Marxman Effect Redux

A/N: Here's that long promised rewrite of the original Marxman Effect, co-produced by myself and a friend of mine called revan193 and beta-read by Resurgentclone.

This version is written as an attempt to both fix the (IMO) horrible start that the original one suffered from and provide an overall better reading experience to everyone who enjoys reading my stories.

In the meantime though, enjoy the story.

Chapter 1 – New Worlds, New Possibilities

You know, they say that you never realize the importance of things until they have already been taken from you…

This saying rings true especially to people who are at the end of their lifetime, face to face with their own mortality and waiting for the moment when it all just comes to an end.

People like cancer patients, the old whose hearts and lungs are failing them and the people who are so badly demented that they don't even recognize their own family…

And then there's the people who just had a bad day, were in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid the ultimate price as a result.

My current situation would be the latter one, with a bullet having passed through my chest, cracking several ribs and punching through one of my lungs judging by the amount of blood I'm coughing every few seconds.

It's quite funny really… I was one of those people who never expected to have anything bad happen to them since they live such an isolated life that their everyday social interactions consisted of surfing message boards, playing some games and visiting the local supermarket to buy the usual groceries like food stuff and toilet paper.

I rarely even spoke to my parents since they were either at work most of the day or doing other stuff that reduced the amount of interaction that I had with them to basically sitting together at the dinner table to eat together a few times a week and even then it was not guaranteed everyone would be present.

Out of all my friends at school I was probably the odd one out, considering that unlike everyone else, I wasn't really interested in most of the things that people my age did. Everyone else drank at parties and drove around with their bikes or cars when they got one, I didn't even bother to get a license and had stayed pretty much sober my whole life. Let's just say I didn't like neither the taste and burning sensation of alcohol nor the idea of getting so piss-drunk that I'd do embarrassingly stupid shit that I'd never even think of doing when sober.

I was also this serious, no-nonsense person who had his poker face on almost all the time and only laughed or smiled if something was really piqued my interest and made me laugh. But funny in whose opinion is the question, because what other people might find shocking or even disgusting I'd find totally hilarious.

I was eighteen and had never even dated a girl or experienced what people call 'true love' and by now I had already figured the whole concept of love to be utter bullshit.

I was mostly mediocre in my school grades during my senior years in high school and had a really cynical outlook at my life, seeing no light at the end of a tunnel but just a grey hallway filled with pictures from across the span of the brief period of time I had spent on this planet. It always reminded me of how dull and wasted my life had been.

In the middle of musing I winced as I tried to move to a more comfortable position with the bullet still lodged in my chest.

I hissed in pain as soon as I tried to move '…This really hurts…' I thought after coughing up some more blood.

Another thing people say is that just before you die, your life flashes before your eyes, like a series of photographs.

But I saw nothing; my life had been so meaningless that I had completely forgotten to actually appreciate the gift of life that I had received and as a result hadn't achieved anything significant for people to remember me by.

And that's especially sad for me because this is the only life I'll ever have, that's one of the cons of being an atheist… you have to accept that you'll die for good when you eventually do end up dead.

Would have been nice if hell was a real thing.

At least I'd be in good company.

Struggling to stay awake now… mind is going blank…

Guess this is the end then…

Wish I could have done more for the world… To make it… A better place…

As I exhale my last breath… I slumped onto the floor of the small department store while my killer jumps over my body and the pool of blood forming under it with a plastic bag full of money in his other hand and a handgun in the other.

After that my brain shuts down due to the blood loss –induced shock.

And then…

Nothing.

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Death Room N° 14096

Where am I?

I don't feel like I'm in pain, I actually don't feel pretty much anything; it almost feels like I'm floating in the air like a… hmmm… ghost?

I glance downwards and notice my body looks like its completely transparent, also similar to a ghost.

Weird…

I didn't think death would be like this, I thought it would simply be a dark place where you have absolutely nothing, where you just don't even exist anymore.

It was not a nice vision but it suited me. An empty place without time would give me a limitless amount of time to think about the world.

Now, since I can actually still think for myself…

I look to my left and see a bright light in the distance, like a portal of some kind filled with rainbows and nyancats.

The thing people usually describe they'd do when faced with this kind of situation is that they would walk towards the light and are greeted by some form of gatekeeper that welcomes to their chosen form of afterlife.

But I've always been the exception so… fuck you bright light I'm not playing your game.

And I head in the opposite direction, where I can see another much dimmer light that is barely even visible to a naked eye.

As I reach the end, I can also see what appears to be a doorway with a sign above it that says and I'm not kidding:

"Respawn"

Okay…

What the actual fuck?

A similar sign with a more in-depth description is located on the doorway's right side:

"Congratulations! For being an observant enough person to notice this alternate after-death option you get a free start with a universe of your own choosing, any fictional universe can be chosen. Suggested popular ones include: The Star Wars–verse, Halo-verse, Star Trek-verse, Mass Effect–verse and the Doctor Who–verse respectively."

There was also a barely readable fine print located at the bottom of the sign, which read:

"Please input your age, the universe you want to be in and one specified item you want to have with you onto the paper form provided to you." I was puzzled at this before I noticed that there was actually a wooden table near me with a stack of papers and pens on it.

After taking the form into my hands I seriously started thinking about the consequences of my decision. I'd need to be in a universe that I have lots of knowledge of to survive inside it.

That rules out Star Trek and Doctor Who at least.

Star Wars sounds nice, but it basically has zero people with the same political and economic views as me. Plus I don't like the Jedi, they creep me out with their ridiculous belief system and all the Sith are basically dicks if we go by the movies.

Also the first episode sucks total balls, not to mention the rest of the prequels.

So that means either Halo or Mass Effect

Let's see…

Halo-verse has a long genocidal war with religiously zealous nutjob aliens trying to exterminate mankind. Too much of a health risk for me even if I arrive at the war's end, since there's still the Covenant Remnant and the Didact to worry about.

Not to mention the fact how slowly the technology advances, considering they still use gunpowder-based weapons in the 26th century

So… Mass Effect it is then I suppose, huh… never would have thought I'd be glad to go to that place considering they would also have a genocide of massive scale at some point in history, but at least their war isn't as long as the Halo one.

Plus the alien chicks are seriously fucking hot!

…

Not implying I searched for any Rule 34, totally not implying anything…

…

So I wrote down my age: 18.

Then the universe: Mass Effect.

And finally, the one item that I will ever need for any situation… The Tool Gun.

[If you don't know what the Tool Gun is, then go buy Garry's mod, you'll learn soon enough.]

As I laid down the pen after writing the last letter of the word 'gun', the dim light that was previously occupying the doorway began to intensify by tenfold and generated a vacuum of sorts that began to violently pull me towards it.

Since there was nothing to grab, besides the table, I was pulled into the vortex and swallowed whole, suffering a minor spike of pain in my head before landing onto a soft ground face first with something landing onto my head afterwards.

As I was rubbing the spot at the back of my head where the object hit I looked around to notice something quite unusual lying on the ground.

It was the actual Tool Gun!

It looked exactly the same as it did back in-game, a classic revolver with the ammo cylinder being replaced by copper wire and the rest of it being fitted with all kinds of electronics like the small touchscreen located on top of the spot where the hammer would be in a regular single or double action.

I was so baffled by the thing in my hands that I hadn't really bothered to even take a look at where I actually was, besides the obviously large amount of green grass under my feet.

And that's exactly the thing you are NOT supposed to do when in an unknown, not to mention very dangerous environment filled with things capable of killing you many times over.

Because when you turn your back, you're basically inviting your hunter for a free meal.

Which is exactly what happened next, and the hunter came in the form of a large, scaly lizard with sharp looking fangs jutting out from its mouth, which at first glance seemed capable of tearing a grown man in half.

After taking a closer look I realized it was a fucking Varren.

And it ran straight towards me, mouth wide open and ready to sink its teeth into me.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

POV Switch: Third Person

Jane, as usual had left her family's farm after finishing with her morning chores to go play out in the woods and relieve the boredom she would surely otherwise face if she stayed on the farm doing nothing particularly interesting.

Entering through the edge of the forest and walking down the familiar footpath, she was still marvelled as ever by the beauty of the natural flora and actually stopped for a moment to observe the wildlife around her.

Mindoir had always been dear to her, not only because it was where she was born and raised, but because of the natural beauty of the lush forests and open fields untouched by any sapient organic life.

That and the weather on the planet was always perfect. The small planet had never experienced any extreme natural events that she heard were frequent back on Earth, like tornadoes or hurricanes.

While she closed her eyes to take in all the sounds of nature, her keen hearing picked out what sounded like shouting deeper in the forest.

Almost as if someone was calling for… help.

She immediately snapped her gaze towards the direction the sound was coming from. It was coming from the clearing she had used with her dad to train her with the firearms, her father had always wanted her to carry on the family's military tradition.

They used the remote clearing also because her mother was a pacifist that didn't believe in the use of firearms and had wanted Shepard to never use one either, so they had trained in secret.

She quickly ran towards the source of the voice, constantly hoping that she wasn't already too late.

'I wonder who it could be.' Shepard thought frantically as she was closing in on her destination.

Finally she reached the edge of the clearing and saw a man, not too much older than her, being pinned under a large wild Varren attempting to bite his head off.

She thought quickly and took out her dad's old Kessler sidearm that he had used back from in his days as a marine that she nowadays always carried as protection when going to the forest.

This though, was the first time she had to shoot a living target like a Varren so she was understandably nervous about the fact that she had to take the life of another living thing to save another.

"Stupid creature, get the fuck off of me!" The man yelled while he attempted to kick the Varren off of himself, partially succeeding, since he was able to kick the predator off his chest but as a result it bit him in the leg and he cried out in pain.

While Shepard was fumbling with her weapon the man raised the toy gun-resembling device in his hand towards his adversary and squeezed the trigger once, releasing a blue stream of energy from the device that disappeared less than a second after hitting its target in mid-air.

But the end result of this action is what caused Shepard's eyes to fly wide open in a mixture of surprise and amazement.

The shot fired from the man's weapon had turned the Varren into a statue of glass that still had the frozen expression of what just a minute ago had been a hungry predatory beast.

And because it was frozen mid-leap it came crashing down to the ground with such force that the body of glass simply broke into a million pieces as it hit the hard ground.

Everything was deadly silent after that; the only sounds that could be heard were the breathing of the man on the ground and the slowly blowing wind.

Soon the clouds began gathering and covered up the sun from shining, resulting in a much darker environment inside the forest.

After recovering from her shock, Jane slowly walked over to the man who seemed to be patching his leg up with a part of his shirt that had been ripped off when the Varren had first bounced on him.

"Umm… Hello. That wound looks painful, do you need any help?" She shyly said.

The man turned his focus away from patching up his leg to gaze towards the young girl who turned looked at her with a brief moment of shock that was soon replaced by the stoic poker face that she had seen him wear on his face for the whole time she had been near him.

"Yeah… could you help me up, I need to find a local hospital." The man said to her as Shepard did her best to support his weight against her shoulder.

"You can come to my family's farm, we have medical supplies to treat any possible infections you might have in addition to properly patching you up." She answered to the man's query.

He remained silent; and his expression remained unchanged as they kept walking out of the forest and back towards the Shepard family home.

"So… what's your name?" Shepard curiously asked, eagerly wanting to know more about the mysterious man she was helping.

The man was silent for a moment before replying in a dry voice.

"Mathias, my name is Mathias."

"Nice to meet you Mathias, I'm Jane." Jane replied with a smile creeping on her small face.

As they kept walking down the dirt path, Mathias occasionally winced in pain due to his leg wound and they had to stop every once in a while so he could rest, luckily they didn't run into any more trouble while they were still inside the forest.

Shepard actually released an audible sigh of relief after she saw the open green field peeking from behind the edge of the treeline after they reached it.

They had remained silent for the majority of the trip, mostly because Jane wanted to be polite and not intrude too much to Mathias' personal life.

But there was one burning question that she wanted to know the answer to so very badly that she couldn't help but voice it.

"What's that thing you're carrying, it looks like a gun but not like any I've ever seen."

The man stopped for a moment and Shepard had to catch him so he wouldn't fall flat on his face.

'I wished she wouldn't have asked that, that glass pile surely raises too many questions already.' Mathias thought.

"It's nothing special, just an old relic I carry to remind me of my parents." He lied, but Jane decided to not push it further for now.

"'Kay then. Oh look, we're already here." She said, pointing towards the farm buildings in the distance.

'Phew, so she didn't see what I actually did. That's a relief.'

Jane's parents were there to greet them, her mother looked disapprovingly towards her while her father had a worried expression on his face as he glanced at Mathias.

"Young lady, you have exactly ten seconds to explain where you have been for the last three hours..." Her mother whom had become quite irritated about her absence, asked her before being cut off.

"Not now mom, I have a wounded man with me!" Jane replied as her father came to help her carry the second man.

'Can't… stay awake…' Mathias thought as his vision darkened and he slumped against the shoulders of the two people supporting him, having already fallen unconscious with a fever.

"What happened to him?" Jane's father, John, asked her.

"He got bit in the leg by a Varren in the forest, I think his wound is infected." Shepard frantically explained to her dad as they walked in through the front door of the house.

"Damn, alright let's set him down on the couch." John replied as they arrived to the living room where they set Mathias down onto the large couch.

"Jane would you be a dear and get the Medi-gel from the bathroom." John ordered. She nodded and rushed towards the bathroom around the corner, retrieving a vial of the miracle medicine that worked on almost every minor wound, the gel acting as the disinfectant, anti-biotic and the bandage all in the same package.

After returning to the living room, Jane handed the vial of medi-gel to her dad who proceeded to spread it along both the bite wound and several of the smaller scratches that had torn the man's clothing.

"There, that should help. Now we just have to wait for the gel to work its magic." John said, wiping a small amount of sweat that had formed on his forehead.

"So, do you know who he is?" He asked Jane.

"His name is Mathias, I didn't really have time to ask pretty much anything else from him." She admitted.

"Well, I guess we'll find out more when he wakes up." John said, shrugging his shoulders and walking back outside and closing the door behind him.

That left Jane alone in the room with the sleeping man, she decided to use the time to go through his things, simply out of sheer curiosity.

He didn't have much on him, but the few things he had were fascinating indeed.

One of the things he had was a slightly broken, ancient looking mobile phone.

Now, since Shepard had always been interested history, especially the history of technology she immediately recognized what the thing in her hands was.

'Oh my god it's a genuine iPhone! How the hell did he get one of these? These things are like over a hundred years old. It must have cost him a fortune to get one in such a good condition.' She excitedly thought.

'He also has earbuds for it! Oh this is so exciting, I can't wait to tell my friends!' She screamed inwardly in excitement as she looked at the pair of white buds connected to a similar wire.

Probably the most interesting thing still was the strange gun the man carried inside his right pocket.

She was reluctant to grab it since she didn't actually know what the thing would do if she tried to use it.

But her inner argument about trying to retrieve it from the pocket was interrupted by the stirring of the man in front of her.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

POV: Main Character (First person)

I slowly opened my eyes, but shut them again immediately due to the pain caused by a bright light.

Wait…what am I lying on? And why is it so soft.

Looking away from the bright light this time, I opened my eyes again to see the face of none other than Jane Shepard.

Huh, so I hadn't been dreaming…

All that shit from before, the fight with that… thing, her helping me get out of the forest and bringing me to her home and…

Then I blacked out.

Hold on… why is my stuff on that coffee table? Why is Shepard reaching her hand into my pocket?

And why do I have this damned headache! Fuck! It hurts like hell.

"What… are you doing with my stuff?" I asked with threatening undertone.

Shepard pulled her hand back quickly and just smiled sheepishly.

"Oh nothing, just checking out what you have." She said while averting my gaze.

"You know, it's rude to go through other people's stuff without their permission, don't they teach you that kind of stuff in school and shit." I sarcastically replied while I sat up, still keeping my eye on her.

She didn't answer, just ashamedly looked at her shoes, which at the moment seemed to be quite interesting.

I sighed and retrieved my phone and earbuds from the table.

After a moment of silence she looked up towards me.

"Now that we have time, I have some more questions for you." She said.

I fucking knew it, she waited until I was helpless before beginning the interrogation, clever little bastard.

Oh well, might as well get it over with.

"Shoot."

"Okay, so what's your name?"

"I already told you, it's Mathias."

"No, I meant your full name."

I sighed in frustration.

"Mathias Nordwall."

"And how old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"You don't look like you're eighteen, you look like more a guy in his twenties."

"I don't really care if you believe me, just ask the fucking questions." I harshly replied.

She just hmphed back at me before continuing.

"Where are you from? I've never seen you before and I know quite a lot of people who live on Mindoir."

I was silent for a moment as I tried to come up with a believable backstory.

Can't really say I was drunk, that would be dishonest.

Might as well tell her the partial truth.

"I'm from… Earth."

"Earth huh? We don't get many visitors from there, Mindoir is pretty far away from Sol."

"I came here… with my friends on a vacation, we got separated and they had to leave without me." I answered, trying my best to hold a poker face.

And she seemed to believe me.

"Alright, final question. What is that device you have? For real this time, don't give me that bullshit about it being some fucking toy. I saw you using it on that Varren." Shepard asked with a piercing gaze.

I raised my eyebrow in surprise, but I didn't falter.

"And why should I tell you? Helping me doesn't mean getting to know my secrets, especially since you tried to steal it!" I replied defendingly, with a slight bit of venom seeping from my tone of voice.

Shepard was taken back by my aggressiveness but she held her ground.

"Because holding back a secret when someone already knows about it won't help you one bit. Please, just trust me on this one thing." She pleaded me.

I thought about it for a moment before replying, it wouldn't exactly reveal my origins but would help her to trust me a bit more if I explained what the 'thing' is.

"Alright fine. The device is called a Tool Gun it's basically a Swiss army knife of creating and manipulating things. Here, watch." I said as I pointed the gun in my hands towards the floor, and went through the prop menu to check for a good item that I could produce as a demonstration.

Shepard raised an eyebrow in confusion at my unusual (for the time) figure of speech but didn't fortunately for me ask about it.

I finally settled on a DoD: Source prop that was basically a large empty tobacco container.

Squeezing the trigger, the blue streak shot out of the barrel and spawned an empty white box that used to hold a form of tobacco called "shag", which some soldiers used to make their own cigarettes out of by wrapping the loose tobacco in slices of paper back in the day in the unfortunate situation that pre-wrapped factory made cigarettes were not available.

Yeah, I'm a bit of a history buff. I get that a lot.

I grinned when I saw Shepard's reaction to the fact that the box had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

"Holy shit! That is so cool!" She exclaimed in a high-pitched voice, jumping up and down in excitement like a fucking schoolgirl.

Which she probably was from the looks of it, I still don't know what her age is.

Wait a minute…

She mentioned Mindoir before…

She looks to be somewhere in her mid-teens…

Oh shit…

"Jane…" I said in a low and worried tone.

"Yeah?" She asked as she stopped her celebrating to look at me with a confused look on her face.

"How… Old… Are you?" I asked.

"Sixteen, why?" She said, raising an eyebrow.

Aaaand its official. We're gonna be in some deep shit soon.

"Nothing, forget I asked." I said with an attempted dismissal, further confusing her.

"Matt? What's wrong?" She looked at me with a worried expression quickly forming on her face.

"We're going be in big trouble soon…"

As I said it, explosions and gunfire sounded off in the distance.

She heard it too and started panicking.

"Matt… What the hell is going on?!" She asked me again, this time in a more raised voice.

I raised my head and gazed at her with a neutral expression crossing my features.

"They have arrived, and they're out for blood..."

And as if on que, the door was kicked in and someone walked in through it, the footsteps echoed throughout the empty house.

"You two check upstairs, the rest of you are with me." A deep masculine voice in a group of several said, probably the one in charge.

I couldn't see them yet but I could hear them coming closer and knew they were coming for us.

And we had no place to hide.

So what do you do when you have no place to hide?

You fight back as hard as you can, defiantly until the very end.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Hope you liked the first chapter, if you have any thoughts you'd like to share about it, please do so through a review and if you'd like to see more then make sure to follow and/or favorite this story.

This is MarxistFIN, over and out!