A/N: I did not write this, user Ian the Mechanic did. Credit for this chapter goes to him.

GST Side Stories

The first thing I noticed upon waking up was pain; or rather, a lack thereof. 20 years as a military aircraft mechanic and another four restoring wooden hulled tall ships had left its mark on me: bad knees, aching back, moderate tinnitus, and a fingertip that would live forevermore as a part of the Constitution's gun deck. Now, my back felt great, my ears didn't ring, and I could feel with the tip of my left pointer finger. This was a vast improvement over the terrible heartburn and throbbing left arm I had gone to sleep with the night before. I had simply collapsed on the couch rather than risking the stairs.

Then I went and ruined it by opening my eyes. I was in an alleyway, laying on a discarded pile of detritus, looking up at a sky just slightly the wrong shade of blue. I stared blankly for a moment until the air car flew overhead, then I bolted upright. A clatter drew my attention, and I found my phone, tablet and wallet roughly where I had left them on the coffee table. I was still in my Carharts, steel toe boots and heavy flannel shirt. I saw I was alone in the alley for the moment, so I used that moment to gather my wits and belongings.

My first impulse was to see where my phone's GPS said I was. I was glad to see it was fully charged, though it looked like it was still charging. I also saw there was a very strong Wi-Fi signal. What I didn't see was a geotag for the local weather; just a "No Signal Detected" which made no sense, and a prompt to update. I sat down and set my phone to update, determined to call a cab or an Uber once it was done, then opened my tablet. I got the same strong Wi-Fi and charging signals, and the same prompt to update. It became quickly apparent that I wasn't getting on the web without the update, so I set my tablet aside to do that and just looked around.

That was when the Blue Woman Group and a Sleestack couple walked by the alley's entrance. Thankfully they didn't notice me, or didn't care because I was frozen in shock while staring like a tourist. I don't know how long I stared into space, but the dual beeps from my devices woke me from my fugue. The updates were done. It was time to get some answers.

Those answers were not comforting.

I didn't recognize the dating system, nor the name Nos Astra. I did however recognize the name Illium. I spent a good 10 minutes fighting off a full blown panic attack. I could read what was written in front of me, so I wasn't dreaming, and there were no reports I had ever heard of concerning lucid experiences while in a coma. I was uncomfortably warm and doubting my surroundings, so Descartes held true: Dubito, ergo Cogito, ergo Sum, res Cogitans. I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am: a thinking being.

Every fact I read pointed to my existing inside a video game I had heard of, read and watched fiction of, but had never played. 'Matrix' and 'Total Recall' scenarios ran through my head until I slapped myself. Carpe Diem, seize the day! Whether I was in a computer simulation, or Purgatory, or actually on a planet from a Sci-Fi video game didn't matter; I was here, and I needed to work with that.

I gathered my things once more and stood up.

That's when the two Batarians stepped into the alley with me. It doesn't take a killer to recognize a killer, and that was what these two were. I didn't need any Treknobabble translator to get the gist of what they were saying when they stalked towards me while drawing knives.

Now I should preface right now that I am not a warrior or a super soldier. Some members of various militaries would probably go so far as to say I wasn't ever a soldier. I was a military mechanic and a carpenter, a military history enthusiast from my reenacting days and decade long participation in the SCA and various Historical European Martial Arts groups. More importantly though, I was a forty two year old man in a twenty year old's body, and that's a lot of time to compile an assortment of dirty tricks.

I raised my hands, holding my tablet in my left while backing towards the nearby dumpster; it would limit my escape, but it would also limit their approach. Plus, I didn't trust the locals to come to my aid if these two gave chase. I would have only one chance at this.

Both seemed to take great glee in my seeming fear and I guess began taunting me. I will forever be thankful that Hubris is a universally deadly sin, since this pair decided only one was needed to kill me as that arrogance saved my life. One of the two stood a good ten feet back while the other advanced. When he got five feet from me, he lunged to stab me in the gut. I swatted the blade hand to the outside with my tablet while grabbing his shirt and, with his own momentum, slammed his face into the dumpster's rigid right-angle welded corner. He made a faint squeaking noise as he collapsed on the ground.

His partner in crime was much less quiet as he charged me. I ducked under his wild swing and went for one of the less savory medieval wrestling techniques I had learned, but never had cause to practice. A childish voice in my head piped up with a quote from "The Monster Squad"; I'm certain the batarian at that moment wished he didn't, 'got nards' as I used them to hoist him off the ground and dump him head first on the alley floor. As he was still flailing and making noise I kneeled on his chest, pinning his knife arm with my foot. I then introduced his head to mankind's oldest and most versatile tool: the rock.

The entire altercation took less than ten seconds.

I stood and surveyed my gruesome work, and promptly collapsed on my detritus bed and threw up. I don't know if I was more thankful or concerned by the lack of citizen or police response to the noise we had made, but I decided if I was stuck in a bizarre video game world, then it was time to act like it.

I dragged the corpses deeper into the alley, behind the dumpster, then moved some of the alley's trash to conceal the signs of the fight. I then turned to the age old gamer task of rifling my opponents pockets for loose change. The second of them had an Omni-tool, while the first had a small pistol.

As I said, God Bless the universality of Hubris. They both had what I assumed were credit chits. There were a number of other odds and ends which seemed out of place on a pair of murderous thugs, so I assumed they were trophies. I decided that if I could figure out who they belonged to, I might be able to give them back, or at least give their families some closure. I was going to need allies to survive here.

Their clothing lacked any uniformity, so I assumed they weren't in a gang, which was good since my shirt was blood soaked and torn in several places. I took the first attackers jacket as it wasn't covered in blood. I used his shirt to wrap up my new collection of worldly possessions: a pistol and two knives (you never know when a knife will come in handy) a half dozen assorted nicknacks, twice as many credit chits and my phone, tablet and wallet. Putting the omni-tool on my arm and dressing the first attacker in my ruined shirt, I then set out onto the streets of Nos Astra in the hopes of finding my way home.

I found an open air park to sit and tinker. I opened my tablet and phone and started doing some basic research. The 'oh-so-convenient' update turned out to be the Illium State monitoring software patching into any wireless connectable hardware. The Wi-Fi there was strong enough to charge my devices at the same time as well.

I was (mostly) fine with this, though there was the chance it would lead the police to me if anyone checked on my two victims. Thankfully, in my research on how to access and reprogram their Omni-tool, I found they had installed a sort of privacy program that prevented their metadata from being used to track them.

I was equally thankful that those for two, while brutally cruel, this had been the extent of their Information-Security savvy. There were no restrictions on accessing the omni-tool, and in short order I was happily playing with my new prize.

I chose to research the credit chits, finding they were essentially prepaid credit cards that could be reloaded. Transferring all the credits onto one chit, and checking exchange rates and cost of living, I figured I had enough to live decently for a week; three if I lived like a dorm-rat, but not enough to buy passage off world. I also started researching the history of the current universe. I confirmed most of the facts I was passingly familiar with.

I also came upon a questionnaire that asked five simple, yet logically impossible questions. I gave the name "Hiram Abiff" and forged ahead. They were simple enough, though I waffled the second with, "depends on how you play". Number four simply got "J.H.". I did not want Cerberus to come looking for me.

With the final question answered, I waited. Five minutes later, there was a ping on my tablet with a question attached: Where are you?

It had only been a few hours since I had woken up, but it felt like days worth of stress, and with that simple question all that stress lifted. I looked up the prices of the local hotels I had researched, and booked a room for two weeks. Taking a leap of faith, I gave that information to my ghostly interrogator.

It was another five minutes before the next response: Be ready to leave in five days.

Having an actual sense of how long I was going to be on Illium did wonders for my nerves, and I settled in for the ride. I headed for my new home by way of the Asari equivalent of a department store; I desperately needed new clothes. My Omni-tool was a bare bones model, only more functional than my smart phone in that it had holographic controls. I opted to upload an Asari Phrase book, as well as a basic language primer.

I felt like I needed the distraction of the new device, since despite my actual age, I was in the body of a twenty year old American Male, and I was flanked on all sides by a race that seemed to have evolved to be swimsuit models.

Once finally settled into my room, I really started doing research: sociology, science and mathematics, and anything I could learn on the various keepsakes. The first three led to an unsettling discovery: with every species, once they discovered the Mass Effect principle (universally by finding Prothean artifacts) they discontinued all other research into similar fields not carried on by the Protheans.

It wasn't that the science and math were debunked, but rather a malaise in regards to those fields: the math of faster-than-light objects by James Hill and Barry Cox, Negative Energy Space Warping by Miguel Allcubierre and Harold White. Even the 2015 findings regarding Gravity Waves and General relativity as well as the Higgs Boson and it's relation to Time and Mass had been simply ignored in favor of Mass Effect science.

My own personal fascination with the subjects was the only reason I had several papers by the associated scientist. From my initial read on the net, these might be the only copies of those works left in existance. I was reminded of a fan theory I had heard that not only were the various races of the Galaxy part of a Citadel Council backed Cargo Cult, but the technology itself might contain some small shred of Reaper Indoctrination. I started madly making notes on my findings and beliefs, as well as drawing out basic designs for potential re-writes of various technologies.

If we were really going to be facing the Reapers, I felt we needed to not try to beat them at their own game.

After collapsing from hunger and exhaustion, I decided a change of pace was needed. I instead focused on the keepsakes; I only had three and a half days until I was picked up, and I needed to keep busy. It also kept me from fixating on my memories of the two from the alley. Most of the items were either so innocuous or so common that they could have belonged to anyone. The last one was a small holographic cameo of an Asari. I lucked out and found an online facial marking recognition program that identified the image as Kala D'Lano and gave her address.

The day before my pickup, I headed to the home of Kala with only my Omni-tool, pistol, knife, and the cameo. It was an iffy part of town, but I had remembered and learned that on Illium, that was entirely subjective. I knocked on the door to the apartment directly opposite a stairwell and waited.

It was opened by a frantic Kala who was, I could only guess, calling another being's name. Her demeanor dampened when she saw me and asked a question. One of the other benefits of being fortytwo, you could tell when you were dealing with a family member waiting for someone. It took some pantomime for her to understand I was neither fluent, nor in possession of a translation program.

I brought up my phrase book and asked, "Are you Kala D'Lano?"

She smirked and giggled at that and corrected my pronunciation. That simple gesture made my heart break a little at what I was likely going to do to her by giving her the cameo. I was really starting to hate Illium. I took one of her hands and set the cameo in it as reverently as I could. I had only ever seen that kind of grief in my own family when our 'Greatest Generation' started dying off.

I hugged the distraught Asari and simply repeated over and over, "I'm sorry." In that moment I had the absurd hope that this really was a game and those two animals could respawn so I could spend a year just killing them over and over.

She gathered herself and stepped back. Whatever she was going to say was preempted by her screaming and throwing one of her hands up. There was a sudden surge, like electricity and standing too close to the inlet of a running jet engine followed by a squawk. I spun around and saw yet another Batarian getting up off the floor, a long arm of some kind laying next to him.

I rushed over, set the barrel of my pistol against the top of his head and pulled the trigger. An enraged yell drew my attention to the other two Batarians coming up the stairs, followed by what I assumed was a Krogan. I fired blindly down the stairwell with my pistol until it overheated, then picked up the long arm. It turned out to be a shotgun and made short work of the last two Batarians.

The Krogan was less impressed.

This was the first time I had seen a kinetic barrier at work, and I could say with confidence that I didn't like it. He bellowed something and charged up the stairs. I took a chance and threw the Batarian corpse on top of him as he was coming up, then opened fire on his hands and legs.

I was rewarded with an inarticulate scream, just before he threw corpse back at me. I was knocked into Kala's now closed door and the shotgun was sent down the hall. By the time I got the body off of me, the Krogan had made it to the top of the stairs.

His right hand was missing, and his left leg was bent at a bad angle, but his eyes were fine and filled with unreasoning bloodlust. He lunged forward and grabbed me by the neck before lifting me off the ground. I took my knife and jammed the blade into his wrist before dragging it the length of his forearm. He dropped me instantly and I scrambled away. I saw my pistol on the ground where I had dropped it, but so did he.

I had just made the lunge when the hallway, and the Krogan in it, was filled with automatic weapons fire.

I spun sloppily to see what looked like a pair of humanoids dressed as French Foreign Legionnaires in death masks and balaclavas. It's probably best for everyone that my cheap pistol was still overheated, as I heard a woman's voice ask in perfect, if heavily accented english, "Hiram Abiff?"

I just sat there laughing hysterically until I started crying in relief.

The second came up and carefully disarmed me as he helped me stand. "Come on soldier, let's get you out of here." His speech sounded South African, while hers was more Asiatic in accent.

"I'm an Airman, thank you very much." I groused once standing. "We need to swing by my hotel room and collect my things."

She looked at me for a moment. "Already done. We need to leave, now."

I staggered towards the fallen shotgun. "Did you get my security deposit too?" He chuckled, while she glared at me. I didn't need to see her eyes to know that was a glare. I walked over and knocked on Kala's door again. I was very relieved when she opened the door.

I was handing her the shotty when she lurched forward in a rib-creaking hug. It took a bit to get her pried off, then me and my mystery escort headed up the stairs towards the roof. "So... your boss; I don't suppose some would call him, TIM?"

She snorted a quick laugh while he shook his head. "No we aren't Cerberus. We're with a currently unaffiliated organization with the goal of preventing them from coming through."

We stepped out onto the apartment roof just as sirens could be heard below. There was an air car waiting with the cabin doors opened. The driver said something in French as we all piled in. True to their word, my personal effects were in the back of the car with me. I slumped in my seat as we lifted off and headed towards what I assumed was the space port. I have no idea what the gamer opinion of the setting was, but I was absolutely done with Illium.

A/N: A HUGE thank you to fan Ian the Mechanic for his submission to this new anthology.

This story will be a collaboration with all of you guys; like I said in the main story, the Ghosts are made up of us; ME fans or just everyday people.

Ian did give me a thought, and that is I should probably post this to Ao3 along with "A Ghost and A Spectre", so expect to see both on FF and Ao3.

Please PM if you want to do a submission of your own for this Anthology, and another huge thanks to Ian for being the first to submit a quick story.

Nomad and Kingslayer will not be the focus of this anthology; although you are welcome to try your hand at writing a story of what they did before Nomad brought them together. Except for Nomad, Cira, Schultz, and Grant; Nomad because he's me, and the other three I have plans for.

Alright, good day to you all; and I will see ya when I see ya.