Chapter One:

The Man Comes Around

"I don't belong here

We gotta move on dear

Escape from this afterlife

'Cause this time I'm right

To move on and on

Far away from here."

Afterlife, Avenged Sevenfold

July 1, 2186

9:32, GST

Location Unknown

The camera flickers to life.

At first, the feed is swarmed with static and ripples of distortion. It slowly fades and a room comes into view, populated with military bunk beds, sleek gray walls and a lone chair facing the camera. The camera whines and sputters but nothing else is heard. Seconds tick by.

A human hand wraps around the screen. Movement is heard and a muffled voice says something inaudible. When the hand comes away, it reveals a young human male staring into the lense. He licks his lips, which has some five o' clock shadow wrapped around it, and tilts his head, as if expecting something.

"Hello?" The camera shakes. "Seriously, they couldn't have put an orange light on this thing?" The camera is hit and the feed distorts. "Hey, turn on, you piece of shi—"

The camera starts to slide off the stand. The man makes a wild fumble but the camera flips and bounces off the floor, the feed lost in static. "Motherfucker!" The camera comes up and the man once again becomes the focal point, blue eyes wide. "Shit, if I broke this thing. . . ." The man starts pushing buttons, activating most of the camera's filters randomly and sometimes switching off the footage. Eventually, he rests it back down on the stand as it was earlier, now with the lense cracked in the upper left corner.

He backs away slowly, precautionary hands outstretched. "Okay, don't fall. Can you do that for me, Mr. Inanimate Object? Can you?" He straightens his back. "Aw, fuck it, it's not my camera anyway."

He sits down on the chair and rubs his neck. "I would really like to shower and eat before I do this, but I can't waste any time. God knows we have so little of it these days." He pauses. "Though I did have time to change into my downtime clothes." He gestures at the clothes, a T-shirt and jeans. "But I can't be all dirty and torn up for this, can I? Need to look handsome here. Not that I'm not always stunningly beautiful, mind you, but it's a little hard to look clean cut when you've got bullet holes in your chest. Something I've learned firsthand."

He twists his neck until it cracks.

"In a few days, everything's gonna change. For better or, more likely, for the worse. And after seeing Liara's little time capsule thing, I got the idea to make this." The man gestures to the camera. "An account of my journey through this whole clusterfuck of an adventure. I want to say I'm doing this for the future generations, to aid them if things here do go to shit, but I'm not. I'm doing this for me. To finally open up about who I am and . . . confess, I guess is the right word."

He pauses and chuckles with little humor.

"Sure hope this goes better than the last few times. Maybe you'll actually believe me. Hell, maybe this'll actually help someone stop the Reapers. Ah, who fucking knows, huh? Maybe an optimist will actually believe shit will change."

He opens his mouth, lets it hang, then closes it. He taps a beat on his thigh.

"You know, I shouldn't swear so much, should I? I mean, if this is gonna be an alien civilization's first glimpse at humanity, then I don't really want them thinking we're vulgar assholes obsessed with sex and excrement. Telling the truth isn't always the best course of action. I'll keep the story as is—historical accuracy and all that—but I'll try to keep any comments I have kid appropriate. Alright, no more swearing. Here we go." He smiles at the camera.

"Okay, so . . . where to start? Uh . . . oh, yeah, right. My name. That might be important. I'm, uh, Quinn. Michael Quinn, actually, but you'll call me Quinn, alright? It's kinda a thing I have. Before all this, I guess I was just average, you know? Middle class through and through. Played doctor with girls in kindergarten, got braces in middle school, smoked weed in high school, the whole deal. I lived next to this huge creek that dumped all the sewage into the ocean, and in the summer this thick, sluggish smell would—"

He pauses and laughs. "Actually, wait, you don't care, do you? I'll just skip to the cool shi—stuff. Stuff. Right, so, I guess I'll start with how I got to the Citadel. That's when this kicks off, anyway, working with C-Sec. Fun times. Though how I got there is by far the most fantastical part of my story. It wasn't just a simple shuttle ride that got me there."

He smirks. "I did have to die first."

Time Unknown

Chirping. That's the first thing I became aware of. A bird, somewhere to my right, was chirping his little heart out and actually carrying a decent tune. In response, another bird to my left struck up a tune of his own, a few octaves higher. More bird soliloquies came out of nowhere, all around me, and eventually the sound of dozens of birds chirping and whistling and cooing melted into one large wave of noise. Now, I'm no ornithologist, but I was pretty sure I was hearing the full spectrum of birds here. Creatures that were usually continents apart were harmonizing with each other.

I opened my eyes. There was a blanket of blue in front of me, little cloud islands drifting by in perfect spots. I couldn't see the sun. I wasn't in the shade and it looked like the middle of the day, high noon, but I couldn't tell where the sun was. If I closed my eyes again, I could pretend it wasn't even there anymore.

Everything felt . . . nice. Not quite euphoric, but definitely close to it. It took me a little longer to notice I was lying in a field of tall grass and when the wind rolled by, like someone blowing softly in your ear, the grass licked at my skin and wrapped me in a soft cocoon. The bird's tumultuous melody could've been a grand orchestra for all I cared. The sky was the perfect shade of blue, the clouds were perfectly white and fluffy, the air around me was the perfect temperature and had just the right amount of a pine scent to it. It all seemed tailored exactly for me.

Bright lights, dark horizon. Rock blasting on the cheap radio. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on the empty window. Wind gusting by, disheveling hair. The feeling that everything was fine in the world.

I tried sitting up but couldn't. It's not that I wasn't physically able to, I just didn't want to. Everything was too nice, too blissful, too perfect. Moving now would be a great injustice, punishable by death.

Headlights stretched along a barren road. Music loud enough to make bones vibrate. A fumble, a frantic reach, a sigh. Picking up the offender. Four legs and wide eyes, frozen in the road. Panic. Adrenaline. Instinct. A hard turn, the unforgiving pull of gravity. Crunch of steel and bone. Tiny, sharp diamonds of glass dancing in the air. Cracked pavement. Whiplash. Pain. Complete lack of control.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was wondering how I got here. There were fragments of memories, broken pieces of a puzzle, but they refused to come together. Time was different, somehow. Normally, time was definitive—seconds, minutes, and hours were all strict measurements, no exceptions to the rule. Here, well, it all flowed together into one solid stream. Hours could pass in the blink of an eye. I could spend milliseconds contemplating life, and years thinking of what I had for dinner.

Darkness. Suspension. Blood pooled upwards, glass fell through hair. Ragged breaths, heart pounding. Too many thoughts.

A tree branch stabbed through the radio. "C-c-c-com***n b**y d-d-don't fe*****e reap**."

A roar. Floodlights. Rubber screeching. Metal on metal, blood, fear. Release.

I was dead. The thought hit me like an inconvenience, like having your pen run out of ink. Oh, damn. That sucks. Well, whatever. Life goes on. Or not, maybe.

"Get up, Mr. Quinn."

I craned my head back. A smile was peering down at me. The smile was attached to a face, obviously, but the smile dwarfed it, made it almost irrelevant. The smile was all you cared about. The wearer of the smile was a man with blue eyes the color of sapphires and short brown hair that seemed to redirect you back to the face. Underneath the smile, the man wore a tailored white suit, blazer without a tie, and a black rose on the lapel. This is all stuff I noticed later. At the time, I had only seen the smile.

"Come on, there's much to do and all that."

His voice was soft with an authoritative undertone, masculine without being brutish. Once he said that, a switch was thrown. I could sit up. I did so and struggled to get to my feet. I had been lying down so long I had forgotten how to move my joints.

Once I was upright, I wobbled. Hard. I teetered back, overbalanced, and fell forward, stretching a hand out to steady on the man.

I passed right through him.

Surprised, my arm and the rest of my body sailed through his intangible form and hit the floor. It didn't hurt. It felt like landing on a cloud.

He laughed. "My apologies, Mr. Quinn." He held out a hand. I stared at him. He laughed again. "Come now, I won't bite." I reached for it, fully expecting a repeat of my earlier action.

His grip was solid and firm.

He pulled me up with almost no effort and this time I managed to keep my balance. He kept smiling and took a step back, giving me space. I stared at my hand, then at him. The corners of his smile ended perfectly underneath his pupils. He seemed genuinely in a good mood.

"What. . . ." My voice trailed off, echoing on the plains.

He waited politely.

I had to fight my jaw. "What are you?"

"Depends on your perspective, really." I waited for him to go on but he just kept smiling at me. It was hard not to return the favor.

"God?"

He laughed. "No, no, no. Well, maybe not quite how you consider Him, but yes, in a way."

My mouth had stopped working again so I blinked in response.

"I am a god and a servant, a slave and a master, all powerful and powerless. You are too."

"W-what?"

"But never mind that. We need to focus on the more important issue. You," he poked me in the chest, "Mr. Quinn, are dead."

"Me?"

"Yes."

"Dead?"

"Quite so."

"How?"

The smile widened. "I think you know that answer."

I was going to say something to the contrary when it hit me. A hard pain in my chest, right where the hood ornament had shattered my sternum and severed my spine. A hood ornament that I'd only seen barreling at me at seventy miles an hour. I felt blood and glass in my hair, but when I reached up I only felt my scalp. Then the pain faded and a dull pleasure washed over me.

"I'm . . . dead?"

"Is it so hard to believe, Mr. Quinn? People die every day, often in droves."

"Yeah, but. . . ."

"But . . . what, Mr. Quinn?"

I couldn't quite phrase it. "But those are other people. Strangers."

He chuckled like I had told him a bad joke. "And you're the exception? Did you think you would live forever?"

"No, I . . . Jesus Christ." I looked down at my arms. I pinched the skin under my bicep. It felt real. It felt alive. "I'm really dead, aren't I? I'm dead and this is—this is Heaven, or Hell, or Nirvana, or whatever."

"Not quite, but basically, yes. Enjoy it while it lasts."

I didn't really hear him. I was staring over his shoulder. We were standing in a plain that stretched on endlessly in almost all directions, flat and featureless. Behind the man, though, was a mountain range with snow-tipped caps, spread like a wall. On the highest peak, straight in front of me, a tiny golden light was twinkling, like someone was shining a mirror in my direction. The longer I stared at it, the more it seemed to be growing.

"How did everyone take . . . it?"

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "That's what I like to see! Your first thought after death is for the people you knew. A very admirable trait, Mr. Quinn." He walked past my shoulder. I felt relieved—his smile was making me feel hollow. "They took it as you might expect. Shock, grief, sadness. Standard fare, really. Your funeral was held in a quiet graveyard on a cloudy day. Only twelve people attended."

"Twelve people. . . ."

"Yes." I could feel him staring between my shoulder blades. "I know this a lot to handle, Mr. Quinn, but there is a schedule to keep. Obligations need to be met."

I was staring at the grass. It was perfect, literally in every way. Perfect length, perfect texture, perfect shading. The stalks gently rubbing against my jean legs felt like feathers. The birds were still singing, they had been this whole time, but, as I looked around, I couldn't see any movement. We were alone.

"Where's that coming from?"

"The chirping?" he asked. "I thought it fit the atmosphere."

"You do know birds chirp when they're being aggressive, right? It's how they defend their territory."

"And your hair is composed entirely of dead tissue, yet your species considers a well-groomed mane to be attractive. An object's origins aren't always as important as its uses, Mr. Quinn."

I didn't reply. There was too much going on in my head and, besides, there was nothing to say. The golden light on the mountain had grown and swallowed a good chunk of said mountain, and was working its way down to the base.

"If it helps, Mr. Quinn, no one grieved for long. You had withdrawn somewhat from their lives and they had grown less attached."

"So you're saying no one really cared?"

"If you want to see it that way, yes."

The man walked back in front of me. His face had changed. His nose was sleeker and his jaw more defined, giving him an underwear model look. Minus the huge schlong, of course. More importantly, his irises had turned from sapphire blue to ocean green, and were working their way to being the same color as the grass at his feet. On closer inspection, they looked like little whirlpools squeezing the pupil.

"Do you have any other questions, Mr. Quinn? Again, there is a schedule."

I did have a lot of questions. A shitload of them. They all fought for attention, bubbling up in my mind, but only one ended up coming out of my mouth. "What's your name?"

He laughed, uproariously this time. "That is your question, Mr. Quinn? Not, perhaps, the meaning of life or future events? Or the origins of your universe?"

"I feel like all that metaphysical crap will go over my head. Just give me this one."

"Very astute." He pursed his lips without losing the smile. "I have many names, and many faces. Some names you cannot physically pronounce, and others never spoken with human lips. I am always different for every person—a new face, new location, new personality. That's why I believe, Mr. Quinn, it would be better to ask you—what do you think my name is?"

I thought about his impeccable white suit, his wide, endearing smile, and his overly polite personality. One name came to mind. "Gatsby."

He clapped me on the shoulder. "A very appropriate choice, Mr. Quinn. I approve. Will that be all then?"

"I guess so."

"Excellent!" Gatsby exclaimed. "Now we can begin." Beginning, as it turned out, involved him walking past me without another word. I jogged up to him. The mountain range had now completely disappeared in the golden light, and it seemed to be sweeping at us like a runaway flood.

"So, uh, what's this 'schedule' you keep talking about?"

"Ah, Mr. Quinn, I thought you said no more questions!"

"Yeah, well, I think you can oblige me this time."

"I do believe that's fair." He put his hands in his pockets and I noticed that stubble was growing on his face, at the rate of a snail. "You're going to a different place at a different time."

I looked over at him. "That's not an answer."

"Of course it is. It's just not the one you want."

"Well, give me the one I want."

The golden light was a brilliant, glowing wall racing towards us, closer and closer. It was bright enough now that I had to squint.

"Mr. Quinn, I assure you, the answer you want is not the answer you want."

I tried to grab his shoulder but he did that ethereal thing again. "Goddamnit, just tell me what's gonna happen! Please!"

He took a few more steps, then turned around to face me. The golden light hung over us like the parted Red Sea, blurring the outlines of everything. It arched, blotted out the sky, and crashed down with a soft embrace. Gatsby disappeared and I felt myself fading again.

"Good luck, Mr. Quinn," was all I heard before the light engulfed me.

11:72, GST

I woke with a start, eyes shooting open and gasping like a dying man. My head came up and smacked against a thick metal wall, where it then fell down onto the thin metal floor I was lying on. Instinctually, my arm came up to rub my head, which meant I ended up punching the thick metal wall. Having not learned my lesson at this point, my leg came up in a knee-jerk reaction—pun intended—and jammed my shin between the two metal walls. Something popped. Painfully, I might add.

In pain all over my body, I groaned, swore, and rolled over the edge.

I fell for four seconds. In the first second, I realized that I was falling. During second number two, I realized that, holy shit, I was falling. At the third second, I flailed my limbs trying to grab on to anything and ended up spinning in a circle. By the fourth second, I had hit my target.

Vents are not designed to support human weight. When I hit the gray vent, the metal shrieked and bent down at the point of my waist, folding me into a human fortune cookie. Both legs came up and both knees hit me on both sides of my face. The vent groaned and sagged. When one support snapped like a whip and the vent sank a few inches, my heart nearly stopped.

I looked down. I was hundreds of feet in the air, in a cavernous room that stretched nearly a mile long. On the floor, factory boxes were strewn around like blocks in a game of Tetris, jammed together and creating different plateaus and peaks. I saw a few crumb-sized people walking around on raised square platforms. Mechanical claw arms flew past in all directions, long ropes running along a conveyor belt on the ceiling, each ferrying a different load—some carried crates, others carried what looked like robots, and I even saw a few working together to carry a car, though it was too sleek and didn't have any wheels.

The vent was gonna fall. As I looked up, the support wires were unplugging themselves from the ceiling with little snaps. Each time they did, the vent sagged as the remaining supports compensated. It would give any second. And if I went down with this thing, some poor janitor would get a shitty start to his day.

There was another vent below me, four feet out and a couple meters down. I straightened my legs and pushed myself up, trying to get a standing position. Imagine being stuck in the middle of a giant V and you'll know what it's like. I got into a jumping position with my legs jammed almost horizontally into the vent walls. It sagged again and I lost my balance, pinwheeling my arms like crazy until I re-centered myself.

I think it's important to repeat that I was really fucking high up. One slip and they'd have to scrape me off the floor. I'd look down, lose all resolve, and then feel the vent sag. This process repeated itself a few times.

I had just decided to jump when the vent gave way.

There was no warning. The last support died with a whimper and the metallic snake shot down just as I launched myself into the air. The suddenness made me lose all power in the jump. I stretched out in the air, spread-eagled, and reached for the lower vent. To this day, I swear that the tips of my fingers skimmed the edge. But that wasn't good enough. I kept falling.

Turns out I had fallen right in the path of a claw arm carrying a large square crate, at the perfect time for it catch me. I had the clearance to brace and slammed my shoulder into the edge of the crate, bouncing at least a few inches. The claw arm shot forward ridiculously fast and the only thing that saved me from sliding off was my right foot getting stuck around the arm itself. Needless to say, the upper half of my body slid off the crate and I was left staring down at a five hundred foot drop.

Yeah. Not fun.

The vent itself hit the floor with a loud, reverberating clang, stumbling a few workers with the shockwave. Of course, I didn't see this, because I was screaming and flailing while trying to get my body back on solid ground. I managed to pull myself in by bending my right leg, and I twisted my right arm back until my fingers latched around the body of the arm. I pulled myself into a standing position and hugged the pole like a stripper facing a drunken, angry crowd.

Something red and electrical shot out the body of the crate. I thought it wasn't real at first but when I turned my head there was a little red sphere floating alongside my impromptu chariot, perfectly parallel. It looked like a transparent red Death Star.

"Debris detected," it said, and let loose an electrical current right into my pelvis.

Being shocked with electricity does not feel good, even on the best of days. All my muscles contracted at once and my heart felt like it'd been hit with a fistful of nails. However, this had the effect of making my arms lock up around the pole. Not a very effective strategy, if you ask me.

"Removing debris," it said, and shocked me again.

"Fuck you!"

"Removing debris." I tried to dodge it by going around the pole but the current nicked my shoulder and made all the hairs on my arm stand up.

"I am not fucking debris!"

This time, a claw came out of the body. And I mean a claw, three razor-blade fingers attached to a robotic joint. It slashed straight down and cut open my T-shirt. I nearly lost my balance.

In a wild haze of fear, pain and adrenaline, I did the only thing I could think of at the time—I leaned forward and kicked the fucker, right in the teeth. It glitched out and shed a transparent layer of skin, but kept at me. I kicked it again, and again, and again, and again. By the seventh or eighth time, my foot sailed through the body and my shin ended up impaling it. It sparked, made a digital death rattle, and vanished. I hugged the pole again.

The claw turned to the right. And by turned, I mean it made a straight ninety degree bend and nearly sent me flying. By this time, I saw where it was headed—a giant hole in the wall, where a lot of other arms were feeding into. The tunnel itself was swollen with traffic and my own personal taxi slowed to a halt behind other waiting cargo, inching forward just like real traffic.

Someone shouted very far below. I peered down—as much as I dared to, anyway—and saw a group of people pointing and yelling at me. I was too far up to hear what they were saying or even make out who they were. One guy ran towards the wall where I was headed into. I could guess what he was trying to do.

Not even remotely thinking at this point, I jumped forward—onto the next piece of cargo. I found a rhythm and soon I was running along the tops towards the exit. It wasn't a smooth journey. I had to jump over stuff that I couldn't get a foothold on, like robots or vertical crates. Near the middle of the journey, I landed on a refrigerator that slid out of the claws grasp and almost took me with it. And I had to work out the timing on when the cargo would jerk forward, which didn't have any sort of predictability to it. Still, I was making progress, and somehow not pissing my pants. I'd call that a victory.

The tunnel, once I got inside it, was dark. Blue veins ran along the walls and barely gave any light to the place. To the left was a walkway guarded by a guardrail. Further down was a large window looking into a room with a control panel, and an extended platform that looked like an area for workers to inspect the cargo. The best part, though, was that the cavern only had the cargo hanging thirty or so feet above the ground. You have no idea how good it felt knowing that, if I fell, I'd only break my legs and be in horrible agony. I guess it's all relative.

I had been in the tunnel maybe ten seconds when the cargo line went dead. Full stop. The blue veins turned red and a light I hadn't seen bathed the area in a maroon glow. The shouting got louder outside. I jumped back a few cargo blocks to see a growing crowd of people sprinting towards my side of the room.

Where I was.

Shit.

The guardrail was close. I braced, then jumped. I got my arms around it just fine, but my feet slipped off the edge. This made my face fly down and kiss the guardrail like a last-minute prom date. My legs kicked desperately for a few seconds before finding land. Blood was already spurting into my mouth and something skidded along my gums. I spat out blood, saliva, and a chunk of my front tooth. I threw it behind me and hopped over.

A door was right in front of me. It didn't have a knob, just a green button on the side. I got hit with a major wave of nostalgia, one that got worse when I hit the button and the door slid back into its frame.

The door led to a chrome hallway doused in blue light, and mixed with another red alarm light. It was only when I started running that I realized just how in pain I was. I had angry burn scars all along my right side where the drone had shocked me and I was pretty sure my shoulder was dislocated. It didn't stop me from noticing how familiar everything was, though. The sleek grooves, the neon lights, hell, even the arm claws and factory room gave me déjà vu. It was somewhere between surreal and terrifying.

The hallway turned left into another identical hallway. At the end, though, was a large door with the yellow words ELEVATOR stamped over it. That's when the shouting actually became discernible. Voices were yelling somewhere in front of me, and, judging by the dozens of pounding footsteps, they were coming. Fast.

There was a lone room to my right. I took it immediately. The room had a TV with something blue talking onscreen and a long conference table bordered with chairs. I dove under it. And the second my body nestled into the chair legs, the voices and footsteps came into my hallway. While they raced past, I felt very small, and sweaty, and bloody, and scared. I imagined being trapped forever under the table, dark and cramped. Then it disappeared. I waited a few seconds, then jumped out and opened the door. The hallway was empty. I sprinted for the elevator.

The door opened as soon as I hit the button. I collapsed into it, literally. Metal never felt so good. The elevator shot down immediately and gave me a nice jolt in the gut.

"Attention!" someone said over an intercom. "False alarm, everybody! It was just a duct rat playing up there! Back to work!"

I rolled onto my back and breathed for a while. That's when I saw the note. It was a piece of paper taped to the ceiling, with a paragraph or two of writing. I wobbled up and peeled it off.

Dear Mr. Quinn,

If you have fallen tragically to your death, then please disregard this note.

If, however, you have survived, then congratulations! You may have noticed some alarming familiarities with this world. And the answer is yes, Mr. Quinn. It is exactly what you are thinking. Remember, Mr. Quinn, this is no longer a videogame. No respawning at checkpoints, I'm afraid. Make your way to C-Sec academy—things have been arranged for your arrival. The year is 2180, so you will have sufficient time to train. Make friends, and keep on your toes. You are important than you know.

Sincerely,

Gatsby

I turned the paper over. There was a pencil taped to the back, and a set of black lines with the words WRITE HERE on top. I tore it off, thought about my answer, spat out some blood, and wrote down:

Dear Gatsby,

Go fuck yourself.

With love,

Mr. Quinn

A little immature, but I wasn't in any mood to be someone's puppet. Right when my pencil left the paper, the graphite soaked into the paper and faded away. Then all four corners of the paper burst into flame. I dropped it and the fire turned the note into an ash-stain on the floor. I felt like Wile E. Coyote, racing towards a tunnel only to find out it's a painted wall.

My first priority was getting the fuck outta here, and, if possible, finding Gatsby so I could knock his teeth out. I'm not a slave quite yet. He'll have to beat me down if he expects me to just go along with everything. I'm still alive, and I plan on finding a way home.

The elevator stopped. The door opened and a man walked in, dressed in some skin-tight blue jumpsuit with an ID on his chest. I stared at him a little bit to make sure he was human, and the look he gave as he got on meant I was creeping him out. I still sidestepped out of his way.

"You alright, mate?" he asked, hitting the one green button. He sounded Australian. "You're bleedin' everywhere."

Right as he said that, a drop of blood rolled over my eyebrow and stung my eye. "I'm fine," I said. "Mind telling me where we are?"

He squinted at me, like I was trying to con him. "You picked a bloody good place to get lost. We're still fishing duct rats out of the crate mazes."

"You didn't answer my question."

"Do I have to?"

"Are you saying that because you don't want to, or is it obvious?"

He squinted again and I noticed his arm drop for his waist. "How did you get up here? This area's restricted to the public."

"I'm the . . . professional robot-inspector. Young prodigy, graduated college at seventeen."

"Robots? You mean the mechs?"

"In our business, we call 'em robots, buddy."

He shook his head. "I'm not buyin' it. Look, mate, you're coming with me down to Central Process—"

I got right in his face and the hand grabbed something just out of sight. "Listen, asshole, I've just gone through a lot of shit in the past few hours, so why don't you cut me a little slack, huh? Just forget you saw me and everyone goes home happy. Alright?"

He stared at me with an indignant and determined face. Then he made his move.

His right arm came out with a pistol, some block thing. I grabbed his right arm with my left, but his left arm swung out and bashed me in the mouth. The gun went for my face, I ducked, it fired and cracked the elevator wall. I tried wresting the gun from his hand while he beat my face in. My face gave in first. I lost my grip and he shoved me to the ground. The gun in my face didn't register as much as the brain damage.

"Stay down, mate. Don't do anything we'll regret."

In response, I kicked his shin. He yelled. I grabbed the gun and pulled it down, where it fired under the crook of my arm. I kicked his shin again and followed it up with two punches to the jaw. By this time, I had put all my weight on him. He pitched forward while I swung to my feet with the momentum. The gun came into my hands. This all took about six seconds, and at the end we had switched positions.

"I have a better idea, 'mate'. Stand up." He got to his feet, a line of blood at his mouth. "Back off." He stepped back. "Turn around, face the door." He did so. I angled myself directly behind him and was a little amazed he was actually listening. "Just stand right there, pal." I had an epiphany. "Actually, stop at the next floor." He hit the button and the door immediately opened on a large factory floor, though we had gone too far for it to be the same one.

"Give me your ID," I said.

"Why?"

"Fuck you, that's why." In retrospect, I was handling the whole "threatening someone with a gun" thing pretty well for my first time.

He handed it to me over his shoulder. "Good," I said. "Now, if you tell anyone I was here, Peter Cunningham, your family's gonna be the next new graveside attraction." I lifted my leg and kicked him out, then hit the button. The doors closed right as he swore at me. I shot down.

I thought I'd feel cool for doing something like that, but, really, I felt like a dick. Poor guy didn't deserve it. I was just happy neither of us got a free lead dinner.

"Now entering the Presidium," a soft female voice said.

That reminded me—I examined my new gun. It was blocky and built with hard angles. A . . . Predator? Something like that. Anyway, the thing was heavy and pointing it at anything for more than a few seconds was tiring. I held it out straight like how Shepard would execute someone, and remembered a few renegade playthroughs.

The elevator entered a transparent shaft, and suddenly I was in space. Great purple clouds mixed with white lights billowed around. There was a giant metal plane, built like a flat air conditioner, down to the southeast that had orange veins running along it, along with spiky buildings. I looked the other way to see a plus sign shaped ship drift to another metal plane, its rectangle mouth burning blue. The Destiny Ascension.

Mass Effect. Holy shit.