantries?" I plopped all of my things, besides the wallet and watch, onto the shop counter. "How much can you give me?"

His eyes widened for a split second in brief surprise of the items he saw before turning to me with an amused smirk. "What is this crap?" He pointed at my cell phone and began laughing. "Is that one of those twenty-first-century smartphones? Where did you even get that?"

Seeing my blank stare, he simply closed his eyes, shook his head, and shrugged. "Alright, kid. You look like you really need the money. Hell, you need some clothes, so I'll be honest with you – I can't give much. Not because some of this wouldn't be valuable, but because all I own is a small pawnshop in the darker parts of the Wards. Not enough business comes my way to put money down for some of this stuff."

Shit. This was not going as planned, and the fact I was rubbing the bags beneath my eyes was proof of my frustration.

The shop owner noted the action with a sigh. "As I said, kid, I'm just being honest. If it hadn't looked like you took a nosedive into Chora's Den's weekend trash, then I would've happily stayed quiet and bought this stuff off you for no more than a few dozen credits."

The old man's honesty was appreciated, but it didn't ease the burden. I'd just finished spending nearly nine hours trying to get to this place, and five or six of those hours were of me attempting to travel to these parts of the Wards without detection by C-Sec. The last three or four were then spent searching for a pawnshop owned by someone who both spoke English and didn't care about identification. My New York State Driver's License would only cause problems, and it was not like I had an Omnitool to translate other languages, much less alien ones. After lying to a Human pedestrian in the area that I had gotten mugged by a group of Batarian thugs, I was finally pointed to this shop about a quarter of an hour ago.

So there I was, having foolishly led myself to believe that I could fill my aching stomach, put some fresh clothes on my back, and maybe even spare enough money for a motel room. All for naught. "Do you at least know where I can get some money for this?"

He silently stared at me, as if considering his choices, before rubbing the back of his neck and answering with another sigh. "How old are you, kid?"

"Twenty-one," I stated tiredly. "Yesterday was my birthday."

An entertained smirk spread across his face. "Must have been one hell of a night."

I would've had to be incredibly dense to not figure out that he was trying to brighten the conversation a bit. Strangely enough, the effort seemed to work. "You have no idea," I declared with a genuine chuckle.

He snorted in amusement. "You might be surprised, kid. I've seen some dumb shit in my time – done even stupider."

Now I was smiling. "You know what, old man? You're actually pretty cool."

That elicited a belly laugh from the shop owner. "I wouldn't speak so soon, kid. We still haven't negotiated prices." He caught on quickly to my puzzlement. "What? I didn't say there wasn't anything I'd buy from you." He hastily looked over the few items resting on his store counter before picking up the key chain and necklace. "I can give you a decent amount of credits for this crap here."

For a few seconds, I merely gazed at the golden Christian cross hanging as it swung side-to-side. It was undoubtedly a beautiful piece of men's jewelry, having been given to me as a gift by Michael and friends on my eighteenth birthday. It apparently cost them a collective price of over five hundred dollars, mostly due to the solid piece of polished gold that was the cross pendant. I hated the idea of pawning it. "How much can you give me?"

He put the keys back down and used a minute to examine the necklace. "I can give you one-fifty for the gold."

I had to hold in a scoff. "That pendant is a solid piece of fourteen-karat polished gold. Four hundred credits." Out of the few things I had ever searched the Mass Effect wiki for out of sheer curiosity, the comparison of Credits to real-world currency was one of the articles I surprisingly remembered. If all of the prices of weapons, items, mods, etc., were compared fairly, a single Credit was roughly equal in value to a single USD. Surprising, considering Bioware was a Canadian company, but I wasn't about to complain.

The shop owner shook his head and squinted his eyes. "You see what prices for Gold are in today's market? Two hundred."

"I haven't, but I'm pretty sure you're still trying to be cheap with me." I crossed my arms and shot him a deathly serious face. "Three-fifty."

Another smirk formed on the man's face. "I like your spunk, kid. Two-fifty."

"Three twenty-five."

"Don't push your luck," he warned, though still with a small grin on his face. "Two seventy-five. That's as far as I'll go."

"C'mon, you can do a little better than that, old man. Three hundred sounds fair to me."

"You're a stubborn one, kid." The smile on the shop owner's face never faded even as he continued. "But I'm staying at two seventy-five. Take it or leave it."

I grinned, grateful for the opportunity to embrace some humor in the situation. "Alright, deal. I take back what I said about you being cool, though."

"I'll live," he said as he opened a drawer on his side of the counter. He then pulled out an empty credit chit, put the device through a sort of scanner on his computer terminal, and pressed a few buttons on the holographic keyboard. He handed me the chit at the end of the process. "Now you can buy yourself some clothes."

"That's the plan. Maybe some food too while I'm at it." My gaze drifted to the key chain. "So what about the keys? Can't be worth much, can they?"

He motioned his head to the sides a few times in thought. "I'd say about fifty."

I was fairly surprised by that price. "Really? Just for a few useless metal keys?"

The shop owner crossed his arms and nodded. "You'll be surprised how many buyers are out there. Salarians especially seem to like collecting sets of old locks and keys made by the other races." He shrugged. "No idea why, but I don't question good business. Not me to complain about earning some extra credits."

"I'm not complaining either. Fifty credits are fifty credits." I suddenly chuckled again. "I'm not even mad that you're probably conning me for a low price. Five or ten credits was the most I thought I'd get out of them."

He snickered. "Damn, should've aimed lower, huh?"

I nodded. "Wouldn't have blamed you, old man, but it's too late for that now, so hand over the fifty." After he resigned and gave me a second credit chit, I looked curiously at the small card-like device before turning back to him. "Why'd you give me two chits? Can't you just put the fifty credits on the first one?"

"I could," he admitted. "But that's never a smart move. If all your money is on a single chit, and you lose it, then you're shit out of luck. If you have two and you only lose one, well, you get the idea."

"Good point." Atop the counter were still the paper USDs and the obsolete smartphone. I sighed and put the second chit in my jeans. "So what should I do with these things?"

The pawnshop owner returned to scratching the length of his beard, which reached down to the bottom of his neck. "For the old currency? I can give you the names of a few private collectors if you don't want to go through public channels. They'll still pay pretty well, maybe even more." He then looked at the smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy S6. "As for that hunk of junk, I know some Salarians who love that kind of stuff. The payout won't be as good as the paper money, but it should be better than what you got from me, kid."

Before committing to anything, I needed some essentials, specifically a cheap omnitool and translator software. "Sounds good. I'm gonna need to buy a few things off you first..."

—

I crashed on the North American-style futon with a day's worth of exhaustion. The old piece of furniture smelled as if it had not been washed in ages, and the springboard beneath felt like it'd long been broken. Yet, at that moment, it was by far the most comfortable mattress I had ever laid upon. My body refused to allow me even the privilege of crawling under the covers, so complete was my fatigue. Having finished dealing with the most bizarre twenty-four hours of my life insofar, I doubted I was going anywhere until receiving at least eight hours of rest.

With nothing better to do other than fall into a deep slumber, I took the chance to gleam the surroundings of my sleeping arrangement. Stationed in the opposing corner of the approximately five-by-fifteen-yard rectangular room was a holographic television, and a set of bedsheets hung across the center of the living space, separating me from the only individual with a real bed. Not the best of conditions, but they served their purpose for the time being.

I didn't know what I had been expecting, but it was a tad difficult to believe a person's home on the Citadel could be so small and cramped. The possibility of the large space station having studio apartments wasn't something I could wrap my head around before that day. Was this not supposed the be the center of nearly all of galactic civilization? One might think a place like it, filled with wealth and advanced culture and technology, would have gotten passed such faults.

Alas, I was wrong to hold such an ignorant belief. It should have been obvious there'd be areas worse for wear on the lesser-known parts of the Citadel. Every major metropolis in history, from Rome to modern-day megacities, had been cursed with a similar hindrance. New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and even Washington D.C., at least in my originating time, had poorer districts where the lower class accumulated.

What surprised me, though, was how empty the apartment was. I could argue that it was barren even, appearing as if its denizen barely came home whatsoever. A thick layer of dust covered much of the empty shelving. Who would have thought a pawn shop owner on the largest and richest space station in the galaxy would be so economical, for lack of a better word?

And talking about the old man...

His name was Greg. I would've said it was oddly normal or bland for the 22nd Century if someone had asked, but I wasn't going to say anything after he'd taken me in for the night. Of course, I was paying him fifty credits per night for the accommodations, but that was beside the point. After having gone earlier in the day to see the antique collectors he'd mentioned, I was about fifty thousand credits richer, so spending a tiny fraction of that cache for a reasonable night's rest was the better alternative to sleeping on the streets due to the lack of ID required for a hotel room. Furthermore, just because I had been willing to pay him for a warm bed didn't mean he was obligated to accept me into his home. To him, I was a stranger he only just met several hours beforehand. He could have simply said "fuck off" and not cared less once we finished our business.

I owed the man a personal debt, whether or not he agreed.

Although I was functionally a burnt-out wreck after the day's events, my mind didn't easily let me to succumb to my desire for sleep. It kept me awake, causing me to muse over my current predicament instead, like a pestering bug. The day had been driven by instincts of survival, and I had not stopped for an amount of time to truly contemplate the far-reaching ramifications of it all. Now, the weight of everything that had occurred dawned on me.

There I was, having been mysteriously transported to the Mass Effect universe like the main character of a cheesy sci-fi flick or Japanese anime. The date was May 2nd, 2182, a full year before the events of the first game, or it might have been considering Bioware never mentioned which month of 2183 events took place. No matter, I was going to be trapped here for quite a while before anything remotely important happened. No friends to help me out. No family to support me. Just a pawnshop owner who happened to be a good Samaritan and the credit chits in the pockets of my new clothes. As I thought more about the circumstances, the creeping pain in my chest was getting harder to ignore. The reality that I might never again see the people I loved and cared for was setting in.

Prone I was not to admit it, a few tears fell that night. The only moment of weakness I allowed myself.