Mass Effect: Massive Shock

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Mass Effect or BioShock franchises or any characters or property that BioWare or 2K games has staked claim upon. Original Characters that I create may be used or distributed for use at my leisure.

Stylistic Notes: Any comments from the author of any kind will be done in bold print. Any communications, read text, past events, stories, or subconscious thoughts of characters other than myself will be done in italics. Enjoy!

Rated M: For Coarse Language, Graphic Violence, and Non-Explicit Suggestive Themes.

"Nothing endures but change."

~Heraclitus~

An amateur writer, writing for the sake of it, grown and matured mentally, frustrates long-time readers by rewriting an old story rather than continue it, for now at least. Enjoy.

Ch. 1: Rapture

9:48 AM December 29, 2011

I'm going to tell you a story.

You won't believe it. But you don't need to believe it. It's the truth and whether you believe it or not it needs to be said because if it goes any longer without being said it will go away or it won't be true anymore.

You know those video games you like? I lived them.

Sorry to be so blunt about it. Not all of them, of course. Just one. Though one more than I'd like to have lived in a lifetime. To you, they're often little more than just games. A means of entertainment. Trust me, I get it. I loved video games when I was younger, before all this happened. I loved escaping into another world or reality and immersing myself in it. Because reality isn't always ideal, and video games were a way for me to muffle that for a time.

Enough chatter though. I'm going to tell you a story. And it's easiest to go from the beginning.

When I was 17… the DAY I turned 17 to be exact, I went to a museum for my birthday. Let me tell you, BAD IDEA. Objectively, who goes to a museum for their birthday? I'm sure many people do do that and don't get me wrong, I love museums. But as a 17 year old teenager, all I wanted to do, literally, all that motivated me, was talking to girls. And I'm telling you that to show how different things are. How fucked up things were to change this kid into the person who's telling you this story right now.

When I was 17, I was only recently coming into myself. I was a late bloomer of sorts. "Of sorts," because it's not like I hit puberty at 16 or something. No I was just a slow developer. I didn't get a growth spurt like all the popular athletes at my high school. From the time I was 13, all the way until I was about 20 or so, I got taller very slowly. And I was kid-chubby until I was about 15 when I started exercising and leaving my house more often. When I was 17, I was thinnish and still kind of short compared to some, and still kind of awkward. Some people were able to kind of talk to girls or boys they liked by the time they were like 14 or 15. But I didn't really kind of figure it out until 16 or so. Still haven't if I'm being frank.

Long story short, I was awkward. And a lot of people thought I was conceited and full of myself because I looked at mirrors a lot, when in reality I was just overly self-aware and closed off and introspective. I just kept to myself because putting myself out there was too harmful. I learned how to fake it, just like everyone has by the age I am now.

When I was 17, I was thinnish. I was in fairly good shape because I was participating in various after-school programs and exercising vigorously because I wanted to join the military. I wanted to be thin like everyone else I knew, but retrospectively, it's a good thing I just can't be. I like the way I look now. At the time I weighed about 150 pounds, but didn't really look it.

I've always been one of those thick bodied people. Like, I don't know if it's my bone structure, or genetics, or both, but I've just been a thick person. I have thick arms, thick legs, big shoulders, a big chest, a thick neck, a fat ass, and a huge back with a narrow waist. Not that I look like some kind of dwarf or something. I'm proportional for the most part, I'm just trying to emphasize that in my adolescence where most people were lanky sticks or chubby as fuck I was somewhere in between. In short, I wasn't cut or anything back then, and I wasn't a twig. This natural thickness didn't do me favors as a young man though, as I wasn't very tall until my early 20's or so. When I was 17, I was about 5'7". So I was a stocky little bastard for sure. So, I'm kind of glad I can't be a skinny-skinny. My body just naturally wants to put on bulk, so when I finally became taller and more muscular, I didn't look half bad.

People thought me conceited because I'm not ugly. And even when I was awkward, self-conscious and kid-chubby, I thought I had a nice face. I have green eyes and shiny, thick, semi-straight brown hair. I have a cut, triangular jawline, a sharp but not pointy chin, no real cheek bones to speak of, and nice lips. I wore my hair in a messy side part of sorts with short sides. And I couldn't really grow facial hair at the time. At the time, I also had a nice tan, but that faded quickly after the incident.

My goodness. I haven't even gotten to that part yet.

Okay, so backtracking, museums on your birthday are not the best idea. Especially obscure ones like the one we went to. But we went to this one because I was tired of going to the usual stuff for my birthday, because it was near the restaurant we wanted go to, and because I wanted to at least pretend I had some culture.

Alright, so we get to this museum and my mom's driving. I love my mom. She was a great mom and I miss her.

"We're here!" my mom announces from the driver's seat.

"Finally!" my brother says from the far back of the car. I never thought much of my brother. He was never much of an achiever. I was an achiever even if I didn't achieve much. At least I counted my worth based on personal merits. He never achieved many merits in my book. I miss him all the same.

"You're 17 now, does it feel different?" My mom asks me.

"Not even a little bit," I respond, disembarking from the car with my brother, my sister and my mom.

My sister was always demure but I like to think that after I left she became more outspoken and learned to love herself more. I'm sure she did. She was an achiever too. I miss her also.

As we walk up to the museum entrance, I turn up the volume on my phone in attempt to drown out the world around me. That's the kind of ungrateful shit I was. Events seemingly fly by from there: go inside and get a program of exhibits. My mom is saying something as we stand in the lobby of the museum. It seems important so I take out my earbuds so I can hear her better.

"…meet back here at 11:30 okay?"

"What for?" I say

"We're going to go get lunch after this, then come back and see the other museums in the park." My mom responds, seemingly exasperated that she had to repeat herself.

"Oh, alright, so I can just wander?" I say.

"Mhm."

"Sweet." I say and I immediately walk off in another direction, plugging my ear buds back into my ears. Yeah. I know. I was a little asshole.

As I walked through the museum, I looked at the exhibits, with their mannequins and period clothing. Nothing caught my interest. Not the JFK exhibit, or the one about the Korean War, or even the Space Race one. Which is surprising to say the least because I LOVED space. Pretty soon, I got lost. This place was oddly big for a random museum about the 20th century.

And as I'm walking through the exhibits, I start hearing this noise. It's like a faint music but clouded with heavy static. And I can hear this noise over the sound of the music blaring through my earbuds into my skull. It was like the faint music and static were in my head. And it was subtle at first but after a while of thinking I was hearing something, I KNEW I was hearing something. So I started following the "sounds." It brought me to a wall. Not very dramatic I know, but wait. So all of the walls were covered with these thick, dusty, red curtains. And as I reached this wall, I listened and I could tell that this was where the music was coming from. I was pressing my ear up against the curtain and the wall to listen better, when the wall fell away like a door swinging open. And I fell into this hallway, with red curtains all around. It was dark, and I didn't like the dark. Straight ahead of me was a dull light. Behind me, was a solid wall again.

And I could hear the music coming from up ahead.

And I know what you're thinking. "You fell for the fucking trap. You'd think that as a gamer, you'd know this was a 'oh fuck no' sort of scenario."

Well it's not like I had a lot of options. When video games and life put you on rails, you can go one way or the other. And if you go the other way, you're going to hit a dead end. Going backwards was not an option for me, so yeah, I fell for the fucking trap.

And to be honest, I was curious.

So. Coming to the end of the hall, I pushed through a curtain draped over a doorway. And I was now in a hexagonal room. The room had undressed mannequins in it. And the mannequins at this museum were the cloth kind with no features whatsoever. So they're less creepy in my opinion than the plastic ones.

Anyway there are about a dozen or so mannequins in this room. And the floor had a thin layer of water puddles on the floor. So the room had this musky, mildewy smell to it. But in the middle of the room was a small round wooden end table with a blocky radio from the 60's on it.

The music was coming from there. I walked up to it, and played with the knobs until it cleared up.

"Somewhere… Beyond the sea, somewhere, waiting for me… My lover stands on golden sands, and watches the ships, go sailing…" Somewhere Beyond the Sea by Frank Sinatra.

Okay. Great. Now how the fuck do I get out of here?

But then the music stops. And there's this beeping. Like a bomb almost where it starts slow and slowly picks up pace. And more static and this dull ringing.

And there's a voice. Here's what it says:

"A man has a choice. I chose the impossible. I built a city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. But my city… was betrayed by the weak. So I ask you, my friend. If your life were the prize, would you kill the innocent? Would you sacrifice your humanity? We all make choices. But in the end, our choices make us."

Well that sounds damn familiar.

As the voice on the radio speaks, the beeping gets faster and the ringing and static get louder. And right as he finishes his final word, it gets to the point of being unbearable. And then it just stops.

"Make your choice."

I look about and I can't find the way I came. And the mannequins. They're standing. And they're each holding a curtain open. Behind each curtain is a doorway to another long hall. Each a different way I guess.

Entirely befuddled and afraid, I'm frozen. What is happening?

Suddenly, cloth arms wrap around me. 3 mannequins grab me from behind and wrestle me to the ground.

"No? Then I shall choose for you."

The mannequins drag me forward, toward the center most hall. From it I can hear Frank Sinatra again. The mannequins are strong. Unnaturally strong. And I have no chance against them as they throw me into the hall and release the curtain.

It's dark again and I run back to run through the curtain but there's just a wall there. I slam, face first, into it and see stars, and taste blood and feel pain lance through my face. I fall backward onto the ground but find the hallway is partially filled with water.

I submerge myself in the icy water, and panic as I try to get back to my feet. I manage it, but find that the water level is rising. So I panic again.

And then down the hall, I see a figure. It's a girl. A young girl, probably 6 or 7 years old. She's standing knee deep in the water.

She giggles and turns to run away from me. "Come on! Big Brother!"

Her voice is wrong. But I follow her, with no other options available to me.

I run after her, slowed by the quickly rising water. Within a moment it's waist deep but she always seems to stay in knee deep water.

And then, I fall. And when I fall I plunge into the icy water. And when I do that, the floor seems to disappear, and the walls, and I'm just in darkness.

And this darkness, it's like, more permanent than any other darkness I'd been in before. It's like I was in a room. Where the room had no light and had never known light. And I can see nothing, and everything in the room at the same time. Like I can't see anything, but that's because there is nothing. It's a void, so perfectly empty. I can hear nothing. Feel nothing. And see nothing.

But I can smell. Oddly I can smell. I can't breathe but I can smell. And the smell is choking. It smells like dirty metal and dead bodies. It has that smell that old quarters have and the smell of rotten meat.

And then I know why. It turns out, I can see. There was just nothing to see. Because now, I see a hand, reaching out for me. The hand is the color of bone and the smell is coming from it.

The hand is gigantic, and it closes around my body, crushing it in an iron grip.

"Die." A voice, the hand's I presume, says with a voice that is deep and metallic with an intense vibrato. "Die. And be born anew. You must choose. Kill the innocent and live. Sacrifice your humanity, and live. You will die if you do not. You must choose to live. Now, die and be born anew, slave."

The hand squeezes, and crushes me. And I die.

I died. Like, I felt myself die.

But I didn't. Because then, I was awake. It was still dark but I was awake. I could feel it. The smell was gone. Instead I smelled the ocean. And I heard the ocean. And I felt cold and wet. A sudden wave of icy water rushes over my feet and legs and I yelp, scrambling to my feet. It was only dark because my eyes were closed, evidently. It is night time though. The moon is full and thousands of stars are in the sky.

I don't know where I am. Wherever this place is, it's well below freezing cold and I'm wearing nothing more than a t-shirt and jeans. Looking around me, I'm on some sort of stone staircase. Above me is an incredibly tall structure that looks sort of like a lighthouse. Turning around, I see nothing but ocean from horizon to horizon.

Well. Isn't that great. I'm in the middle of the mother fucking ocean.

Though this place is familiar for some reason. Like I've been here before

Again, with no other options, I climb the stone staircase to the huge, ornate, brazen doors of the structure. I need to get warm. Nothing else is important. I need to get warm and dry. Nothing else matters I just need to get dry.

The room I'm in is pitch black, where the only light is the moonlight coming through the small opening in the door where I entered. Suddenly, the door creaks shut behind me and I'm left standing shivering in the cold dark. It's silent in here. All I can hear is my shaking breath, my teeth chattering.

Minutes pass, I'm afraid to take a step. I can hear something else in here. It's hard to tell what it is because of my own breathing but I think it may be the wind? Or no… maybe breathing.

Suddenly the room lights up as the power kicks in and I blink and cover my face. I rub my eyes and try to adjust them to the light. A small chuckle from behind me makes me whirl around in shock. Nothing. No I wasn't hallucinating or anything. That was a laugh. I look around to my left and right frantically, still nothing.

The room I'm in is huge. And the inside walls are all gilded and shiny. But the main thing to take note of is a huge golden statue on the far wall. The statue is coming out of the wall and depicting the torso of a man, breaking a chain with his hands. That is strangely familiar.

All of this is strangely familiar.

I am suddenly slammed into the ground as something hits me from behind and above. I lift myself up onto all fours and look up with hazy vision at a pair of thin misshapen legs and feet, wrapped in rotten yellow bandages. A fierce pain shoots through my back as I feel something stab into it. I scream in pain and the person uses whatever they stabbed me with to throw me several feet away into a wall with incredible force.

I slam into the wall, back first and look up, still hazy, just in time to see something flying at my face. I throw myself to the side and with barely enough time. Whatever was flying at me cuts my temple, leaving a deep gouge from about an inch back from the corner of my eye to almost the back of my head. I look at the projectile and it looks like a long, notched, jagged blade. A kitchen knife.

I look at my attacker and am horrified by this creature standing before me. It's mishappen, deformed, could hardly be described as human. It has extra toes, swollen feet and emaciated legs. A head swollen to the size of a watermelon, wrapped so tightly in bandages that the flesh bulges from between them. Its one visible eye is the size of a baseball with pupils that take up most of the space. Its lips are disturbingly red and I realize that it is wearing lipstick. It's also wearing the tatters of a cocktail dress over its emaciated torso and its belly swollen from malnutrition.

It laughs, its voice surprisingly and disturbingly clear and vivid and feminine. "Hey there handsome. Wanna dance?"

Fuck.

It charges at me and I reach back and yank the kitchen knife from the wall. I get to my feet and ram the knife forward as it reaches me. It slams me into the wall three times and throws me to the side. I grunt as I hit the ground, feeling a bone in my elbow crack as it takes the initial force of the landing.

I look back at the creature. The oversized jagged kitchen knife is protruding from its swollen belly. It grabs the knife and yanks it out, spilling blood all over the floor. It shrieks and laughs and stomps towards me, knife raised.

Just as it reaches me, I see it slip in a puddle of blood. Whether its my own or its blood I can't say but it opens a window of opportunity. This is my chance. With all my strength, I lash my foot out and kick the creature in the knee as hard as I can while it's still trying to regain balance. I hear a sickening crack and see the creature's knee bend unnaturally and it falls to the ground. I quickly get to my feet to kick it but the creature is madly flailing the knife around. I back away for a second until it rolls over. I then leap forward, slamming my foot down onto the back of its head. I hear it grow silent for a second and then I hear it laugh. I stomp on the back of its head again and again until I can feel how shattered its misshapen skull is.

I collapse back against a railing behind me, across from the statue. My breathing is ragged, blood is pouring down the side of my face and I can feel it running down my back too. I'm having a hard time breathing. I think it broke some of my ribs. Not to mention my elbow is probably broken too. I reach behind my back and feel that whatever the thing stabbed me with is still in my back. I yank it out and see it's a large rusted meat hook.

Well, if I don't bleed to death then I'll at least be sure I can die of tetanus. Listen to me. I just killed someone and I'm making fucking jokes.

I turn around and look at the statue again. It's too familiar.

Next to me is a plaque. In the middle of that plaque is a large golden button.

I look around to see if there are any further dangers and then I press it. And the voice from the radio says to me from the plaque:

"Is man not entitled to the sweat on his brow?"

Wait….

"'No!' Says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor!'"

No… No this can't be real.

"'No!' Says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God!'"

Oh my fucking God…

"'No!' Says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone!'"

This isn't fucking real.

"I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible, I chose…"

"Bioshock? Seriously?" I say out loud.

5:49 AM December 29, 1968

Hard to believe, I know. But that's the story.

But it's been six years. Six fucking years I've been in this hellscape. I've been fighting everything, from Splicers, to Big Sisters, to Big Daddies. I've just been trying to survive this whole time. At this point, I've stopped trying to mull out what happened or why I'm here. Yeah, Bioshock was a video game. But now it isn't. Rapture is a real place and I'm trapped here.

There were plenty of attempts at escaping. Trust me. I hadn't played the games for a while when I left my world, but I remembered a few ways of escaping. Sinclair had a submarine. I'd met him. Nice fellow. I tried helping him but I wasn't able to and he wasn't able to help me either. I tried stealing bathyspheres but Sophia Lamb has had this place on lockdown for years and blocked all my attempts to get them out of here.

When I got here it was absolute chaos. More than usual apparently.

The splicers were suffering from ADAM withdrawl because in 1960, Jack left Rapture with Dr. Tenenbaum and all the Little Sisters. Without a means of recycling it, ADAM became a scarce resource. I saw a lot of Splicers drinking blood in an attempt to get some ADAM at least. Around 6 months or so after I came here, Lamb was doubling down. All I heard over the radio and the loudspeakers were her slogans and promises. Safety and security. ADAM for all. People worshipped her like a god.

I didn't. Fuck that.

I don't need or crave ADAM like the other splicers do. When I first used, it was out of necessity. There was this wall of ice blocking the pathway to hydroponics. I'd been trapped around the welcome center area for over a month and I'd barely been scraping by. I needed food and I figured the best place to find it was in hydroponics. So I gathered up the raw ADAM I'd found off of the bodies of splicers and daddies and I used it to synthesize an Incinerate plasmid from the gene splicing machines that are all over the place.

I remembered the games. I was ready for my arms to burst into flames, my flesh to melt, my mind to scream in agony as my body was changed on a cellular level, as my DNA was erased and rewritten.

But that didn't happen.

In fact, nothing happened. Not right away at least. I found out later after some testing that some gene in me tells my body to welcome ADAM, store it, and let it change me over time. For other Splicers it's a painful, violent, fast acting effect. Not for me. It took another month for Incinerate to manifest into anything remotely useful and years since then for it to become more effective.

Discovering this, I've spliced up like crazy. When I got here, ADAM was scarce because there was a shortage of Little Sisters. She promised to get them back. She delivered. She took little girls from the surface and brought them down here and turned them into those things. I remember when I first saw one of them. Little Sisters, that is. Dirty, smelly, blood oozing from her mouth. Cute in a macabre kind of way. She was a means to an end though. I knew how to get ADAM out of her but I didn't want to do it that way.

Cutting her open and ripping the fat slug out of her body that is.

So I got her to take me to Tenenbaum. It wasn't easy. I had to fight off Big Daddies, mad Splicers, Big Sisters, and Lamb's cultists. When I finally found the good doctor, she gave me a plasmid that would flush the slug out of the Sister's body without killing her. Rescue, it was called.

And for no reason in particular, other than for ADAM and morality, I rescued as many of them as I could. This put a big target on my back though. Lamb wanted to know who was undoing her work and who was causing her to lose support from splicers. She's tried capturing me a few times but I've managed to avoid her people for the most part. I have a well defended, albeit ramshackle abode in Athena Commons. It took me months to clear out a path to Athena Commons. Then several more months to clear the place of splicers, many of whom were trapped there for a really long time. They were mad with withdrawal and many were starving and cannibalistic. But I killed them and ran the rest off and secured it with a gauntlet of turrets, drones, traps and bombs. And I've been reinforcing it daily for the last few years.

So of course, they captured me, AWAY from home.

One week ago, she got me. I was in some ruined bar, drinking a still sealed bottle of bourbon when I was attacked by a Splicer who could turn invisible. She knocked me out and I've spent the last week in Persephone Correctional Facility. And this is likely where I'll die as well. This place is supposed to sink once Delta comes here to face Sophia Lamb for the final time.

At present, I've just been beaten, and I'm being dragged through a hallway to be interrogated. The splicers dragging me are my personal guards, wardens, and judges. They watch me, feed me, and drag me from point A to point B. But not before beating me senseless first. They both have my guns. The one on my right has my tommy gun and the one on my left has my pump-action shotgun and my pistol.

"Has Delta gotten here yet?" I ask, spitting out some blood.

"Shut up meat!" The splicer on my right hisses through a lipless, noseless face. "Lamb is going to get you to talk and tell us where those lil sissies are."

"I've never met Delta personally." I respond, ignoring him. "But I'm an admirer of his. He's killed so fucking many of you fuckers."

"Quiet!" The one my left with my shotgun says, he raises it threateningly into my face, "Or I won't wait for Lamb to—"

The ground, walls, ceiling, everything begin to shake extremely violently. Ohhhh motherfucker.

"What?! What's happening?!" The splicer on my right screams. He lets go of my arm and spins around, shooting in random directions.

Well that wasn't smart of him. As I activate Winter's Blast, icicles shoot out of my right hand and forearm, my skin turning translucent and forming an opaque layer of frost. I grab the forearm of the splicer on my left and flash freeze it. He screams and tries to move and aim the shotgun at my head. But in doing so breaks his arm in half where I froze it. Chucks of frozen meat and blood fall to the ground as he screams in pain and terror, firing the shotgun on accident.

I throw myself aside and roll over, snapping my fingers in the direction of the splicer with my machine gun.

As I snap my fingers, a spark appears in the air that causes a rippling wave of heat to wash towards him, fast as a bullet. As the wave reaches him, his clothes, hair and skin catch on fire. He shrieks in horror and pain just like his friend. My hand glows red and flames crawl up my fingertips and over the back of my hand to my forearm. It hurts but not as badly as it hurts them no doubt.

I get to my feet and raise my right hand again, still frosty from Winter's Blast and activate Telekinesis. My hand glows with a dull yellow light, my bones and veins still black and reposed against my glowing flesh. With a twitch of my fingers and a slight effort on my part, the burning splicer's machine gun flies out of his hands and into mine, flipping midair so I catch it by its grip.

The other splicer is desperately trying to cock the shotgun at this point, rubbing the stump of his arm back on the slide to try and get it to rack another shell. I point my tommy gun at him and pull the trigger, unleashing a short but deadly burst of bullets into his body.

He stumbles back and falls on the ground, twitching. I pick my shotgun up and a duffle bag off of the back splicer who isn't burning. I stuff the weapons into the bag, take my 1911 pistol from the dead splicer as well and leave the other splicer to continue to burn and crackle on the ground.

I begin to run down the hall, following the signs for the next closest bathysphere.

I'm sure Tenenbaum has escaped Rapture by now with the Little Sisters we've rescued. Now I just have to worry about myself. And now that Lamb is gone I bet I can finally ride a bathysphere out of here! I run full speed through the corridors of Persephone, ignoring many of the panicked splicers around me. I hit a few with Electro Bolt as needed whenever they get too close. I leap over debris that is in my path whenever I need to, which goes to show how much has changed for me here I suppose. I never could jump very well before. I ignore the many panicking splicers around me as I run determined through the rooms. Finally, as I turn a corner into towards a large docking area with several bathyspheres I hear a sharp, shrill cry like from a little girl.

I freeze and look back and see a Little Sister, still in the sisterhood and corrupted by the slug, being attacked by a splicer. She's attempting to hide underneath an overturned cabinet but the splicer is snarling and crawling after her, pulling her out by the ankle.

"Ah! Let go! Daddy will get you!" The Sister cries.

"Daddies are all dead!" The splicer shouts back, laughing maniacally. "So is the Lamb! Just you and me now! I'm taking you with me!"

I look back at the bathyspheres, then at the Sister and the splicer, and back at the bathyspheres. The whole fucking place is sinking into the blackest abyss in the ocean and I'm seriously going to bother with this?

"God. Dammit." I say out loud, running towards the splicer and the Sister.

I activate Winter's Blast and send a blast of sub-zero degree Celsius mist at the splicer. I've become quite skilled at aiming plasmids even when on the move and the blast hits the splicer square in the head.

His head freezes instantly, turning into a large block of misshapen ice. He drops the Sister's leg and claws at the ice ensconcing his skull, fighting to breathe and see. Winter's Blast can flash freeze flesh down to the bone. If it could penetrate bone, it'd likely kill him, but his brain is probably intact for now.

For now.

I pick up a large pipe as I run towards him, and with a running swing, crash it into his icy head.

There's a sound like shattering glass and I see chucks of red ice fly, then I see the splicer collapse.

I drop the pipe, look at the Little Sister and take a breath. "Come on kid."

She looks at me and reaches for my hand. I give it to her and run back towards the bathyspheres.

Thankfully, there are still a few left. I run to the nearest one and pry the door open. I usher the Little Sister into the Bathysphere and I'm about to step inside when I feel a blade plunge into my back twice and a hand on my shoulder pull me out of the bathysphere.

Grunting as I hit the ground, I try to activate a plasmid but the splicer that attacked me leaps on top of me immediately and raises his arms above his head, holding the long knife with both hands. I instinctively throw my hands up and catch his wrists just as he attempts to bring the knife down into my chest.

His bandaged wrapped head doesn't conceal his rancid breath or the curiously bright orange eyes that glare down at me.

"Get your own.. FUCKING bathysphere!" I snarl at him between clenched teeth. He leans down onto the knife, trying to press it into my chest.

"Die you fucking bastard!" The splicer hisses at me in an oddly personal way. Though after being here 6 years I've grown accustomed to people saying odd things.

I hear a shriek from the bathysphere. I glance over there and see the Little Sister trying to shut the bathysphere door as a Splicer fights to open it and get at her.

Fucking fuck. With a low growl I knee the splicer on top of me in the balls and let go with one hand. I reach over and use Electro Bolt to zap the splicer trying to get at the Little Sister. He shrieks, stumbling backwards as electricity arcs over his body. The Little Sister yelps and tumbles back in the bathysphere as she is released from the splicer's grip. I feel a pain in my chest as the knife slowly sinks into my sternum but I switch to Telekinesis and activate the bathysphere's controls and shut the bathysphere door. A red light begins to flash as the bathysphere begins to submerge slowly, water bubbling up around its edges. I turn my attention back to the splicer, his knife still pressing into my chest.

All around us, the walls seem to be collapsing. There are pops and explosions of steam from bursting pipes, bolts of electricity arcing out of rupturing power lines, and huge streams of ocean water blasting into the room from the rapidly forming cracks in the walls and from the bursting seams. I'm running out of time and bathyspheres.

I use my free hand to grab the side of his head, activating Incinerate as I do. The bandages on his head immediately catch fire, but I also blast flames from my palm. The fire burns straight through the bandages and sears his flesh. He screams in pain and attempts to roll off of me but I roll over with him and press his face down against the floor hard with my hand, burning still. Finally, I feel his knee slam into my groin and I lose my grip long enough for him to shove me off and run away, his head smoking. I see him look back at me from the doorway, a large handprint shaped burn on his face through his bandages. He mouths some curse at me and runs away.

I look back at the bathysphere and see only the top of it still above the water.

"Shit." I say out loud. I'm going for it, particularly considering this entire building is beginning to get crushed by the sea pressure. The other bathyspheres are already lost, either ruptured or on the verge of exploding. This one is fine only because it got the opportunity to launch. The walls themselves all around me are screaming, a horrible high pitched screeching noise that can only indicate that this place is ready to collapse entirely and implode.

I run at the submersible and leap on top of it, grabbing hold of metal rails attached to the hull with all my strength. The bathysphere completely submerges and the water is so cold I nearly gasp and inhale two lung-fulls of brine. The bathysphere, once completely submerged, begins moving at blinding speed down a rail. Most likely, the system knows the building is being evacuated so its sending us out as quickly as possible. Soon enough, the bathysphere is shot out of the tunnel like a bullet, clearing the structure quickly as the tiny propeller on the back keeping us moving albeit at an rapidly slowing pace. The bathysphere slowly rises toward the surface, but a massive explosion from the city, most likely as a result of Persephone rupturing and its internal air pressure escaping, causes the bathysphere to spin madly out of control and I lose my grip.

At this point, my lungs are screaming for air, and I can't tell how far I am from the surface but it's at least 300 feet. I know I'm not going to make it. But that Little Sister could. So, I use Telekinesis and stop the bathysphere for its wild spinning and launch it toward the surface.

I feel weak and heavy as I slowly descend after Persephone as it sinks into the dark undersea chasm. My lungs are screaming for oxygen. I can see the lights of Rapture distantly, and my life flashes before my eyes. Thinking back, my life wasn't bad growing up. My parents were together. My family was kind. My siblings weren't awful. I did well in school and I had friends. I definitely took all of that for granted. I knew that soon after I ended up here, but it's hitting me again. My life wasn't hard and it wasn't bad. And I took it for granted. And for whatever reason, my life was taken away from me. A lot of the time, I think it's my fault. For being a little shit and being ungrateful. Like, maybe this is the universe's way of punishing me and telling me why I should give a shit. It thrust me into the worst possible scenario.

It killed me and made me reborn. And now I'll die again. Well I hope the universe is happy. Because I learned my goddamn lesson. But despite that? I don't miss it anymore. I'm a different person now. That old life, I'd never fit in there as I am now. I held this glimmer of hope for a long time that I might go home, but I've known deep down for a long time that I don't belong there anymore. So I knew I'd never go home, and I knew I'd die here.

So I turn myself over as I descend into that abyss and I accept my fate. I feel almost warm and I don't feel the pain in my lungs quite so much anymore. I can't see Persephone anymore and I'm drifting down past the edges of the pit it disappeared into. I'm close to a craggy wall of the pit and I watch it pass by but soon I can't see it due to lack of light. Or lack of oxygen.

Why am I still holding my breath? I might as well just breathe and get it fucking over with, right?

Suddenly, a crack appears in the craggy wall of the pit and I see water flowing into it at great speed, like there was a void beyond it. The pull is so intense that I feel my body rush towards the crack faster than a car on a highway. I don't even try to fight it as I get sucked into the crack and into such pitch black darkness that I couldn't even try to figure out where I am.

I still feel myself speeding through the darkness at incredible speed. I don't know where I am or where I'm going and there's no chance of slowing myself down. I can't even feel the walls of the crack as I reach out.

And suddenly I feel like I'm somewhere else. I'm still in darkness, it's still freezing cold, but I'm in some sort of huge space. I can feel it. I can feel this pure emptiness around me. And I just don't feel like I'm living in here. Like it doesn't feel necessary to live in here. I don't even feel my body. I feel it's cold, I feel the water, and I feel pain. But I don't at the same time. Sort of like an out of body experience. It's darker in here somehow. And bigger. And emptier.

Wait. Fuck. Suddenly, I start hearing that noise again. It's so fucking familiar it makes my heart stop. And it's so fucking loud. It fills this huge empty space. That high pitched beeping, like a bomb, getting slowly faster and faster. And there's that ringing. That shrill ringing that just gets louder and louder. It gets so loud and painful I cover my ears but that doesn't stop the noise. The noise just digs furrows on the inside of my skull with jagged nails and bloody fingers. And I see the hand again. I smell it too. I see the bone white hand, that smells rotten and metallic, reaching for me. It's strange. I had almost forgotten how I'd gotten to Rapture in the first place. I remember the room with the mannequins and the hand and the radio but it's like, I never thought about it. And just as its fingers close around me, I get a fast glimpse of its face and the rest of its form and I snap my eyes shut and at that moment, the noise stops. And a pure silence follows. And I open my eyes.

And it's warm. I mean, warmer. But I can't breathe. I'm still in water but it's different. It's warm, clean, fresh water. A fish swims past my face. But not a fish I know. It's blue and green and purple. And just… fucking weird looking. Not like any fish I'm familiar with.

Wait. It's bright. I see everything. Oh there's light.

I look up and see the surface just a short distance away. And just then I feel how much I need air. It feels like my lungs are flaming raisins. They must be bleeding on the inside by now. I don't know how long it's been since I've last taken a breath.

I start scrambling towards the surface, wildly moving my arms and legs as quickly as I can, fighting to rise. And just as I'm about to break the surface of the water, my vision fades and I feel myself go unconscious. I feel something grab the back of my shirt however, just before I pass out.

I awake suddenly, my eyes opening slightly and my lungs filled with air and water, my diaphragm spasming. And the lips that were on mine pull away. Huh. I missed that. Weakly, I turn my head to the side and open my mouth, water gushing out of my mouth and lungs. I cough once and take a deep shaking breath in before coughing again, more violently. My head is hazy and my vision is blurry. I'm shivering as well.

"There you go, just breathe. You're alright." A women's voice says, soothingly. I feel some hands on my shoulders, holding me still.

"Get him a blanket or something!" Another voice says, this one masculine, but strangely flanged, with some natural vibrato and depth, sort of the way a Little Sister's voice is. "And where the hell is C-Sec?!"

I breathe, my breaths shuddering and ragged and full of effort. My eyes are extremely watery but I'm somewhere bright and warm. Which means I'm NOT in Rapture because NOWHERE in Rapture is bright OR warm.

I continue to just breathe and blink away my tears. I don't feel safe. I never feel safe. That is a natural instinct I developed from living in Rapture for 6 years but this is one of those scenarios where I feel like I should feel safe but I just don't.

I don't know what to do. I'm so weak I can hardly move.

"Keelah he's bleeding. Bleeding a lot." Another woman's voice says, this one sounding like it's altered with an electronic voice filter. Or spoken through a tin can.

"Well yeah there's a fucking knife in his chest." Someone else says, this voice normal sounding. "And what is he wearing?"

"That's what you're concerned about? Not the nearly drowned, stabbed man here?" The first woman's voice says.

I finally manage to blink away enough haziness to get an idea of who's standing over me. I can see a few people. One looks to be wearing some kind of blue hood or something, the other is tall and thick around the body, and the last is in dark clothing, head to toe.

"T-Thank you." I manage to say.

"Hey, hey." The person with the blue hood on says. "It's okay, don't talk. Help will be here soon."

I blink away my tears finally and my vision clears. "W-W-Where am…"

I stop talking because I can see the person speaking to me now. She's blue. She's not wearing a blood hood, she IS blue. She's blue, beautiful with facial markings on her face. She is an alien, no doubt about it. And it hits me, pretty quickly exactly WHAT she is.

She's an asari. And… yeah okay that's a quarian next to me, with her dark black and blue enviro-suit. And in front of me is a turian, with glossy skin and facial markings.

What the fuck.

I look around me, sitting up slightly. This is the Presidium. On the Citadel. It is I'm not imagining this. It's the fucking Presidium. I know this place. I loved the Mass Effect games when I was a kid. I fucking loved those games. And now an asari, a quarian and a turian and kneeling around me. What the actual fuck.

No. Like what the fuck.

First one video game became a reality, and now another.

I'm telling you. Moral of this story! Do NOT go to random museums on your birthday. I know that is probably not what caused this, but it's all I have to go on.