As I opened my eyes a something became quite obvious, I was standing in a hallway made of mirrors.

"First I wake up on Eden Prime and now I am in a fun house?" I quipped to myself, taking a quick look around I saw I was no longer in my armour, I was wearing a plain white jumpsuit. "Okay maybe I am insane, that would definitely explain what has been happening to me today." My body felt light the bruises and injuries of the day were completely pain free had it all been a dream?

As I made my way forwards the corridor of mirrors was disturbing to say the least, the corridor was quite cramped with maybe enough room for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder. I was holding my hands out in front of me, constantly probing for any change in the room not wanting to smash into a wall.

"Who made this mad house?" I muttered to myself really starting to lose my patience with the nonsense that was this place.

)We did(

I spun around looking for the source of the voice but saw nothing.

"Where am I? What the hell is going on?" I bellowed wishing I could confront the source of the voice. Just like that the hallway of glass exploded into millions or shards and the floor vanished beneath me.

"Holy shit!" I screamed flaying my limbs around.

(Quit faffing about you're not falling, you can't die here)

The second voice was a quite a bit deeper, more grizzled it gave off the image of a tough, old soldier, who had seen his fair share of the world. And sure enough as he said I wasn't in fact falling I was just sort of floating in the air. As I stabled myself two doorways of light opened and two people were silhouetted against it.

"Okay, am I dead or what?" I murmured as I brought my hand up to cover my eyes from the blinding light.

)Carolus that is your name in this place. It was given to you when you agreed to be here.(

(You are longer a part of your universe you are now a part of ours.)

"Well whatever you say hallucinations, who am I to argue when all this is so standard and not out of the ordinary at all." I replied as I steadied myself in the abyss that I was now surrounded by. "I mean there I was on a planet from a video game just going on with the flow you know, except I wasn't I was running, fighting, shooting and generally confused with a HUD embedded into my brain!" I yelled towards the two figures, expecting some kind of reaction some sort of reassurance that I was either dead or having a dream.

)Okay Carolus let us help you. We talked you through this once before we can do so again(.

I could now determine this first shadow was a woman. Her voice was smoother but still gave of the voice of someone who was distinguished and full of confidence. The lights behind the two faded and the dark abyss lit up into a white light before reforming as some sort of conference room before I could utter another word A chair appeared beneath me and hesitantly took a seat. I could see the two figures clearly now and I couldn't believe my eyes.

"You, I know who you are." I stuttered as my mind began racing again these people they were Shepard.

"Well that's a start." Muttered the male Shepard as he took a seat on the opposite end of the table that had finished materialising, it was a good size table three metres in length or there about. He looked tired his movements were minimalistic moving no further than he had to and any point, his jet black hair was short his goatee clean and crisp, he had a scar that ran the length of his face from the top right to the left hand side of bottom lip. He was wearing the leather jacket from the Mass Effect three, along with a pair of denim jeans. The other person was as I had assumed a woman she was taller than the Shepard I had met on Eden Prime, or at least thought I had met once again I found myself questioning my reality and what had and was happening. She had dark red hair that flowed freely just below her shoulders her face had a fair complexion, if I had to guess perhaps Mediterranean in descent she walked past the other Shepard and ran her fingers along the table as she stopped next to me and pulled up a chair.

"Hello Carolus. My name."

"Alexandra." I spoke softly I recognised her now she was a Shepard from one of my Mass Effect games.

"So you remember something at least." She smiled at me before quickly grabbing my closest hand and crushing it in her vice like grip.

"Jesus Christ!" The pain was immense with just one hand she was now twisting my whole arm and slowly forcing my face down into the table.

"Nope sorry no Jesus here." She said as she let me go. "But don't interrupt me again." Her devilish grin snapping me out of my daze from what had just happened.

"Yes ma'am." I quickly replied as I shook my arm. Alexandra was one of my Sentinels she was a good person at heart, but walked a fine line do good by her and her friends and your save, annoy her or do her wrong and well things got interesting.

"So Carolus, how much do you remember? Do you remember him?" She asked with her devilish grin still plastered on her face it was more terrifying than any Geth I had encountered early in the day. I looked up at the man still sat at the end of the table I looked at his face, I knew this man I just needed a name. "Oh god, you have got to be kidding me." It hit me like a truck this wasn't just any Shepard from my not so modest total of fifty-two play through, he was the original man. "Sovereign." I finally said, I had a thing for naming my Shepard's interesting names Titan, Zoltan, Xylene, I remember being in shock during Sovereign's reveal as a reaper in the first game.

"Well nice to see I haven't been forgotten in all those other Shepard's cooked up. I would say it's nice to meet you but we already have, you have just gone and forgotten." His face remained unchanged, his tone was flat no sense of emotion he gave me nothing to gauge his true feelings with.

"What a touching moment this is; I am really glad we got to redo this first time meeting." Alexandra sat back down in her chair her grin had somehow morphed itself from one of a psycho to well a normal smile. "You know the first meeting didn't go so smoothly." She giggled "You were running around screaming like a mad man. What is going on? Who are you? What is that thing?" She slapped my back, it hurt she was ridiculously strong it didn't even seem like she was trying. "So Carolus lets' see if we can get through this quickly, now I am going to talk and you are going to sit and listen once we finish you can ask three count them three questions." She said bringing up three fingers. "Okay here we go." I got a feeling I should do as she says.

Shepard

As she opened her eyes the first feeling she had was one of immense pain her head felt worse than the last time she was waking up from shore leave. As she sat herself up a familiar voice came into perception Dr Chakwas.

"Commander? Can you hear me? Commander?" by the sounds of it she had been trying to get her attention for quite a while.

"Yes doctor I am up." She replied bringing her hands to cover her eyes the light of the room was bright. "How long was I out?"

"Around ten hours. You had us worried their commander." Chakwas replied "How are you feeling?"

"Worse than my last shore leave." She mumbled as she brought her hands off her eyes, as she looked around the room she saw two service men standing guard over the bed to her right.

"Charles?" She asked now finally being able to see clearly. Chakwas looked over to the other bed, while he wasn't a serviceman he was still a patient it seemed.

"If you are referring to Carolus over there, it seems the beacon reacted to him or at least that is the best we can tell, sadly we will never get the chance to find out if he is what set it off the beacon exploded once it grabbed you both." She walked over to grab a data pad and quickly flicked through it. "The engineering crew have been trying to determine what could have set it off. Their best guess is that all the tech in your friend here set it off. But I have to say commander I have never seen this level of modification of a person." Before she could finish the door to the med bay opened and the two guards left and a friendly face came into view.

"Doctor, how is our XO doing." Captain Anderson asked with a wide smile on his face.

"By all physical standards she is fine, I detected some unusual brainwaves abnormal beta waves and she displayed rapid eye movement while unconscious, but those can be attributed to intense dreaming." Chakwas addressed them both trying to satisfy the Captains answer while also reassuring her that she was going to be fine.

"I saw I don't know what I saw. Death. Destruction. Nothings really clear." It was all kind of vague to her but as a solider she knows what death looks like, what she saw was horrific even though it only came in parts.

"I will add that to my report, but aside from that you're free to leave Commander."

"Thank you doctor." She replied as Anderson looked over at Charles.

"Doctor could you give us a moment of privacy please." Anderson's smile was now gone his face had become like steel.

"Certainly, I will be in the mess if you need me." And with that she left leaving only Anderson, herself and an unconscious Charles. After a moment Anderson spoke up.

"I am not going to lie commander, things looked bad. Nihlus is dead. The beacon was destroyed and Geth are invading. The council is going to want answers." The situation was clearly riding heavily on her old mentor.

"I did nothing wrong hopefully the council will see that." She was right she had done nothing wrong she had followed her mission but the beacon had failed and for whatever reason it may have failed all she knew was it wasn't her or her teams fault.

"I'll stand behind you Commander, but that's not why I am here. It's him and his statement about another Turian. Saren. Saren is a spectre one of the best a living legend in the eyes of many but if he is working with the Geth that means he has gone rouge. A rouge Spectre is dangerous and Saren in particular he hates humans."

"Why does he hate humans?" She asked noticing a slight change in Anderson demeanour how could the council promote someone with such racism of an allied race?

"The same reason most of those that hate us do. Thinks were growing too fast. Taking over the galaxy. He has allied himself with a synthetic race and the beacon was the key. Did you see anything something that could give us something to go on?" Anderson was certainly tense now something was bothering him greatly, but she was also concerned over what had happened in the mission.

"Besides the dream I had, nothing sir I am sorry." She looked over at the unconscious Charles again.

"You're worried about him?" Anderson asks clearly noticing the glances she was giving Charles. "Chakwas insures me, he is physically fine hell if the reports from the ground team are to accurate he should be at deaths door his body has a truly mutant ability to heal. I will have Chakwas give you one more look over, get some rest Shepard we will talk with him when he wakes up." And with that Shepard was alone with Charles as Anderson left to fetch the doctor.

"Two people already died on this mission, between the Geth and the beacon you are the most normal thing to have happened you are going to give me some answers." She was tired now and decided to lay back for a bit.

Carolus

As I looked over at the two Shepard's all I could do was sit in silence and hope what I was about to hear not cause me to have a heart attack.

"Okay so let's start." Alexandra said as she put her feet on the table forcing me to take my hands off and put them down by my sides I was as stiff as a board. "Okay so first of all, you are dead." My face went pale before noticing her smile reappear. "Just kidding you're not dead we approached you in your universe because you had knowledge of our universes and all possible outcomes well maybe not all but your knowledge made you a high value target. The other version of us you should be able to meet her soon enough she is a big old softy but best tech head I ever met. Well she is another me so of course she's good." Her smile grew as she looked over at Sovereign. "She came and spoke to you and explained that you were needed, I believe your response was to stab yourself with a fork to see if you were dreaming then you tried to make her leave, something about her being insane or who was paying her to do this. So long story short we snapped you up and brought you to our universe and after much panicking oh god it was hilarious we finally calmed you down enough to explain. So here is the quick version, we are Shepard's that followed the path of your created fictional versions of us we completed the trilogy but this universe fails, it is based off a game you didn't complete one were you died and never reloaded needless to say with that universes Shepard dead the reapers win and you know what that means lots and lots of dead people, hell even the next cycles die and on and on so on and so forth."

As I sat there trying to absorb what she was telling me all I could do was draw a blank, this stretched the realm of what I perceived to be possible and even if it was possible why me?

"So I guess I will tell you how we got inside your head. Once you agreed to help us and don't get it wrong you did agree honey. We utilised the technology the Geth used to place me in one of their servers all be it slightly modified you see our organic bodies died quite some time ago, and we were deemed too important by the Geth not to keep so they suggested we be made well more. We were digitised and stored and once we decided to intervene in other universes and you were chosen to help us we were implanted in the various tech implants in your new body." As she finished all I could do was look up at the white ceiling it was calming, I had just sat through an explanation that would make the greatest minds in history lose it.

Before I could think on it some more I noticed something, the white ceiling it began to flake slowly at first a few pieces here and there but before long it was spreading like a cancer infecting and tearing down the crisp clear white ceiling and now it was spreading to the walls.

"Well that's the story in the nutshell, now I did promise you could ask three questions but it seems you're waking up faster than I suspected….." She paused her devilish grin reappearing I looked over at Sovereign who had been silent the whole time not even seeming to move a muscle. "Or perhaps I timed it perfectly." She added as I found myself staring at another ceiling.

The light was bright it hurt or at least my head hurt the light wasn't doing me any favours. I brought my hands to my head and sat up.

"Seems your head feels as bad as mine." That voice I recognised it as Shepard or more accurately as the Shepard from Eden Prime.

"Inside voice please, oh god feels like a mule kicked me in the head." I rubbed my eyes with my hands before finally looking over at Shepard. "So I want to go ahead and say that the beacon did this? Jesus that hurts." My head was throbbing not having any memory prior to waking up in a crater I had nothing to compare it to.

"The doctor says we are both fine, but she wants to have a talk with you later something about your tech implants." She said bringing me over a glass of water.

"Thanks" I accepted the glass and quickly downed it. I realised I hadn't eaten or drunken anything since my awakening. "So where am I?" I asked knowing full well by this point I was in Normandy's med-bay, I wondered if that brandy Chakwas kept around was nearby after my day and whatever I had just gone through in that dream I had just had a drink surely wouldn't do me any harm.

)Wasn't a dream, I expected better from you. You were so good before the crash to such a disappointment(.

The voice in my head was drowning out whatever Shepard was saying to me, oh god it wasn't a dream that or I really am insane.

(You're not insane we can talk later stay focused on what is in front of you).

"Charles?" Shepard asked looking slightly worried.

"Sorry Shepard my head is killing me, I just had a horrible dream." I trailed off if she asked about it I can't tell her about the meeting with the other versions of her, if she asks I will have to be careful I can't reveal the whole meaning of the beacon a light touch would be needed.

)Maybe you are not a lost cause at this point at least your analytical mind seems to still be intact(.

I ignored Alexandra's words of 'encouragement' focusing on the Shepard in front of me.

"What was your dream about?" She asked slowly rubbing her hands together.

"I saw destruction, there was death everywhere, synthetics I think." I paused rubbing my temple "Sorry it isn't really clear." I let out a smile before placing the now empty cup of water on a tray.

"Yea I had a dream like that. Those Prothean's sure knew how to mess with your head." As she finished the door opened and Doctor Chakwas and Captain Anderson entered.

"Seems your other patient is awake doctor." Anderson said as he made his way over to me while Chakwas grabbed a data-pad off her desk.

"So it would seem, tell me how do you feel?" She asked as she made her way over.

"Besides the headache I have I feel fine had one hell of a nightmare I was just telling the Commander about it. Seems we had the same dream." I replied and only now did I realise that I was still wearing my armour.

"I will have to add that to both your reports, seems the experience left a common marker on you both." Chakwas flicked through her data before turning to me a second time.

"Now Carolus." I cut her off.

"Please just call me Charles doctor."

"Very well Charles, I have to ask you about your implants they are both extensive in terms of power output and number." She paused obviously trying to find a way to word whatever she was about to ask. "Some of these implants they are completely unknown to the alliance, I have sent scan readings of them to the Citadel and no one can tell me anything about them. These implants are while not illegal due to well us not having any idea what they are or even what half of them do it made treatment of you impossible. Where did you get them?" Her question finally came, obviously unknown tech would raise eyebrows, but even more worrying was the fact I didn't have an answer.

(You got to make a good backstory. Mercenary is a solid answer low level be vague don't leave them a trail to latch on to.)

Thanks for the save Sovereign, I thought as I hurriedly threw together a backstory.

"My name Carolus Rex or Charles King either is fine; I was a mercenary I was making my way to Citadel space to start a new life. I was going to return to Earth and re-evaluate my life I have done nothing but be a paid gun for some of the worse people I could ever have imagined sure sometimes I worked for the good guys but more often than not it was my ass on the line for some drug runner or gang. And when you are in this business you take whatever advantage you can get the majority of my implants from less than reputable sources that is all I have to say about those I am afraid." I paused looking around at the three faces in the room trying to gauge the response.

Shepard was just leaning forward listening carefully, Chakwas was filling out another data-pad probably adding it to a psych profile or something. Anderson on the other hand was unmoved his face steel not giving away anything oh well I was committed now. "I am sick of it, if I am risking my life I want to do it for the right reasons fight the good fight if you will." I let out a sigh. "Now it seems I have got caught up in something pretty big I don't know what I will do now."

"Well from the mission report of the ground team you were a valuable asset, while there are some question that will need answers, this will suffice for now. There will be a debriefing when we arrive at the citadel in a few hours. Doctor will that do for now?" Anderson asked turning to Chakwas.

"Well its not really useful but for now it will have to do he is under no obligation to tell me anything he doesn't want to but I do advise against it." With a nod of the head Chakwas and Anderson left again leaving me alone again with Shepard.

"Don't suppose you would like a tour?" Shepard asked as she jumped off her bed.

"You know what Shepard a tour would be nice." I let out a large sigh and stretched my arms and legs and made a personal note, I have got to figure out how to get this armour off.

What is this madness? Two updates within a week. I must be sick. Anyway first major story bomb dropped but the really question is can anyone trust the voices in their heads? Can you spot any possible plot problems with Alexandra's story? Again I have made a twitter handle were I post story updates you can find its link on the fanfiction profile.

Next chapter the citadel and consequences of previous mistakes. DRAMATIC MUSIC

Castor Out.