Hey all! Sorry if you got the message about a new chapter and excitedly rushed here only to find this. I really had planned to finish the story over the summer, and then I told myself I'd push it back to maybe finish it before the holidays, but yeah man. Shit's been crazy. Work was becoming ridiculously demanding so I found a new job, and while it's going well, it's been time-consuming alongside family matters and other personal stuff. Everything is going good though, and I am writing very slowly. I just wanted to give you a quick explanation for why it's been a hot minute. Don't worry, I'm not disappearing. We will finish this damn story.

Anyway, just so you guys do have something to read (and to avoid the FFN content wardens), here's the weird, unfinished first draft of chapter seven before I decided to rewrite the entire thing. Enjoy!

I was alive after all. Three down, six to go.

Either someone had taken my armor off or the Reaper had disintegrated it, leaving me and my clothing fully intact. Needless to say, the former was more likely, unless the Reapers had extremely precise lasers. Scary thought. In addition, my personal shield generator was gone, as were all my weapons. Someone wanted me unarmed and unprotected which, given the fact that we were in the middle of an uncontainable war, was not good.

The room the Alliance had stuck me in couldn't have explained their intentions or their current predicament any better. Small, maybe just enough to fit three people inside, with two folding chairs in the far corners and a candle burning on a modest side table just between them. Walls of dirt surrounded me on all sides and a single wrought-iron door sat perched at the opposite end of the room from the chairs.

I suppose 'room' is an inadequate word. Broom closet might fit better. Or maybe tiny luggage compartment.

Dirt meant underground, which meant the fight was going about as well as expected. Candle meant power had been knocked out in the area. Iron door meant this was some sort of bunker, possibly underground prison. The second chair and lack of any other furniture meant they'd put me here while waiting for someone else to arrive. At the time I'd assumed that person would be Anderson so he could do a mission debrief and find out what the hell had happened in Jerusalem. The fact that they'd stuffed me in there just to sit and wait meant they either had limited space in this bunker of theirs or didn't want me to have contact with anyone else until my interrogator showed. Classic.

Fortunately for me Anderson wasn't the one to walk through that door as I'd expected. In fact, it was the last person I thought would be there simply because I'd thought she was halfway across the galaxy with Shepard.

"Daniels?" I asked. Even though the light was dim I knew it was her; I'd merely asked the question to try allaying the surprise that hit me when I saw her.

She wasn't decked out in full Alliance body armor like the rest of the Marines I'd seen, but rather a thinner armored suit reminiscent of Liara's outfit, minus the trench coat and reflective white coloring. Sturdy stuff for being so lightweight; overlapping armor components to protect center mass and a flexible, almost rubber-looking substance over her arms and legs to allow for freedom of movement. Definitely not Alliance gear. As far as I was aware, the Alliance didn't shell out for black badass armor suits.

I didn't get much of a response or even eye contact until the door closed. Even then it was like she was trying to put as much distance between us as possible despite the confines of the room.

"I'm here to debrief you," was all she said.

Really? All the shit that I went through and she expected to just get straight to business? Fuck no.

"Wait, how the hell are you even here? I thought you were going with Shepard to find Javik and Leviathan?"

"Admiral Hackett thought it best that I stay at Sentinel Outpost," she replied callously, walking over to one of the chairs on my end of the room. "When he heard what happened in Israel he sent me immediately."

"Okay, same question, different reasoning. How the hell are you here? Without a Reaper IFF your transport would've been shot down before making it to orbit."

Finally a show of emotion. Daniels actually looked me in the eyes, and if I wasn't mistaken, contempt crossed her face. What the hell had I done?

"My pilot didn't make it," she said, anger or something similar brewing just under the tone of neutrality she'd established. "Sorola didn't make it. I'm lucky to have gotten here in one piece."

"Shit," I absently enunciated. "I'm sorry."

I never know what to say in those situations. Really there isn't anything to say. If I'd just lost someone I wouldn't want anyone to tell me it would be okay or that they were going to a better place. That crap doesn't help when you're grieving the loss of a friend. Only thing I've found that helps is just being there, relating shared shitty experiences.

"Thank you," Daniels replied, back to her emotionless demeanor, "but it's not important right now. I'd like to hear what happened in Israel, if you don't mind."

So she was going to drop a bomb like that and then choose to ignore it? Even with how little I actually knew Daniels, I knew this wasn't like her. She'd always wanted to talk to me about every little thing that was bugging me, and now it seemed like she couldn't care less that she'd just lost a teammate. Maybe she was just as fucked up as I am and didn't like dealing with her emotions, I don't know, but the thing about people like us is that we can't stand when someone else shuts down just to piss us off.

"I kinda do mind actually," I protested. "Tell me the truth, what is going on right now? Why are you acting like Robocop and why hasn't the Alliance told me anything about Jerusalem?"

"You don't remember?"

"I don't even know where I am!" I exclaimed. Might've been a little too cramped in that room for raised voices, but I can't control myself when I'm stressed. "I woke up about an hour ago—although I don't know for sure because someone took my omni-tool and there's not a clock in this damn place—and some uniform told me I had to sit here and wait for you. I don't know if Troy or Adison are alive, I don't know how in the fucking hell I'm alive, and I sure as hell don't remember anything that would make you suspicious of me. That's what it is, right? You think something got fucked up out there and somehow it's tied to us?"

"And what would you call the mission? A success?" There still wasn't much emotion in her voice, but that was by design. However unsure you are about what someone's feeling, you can usually get a glimpse of it in their eyes even if they are hiding it. "The majority of the squad that went in with you is dead or MIA, and that's not even our biggest concern. When they found you three miles outside Jerusalem it took a team of six medics just to patch you up and keep you from tearing the shuttle apart. Eight suit ruptures, four of which should've been lethal, thirteen lacerations, seven broken bones and a dislocated shoulder."

"What the fuck…?" I breathed. "How is that possible? I should be dead right now."

"You should be. But along with all the bullet holes they found a number of surgical incisions on your body. Do you remember that?"

Surgical scars? As in someone performed surgery on me to save my life? Couldn't have been the medics, otherwise Daniels wouldn't have had such a problem with it. As far as I knew Troy and Adison didn't have the knowledge or equipment to perform surgery, and there hadn't been anyone else with us when the Reapers stopped attacking.

Holy shit. The dream. My near-death boredom…the conversation with the Reaper…

That had all been real?

Oh God. Someone please tell me my life wasn't saved by a Reaper.

But it fit. The Reaper had told me I had to find another way to stop the destruction of the universe, so it would make sense that it had been the one to patch me up. And the red beam I'd seen just before passing out could have been some kind of paralysis device, something to put me to sleep long enough to fix my body and allow the Reaper to converse with a less obstinate me.

That was why the Alliance was being careful. The Reapers—or at least the one I'd talked to—wanted to explore all their options, and they were going to use me to do that. They'd saved my life, which sent up a huge blinking red alert light to the Alliance. If I hadn't been under suspicion of Reaper control before, I certainly was now.

I looked at Daniels, and she knew that I'd just made a connection. I wasn't sure if I should tell her the whole truth then and there or work things to my advantage, but the situation called for decisiveness from an indecisive person, so I compromised.

"I think I know what happened," I stated, slumping into the chair behind me.

"Mind sharing?"

"First I want to know what happened to everyone else. Troy, Adison, Garrus. If they went through the same thing I did, I'll be certain."

Daniels took her seat across from me, resting one leg over the other. "I don't need to tell you that everything about you and your cousins has been suspicious from the moment we met. Given this latest incident, Admiral Hackett thinks it best if we get the story from each of you individually. Then we'll have a clearer picture."

"You mean you'll know whether or not you can trust us," I said, stating what Daniels was trying to be polite about. "At least tell me they're okay?"

She nodded deliberately. "As well as you are."

I exhaled deeply, running my fingers along my beard. Several weeks' growth and the chaos of the last day or so had made it scraggly and uneven, and combing it with my hand relieved a bit of stress that cigarettes usually dealt with.

"Okay. The whole mission was odd right from the start. As soon as we touched down and met up with the Alliance team we headed for Jerusalem. I don't know exactly what a Reaper's scanner range is, but we weren't very far from the city so I'd think they would have picked us up. The fact that they didn't decide to blow us away right there was a little odd, and it got even stranger when we entered the city. The Reapers were just kind of poking around, not paying the least bit of attention to us. It wasn't until we got a little ways in that suddenly they went crazy and attacked. The first blast took out our heavy artillery, the second one cut us off from what was left of the squad, and by the time the third one hit, Troy, Adison and I were running through alleys trying not to get crushed by falling buildings. We encountered drones and decided to find a holdout location until we could figure out what the hell was going on. Comms were dead so we couldn't get through to anyone else, if they were even alive at that point.

"We held our ground for probably half an hour before we were overwhelmed. Then right when we'd pretty much accepted the fact that we'd lost, the drones shut down. Didn't attack, didn't try to advance, they just stood there. And one of the Reapers talked to us."

Daniels eyed me skeptically, but any real show of disbelief hid under a small expression. "It talked to you?" she said, more of a suspicious statement than an actual question.

I nodded. "Said it wanted us to understand. That they're doing this for the greater good or something. If I understood it correctly, they believe the universe is deteriorating due to dark energy manipulation and they're trying to find a way to stop it."

"And you believe them?" This time it was a legitimate question.

I shook my head and stood to my feet again, careful not to bump my skull against the ceiling. When I thought about it, yeah, I kind of did believe them. The Catalyst was gone, which meant the entire story behind it didn't amount to shit, and the Reaper's explanation was the only theory I had to go on. There was that nagging bit in the back of my head that warned me about trusting a Reaper, but every option had to at least be considered seriously.

"I don't know," I confessed, "but it's all we've got at the moment. If there's a chance that the Reapers can be stopped or—I can't believe I'm about to say this—we can find a way to work with them to find a solution, I have to take that chance. It's a hell of a lot better than the alternative."

Daniels inhaled slowly, her face contorted with a mixture of confusion and deliberation, then let it out with the same calculated apathy as a chiding schoolteacher. "Hackett was worried that you might be indoctrinated."

Damn. I probably would've been less surprised if she'd palmed her pistol and went for a murder/suicide. How could they possibly think I was indoctrinated? There were the surgical scars I suppose and the fact that a Reaper had acted so unusually, but under no reasonable circumstance would they send in such an obvious agent. The war must have been going worse than I'd thought if they were now suspecting me and my cousins of being indoctrinated.

But on the other hand, some pretty crazy shit had gone down and I'd been less than forthcoming about my past and the information I had. I guess a little healthy mistrust never hurt anyone.

"And you aren't?" I asked. In all honesty it probably sounded more like I was begging her not to believe it rather than asking her opinion on the matter.

"I believe you want to stop the Reapers. I've read the files on indoctrination. Subjects always claim to be working for the good of their species, but they never hold on to their resistance. As for the rest of the story, I don't even know where to begin making sense of it."

I scoffed and sighed at the same time, producing a sound I'm sure seemed very out of place. "Yeah, well, you're not the only one. I mean Christ, a frickin Reaper talked to us and explained that they're doing this to stop total, universal destruction. On top of that, it basically said that if we want to survive and save this cycle, it's completely up to us to find an alternative to mass genocide. So as far as making sense of this shit goes, I'm probably not the best person to ask."

And that's when it hit me. I chock it up to delayed reaction time. My brain had gone through a lot at that point.

Maybe Daniels did believe me, but the Alliance certainly didn't and they weren't going to take chances letting possible indoctrinated agents running around freely. Taking into consideration the fact that I had talked to a Reaper, been put back together by its drones, and somehow magically appeared three miles away from the attack, there was no reason for them to just let this one roll off their backs. And since my only explanation was that the Reapers wanted us to do something other than fight them, I might as well have been wearing an "I love Reapers" T-shirt.

I turned to face Daniels, and the expression she gave me said everything I needed to know.

They weren't letting me out of that cell.

"Daniels," I breathed, trying to suppress the emotion that accompanied my latest mental discovery. "I'd like to make sure my cousins are all right now."

"I'm sorry," she replied, and I'm pretty sure she meant it. "I can't let you do that yet. We still don't know if—"

"Please," I begged. My pulse was quickening rapidly and despite trying to remain calm I found myself short of breath. "I just need to know they're okay."

"Like I said, once we're sure that the Reapers didn't get to you, you'll be back at it in no time. Until then, you'd better get some rest."

I put my hand to my head in a vain attempt to stop the headache that was forming and followed as she went for the door. "No, Daniels, you don't—"

"I understand, but now isn't the time."

"I have to see them!" I yelled, reaching for the door.

"Get back!" The gun was in her hand before I saw her reach for it.

My brain might as well have exploded. Metaphorically speaking I suppose it did. A brutal, stabbing pain hit my skull as Daniels brushed past me and I lost all control of my body, sinking to my knees. A scream forced its way up my throat but was caught there when I attempted to suck in air at the same time. As a result my body went rigid, my brain trying to cry out while I did everything in my faltering power to fight it.

More agonizing pinpricks hit my skull, not as intense as the first but increasing in frequency to the point that I sat there heaving, grumbling inaudibly, suppressing screams while trying to draw enough air to breathe. It felt like I was being lobotomized and the surgeon (or torturer) in question decided to set the rest of my brain on fire just for kicks.

And then I couldn't fight it anymore. Whatever reserve of self-control I still had faded and I let loose.

My own voice nearly deafened me.

I'm used to screams. In fact that was pretty much all I used to listen to musically before I was transported to another reality. Hell, I used to enjoy it myself on occasion anytime my jam would come on or I was just pissed at the world.

But what came out of my mouth was something I'd never heard before and don't ever want to hear again. Low, guttural, bone-rattling, as if I'd broken the sound barrier and had hit the level of physically doing damage with my voice. I'm pretty sure I did do damage to my vocal cords at least, and the lobotomy continued in full force despite finally giving up.

I thought I was going to die. Again. I've been told I have a moderately high pain threshold, and usually when something hurts that bad it's because I fucked up and bought an express ticket to a morgue. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, just die like you've tried to do a million times already.

But I didn't die. As my throat-ripping scream hit its apex the pain suddenly released its hold on me and my lungs settled. I breathed deeply, only then becoming aware of the arms that had wrapped themselves around me from behind. I didn't realize that my eyes had closed either, although given the ridiculous torment I'd just gone through it didn't surprise me.

I opened them to find the door to my cell crushed to the size of a stapler. At least I'm pretty sure that was the door; freshly unearthed dirt littered the ground in clumps and a thick haze covered as far as the eye could see, making it impossible for me to even perceive the wall that had to be only inches from my face.

The arms that I could only logically assume belonged to Daniels released me, sliding slowly away from my body, and I was left there speechless. Half my efforts were focused on figuring out what the hell had just happened while the other half were trying to decide whether to enjoy the reprieve or brace myself. Unable to make up my mind, I turned to look for Daniels, as if she would have the answers.

The look she gave me… I don't think I've ever had anyone look at me like that. People say I look older than I am for a pretty good reason. I don't smile a lot, my eyelids constantly make me look like I'm half-asleep, the trenches under my eyes let everyone know how horrible my sleeping patterns are, and someone once told me that all they saw when they looked at me was pain. So I'm used to everyone avoiding me or thinking I'm the next Unabomber.

But no one has ever looked at me with genuine fear in their bones. It was haunting.

"You never said you're a biotic," she whispered.

"A what? I'm—I'm not—"

Before I had a chance to ask what made her think that or get some clarity on why the room had imploded, white light filled the tiny space accompanied by heavy footfalls and the sound of weapons priming.

"Leave the tiny meatbag alone," a gravelly, familiar voice said. "The only thing krogan hate more than salarians is a Reaper spy."

Grunt's shotgun collided with my head.

My fourth time getting knocked out in half as many days. First the Reapers, then Shepard, then the Reapers again, now Urdnot Grunt. If the pattern continued, the Reapers were up next, probably followed by another of Shepard's crew we had yet to run into. Maybe Tali. She seemed least likely to show up or knock a person out for any reason, so why not?

Although by the look Daniels was giving me, she wanted a shot at it.

Troy, Adison, and I sat side by side in shackles supervised by Daniels, Grunt, Garrus, and half a platoon of Alliance and krogan troopers that all looked ready to take a swing at us. Fucking Reapers. Got us lined up for the firing squad, guilt by association. I can honestly say I'd never been more angry, confused, curious and terrified all at the same time.

I'd used biotics, at least according to Daniels. So had Troy and Adison. I still didn't have a clue what the hell had happened aside from the worst migraine in human history, but even that only served as proof for what they were telling us. Without implants, human biotics suffered all kinds of symptoms courtesy of the enhanced synaptic pathways their brains developed. I could still recall Kaidan telling Shepard about his biotic training and how his biggest displays of power were always accompanied by tremendous mental pain.

Still, biotics? I could deal with the fact that a rip in the fabric of spacetime had snatched us out of our reality and stranded us here, but moving shit with our minds? That wasn't possible. As far as I remembered, a human had to have been subjected to vast eezo exposure for their brains to accommodate the changes necessary for biotic enhancement. Sure we'd travelled on the Normandy, been to the Citadel and there was probably excess eezo in the atmosphere due to all the damn Reapers parked on the planet, but it generally took years of close proximity for even the smallest biotic abilities to develop.

Nothing can ever be simple.

"So, now that this recent discovery is out of the bag, is there anything else you'd like to tell us to clear the air?" Garrus asked. He stood in the center of the group directly facing us, flanked on either side by Daniels and Grunt. All of them had weapons in hand.

We were done for. Not only were we pretty much confirmed Reaper spies as far as they were concerned, we also had biotic abilities and insider information about the Alliance and their plans for the war. If ever there was a reason to lock away three men, throw away the key, and jettison the cell into outer space, that was it. I'd tried to avoid precisely this the entire time only for it to unravel so easily. As good as I am at lying, something always happens down the road to fuck it all up that I simply can't control. You'd think that after a certain course of action fails so many times in a row we'd get the memo, but people are stubborn creatures and do what they think is best regardless of the consequences. I believe that's where the phrase "Think before you speak" comes into play.

Honestly though, thinking was what had gotten us into this mess to begin with. I'd thought this was the best way to go about being stranded in the plot of Mass Effect 3, and look where it got me. Maybe the best thing to do now was just go with Plan D.

Fuck it. I'm done thinking.

"Okay, you guys want the truth, I'll give it to you. But this is by far gonna be the craziest shit you've ever heard."

"Dude," Troy protested. "Remember the whole 'they'll think we're crazy' thing? Definitely gonna happen if you spill it."

"Yeah, well, Grunt's about to pull some blood rage headbutt shit if we don't," I replied, motioning toward the massive specimen teetering on the brink of punching something.

"After all the trouble we went through to get here why would they even believe us? We lied our asses off just to get a foot in the door."

"Exactly. We don't really have any other options. Lying didn't work and it's not gonna get us anywhere now. At least if we tell the truth karma'll be on our side or something."

"I think we should tell them," Adison added. "Or, you guys should. I don't know as much as you. But they deserve to at least know why an entire unit got wiped out."

"You guys know we're standing right here, don't you?" Garrus asked rhetorically. We must have made the worst prisoners ever.

"So, the truth," Daniels demanded.

Plan D, don't fail me now.

"Yeah, here it is." I took a deep breath. "Remember what the Reaper told me about how the universe was ending due to extreme biotic use? Apparently—and this is more of a guess than anything because those bastards are cryptic as hell—apparently that deterioration tore a hole in spacetime. We were sucked in through that hole and landed here, in 2187. We're from 2016. I can't think of a more cliché way to say this, but…we're from the past."

The response was pretty predictable. I couldn't really decipher turian or krogan facial expressions at that point but the still silence that permeated the room spoke volumes. Oddly enough Daniels, the only one I could get a somewhat accurate read on, didn't seem quite as surprised. In fact it almost looked like trust was an option she was considering, however slightly.

"Right," Grunt mocked, his booming voice resounding through the entire room. "And I'm actually a thresher maw in disguise. Can we just take them out back and shoot them already?"

"Easy Grunt," Garrus replied. "Didn't you hear them? They're from the past. Killing them might destroy everything in the universe."

"Well it sounds stupid when you say it like that," Troy said. "And that's not really what it meant, I don't think. We can die no problem and I doubt it would change anything here, but we're the only ones who know the outcome of this war."

"If you'd said you were from the future I might actually believe you," Daniels replied. "Everything you've told us would make sense if you knew it as history. But how the hell do you expect us to believe that three people from the past know what's going to happen in the future?"

I sighed. This was not going to be an easy discussion. "That's where it gets complicated."

"Because it's all been so damn simple so far," Garrus added smugly.

I decided to ignore his quip and work on Daniels, the only person in the room I thought might actually listen. "We're not just from the past. We don't belong to this reality. I don't know where you're all at in terms of the alternate universe hypotheses, but if you believe the Reaper, we were brought here from a completely different universe. One where everything in this galaxy is precisely the same aside from our actions. As far as I know, there aren't any prothean ruins on Mars where we're from, but then again we never made it far enough to find out. We know about what's happening here because there's…a story about it in our reality."

Grunt eyed me suspiciously, his shotgun still level with our heads. "That's stupid."

"A story?" Garrus chimed in.

"I guess you could call it kind of a legend. No one actually thought it was real, we just liked to dream about it. And then we found ourselves here."

That was it. The truth was out, however fucking ridiculous it was. The whole thing made perfect sense when I ran through it in my head, but I was failing to find the words to adequately describe this shitstorm. Instead it all came out in a spout of poorly-described BS that I knew wasn't going to convince a single person.

Then again, I had the benefit of living the experience firsthand. When you're going through an unbelievable situation you don't really have any choice but to go with it or check yourself into a psych ward. If I'd been Garrus or Grunt or Daniels in that moment, I probably would've thought I was the worst fucking liar in history.