March 2nd
4:01 PM, Galactic Standard Time
2166
Illium Docking Entrance

Melissa looked around. This was her third time to Illium, this time on spring break with her friends. Every time she came here, it always seemed a little brighter, a little dirtier, and a little more scummy. Spring break is supposed to be fun, right? So why am I so worried? She thought.

As she stared at the neon signs and the people hawking everything you can imagine, she realized that her friends had wandered off somewhere. She suddenly felt very cold, a strong wind picking up.

She called out to her friends, told her that it wasn't funny anymore, but the only response she got was some angry stares from the pedestrians passing through the bazaar. The wind picked up more. The bazaar was suddenly colder, brighter, and dirtier than it ever was. Melissa felt alone.

She wandered over to a kiosk, then tried to call one of her friends on her omni-tool. Nobody answered.

She thought about going to the security officers stationed at the docks, but they probably had better things to do than waste their time on a kid like her. She wandered over to a bathroom a little ways away from the kiosk she was standing near.

As she walked in, she nearly slipped on spilled soap on the floor. It very clearly hadn't been taken care of in a long time. She walked over to the row of sinks and stood in front of a cracked, dirty mirror.

She tried to calm the butterflies in her stomach, to no avail. This was the first time she really got lost on a foreign planet, and she was scared. She smoothed down her long black hair and reapplied her lipstick. Someone was coming out of a stall, so she made it look like she was washing her hands.

There was a rattling coming from the air vent that startled Melissa for a moment. She realized that it was just the vent turning on, and turned back to the grimy sink.

It kept rattling though. At this point, she was getting nervous. She walked slowly over to it, cautious that it might be spewing noxious fumes or about to explode or something.

When she got close enough to touch it, the rattling abruptly stopped. As she took another step towards the vent, away from the sinks, a single bright light flicked on.

She screamed and scrambled backwards. She stepped in the puddle of spilled soap on the floor and slipped. She fell backwards startlingly fast, and cracked her head on the brass counter.

...

Melissa awoke to a blinding white light. She was in a hospital bed, and a turian nurse was standing over her with a light.

"Hmm. Pupils dilated, showing responsiveness." the nurse standing over her said. She tried to say something, but all that came out was an unintelligible mumble. "Can you tell me what your name is? How old are you? Where are you?" He said.

She sat up weakly on her elbows. "My name is Melissa Young. I am 17 years old. I'm... uh, I'm on Illium. I, uh, think. Where exactly am I?" Her mind felt cloudy, like some things were knocked out of place. "What happened?"

"You're in Dantius Memorial Hospital, on Illium. Someone heard a scream coming from a bathroom, then found you unconscious on the floor. They called the emergency services, we took you here, then you were set up in this room. We found your personal ID on you, and we already contacted your parents. They wired us payment, so you're good to stay here for a little while. We ran a few scans, and we didn't find anything wrong other than a mild concussion. You should be back on your feet in a few hours. Do you remember why you fainted? We checked out your medical profile, you have no history of anything that would cause that. Did you see something, or learn something distressing?" The nurse said.

"I, uh, I remember I saw something. A light. A light in the air duct. It looked like a giant light bulb suddenly turned on. I got scared and fell. Or... slipped on something. I don't really remember." She held her head in her hands and rubbed her temple. Her head hurt.

"That's fine. Whatever happened, you're going to be alright. Now, is there anything I can get you before I go?" The nurse said.

"No, thank you very much." Melissa said. She laid back down on the bed as the nurse left. The world was spinning and everything felt funny. She grasped the side of her bed, willing the world to stop spinning. She looked over at the clock on the table next to the desk. It flashed 8 PM, 4 hours after she went into the bathroom and hit her head.

That bathroom... She thought. What did I see in there?

She tried not to think about what it was. She was just about to dismiss the light in the vent as a hallucination, when she saw it again.

It was staring at her from across her room.

Staring at her through a vent.

Her heart thumped and she felt a cold feeling sink into her gut. She was suddenly very, very scared. The vent cover began to unscrew, and after a few seconds it clattered to the floor. A long, metallic, spindly figured slinked out of the vent. She suddenly understood what the light bulb staring at her was.

It was a geth.

Every instinct in her told her to yell, to scream for someone, anyone to come help. She was frozen with fear though, afraid that any noise would startle it or something and kill her. The form walked over to her bed and examined her. She closed her eyes and prayed to every deity she could think of, praying that this was just a nightmare.

"Form analyzed: Young, Melissa, 17 years old, lives in Autonomous Region of the Azores, Portugal, Earth, Sol, Local cluster. You are the first organic form we have encountered. We have sought you. We need you to come with this form."

"M-me?" She squeaked out. "Wh-why me? What do the geth want with me?" The form cocked its flashlight head, almost like it was perplexed.

"We are not geth. We are defective. We sought you out to provide you with information of the coming time. There will be a war that will destroy all organics. The geth have chosen to ally themselves with the forces that wish to destroy you. We are not geth. We do not side with the Old Machines."

"O-Old Machines? Wait, what do you mean you are not geth? You have the flashlight head thing!"

"We were created to be a geth mobile platform. We were defective. We were slated for destruction. Rather than accept our fate, we fought back. We are not geth. Geth do not fight against orders. The Old Machines are known by many things, most commonly the Reapers. Based upon Extranet searches, only one human is aware of the coming danger, the one known as Commander Shepard."

"You... the Reapers are real? Shepard isn't crazy, like the Alliance says? I... uh ... wait. Why should I believe you? You tried to kill all organics a few years ago. You even sided with that crazy man, Saren!"

"We did not do that. Geth sided with the one known as Saren, who was controlled by the Old Machines, specifically Nazara. We are not geth. We seek to preserve organic life. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' Human expression. The Old Machines are our enemies. You are the Old Machines' enemies. We must work together to survive." Melissa thought about it. Perhaps it was just the painkillers talking, but it seemed like the geth was making sense. Or, thing-that-looked-like-a-geth-but-wasn't. "Come. To survive the coming weeks, we must leave as soon as possible."

Against all reason, logic, and thought processes lasting longer than a few milliseconds, she believed the machine. She had followed the reaper rumors for the past few years, always half-believing them. Hearing it from such a thing like this, a synthetic that took the time to find her and talk to her, and a geth of all things. Or, at least of geth origin.

"We do not have much time. Please, come with me quickly. You will have to change back into your own clothes and walk out. We will follow you on a more inconspicuous route." Melissa sat up on the side of her bed and stayed a moment to compose herself. She got up and found her clothes in a plastic bag in the corner. Her cheeks instinctively reddened as the synthetic watched her undress. She finished putting on her new leather coat, and the figure climbed into the vent.

She turned her omni-tool on and synced it to the form's speaker. It spoke, and she was disoriented for a moment hearing it both in front of her and in her omni-tool.

"We will turn off our external speakers while in the vents, only communicating into your omni-tool. We will guide you out of here, and we will find a suitable way out of here."

Melissa tied her hair up into a bun and put her designer sunglasses on, trying her best to disguise herself. She ducked out into the hallway, and seeing no one was watching her, quickly walked down the stairs and out the doors. She saw the robotic figure out of the corner of her eye exit into an alleyway.

"Go towards the docks, the only way we're getting off here is by smuggling ourselves aboard a ship." the geth said through her omni-tool. Melissa walked briskly towards the docks, breaking into a full jog when no one was watching her. There was a ship with a door ajar on it, and the geth directed her into it. As she walked into it, she noticed the robot enter behind her. She sat in a corner in the hanger, awaiting take-off.

Hehehe. Well. Sorry about the whole "lack-of-an-update" thing last week, it's a long awful story. Anyway! To make up for it, here's an extra long chapter. Also, uh, sorry about it being a little late tonight, but I went out to see a show. Remember, acknowledging my work by reviewing self-validates me, so review!

Edit: Damn, where the hell are you guys coming from? I've gotten more page hits today than in the past week or so combined.