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I don't own Mass Effect but if I did there would be SOOOOOOOOOOO much more Garrus! Who here loves Garrus? *raises hands* That's right! I heart Garrus!

Chapter 3: The Unreveal
Jason

Shepard leads us into the elevator, and it's tense in there. Damn, these elevators are slow.

Extremely slow. Definitely does not meet standards.

"We need a plan," I whisper to Kevin. He nods in response.

"We need to come up with a cover story," he replies, leaning in.

"Something good, like maybe-" Aleksandr begins before he gets cut off.

The talkative lady who is apparently Shepard's sister (would that make her a mini-Shepard?) leans in. "What are you talking about?"

I immediately rattle off the most offensive thing I can. "How to fuck your CO's wife's brains out without getting court-martialed for it."

"Sounds interesting."

"Yeah, it's not exactly girl talk-" Then I realize what she said and that she sounded genuinely interested. "What?"

"Lots of women like other women. Sometimes women they shouldn't." I wouldn't say lots. Damn dykes.

Oh, don't be such a bigot.

"Do you?" I ask harshly.

She bats her eyelashes. "I'll never tell."

The elevator dings, the doors open, and we head out into the crew deck. I grab Aleksandr's arm and tell him, "Follow my lead."

It's not like I have much of a choice.

Aleksandr

I seemed to remember the SR-1 being, well, not smaller, but having a lot more empty space.

The first and most immediate change I noticed was that the elevator faced the opposite direction it did in the game, toward the back of the ship. The wall is made from the same dark silvery-grey metally-plasticky stuff, but there are two doors just like the ones in the game on the wall. I still have no idea where they go. On each side is a staircase going up to the top floor, but they are not curved at all and very steep.

We followed Shepard around the front, and there was scarcely any space to move. A pair of small tables with two rows of chairs each were in front of the elevator, with some kind of food dispenser along with a sink and small preparation area right up against it. There were doors on each side of the narrow space, and three forward. I assumed that those went to the medical bay, sleep pods, and captain's cabin, though I of course could not tell.

Also, it seemed to me that the ceiling was lower. And I did not remember those lockers on the wall being there. Or all the junk on the ceiling.

Shepard motioned us to the table, and we sit down in the horrid chairs. They're so uncomfortable, tiny and cold and metally. Seriously, my arse is sore within seconds of sitting down. I'm sandwiched between Kevin and Jason, with Sandra deposited on the seat to Kevin's left. Shepard and her sister (is that really her sister?) were sitting across from us.

"Hey Shepard, I gotta hit the head," Jason called casually.

Shepard responded without even thinking. "Portside bulkhead, bow hatch. Turn aft."

"Got it," Jason replied, standing up and making his way over to the left wall and going through the forwardmost door. Frankly I didn't understand how he could understand that and I'm not sure what it even meant.

"I'm, uh, following him," Kevin said awkwardly, standing up and doing so.

"Hey, I won't judge," Shepard replied. "I have lots of friends that live an alternative lifestyle."

She turned to me. "So... nice weather we've been having."

I began to reply to her forced attempt at conversation, than stopped when the blatantly obvious hit me. "We're on a ship."

She blinked. "Oh, right."

A moment of awkward silence, then a pause. She twiddled her fingers. The great Commander Shepard can't talk. "So, uh, do you go to school?"

"Yeah, I'm in Lon- high school." Got to be careful, my school might not even exist in the future. The fewer specifics, the better.

"What do you do in Lon-high school. Do you, uh, learn stuff?"

I nearly facepalmed. "Yes."

"Maybe you should let me handle this, sis," the younger Shepard advised.

"No time," Jason said sharply, coming up behind and literally yanking me out of my seat. "Aleks has to take a shit. Come on blue falcon, move your ass."

"What does blue falcon mean?" I asked as the door shut behind us. Wow, that's a futuristic bathroom. Also, it was tiny. Barely bigger than mine but designed for much more people. The urinals were right next to each other; two guys doing their business would be uncomfortably close. There were three sinks and two showers along one wall, and a pair of toilet stalls crammed in beside the urinals.

And yet even in the future the place smelled like piss and chemicals.

"Buddy fucker," Jason replied nonchalantly. "I say follow my lead, not bullshit with Jenny and her juliet-bravo sister."

"JB? What does that mean?" Kevin paused, realization passing through his eyes. "Oh, jailbait. Why didn't you just say so?"

"She's at least seventeen," I replied. Actually, probably in her twenties, given Shepard's age. I can understand the confusion, though. She looks no older than me- I guess people look younger in the future.

"Still technically a child soldier, illegal to kill under the Geneva Conventions, and thus jailbait." I couldn't look it up at the time, but I seriously doubted that was correct.

I corrected Jason. "Uh, that's not what jailbait means."

"Jailbait means too young. Kill, fuck, what's the difference? We all get fucked and killed in the end." I wasn't sure if he was being humourous or philosophical.

"Where's Sandra?" Kevin asked.

We share a look, and there's another awkward silence before Jason waves his hand dismissively. "Fuck Sandra. We don't need her."

"I suppose," I replied. "All right, let's plan this. We need backgrounds, identities. One for each of us."

"Jason Thompson," Jason proposed. "Former Alliance Marine, did some mercenary work before semi-retiring to Eden Prime. Have some issues, got screwed up on, let's say Elysium."

"That was a shitty movie," Kevin pointed out.

"What?" Jason asked, confused.

"Elysium. It was a shitty movie." Seeing our odd looks, Kevin continued. "All right, Kevin Landon Johnson. Keep it simple. I'm an engineering student at Citadel University."

"Perfect," I replied. "All right, my turn. I'm Aleksandr Petrov-"

Jason cut me off, pointing out, "You're not Russian. You're a fucking Cockney."

"So? This is the future. People don't have consistent accents here. I can be from wherever I bloody well want to. Anyway, I'm a professional composer and orchestrator person and have been hailed as the next Tchaikovsky. Oh and I'm also a world-class painter."

"Don't you think that's a bit much?" Kevin asked.

"Well, I like to inflate my ego a bit, both me and Petrov," I replied.

"What about Sandra? She needs an identity," Jason said.

"Well, we'll have to make one up for her," I replied, adjusting my glasses, which had decided that now would be a good time to slip down my nose. "She's American, so she can be from Boston Illinois, the Big Apple."

Kevin pointed out, "Okay, I'm from Kelowna and I know that's wrong."

I retorted, "Who fucking cares? She's dense as a rock, this kind of confusion happens."

"And a bit fat," Kevin pointed out.

"And a bit fat," I agreed. "Let's say she works as a waitress in one of those places where the waitresses take their clothes off."

"A titty bar?" Jason suggested.

I snapped my fingers. "Yes, she works at a strip club. She's not the best but the owner keeps her around... why would he keep her around?"

"Illegitimate child," Kevin suggested. "The owner had dubcon sex with her mother and then stabbed her to death before she was born. He keeps her around because she threatened to tell the cops."

"Don't you think that's a little harsh?" I pointed out.

"Hey, fuck her, she ain't here!" Jason shot back. "Alright, how did we get here?"

"Drugs," Kevin immediately suggested.

"Drugs?" I asked, skeptical.

"Yes. Like The Hangover. We took some bad Hallex, passed out, and woke up in the cargo bay."

"Okay," I replied, satisfied.

"This is good. Where were we taking bad Hallex?" Jason asked.

I pondered it for a moment before shouting, "Eden Prime. Constant, the capital of Eden Prime. We were partying, having a hell of a time, and we stumbled onto the ship while it was on the planet."

"That's good, that's good," Kevin concurred. "Except that by the time the Normandy got there the place was on fire."

"Damn it."

"Fuck me."

"Bloody hell."

We sat there pondering in silence for what must have been at least an hour.

"Ah, fuck it, we don't have to get every minor detail," Jason finally dismissed. "We were drunk and stoned."

"Right, that will explain any of the inconsistencies," I repeated. "All right, we got this?"

"We got this."

Sandra

"So, Broshep?"

"Yeah." I shrug. I've never really been a fan. I mean, yeah, he's a hunk, but Meer's voice acting is SO BAD. "I prefer Femshep, mostly for the voice acting."

"Femshep," Jane repeats, swirling the word in her mouth.

"You, in a-"

A simultaneous choir of three familiar voices cuts me off. "What in the actual fuck?"

"Oh, I was just telling Jane and Melia about ourselves-"

"Are you fucking mad?" Aleksandr screams at me. His face was turning beet red. "We had a lovely plan put together. A flawless cover story. And then we finish up, come out here, and you're telling Shepard that we're from the real world and this is a video game?"

"Well, there are self-inserts where people do that," I point out. Like, uh, I don't know any off the top of my head right now.

"Not very many! Think about it. Nobody's going to believe you! And at least most of them have the common decency to at least wait a bit and not reveal everything within the first hour of the first bloody game!"

"I'm sorry!" I reply. Don't cry, Sandra. Hold the tears back.

"All right, we need to contain this charlie-foxtrot right the fuck now," Jason says angrily. "Sandra, exactly what the hell did you tell her?"

"I told her who we are." Here come the tears. I'm turning into a wreck. Damn it! This always happens! "Jason, the soldier who was wounded in Afghanistan-"

"Okay, hold up," Jason interrupts. "First, I'm a Marine, not a soldier. A soldier is an asshole who gets all the nice equipment and still can't accomplish shit. Second, I was wounded in Iraq. Simon was wounded in Afghanistan."

I continue. "Kevin, the electronic engineer."

He clears his throat. "Actually, I'm in mechanical engineering now, and I'm not legally allowed to call myself an engineer until I'm certified by APEGBC."

I glare at him and continue. "Aleksandr, British composer and musician."

"And artist and writer," he adds. "Really I do a bit of everything. Creating and all that."

"Finally, Sandra McCarthy, sole proprietor of New York's finest restaurant, the Le Fancie and multimillionaire." I finish.

Kevin winces. "What? You're some waitress at some shitty restaurant. You live in rural Massachusetts. You're on the dole for crying out loud."

"Well, I had to embellish a little," I squeak out.

Kevin yells, "You live day to day and have all of your credit cards racked up! Your family won't help you anymore because you've trashed their credit rating too!"

Aleksandr adds, "Excuse me, what about my embellishment? Couldn't you have made me a composer on the level of Mozart or Bach?"

"Guys, focus," Jane interrupts, leaning over the table.

Aleksandr doesn't stop. "What about where we came from, how we got here? Did you tell her about that too?"

"Yes. We wished upon a chain mail and we ended up here, in a fictional version of the future."

"Oh, that's just bloody brilliant then. Why don't you just outline the entire plot of the entire series and then we can all just piss off-" he waved his arm for emphasis "-and disappear into the background. No story, no adventure, no nothing!"

"What's wrong with enjoying our lives?" I ask.

"Gee, I don't know, how about we don't have any goddamn lives here because this is Mass Effect! Literally the only reason to be here is to join Shepard on her adventures. If she thinks we're bonkers we might as well just walk out that door and leave!"

"What door?" Kevin asks, looking around and trying to find it.

"Hey!" Shepard slams her hands onto the table, and I notice it deformed the plastic. "We're about to arrive at the Citadel. I still have questions, but for now you're going to follow me. Let's see who's lying."

Aleksandr mutters, "Not gonna lie, that doesn't even make any sense."

Jason whispers, "Don't argue. Just take it."