…
"If our lives are already written, it would take a courageous man to change the script."
(Alan Wake)
…
I opened my eyes as I found myself floating through space, the entirety of the universe stretched out in front of me like something out of the old Hubble Deep Field photos. Trillions of little specks, each its own galaxy with countless civilizations. I could almost reach out and grab them as I floated through the lights, though each time I moved towards them they drifted further and farther away. Feeling myself move faster, I quickly realized I was now falling back into darkness, the lights going out as I barreled into some kind of singularity or other phenomenon. I screamed as I felt myself beginning to black out, suddenly stopping immediately with my feet on a cold, metal surface.
I turned my head to suddenly find myself back in the CIC of the SSV Explorer, completely brand-new and undamaged. For a moment I considered calling out to see if anyone was here, but then I noticed an old sight from years ago, Aldrin Station, clearly visible through the external cameras. Without a word, I staggered towards the open airlock into the docking cradle, making my way back into the station's interior. Stepping into the departure lounge, I noticed the security station, all the seats in the waiting area, and the hallway ahead of me were all devoid of life, leaving me with an incredible sense of unease.
"Hello? Is anyone there?!" I asked out loud, hearing my voice echo slightly as I received no response. Seeing no other option, I walked further into the station to try and find someone, anybody who could figure out what was happening around here. Part of my mind was aware that neither the station nor the ship should be here, but I felt an odd compulsion to keep moving forward. I knew that if I could just find someone that would help me, I could find out how this was happening. I wasn't too proud to admit when I needed assistance.
Walking to the personnel quarters, I opened the door to Mara's quarters, finding it completely barren and unfurnished. Feeling my heartbeat jump up, I immediately ran down the hall and to the left where Dan's was supposed to be, finding it in much the same condition as Mara's. I began to panic, dashing across the hall to mine, finding my things right where they were supposed to be. As I crossed the threshold into the room, I felt an odd pulse in my brain, followed by a bout of lightheadedness. Bracing myself against the doorway, my vision went slightly fuzzy for a moment before everything seemingly returned to normal. There was no pain, but I knew it certainly wasn't normal.
Moving cautiously, I slowly walked further into my quarters, finding it all in the same condition I had left it years ago. My old Saturn V model still sat tall in the corner of the living room, and the old German Tiger I poster with the torn corner was still taped to the wall with that slightly faded yellow color. All my old books and research papers, even my ceramic coffee cup from that fateful day sat on the table, leaving a ring-shaped stain on one of my papers. It felt incredibly strange, seeing all of this again after so many years. The few vestiges of Dan and I's past on Earth.
I suddenly remembered what was supposed to be happening as the station shook and the alarms began blaring, jumping my adrenaline through the roof. I quickly attempted to call security to warn them about Lynda, but I received no response as vibrations continued to rock the station. Knowing there was nothing left I could do, I ran back out into the hallways in an attempt to reach the labs before Cerberus and their agents could. As the emergency lighting came on, bathing the halls in harsh, red light, I felt the world around me seemingly slow down with each step. It was as if I was trying to run on the bottom of a pool, surrounded by resistance. I had no way to fight against it other than to keep moving, no matter how hard it got.
Turning the corner to where the Delta Labs were supposed to be, only to be met with an unusual sight. I turned on my omni-tool's flashlight to see what appeared to be… shadows without sources, silhouettes of people that seemed both familiar and foreign to me. If I lowered my flashlight, it was as if nothing was there at all, but the moment I shined it they would return. As I stepped closer to them, they seemingly faded away to nothing, reappearing behind me as I walked closer and closer to the large doors that led into Delta Labs. Checking my neck, I found the old lanyard with my ID and access card, swiping the card at the door and getting it to open with a sharp hiss.
The inside of the lab was an impenetrable pitch black, so thick that not even my flashlight could pierce it. I took a few steps inside, becoming fully enveloped by the darkness as the doors slammed shut behind me, sealing me inside. As I motioned to put my hands back on the door, I realized it was no longer there, leaving me in another dark void. I attempted to call out to Mara, Dan, or anyone else who might have been within earshot, only to be met with more deafening silence. I wandered around in the void, trying to feel for any surfaces only to be met with nothing.
"If you're looking for a way out, you aren't going to find it." I heard an old, familiar voice say in the darkness, booming like drums in my ears. I flipped around to face the source of the voice to find myself face-to-face with Jack Windham. He was in the exact same state as he was when he died in that Cerberus shuttle, two deep chest wounds and a blood-stained lab coat. He had a hollow, dull look in his eyes, and his mouth and chin were stained with the blood he had coughed up.
It was one of the most terrifying things I've ever witnessed.
"J-Jack?" I said in a weak tone, taking a step back as he followed with one step forward. "H-how? Wh… what are you doing here?"
"This is where I dwell. I am your drive, your passion, your ambition. I am all that makes you… you." He spoke in a monotonous tone, making unbroken eye contact with me as I felt that strange sensation in my skull again, staggering backwards. "Without me, everything you are and will be will cease to be."
"I don't understand." I replied, trying to catch my breath as I suddenly found myself back in the SDD chamber at Area 51. It too was the same as I remembered it, still filled with all the old equipment, parts, and papers. Even Dan's old Ti calculator sat at the nearby workbench, collecting dust with the rest of the tools.
"What the hell is happening to me?" I wondered out loud, feeling a sense of vertigo for a few moments.
"You're becoming what we choose… what you were always meant to be." I heard a new, much deeper voice answer as I turned around to see Lynda Embry, The Illusive Man, the doctor from the Pragia facility, and that indoctrinated scientist from Imaneya standing at the top of the SDD platform. All were in the same states as when they died, Lynda with her contorted, discolored face, TIM with the single bullet wound in his forehead, and those two doctors as… I had left them. They all looked equally gruesome, and turning around revealed Jack was now gone.
"Get out of my head… I know you're not real!" I yelled in defiance, pointing at them as yet another pulse wracked my brain, nearly sending me to the floor this time.
"Even now, he resists. A pitiful display of futile organic ignorance." The same voice replied as pain shot up and down my spine. It was as if my spinal disks were being sliced with a particle laser. "Still, a possible threat does exist. We must resolve this immediately."
Without another word, they all began walking down the platform in unison towards me, triggering my fight or flight response as I began running out of the chamber. As I neared the door, I felt the same resistance as before, my movements becoming slow and sluggish the closer I got to the exit. Unable to go any farther, I turned around to find them all right in my face, close enough that I could smell them.
"Oh God!" I yelled in pain as they grabbed me, forcing me to the floor. "Jesus, someone please help me! Please!"
Their hands burned my skin at the touch, filling me with excruciating pain. All I could do was scream out as I tried in vain to escape, unable to move. One of them plunged their hand into my chest, grabbing my heart and sending me into shock. My vision began blurring as my body grew cold, their faces all looking down at me with contempt and disdain as I closed my eyes.
…
..
.
.
.
I gasped for air as I felt a massive jolt to my heart, immediately aware of my surroundings again as I pushed myself off the floor, ready for a fight. I was back in the Delta Labs, with no one in sight. I frantically looked around for any sign of those… things that attacked me, unable to find them at all. I looked back down at my arms, pulling up the sleeves to find no burns, marks, or any sign of what could have put me through such pain. I didn't have long to dwell on it though. The station's emergency evacuation alarm began blaring as the bulkheads shook violently enough to send an uneasy sensation to my stomach.
I heard shouting in the distance as I dashed to the open doorway, watching several of the staff members flee towards the stairways. I couldn't make out any of their faces, but I knew them in some distant way. I ran after them, just slow enough that I couldn't reach them, but fast enough that I could still hear and see them. I wasn't sure what was even happening anymore, but I knew doing nothing was almost a guaranteed death sentence.
Running through the old atrium, I watched as the holographic panels in the ceiling began malfunctioning, falling off as the vibrations continued to rock the station. The rocks crumbled and fell apart, hitting the ground around me. II made it through to the lounge where I watched the last few people ahead of me in the cradle arm cross over into the airlock, leaving me as the last person who wasn't onboard the Explorer.
"Wait, wait!" I yelled out, arms stretched out as far as I could make them go as two of them waved me towards the doorway. I still couldn't make out any of their faces, but one of them appeared to be an older woman, and the other a similarly aged male.
The bulkheads behind me began to give way as air started to be sucked out of the cradle arm. I landed on the deck a few feet from the airlock, only able to keep myself in place with the grooves in the floor.
"Come on, you can make it!" The woman called out in a familiar voice, holding out her hand as the man did the same. I used every single last ounce of my strength pulling myself forward, thinking I might not make it before the pair grabbed me, yanking me past the threshold. As the airlock slammed shut behind me,I laid on my back, completely devoid of strength as I kept my eyes shut. I was entirely focused on stabilizing my breathing.
"Thank you… thank both of you." I graciously said between breaths, finally opening my eyes to see the faces of my mother and father looking down at me with smiles. My heart skipped a beat as I tried to rationalize what I was seeing. "M-Mom?! Dad?!"
"You think he'll be OK?" My mother asked, looking back to my father as I tried and failed to right myself, still too weak. "That was an awful strain he just went through."
"He's a tough young man, he'll be fine." He smirked as both of them looked back down at me, smiling. I couldn't keep my strength up anymore, passing out moments later.
…
As I opened my eyes, I could feel very little. My vision was cloudy, and trying to move my head was pointless due to how heavy it was. My mind felt fuzzy, almost as if someone had injected a canister of CO2 into my brain. I tried to raise my hand as the blurred figure of someone approached me, filling me with an unusual sense of comfort.
"M-Mom… is th… that you?" I asked in a slurred tone, feeling my breathing intensify.
"Richard, he's waking up!" The figure yelled out, sounding like Lydia. "Sean, keep your head still. Your condition still isn't stable."
"Wha… where's my mother?" I asked, still unable to fully form all my thoughts cohesively. "What abou… about my dad?"
"What's going on? How is he awake with this much medication running through him?" I heard Richard ask, who also looked like a smudge in my vision. "Oh… damn it!"
"His brain waves are jumping around all over the place. We need to get him back to sleep immediately or he'll suffer irreparable neurological damage." Lydia replied as I could hear them running around my bed.
"You think I don't know that?" He yelled back, obviously panicked as I felt my heart beat faster. "I'm going to induce a coma. Keep him still."
"Sean, stay calm and control your breathing." Lydia urged as I felt my body grow hotter, a sweat coming on.
"Administering 10cc of propofol… come on, come on, come on…" Richard repeated to himself as I once again felt myself slipping back to sleep. My eyelids turned to lead blocks as I began drifting off.
"You can do this, Sean." I heard Lydia say as I fully lapsed into another deep sleep.
…
I groaned in minor pain as I once again woke up, now able to see and think clearly as I noticed the bandages on the side of my head. Knowing better than to touch them, I instead took a deep breath, looking to my left to see Mara sleeping soundly at my bedside. Enjoying the way she looked when she was peaceful like this, I instead leaned my head back and tried to comprehend what I had "seen" while I was under for the operation. There were so many fragmented images floating through my mind, almost dreamlike in the way they seemed to flee from my conscious mind. Strangely enough, trying to visualize the images in my head no longer caused me any pain like it often had before, leaving me with an odd sense of tranquility. Despite the dull throb where Richard had cut my head open, I felt oddly at peace. I had certainly survived, but I had this feeling of warmth and comfort that I rarely felt in full anymore. It was a strange feeling, but incredibly familiar.
As I sat in my bed thinking about everything that had happened, a nurse walked into the recovery room, making immediate eye contact with me.
"Admiral, you're awake!" She exclaimed, waking Mara up and getting her eyes to grow as large as dinner plates. With no warning, she nearly leapt on me, giving me a tight hug.
"Oh God, I thought you might not wake up after that surgery!" She said, sounding as if she was on the verge of tears she continued to hold me.
"What do you mean? What happened while I was out?" I asked, suddenly confused.
"Um, we should wait until the doctor arrives before discussing those details." The nurse tempered, putting her hand on Mara's shoulder. "Ms. Michaels, can you please come with me?"
"Go on, hon. I'll be fine." I encouraged, smiling as she reluctantly nodded, standing up and walking out of the room.
Not long soon after, Richard finally arrived, wearing his night clothes from the lab. While I was used to him looking disheveled, he was in a particularly bad state right now. Part of me wondered why he looked so rough, but I knew better than to pry at a time like this.
"Sorry it took me so long to get here, I didn't fall asleep until 3AM." He apologized, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at me in more detail. "When did you wake up, Sean?"
"I dunno… 20, maybe 30 minutes ago. I was trying to be quiet for awhile." I guessed, having no real recollection of how much time had passed since I woke up. "What happened while I was out? Everyone seems pretty freaked out."
"Before I do that, I'd like to ask you a few basic questions to test your mental acuity. We need to ensure there was no brain damage during the operation." He denied, sitting down where Mara had been sitting as he pulled out a datapad. "Are you ready?"
"Fine… shoot." I agreed, rolling my eyes.
"OK… a cuboid has six sides of different colours. The red side is opposite to black. The blue side is adjacent to white." He asked, making full, almost uncomfortable eye contact with me. "The brown side is adjacent to blue. The red side is face down. Which one of the following would be the opposite to brown?"
"White." I immediately answered, taking no time at all to arrive at that conclusion.
"A person traveled a distance of 50 km in 8 hours. He covered part of the distance on foot at the rate of 4 km per hour and part on a bicycle at the rate of 10 km per hour." He continued, scrolling down the list at random. "How much distance did he travel on foot?"
"Twenty kilometers." I answered just as easily as before, starting to feel annoyed.
"Four metal rods of lengths 78 cm, 104 cm, 117 cm and 169 cm are to be cut into parts of equal length. Each part must be as long as possible." He droned, sounding as if he was still half asleep. "What is the maximum number of pieces that can be cut?"
"Thirty-six pieces. Is this going anywhere?" I remarked, wanting to know why I wasn't being told anything about what happened. "Are you going to tell me what the hell happened or am I gonna have to pull rank?"
He sighed, staring into space for a few moments before once again meeting my eyes.
"You nearly died while we were operating on you. During the last stages of the implantation process, your brain unexpectedly stopped sending signals to your heart, sending you into sudden cardiac arrest." He finally admitted, sending a jolt through my body. "The AEDs didn't even seem to have an effect on your heart. You were legally dead for the better part of a minute until your heart started beating again."
I was… dead. I had never been declared dead before, that was a new milestone.
"My heart… just started beating on its own?" I questioned, finding that the most shocking part of his confession.
"I'm still not entirely sure what happened. Based on the live scans we recorded during the process, it seems the implant managed to integrate deeply enough to restore the electrical signals to your heart. I know it sounds simple in practice, but in execution… it was one hell of a shot in the dark." He continued, sounding more flabbergasted than anything else. "I've spent the last three days working day and night to try and understand what happened, but I still can't figure it out."
Dismissing the fact that I had been under for so long, I began looking more deeply into the images floating through my head, I suddenly remembered the SDD, Cerberus, and an awful burning sensation that felt like battery acid on my skin. These vague images and sensations were impossible to piece together in full, but something in my gut told me they were somehow related to what Richard was telling me.
"Maybe the Reaper presence in my mind tried to stop my heart." I theorized, getting a horrified expression out of Richard. "I have no idea if that's even possible, but it seems convenient that my heart should stop when a possible solution to Reaper indoctrination is being put in my skull."
"That's impossible to test, but if you're right… I don't even want to think about it." He shook his head, dismissing the thoughts I knew he desperately wanted to entertain. "Nevermind. The point is, the operation seems to have been a success."
"I suppose so…" I winced, knowing there was nothing more I could say.
We both sat there quietly for a few moments, saying nothing as we quietly contemplated.
"So, can you move?" He suddenly asked in a more lighthearted tone, forcing a smile onto his face.
"Well… get these needles and that damn catheter out of me, and I'll give it the old college try." I joked, pulling the blanket off of my legs as I did my best to wriggle the feeling back into my toes. Most of the control was still there, but with a notable tingle in the very tips of my extremities.
It was time to relearn a few things.
…
Serenity Valley, November 5th, 9:32 AM, 2186
…
A little over a week had passed since my operation, and things had remained strangely normal for lack of a better word. Many people had come to visit me since I was released from the hospital wing, all wanting to know how I was getting along in the recovery process. It was oftentimes overwhelming, but I appreciated it regardless. It was good to know that so many people cared about me enough to come visit. It was certainly a good distraction to take my mind off the reports I was working to catch up on.
Shortly after I went under for my operation, the Reapers made a massive, sudden push through the Attican Traverse to the edge of Confederation space near Phoenix Massing. Mal and Pistis had to quickly pull back their forces from Caleston Rift and Hades Nexus to cut off their advance, but it left several worlds open for attack, a chance the Reapers didn't take in a strangely uncharacteristic move. Intelligence reports suggested the Reapers may have caught wind of the Crucible project, but I knew as well as anyone that if the Reapers knew about it and considered it an actual threat, they wouldn't have pulled back. It was more likely an attack to prod at our defenses. Either way, it wasn't a good situation.
The attack happened so quickly that Mal lost nearly a fifth of his ships fighting back, and Pistis had lost nearly as many. It was clear the Reapers had no reservations directly probing our lines, especially when we were so spread out trying to defend the colonies in the Traverse. So many ships came back to Reach with battle damage that crews had to be pulled from the Crucible and ODP construction just to keep up with all the work.
Sighing, I rubbed the side of my head, suddenly remembering what Richard told me about touching before pulling my hand back.
He was right about one thing, I couldn't even tell there was an implant wrapped around my brain. Not long after I had stabilized, the pain had lessened as my skin healed, allowing me to remove the bandages and view the extent of the damage. The side of my head had been shaved and there was a faint scar forming, but other than that it had remained mostly intact. Richard had stitched me in such a way that my hair would cover everything once it grew back, but the asymmetry bothered me. The chunk of my skull Richard had removed for the operation had been successfully reattached, but as a consequence I would set off any metal detectors I'd walk through for the rest of my life. The tiny titanium screws would tend to do that.
Staring at the pile of reports sitting in front of me and rolling my eyes, I instead stood up from my desk, cracking my knuckles as I stretched my arms above my head, fingers pushed tightly into one another. I couldn't go outside and run due to the heavy rain today, and Mara had Elle, busy in CASTLE Base, so I was restricted to whatever I could occupy myself with here in my house. It had been a long time since I had simply sat down and done… nothing for a long time. I was at a bit of a loss as to what I could do to occupy myself.
Richard had given me the strange burden of excess free time.
I poured myself some coffee and sat down on the couch, leaning back as I listened to the pitter-patter of the rain on the metal roof. It brought back memories of sitting in the back of an old Toyota RAV4, listening to the rain hit the roof when the engine was off. I had spent a lot of time thinking about my childhood lately, especially my parents. For some reason, one of the few things I clearly remembered from when I was unconscious was their faces looking down at me, smiling. Just the thought of it gave me this intense, warm feeling in my chest, almost like the warmth I'd experience downing a shot of good Irish whiskey.
I had spent a lot of time dwelling on those images, trying to decipher any meaning behind them. The obvious explanation was that my mind "created" manifestations of my parents to help me deal with the mental trauma I had gone through during the surgery. A simple chemical reaction caused by the implantation process, furthered by the cardiac arrest and subsequent oxygen loss I experienced. The other explanation I had been… less willing to dwell on, simply due to the implications. The idea that… well, they might have been "spirits" of some kind, either some kind of guardian angels or actually the spirits of my parents. There was no way to prove either theory of course, but if either one was a possibility, especially the latter… well, it scared the hell out of me. Perhaps literally.
After everything that's happened the last few years, anything is a possibility.
I began scrolling through my omni-tool, looking for any projects or ideas I had forgotten about or simply abandoned due to time constraints. There was one idea Dimitri had suggested, involving Geth drones and our MES system. The idea was to send them out ahead of ships in a wide formation, forming a secondary layer of protection not directly linked to the ship itself. It was similar in concept to a fully-armored medieval knight who still carried a large shield into battle. Having supplemental defensive barriers such as these would give us more breathing room when it came to dictating the terms of a battle, but supplying isolated units with enough power for an MES to function was a difficult hurdle to overcome.
There was also our drop pod project, SUSTAIN. Progress had been slow, but steady as we pushed development forwards in small baby steps. Due to the resource crunch we were limited to how many we could test at any given time, but at least we had reached the testing stages. I was almost certain the project would die after the first, disastrous test ended with a crater filled with very expensive scrap metal, but Johnathan had kept the project afloat despite these setbacks. At risk of the project overrunning its resource budget, I allocated a few of CASTLE Base's reserve materials to him with a firm "you owe me" attached for good measure. If we could get SUSTAIN to the point where it was consistently safe, then we could avoid the hassle of inserting troops with slow, poorly defended shuttles at all.
Before I had a chance to move on to my other projects, a sharp jolt of surprise shot through me as someone started banging furiously on my door. They didn't stop, and sounded almost as if they were trying to break the door down.
"Jesus… I'm coming! Calm down!" I yelled out, getting up and running over to the door. Looking at the camera feed, I almost couldn't believe who I was looking at.
It was Old Dan.
Without a second thought, I let him in out of the pouring rain. He was wearing his stealth suit, though he now wore a sturdy surplus jacket overtop of it. He was completely soaked from head to toe, and had an absolutely frantic look in his eyes.
"My God… what the hell happened to you?" I asked as he breathed deeply, peeling off his suit as I threw a towel at him. "And better yet, why are you here?"
"I was ambushed by a Reaper patrol while I was trying to get back to the Terminus. My stealth system on the Osiris picked the best possible moment to die on me." He explained, still acting quite freaked out. "There wasn't anything I could do, so I disengaged the reactor safeties and scuttled it before they could get their claws on it."
"Damn… that place was your home." I exclaimed, crouching down next to him.
"It doesn't matter. What I have to tell you does." He quickly dismissed, refocusing the topic at hand. "The Reapers are coming here. Not Rannoch, not Turviss, here. They plan on completely wiping out the planet and anything else in the system."
His words flummoxed me, draining all the color from my face. For the Reapers to come all the way out here when they had the entire Traverse at their fingertips…
"They're coming here because of us." I recognized, getting a tiny little nod out of Dan.
"That's a likely part of it. I don't know the exact reason why they've become so focused on this planet all of the sudden, but they're coming with a fleet of over one hundred ships." He went into detail, handing me an OSD. "Sean… if Reach falls, the cycle will continue. I'm not one for making predictions, but I know this for a fact."
Shaking my head at this new weight I had to carry, I closed my eyes and sighed, mentally preparing myself.
"Alright, hand over the data and I'll get it to the Admirals immediately." I nodded, holding out my open palm.
"No… this time, I'm going to present the information myself." He remarked with a new, steely look of determination.
…
A/N: Surprised? I sure am. Happy New Year! A lot's happened the last few weeks, including my old GPU dying, my "new" one being defective, and a variety of other stupid problems including, but not limited to, a completely screwed up winter market for the newer 30 series NVIDIA cards, and even the slightly older 20 series. Lucky for you guys, I haven't been able to play the games I received for Christmas because of this little SNAFU, meaning you're getting another chapter early on the first day of the year. I hope you enjoyed it, because writing this one was a doozy. Feel free to tell me if it made sense or not, because I'm still not used to writing surreal stuff.