Mass Foundations: Redemption in the Stars
Chapter One: A Stranger in a Strange Land
Chapter One: A Stranger in a Strange Land
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
After one too many near-death experiences, Ethan Sunderland, the Courier, decided to upgrade his Transportalponder. It should increase the device’s range, allowing him to teleport to Big Mountain from anyplace, anytime. He took extra precautions—calculations, numerous trials, and multiple prototypes over the last couple years. He was a scientist and an engineer. What could go wrong?
He should have known by now. Everything could go wrong at Big Mountain, and it always did.
He set it up at X-84, the facility in Big Mountain that manufactured his Transportalponder. There was the device itself in the testing room with a robot, a Mister Handy, as the test subject, and an alarm system. Not long after the New California Republic snatched victory again at Hoover Dam, the facility had popped out of the ground like a mole rat during mating season.
Looking through the carefully cleaned window, the Courier observed as the Mister Handy used one of its claws to pick up the Transportalponder. With a press of a button at the console, the Mister Handy obeyed the command and squeezed the trigger.
The result was a complete disaster. Instead of the robot blinking out, the device shot out sparks. Ethan watched in wonder as to what looked like a tear in reality, a gray and black miasma of swirling chaos, appeared in the room and expanded quickly. He read about wormholes in science books and what they theoretically looked like. This one was it.
In a swift motion, he switched on the testing room’s force fields as the alarms blared out, hoping to contain the wormhole.
“Oh honestly!” the Mister Handy complained. The wormhole pulled it in along with the Transportalponder, almost like it vanished.
The rift broke through the field like a hot knife through butter and tore everything around it.
He dodged as a piece of debris flew over him, missing him by mere inches, and held onto a nearby desk drilled tightly on the ground. Bits of himself torn from him as the rift pulled him toward it. When he looked at it, a dark, starry abyss was glaring right back at him, the stars themselves trailed in the deep black.
“Well, shit,” he groaned. He held on the desk as much as he could, but the wormhole’s strength managed to drag him in. He slammed headfirst into the now flying furniture, and consciousness deserted him.
As he woke up, a foul smell had assailed his nostrils, reminding him of Brahmin shit mixed with gunpowder and rotten fish.
At first, he thought he was in an alleyway, somewhere in Freeside. Freeside was not known for its cleanliness. He was half-right.
He expected to find a starry night sky when he gazed up, only to see that there was a ceiling far above him. Judging by the weak illumination of neon bulbs, he concluded that he was in civilization, but where exactly? One thing for sure was that he was neither in the Sierra Madre nor somewhere in the Divide. He never liked either of those places.
He stood up steadily, kicking off whatever particular pieces of garbage were on his black boots. Dusting off his armored vault jumpsuit, the Courier took a thorough, good look at himself. He knew that rifts in the space-time continuum can tear things apart at an atomic level, so he had to be sure.
He placed his hands all over a chiseled face that went well with his tall, lean, and athletic body. His face. His brown, rectangular eyes and his olive skin tone came from a mixed heritage in Vault 15, common among citizens of the NCR. His dark-brown hair was cut and combed neatly weeks ago while his anchor beard had been trimmed.
So his body was still here. Hands, arms, legs, feet… everything was left intact. He let out a relieved sigh, taking in the comfort he was still himself, and he was still alive.
He checked his Pip-Boy 3000 strapped on his left wrist. With a whir and a beep, Ethan’s scratched face was bathed in its familiar green light. So it was intact too. The Lone Wanderer told him an old friend of hers always said you could drop a bomb on the Pip-Boy, and it would still work with nary a scratch. Even fully submerging it in water wouldn’t short-circuit it. If Ethan could get back, he would tell her to add a trip through a fucked-up wormhole to the list of disasters the Pip-Boy could withstand. These things were built to last.
The screen showed an incomplete map. It seemed he was out of the Pre-War satellites’ range. Much to his annoyance, he would have to wait for the Pip-Boy’s GPS to adjust to whatever new coordinates it would get. However, the date and time read 5:38 PM 10/19/2286. So that meant he wasn’t out for too long—unless he traveled through time, he thought with a wry laugh.
He stopped and looked around, puzzled. “Wait a minute. Where are that Mister Handy and the Transportalponder?”
Conveniently, the Transportalponder was across from where he was. He picked it up and inspected it. The plastic container that contained the energy had cracked open. The vacuum tube at the front of the pistol-like device was burnt out from using enough power to create the wormhole. Without the specific rare materials to create the Transportalponder, he would be as good as stuck here.
He hoped the wormhole had only destroyed the X-84 facility. That wouldn’t go well with his conscience if it did more than that.
“At least I could play with it,” he muttered and put the now-broken device in his bag.
He checked his surroundings and spotted a small security camera mounted on a wall, tracking his every move. The sight of a stranger randomly appearing in a dark, dank alley would be suspicious as hell. That would prompt someone to check what the hell was going on.
When he got out of the alleyway, he squinted and covered his eyes from the sudden brightness. He found himself taken by the view, his mouth half-open. The architecture was dull, brown, and monolithic as if the buildings were interconnected. It made him compare it to a scene from a dystopian science-fiction movie or a superhero comic book, like La Fantoma. Even the dimly lit storefronts and aging neon signs resembled the places he been to in the Mojave Wasteland, especially the Strip.
His eyes adjusting to the brightness, the image of people—if he could call them that—moving about became clear. Some of them were birdlike, each having a pair of mandibles over their mouths. Others were thin with large, horned heads and black, beady eyes. Some women who looked human had scalped crests instead of hair. A giant, slouching creature with thick arms and vertical slits for a mouth guarded an entrance to what appeared to be a nightclub. There were two long lines of people in front of the creature. As he stumbled by, he bumped into a large, reptilian creature with a crest on its head.
The guns the guards carried far outclassed his. Their suits of armor were sleek while their weapons looked either blocky or curvy. There was an orange, holographic light on one gunman with a pair of mandibles on his face. He wondered how they work, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Plus, he didn’t like how the creature looked at him, so he kept moving.
He wandered for hours. Every joint in his body ached. He couldn’t help but have this strong feeling of isolation and dizziness over him. He wanted to go back home. But how?
While he did see plenty of other folk like himself, the strange creatures that called themselves turians and asari were the most populous. Also, judging by the biggest establishment he could see, with large neon letter spelling Omega he overheard several other people discussing the owner within. There was one common refrain among them: don't fuck with Aria. Duly noted. He huffed and muttered to himself, “Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.”
Suddenly, someone dragged him to the alleyway. A thug preying on their next victim taking him away so there wouldn’t be any witnesses, he thought. Obvious and predictable. This should be easy enough to counteract.
Swaying left and right, the Courier quickly broke his would-be attacker’s hold. The Courier reached over his shoulder and grabbed the attacker by the back of their shirt. With a quick motion, the Courier slammed his enemy to the ground like a wrecking ball.
The cracking sound should’ve done the job, but the attacker quickly recovered and stood up. The Courier whipped out his Bowie knife and lunged, giving the mugger a shallow but long gash across his chest. His attacker yelped in pain and stumbled a few steps backward, clutching his chest in a frantic but futile attempt to close the wound.
The Courier inspected and was taken back. This was a four-eyed humanoid with a thin layer of brown fur all over his body. He wondered what else this universe held in store for him.
Enraged, and terrified out of his mind, the four-eyed alien got out a strange-looking pistol. But the Courier, thanks to his implants, was harder, better, faster, stronger. In the span of a few seconds, he shrugged, gave a smug grin to his attacker, and fired his M1911 pistol, in that order. The two shots hit the thug’s chest made him tumble down backward, dead before hitting the ground.
“At least it’s not like those three old ladies with rolling pins,” Ethan remarked with a sigh. He reloaded his pistol and holstered it.
He went through the alien’s pockets, finding what appeared to be an earpiece. It wouldn’t fit him, but it looked like it might be worth something. He found a thin card with a single word in many unrecognizable languages. One of them read ‘credits,' and he guessed it meant a sum of currency, so he pocketed the card and the earpiece.
He picked up the pistol. From its shape, it looked like a semi-automatic but without a hammer at the back end of the slide. Inside the pistol were cylinder-shaped blocks, thick and big as his thumb. He wanted to tamper with it, but he needed to know how this pistol worked first.
As he put the magazine back in, footsteps thumped him. Was someone else in the alleyway? What were they doing while he was looking through the dead alien’s stuff? Without missing a beat, he stood up and slipped out.
After walking around for an hour straight, the Courier found himself in a marketplace humming with activity. A red-haired man wearing coveralls crouched down and tinkered with a pile of scrap metal on a bench, welding two flat surfaces together with a ring around it. The clerk’s mask covered his face from sparks and the welder’s intense light, not to mention the smell of metal and wire.
Ethan approached the kiosk and knocked on the table, grabbing the man’s attention. The man placed his tool on the floor and turned as he lifted his mask. He was pale with green eyes and a soul patch on his thin chin. He looked like he was in his early twenties.
“Hey there. How’s it going?” The clerk looked tired as if he spent all day working.
“It’s been wonderful, really,” Ethan replied. “The sites are gorgeous, and the people here are friendly. What’s not to like?”
The clerk paused for a moment. “Well, this is the shittiest place in the galaxy. First time on Omega?”
“You could say that. I’m looking for something to buy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A translator.”
The clerk blinked in confusion. He raised his finger before speaking. “You don’t have one? You got here without one?”
Ethan realized if he told the truth, the clerk wouldn’t believe him. “Actually, I got mugged. They took my stuff and gave me this nasty concussion.” He rubbed his forehead to give off the impression that he had a headache. “I got my stuff back, but I think I lost my memory.”
The clerk seemed to be surprised “Oh, okay. Happens to everyone on this station. Except for that ‘amnesia caused by massive head trauma’ thing. But you look like you can handle yourself.”
“Nobody’s perfect, believe me.”
“Anyways, you can use the terminal to buy what you need. Security reasons. You can see ‘em everywhere at the Citadel.” The clerk tilted his head to an orange screen at the Courier’s right.
“What’s the Citadel?” the Courier asked.
The clerk shook his head and pinched his nose. “You’re a fucking idiot.” He sighed, now realizing. “Oh, right. Concussion.”
“I had worse.”
The clerk rolled his eyes, going along. “The Citadel is the capital of galactic civilization. It’s like the opposite of this shithole. I’m sure you can figure out the rest. It had its own fair share of problems, sure. Pretty mundane, from what I hear.”
“So why can’t you leave?” Ethan asked.
“I would love to, but travel costs are high,” the clerk answered. “Plus, I’m under a contract. I hope I won’t get killed before it expired. Omega’s a pretty dangerous place.”
“Yeah. I get the picture.” The Courier gazed at the terminal and tentatively touched the screen. After discovering it responded, he browsed the selection. He found a translator of high quality and an orange light that fitted over his wrist. The same light from before.
“Hey, what’s up with that wristband?” He pointed at the picture of the object on the terminal.
The clerk turned away from the shelf. “Huh? Oh, that’s an omni-tool. They’re multipurpose handheld computers. Everyone has one these days.”
“So why would I need one?” Ethan had his Pip-Boy, so buying one of these things would be redundant to him.
“The omni-tool will also give you a kinetic barrier,” the clerk answered. “It’s weak, but it’s better than nothing. It won’t work against radiation and laser, temperature, slow-moving objects, like knives and sticks, and poison.”
“Like this pistol here?” The Courier showed the clerk his new pistol.
The clerk brought his hand up to his chin and investigated the gun. “That’s an M-3 Predator pistol. Heavy pistols like that pack a real punch against anyone with armor. They’re mass accelerators, so they use metallic slugs, not bullets. They’re accelerated by electromagnetic fields and enhanced by mass effect fields.”
“What are mass effect fields?” the Courier asked.
“They are fields used by element zero, which releases dark energy when exposed to an electrical current. It can increase or decrease the object’s mass, with a positive charge increasing mass while a negative charge decreases mass. But when a ship’s moving faster than light, these fields can create static electricity charge. If you don’t discharge that onto a planet’s surface or its magnetic field, depending on the size of a ship, it’ll go into the hull of a ship or a car instead and cause a lot of damage. Fusing bulkheads, destroying electronics, you name it.”
“So it’ll fry everything inside.”
The clerk shrugged. “Basically, yeah. Anyways, you can’t fire your gun like crazy. It’ll overheat. The new models use thermal clips instead so you won’t have to wait for the gun to vent out heat.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe I should’ve been a teacher. You follow?”
Ethan nodded, showing he listened. He turned to the terminal and picked the items he wanted. His eyes widen in shock when he found out they cost about 7,500. It would’ve greatly depleted his stolen funds from the money slip if he hadn’t sold the four-eyed alien’s earpiece. He expected something like a rare weapon or a suit of power armor to be expensive, not something like this omni-tool.
“All right, here is your stuff.” The clerk handed Ethan an eyepiece and a small, plain bracelet. “One Logic Arrest omni-tool and a Rosetta translator. Enjoy.”
The Courier took the translator and the bracelet, fitting the translator over his eyes. A holographic display appeared with shapes and lines flying when he turned it on. He looked at the bracelet now on his right wrist with a confused look on his face.
“You'll have to turn it on,” the clerk reminded him. “Button’s at the side. It’s easy to find.”
The Courier did so, and an orange light appeared, reaching up to his elbow. “Nice!” Ethan’s smile widened in elation as he messed around with the omni-tool, bringing up a paper-thin screen above the device. “I should go. Bye.” He turned it off.
“Okay, see ya. Try not to die,” the clerk called out.
The Courier left the marketplace. He remembered passing by the nightclub earlier. It would be a great place to gather word.
As he looked up information on his omni-tool, he went to a nightclub, Afterlife. Its name appeared in giant white letters above the entrance.
A hooded man shuffled by, bumping into him. He muttered a quick apology and went straight to the club. The Courier wanted to cut past the line but thought better of it when the line went nowhere.
Instead, he walked away from the bar, somewhere else from here.
“Annoyed: No, I haven’t seen anyone like that here. Nor have I been looking. Joking: Who do you think I am, the bar’s informer?”
This is going nowhere. The blue-skinned asari with freckles on her cheeks pinched the bridge of her nose. Liara T’Soni’s patience with the rather sarcastic elcor was wearing thin. All she wanted were some answers regarding Shepard’s whereabouts.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” she sighed. “I just thought—”
“Miffed: You thought because I was an elcor. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be watching them dancing all day,” the elcor spoke, his voice lacking any emotion. “Pitifully: Elcors are good dancers, but nobody here gives us a chance.”
She looked at the display past the counter, amid the loud noises of the nightclub and its bright, colorful lights. The screen across the counter showed news of the repairs the Citadel took in the wake of the attack by Sovereign, a Reaper, and the geth. Last month, Shepard disappeared when the Normandy was destroyed. But it was so long ago. Deep down, she missed Shepard.
“Mockingly: More than they could afford.” The elcor was also watching the news. “Mournful: If it weren’t for that station, living on Omega would be downright depressing.”
Liara would agree with that sentiment.
“You have to love the elcor,” someone spoke nearby. “They got all the expressiveness of a tree. If they didn’t explain the nuance of what they’re saying, it’d be like talking to one.”
Liara looked away from the elcor. “Oh, I don’t know. I—” She looked at the hooded figure sitting by the elcor. Upon a closer look, she recognized he was her contact. Her one shot at finding Shepard. “Wait. You have something to tell me about the Commander—”
“No, not here.” The hooded man shook his head and looked up, his dark eyes meeting hers. Under the lighting, his scaly skin had a warm set of colors of orange and green. He was a drell, a reptilian race rescued from a dying home world by the hanar. “Outside.”
“I… of course. If it’s for the best.” Liara and the hooded man stood up and walked out of Afterlife.
The Courier leaned forward, resting his arms on a rail. Across from the balcony, down where the crates piled, there was a humongous window where distant stars blinking in and out in outer space.
The sound of gunfire snapped the Courier out of his thoughts. The noises were nearby, down a quick turn and twist of a hallway. Driven to investigate, he ran to the source. Moments later, he entered a large, circular hall. Metal slugs flew by, prompting him to duck back inside. The gunfire here was less noisy than the ones in his travels in the Mojave, meaning he wouldn’t get tinnitus. As he leaned against the wall to his right, the Courier held his pistol with both hands.
He peeked, hoping not to get shot. To one side, ahead was a large group of humans, turians, and the four-eyed batarians. They wore blue-and-white suits of armor, carrying guns like the guards’ at the nightclub. Some of them wore helmets, concealing their faces.
On the other side, behind Ethan was a hooded man in a suit of tan-green armor, taking cover behind similar crates as he fired his Predator pistol. He blinked, recognizing the man—he was the one who bumped into him at the nightclub. By the man was a young asari with freckles on her cheekbones. Her light purple armor appeared to be skin-tight, having less padding on her chest and limbs compared to her companion.
The asari stood up, frowning, and balled her hand into a fist. A dark-blue aura surrounded her as if some power welled up within her. She unclenched her hand and raised it above her head in a quick succession. A yelp brought the Courier’s attention to a batarian that floated mid-air, his four eyes wide with terror, as a blue hue appeared underneath him and pushed him up to the ceiling. His allies opened fire on the asari as she extended her arm, causing the batarian to fly backward. She ducked back behind the crate, unscathed.
Ethan blinked and stared at the asari on her ability to manipulate some strange energy. Before he could read what happened, one armored shooter saw him and turned to a helmeted woman. She carried a flamethrower, with a large tank full of gas on her back. “Take him out! We don’t anyone snitching on us!”
The Courier sighed and brought his chin up. Great. Another bunch of idiots to deal with.
The woman nodded and moved towards the Courier. Taking advantage of the tank’s exposure to gunfire, the Courier used his Pip-Boy. It activated VATS—Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Peaking from cover, he aimed down the sight of his pistol. According to its calculations, he had a decent chance of hitting the tank. For each shot, the chances go up slightly.
Time slowed down around him. Adrenaline rushed through Ethan’s body as he fired three times at a rapid pace. Before the flamer realized what happened, it was too late for her to react as the last shot hit the tank. The tank exploded in a fiery blast, engulfing her and two of the shooters nearby.
“Holy shit!” one shooter, another woman, barked. “Someone needs to take him out! Now!”
“On it,” said a turian with white tattoos on his face and blue lights appeared on his chest and his head. He approached the Courier with a bulky shotgun. A shot rang out, taking out the Courier’s shields. He recalled from the clerk that the shields provided by his omni-tool were weak. In a fight like this, it would last for a few seconds. To survive, he had to be quick and resort to hit-and-run tactics.
He got out his Bowie knife and waited. When the turian was around the corner, Ethan threw him against the adjacent wall. A struggle ensued as he thrust his knife at the turian. The turian attempted to push the knife away from his neck and dropped his gun. Ethan dazed the turian with a head-butt and stabbed him in the neck, dropping him.
More gunshots went off behind him. He turned to the hooded man shooting back at their attackers with a pistol. “Hey!” the hooded man shouted. “Get over here unless you want to get shot!”
Ethan nodded, hearing the man loud and clear. As he looked around for another weapon, he found a rifle attached to the turian’s back. He snatched it off and found it forming in his hands, adjusting to his size. As he inspected it, he found it was blocky, its barrel triangular. He smirked, finding it convenient somehow.
Stepping out of the alleyway, the Courier turned and fired at another shooter, a batarian, in several three-round bursts. The batarian’s shields had been taken out, as seen with a blue blur surrounding him.
He slid behind a crate, next to the asari and the hooded man. As he did so, something broke like glass. His shields gave out, he realized. A sharp sting went through his right arm like someone swiped a knife at him, and it bled. The wound on his arm sealed on its own accord. Under most circumstances, the injury would be severe enough to be treated. But the Monocyte Breeder implant from Dr. Usanagi he bought years ago covered that, speeding up his healing process.
The two strangers stared at him, wondering why he showed up out of nowhere. While the asari seemed to be astonished by his regenerative abilities, he had other priorities to focus on, such as not dying.
“What are you doing here?” The man’s voice sounded digitized like he spoke through a mask. The Courier figured it was his translator’s doing. “You’re lucky your shields held up like that.”
“Lucky is what I’m good at,” Ethan smiled, nonchalant. He stood up when his shields refreshed and activated VATS again, shooting down more of the attackers in his direction. “You know, seeing the sights, killing people. The usual. You?”
The asari blinked after ducking back behind the crate. “I’ll be quick: we’re looking for a body of a friend. Feron’s my contact here.” She tilted her head to the hooded man.
The hooded man frowned. “Liara, you sure that’s a good idea? We just met him!”
“He helped us so far, so it’s a good time as any.” Liara, the asari, looked back at Ethan. “We’re looking for Commander Shepard. Feron had some information on her whereabouts.”
“Who’s Commander Shepard?” the Courier asked loudly over the sound of slugs banging against the crate. He popped out of cover and grabbed an attacker that ran up to them, tossed him and slammed him onto the ground. Ethan pulled his knife out and cut the armored man’s throat, ending his life in an instant.
When he looked back at the two, he realized he wasted his breath as the two gave him incredulous looks. “You…” Feron said.
“How did you not know who Shepard is?” Liara asked.
“You think you’d know her by her reputation since you’re a human,” said Feron.
“I’m new around here.” Ethan poked his head out and found more troopers coming in.
“Aren’t we all?” Feron had shot another attacker.
“Yeah, sure,” Ethan retorted. “We can play Q&A after this if you like.”
A metal slug flew by, missing them by inches. “A wise idea, I might add,” Feron replied.
“At least we agree on something.” Ethan put his knife away and continued firing at the shooters. No matter how many they killed, two more entered the fray. Liara gathered the blue energy and formed it into a sphere in her hands. In a second, she launched the ball at the group in question. It suspended in the air, pulling those nearby toward it and flew around the object as if they were like a string attached to a ceiling.
This gave Ethan and Feron the advantage. They focused their fire at the floating shooters as the Courier used VATS whenever he could. He ducked as one of them flew above him. He continued firing, with Liara firing her pistol at another new attacker running in on the scene.
One of the turians entered the fray with a large, bulky rifle in hand. Liara leaned out of cover and pulled off a new trick. A blue barrier appeared on the turian, preventing him from moving.
Without warning, one shooter dropped dead with a bloody hole in his head. “Sniper! Look out!" one other shooter, a dark-haired man with tanned skin, cried with fear in his eyes. Another shot pierced through his head.
Several of the attackers got shot down. Capitalizing on this, Feron ran first, dashing away. Liara came next, tossing away another attacker with her powers and grabbed Ethan’s arm, following the hooded man. None of them looked back as they ran.
“Which way?” Liara wondered.
“Anywhere safe, obviously,” Ethan answered.
As they rounded another corner, the three stopped when they stumbled upon two huge men in hulking, white armor, carrying smoothly shaped rifles. A fair-skinned, dark-haired lady, clad in a dark-sleeved white uniform, led them. It was hard for Ethan to tell if she was beautiful or uncanny.
“Or not.”
“Relax. We’re working toward the same goal: Finding Commander Shepard,” the woman stated.
“Shepard’s dead,” Liara pointed out.
“That’s what they say,” the woman scoffed. “But Shepard has beaten the odds before.”
“Who are you, anyway?” The Courier stepped toward the woman. “And what makes this Shepard so special?”
The woman and her men gave him confused looks. “I’m Miranda Lawson. Shepard’s a hero, a bloody icon. And yet you have never heard of her?”
Liara sighed. “I’ll try to explain to him. He has helped us so far.” She turned to Ethan. “I’ll explain later. Shepard…” She curled her lips. “None of us would be here if she hadn’t stopped an invasion on the Citadel and saved the Council.”
“Oh, okay.” Ethan nodded and turned to Miranda.
“I admit this wasn’t what we expected,” said Miranda.
“What do you want?” Liara asked.
“I’m here to take you to someone who’s interested. He wants to meet you. Work with us, and we might be able to resurrect Shepard.”
The Courier scoffed. He wanted to say resurrecting the dead was impossible, but he bit his tongue instead. If he can go from one universe to another, he was sure resurrection could be within the realm of possibility.
Feron glanced at Liara, frowning as he folded his arms. “I don’t trust this set-up.”
Ethan looked at Feron. Under the hood, with what little lighting they had, he had scales for skin. At least Feron doesn’t look like a Mirelurk, but they were amphibians. “What are you talking about?”
“Cerberus is pro-human,” Feron explained. “They’re only interested in Shepard because she’s human. I doubt they’d mourn her if she’s a hanar or a krogan.”
“A bunch of racists,” Ethan huffed. “Good to know. Those people who attacked us… Who are they?”
“They’re Blue Suns. They’re a mercenary group consisting of humans, turians, and batarians. I think they were hired…”
“Hate group or not, we have similar goals as Cerberus do,” the asari butted in. “Let’s meet up with them.”
“Come with me.” Miranda brushed strands of hair off her face. “And you can bring your friends, too. We're not being choosy today.”
The woman and her bodyguards headed off. Liara followed along, with Feron hanging back.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Feron commented as the Courier caught up with him and the others.
“Let’s see. I got myself into a gunfight with you guys, and now we’re working with a human supremacist group to find a dead hero.” Ethan couldn’t help but smile, holding back his laughter. “Of course you have a bad feeling about this!”
After one too many near-death experiences, Ethan Sunderland, the Courier, decided to upgrade his Transportalponder. It should increase the device’s range, allowing him to teleport to Big Mountain from anyplace, anytime. He took extra precautions—calculations, numerous trials, and multiple prototypes over the last couple years. He was a scientist and an engineer. What could go wrong?
He should have known by now. Everything could go wrong at Big Mountain, and it always did.
He set it up at X-84, the facility in Big Mountain that manufactured his Transportalponder. There was the device itself in the testing room with a robot, a Mister Handy, as the test subject, and an alarm system. Not long after the New California Republic snatched victory again at Hoover Dam, the facility had popped out of the ground like a mole rat during mating season.
Looking through the carefully cleaned window, the Courier observed as the Mister Handy used one of its claws to pick up the Transportalponder. With a press of a button at the console, the Mister Handy obeyed the command and squeezed the trigger.
The result was a complete disaster. Instead of the robot blinking out, the device shot out sparks. Ethan watched in wonder as to what looked like a tear in reality, a gray and black miasma of swirling chaos, appeared in the room and expanded quickly. He read about wormholes in science books and what they theoretically looked like. This one was it.
In a swift motion, he switched on the testing room’s force fields as the alarms blared out, hoping to contain the wormhole.
“Oh honestly!” the Mister Handy complained. The wormhole pulled it in along with the Transportalponder, almost like it vanished.
The rift broke through the field like a hot knife through butter and tore everything around it.
He dodged as a piece of debris flew over him, missing him by mere inches, and held onto a nearby desk drilled tightly on the ground. Bits of himself torn from him as the rift pulled him toward it. When he looked at it, a dark, starry abyss was glaring right back at him, the stars themselves trailed in the deep black.
“Well, shit,” he groaned. He held on the desk as much as he could, but the wormhole’s strength managed to drag him in. He slammed headfirst into the now flying furniture, and consciousness deserted him.
As he woke up, a foul smell had assailed his nostrils, reminding him of Brahmin shit mixed with gunpowder and rotten fish.
At first, he thought he was in an alleyway, somewhere in Freeside. Freeside was not known for its cleanliness. He was half-right.
He expected to find a starry night sky when he gazed up, only to see that there was a ceiling far above him. Judging by the weak illumination of neon bulbs, he concluded that he was in civilization, but where exactly? One thing for sure was that he was neither in the Sierra Madre nor somewhere in the Divide. He never liked either of those places.
He stood up steadily, kicking off whatever particular pieces of garbage were on his black boots. Dusting off his armored vault jumpsuit, the Courier took a thorough, good look at himself. He knew that rifts in the space-time continuum can tear things apart at an atomic level, so he had to be sure.
He placed his hands all over a chiseled face that went well with his tall, lean, and athletic body. His face. His brown, rectangular eyes and his olive skin tone came from a mixed heritage in Vault 15, common among citizens of the NCR. His dark-brown hair was cut and combed neatly weeks ago while his anchor beard had been trimmed.
So his body was still here. Hands, arms, legs, feet… everything was left intact. He let out a relieved sigh, taking in the comfort he was still himself, and he was still alive.
He checked his Pip-Boy 3000 strapped on his left wrist. With a whir and a beep, Ethan’s scratched face was bathed in its familiar green light. So it was intact too. The Lone Wanderer told him an old friend of hers always said you could drop a bomb on the Pip-Boy, and it would still work with nary a scratch. Even fully submerging it in water wouldn’t short-circuit it. If Ethan could get back, he would tell her to add a trip through a fucked-up wormhole to the list of disasters the Pip-Boy could withstand. These things were built to last.
The screen showed an incomplete map. It seemed he was out of the Pre-War satellites’ range. Much to his annoyance, he would have to wait for the Pip-Boy’s GPS to adjust to whatever new coordinates it would get. However, the date and time read 5:38 PM 10/19/2286. So that meant he wasn’t out for too long—unless he traveled through time, he thought with a wry laugh.
He stopped and looked around, puzzled. “Wait a minute. Where are that Mister Handy and the Transportalponder?”
Conveniently, the Transportalponder was across from where he was. He picked it up and inspected it. The plastic container that contained the energy had cracked open. The vacuum tube at the front of the pistol-like device was burnt out from using enough power to create the wormhole. Without the specific rare materials to create the Transportalponder, he would be as good as stuck here.
He hoped the wormhole had only destroyed the X-84 facility. That wouldn’t go well with his conscience if it did more than that.
“At least I could play with it,” he muttered and put the now-broken device in his bag.
He checked his surroundings and spotted a small security camera mounted on a wall, tracking his every move. The sight of a stranger randomly appearing in a dark, dank alley would be suspicious as hell. That would prompt someone to check what the hell was going on.
When he got out of the alleyway, he squinted and covered his eyes from the sudden brightness. He found himself taken by the view, his mouth half-open. The architecture was dull, brown, and monolithic as if the buildings were interconnected. It made him compare it to a scene from a dystopian science-fiction movie or a superhero comic book, like La Fantoma. Even the dimly lit storefronts and aging neon signs resembled the places he been to in the Mojave Wasteland, especially the Strip.
His eyes adjusting to the brightness, the image of people—if he could call them that—moving about became clear. Some of them were birdlike, each having a pair of mandibles over their mouths. Others were thin with large, horned heads and black, beady eyes. Some women who looked human had scalped crests instead of hair. A giant, slouching creature with thick arms and vertical slits for a mouth guarded an entrance to what appeared to be a nightclub. There were two long lines of people in front of the creature. As he stumbled by, he bumped into a large, reptilian creature with a crest on its head.
The guns the guards carried far outclassed his. Their suits of armor were sleek while their weapons looked either blocky or curvy. There was an orange, holographic light on one gunman with a pair of mandibles on his face. He wondered how they work, but he didn’t want to find out the hard way. Plus, he didn’t like how the creature looked at him, so he kept moving.
He wandered for hours. Every joint in his body ached. He couldn’t help but have this strong feeling of isolation and dizziness over him. He wanted to go back home. But how?
While he did see plenty of other folk like himself, the strange creatures that called themselves turians and asari were the most populous. Also, judging by the biggest establishment he could see, with large neon letter spelling Omega he overheard several other people discussing the owner within. There was one common refrain among them: don't fuck with Aria. Duly noted. He huffed and muttered to himself, “Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.”
Suddenly, someone dragged him to the alleyway. A thug preying on their next victim taking him away so there wouldn’t be any witnesses, he thought. Obvious and predictable. This should be easy enough to counteract.
Swaying left and right, the Courier quickly broke his would-be attacker’s hold. The Courier reached over his shoulder and grabbed the attacker by the back of their shirt. With a quick motion, the Courier slammed his enemy to the ground like a wrecking ball.
The cracking sound should’ve done the job, but the attacker quickly recovered and stood up. The Courier whipped out his Bowie knife and lunged, giving the mugger a shallow but long gash across his chest. His attacker yelped in pain and stumbled a few steps backward, clutching his chest in a frantic but futile attempt to close the wound.
The Courier inspected and was taken back. This was a four-eyed humanoid with a thin layer of brown fur all over his body. He wondered what else this universe held in store for him.
Enraged, and terrified out of his mind, the four-eyed alien got out a strange-looking pistol. But the Courier, thanks to his implants, was harder, better, faster, stronger. In the span of a few seconds, he shrugged, gave a smug grin to his attacker, and fired his M1911 pistol, in that order. The two shots hit the thug’s chest made him tumble down backward, dead before hitting the ground.
“At least it’s not like those three old ladies with rolling pins,” Ethan remarked with a sigh. He reloaded his pistol and holstered it.
He went through the alien’s pockets, finding what appeared to be an earpiece. It wouldn’t fit him, but it looked like it might be worth something. He found a thin card with a single word in many unrecognizable languages. One of them read ‘credits,' and he guessed it meant a sum of currency, so he pocketed the card and the earpiece.
He picked up the pistol. From its shape, it looked like a semi-automatic but without a hammer at the back end of the slide. Inside the pistol were cylinder-shaped blocks, thick and big as his thumb. He wanted to tamper with it, but he needed to know how this pistol worked first.
As he put the magazine back in, footsteps thumped him. Was someone else in the alleyway? What were they doing while he was looking through the dead alien’s stuff? Without missing a beat, he stood up and slipped out.
After walking around for an hour straight, the Courier found himself in a marketplace humming with activity. A red-haired man wearing coveralls crouched down and tinkered with a pile of scrap metal on a bench, welding two flat surfaces together with a ring around it. The clerk’s mask covered his face from sparks and the welder’s intense light, not to mention the smell of metal and wire.
Ethan approached the kiosk and knocked on the table, grabbing the man’s attention. The man placed his tool on the floor and turned as he lifted his mask. He was pale with green eyes and a soul patch on his thin chin. He looked like he was in his early twenties.
“Hey there. How’s it going?” The clerk looked tired as if he spent all day working.
“It’s been wonderful, really,” Ethan replied. “The sites are gorgeous, and the people here are friendly. What’s not to like?”
The clerk paused for a moment. “Well, this is the shittiest place in the galaxy. First time on Omega?”
“You could say that. I’m looking for something to buy.”
“What are you looking for?”
“A translator.”
The clerk blinked in confusion. He raised his finger before speaking. “You don’t have one? You got here without one?”
Ethan realized if he told the truth, the clerk wouldn’t believe him. “Actually, I got mugged. They took my stuff and gave me this nasty concussion.” He rubbed his forehead to give off the impression that he had a headache. “I got my stuff back, but I think I lost my memory.”
The clerk seemed to be surprised “Oh, okay. Happens to everyone on this station. Except for that ‘amnesia caused by massive head trauma’ thing. But you look like you can handle yourself.”
“Nobody’s perfect, believe me.”
“Anyways, you can use the terminal to buy what you need. Security reasons. You can see ‘em everywhere at the Citadel.” The clerk tilted his head to an orange screen at the Courier’s right.
“What’s the Citadel?” the Courier asked.
The clerk shook his head and pinched his nose. “You’re a fucking idiot.” He sighed, now realizing. “Oh, right. Concussion.”
“I had worse.”
The clerk rolled his eyes, going along. “The Citadel is the capital of galactic civilization. It’s like the opposite of this shithole. I’m sure you can figure out the rest. It had its own fair share of problems, sure. Pretty mundane, from what I hear.”
“So why can’t you leave?” Ethan asked.
“I would love to, but travel costs are high,” the clerk answered. “Plus, I’m under a contract. I hope I won’t get killed before it expired. Omega’s a pretty dangerous place.”
“Yeah. I get the picture.” The Courier gazed at the terminal and tentatively touched the screen. After discovering it responded, he browsed the selection. He found a translator of high quality and an orange light that fitted over his wrist. The same light from before.
“Hey, what’s up with that wristband?” He pointed at the picture of the object on the terminal.
The clerk turned away from the shelf. “Huh? Oh, that’s an omni-tool. They’re multipurpose handheld computers. Everyone has one these days.”
“So why would I need one?” Ethan had his Pip-Boy, so buying one of these things would be redundant to him.
“The omni-tool will also give you a kinetic barrier,” the clerk answered. “It’s weak, but it’s better than nothing. It won’t work against radiation and laser, temperature, slow-moving objects, like knives and sticks, and poison.”
“Like this pistol here?” The Courier showed the clerk his new pistol.
The clerk brought his hand up to his chin and investigated the gun. “That’s an M-3 Predator pistol. Heavy pistols like that pack a real punch against anyone with armor. They’re mass accelerators, so they use metallic slugs, not bullets. They’re accelerated by electromagnetic fields and enhanced by mass effect fields.”
“What are mass effect fields?” the Courier asked.
“They are fields used by element zero, which releases dark energy when exposed to an electrical current. It can increase or decrease the object’s mass, with a positive charge increasing mass while a negative charge decreases mass. But when a ship’s moving faster than light, these fields can create static electricity charge. If you don’t discharge that onto a planet’s surface or its magnetic field, depending on the size of a ship, it’ll go into the hull of a ship or a car instead and cause a lot of damage. Fusing bulkheads, destroying electronics, you name it.”
“So it’ll fry everything inside.”
The clerk shrugged. “Basically, yeah. Anyways, you can’t fire your gun like crazy. It’ll overheat. The new models use thermal clips instead so you won’t have to wait for the gun to vent out heat.” He took a deep breath. “Maybe I should’ve been a teacher. You follow?”
Ethan nodded, showing he listened. He turned to the terminal and picked the items he wanted. His eyes widen in shock when he found out they cost about 7,500. It would’ve greatly depleted his stolen funds from the money slip if he hadn’t sold the four-eyed alien’s earpiece. He expected something like a rare weapon or a suit of power armor to be expensive, not something like this omni-tool.
“All right, here is your stuff.” The clerk handed Ethan an eyepiece and a small, plain bracelet. “One Logic Arrest omni-tool and a Rosetta translator. Enjoy.”
The Courier took the translator and the bracelet, fitting the translator over his eyes. A holographic display appeared with shapes and lines flying when he turned it on. He looked at the bracelet now on his right wrist with a confused look on his face.
“You'll have to turn it on,” the clerk reminded him. “Button’s at the side. It’s easy to find.”
The Courier did so, and an orange light appeared, reaching up to his elbow. “Nice!” Ethan’s smile widened in elation as he messed around with the omni-tool, bringing up a paper-thin screen above the device. “I should go. Bye.” He turned it off.
“Okay, see ya. Try not to die,” the clerk called out.
The Courier left the marketplace. He remembered passing by the nightclub earlier. It would be a great place to gather word.
As he looked up information on his omni-tool, he went to a nightclub, Afterlife. Its name appeared in giant white letters above the entrance.
A hooded man shuffled by, bumping into him. He muttered a quick apology and went straight to the club. The Courier wanted to cut past the line but thought better of it when the line went nowhere.
Instead, he walked away from the bar, somewhere else from here.
“Annoyed: No, I haven’t seen anyone like that here. Nor have I been looking. Joking: Who do you think I am, the bar’s informer?”
This is going nowhere. The blue-skinned asari with freckles on her cheeks pinched the bridge of her nose. Liara T’Soni’s patience with the rather sarcastic elcor was wearing thin. All she wanted were some answers regarding Shepard’s whereabouts.
“I didn’t mean to offend,” she sighed. “I just thought—”
“Miffed: You thought because I was an elcor. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be watching them dancing all day,” the elcor spoke, his voice lacking any emotion. “Pitifully: Elcors are good dancers, but nobody here gives us a chance.”
She looked at the display past the counter, amid the loud noises of the nightclub and its bright, colorful lights. The screen across the counter showed news of the repairs the Citadel took in the wake of the attack by Sovereign, a Reaper, and the geth. Last month, Shepard disappeared when the Normandy was destroyed. But it was so long ago. Deep down, she missed Shepard.
“Mockingly: More than they could afford.” The elcor was also watching the news. “Mournful: If it weren’t for that station, living on Omega would be downright depressing.”
Liara would agree with that sentiment.
“You have to love the elcor,” someone spoke nearby. “They got all the expressiveness of a tree. If they didn’t explain the nuance of what they’re saying, it’d be like talking to one.”
Liara looked away from the elcor. “Oh, I don’t know. I—” She looked at the hooded figure sitting by the elcor. Upon a closer look, she recognized he was her contact. Her one shot at finding Shepard. “Wait. You have something to tell me about the Commander—”
“No, not here.” The hooded man shook his head and looked up, his dark eyes meeting hers. Under the lighting, his scaly skin had a warm set of colors of orange and green. He was a drell, a reptilian race rescued from a dying home world by the hanar. “Outside.”
“I… of course. If it’s for the best.” Liara and the hooded man stood up and walked out of Afterlife.
The Courier leaned forward, resting his arms on a rail. Across from the balcony, down where the crates piled, there was a humongous window where distant stars blinking in and out in outer space.
The sound of gunfire snapped the Courier out of his thoughts. The noises were nearby, down a quick turn and twist of a hallway. Driven to investigate, he ran to the source. Moments later, he entered a large, circular hall. Metal slugs flew by, prompting him to duck back inside. The gunfire here was less noisy than the ones in his travels in the Mojave, meaning he wouldn’t get tinnitus. As he leaned against the wall to his right, the Courier held his pistol with both hands.
He peeked, hoping not to get shot. To one side, ahead was a large group of humans, turians, and the four-eyed batarians. They wore blue-and-white suits of armor, carrying guns like the guards’ at the nightclub. Some of them wore helmets, concealing their faces.
On the other side, behind Ethan was a hooded man in a suit of tan-green armor, taking cover behind similar crates as he fired his Predator pistol. He blinked, recognizing the man—he was the one who bumped into him at the nightclub. By the man was a young asari with freckles on her cheekbones. Her light purple armor appeared to be skin-tight, having less padding on her chest and limbs compared to her companion.
The asari stood up, frowning, and balled her hand into a fist. A dark-blue aura surrounded her as if some power welled up within her. She unclenched her hand and raised it above her head in a quick succession. A yelp brought the Courier’s attention to a batarian that floated mid-air, his four eyes wide with terror, as a blue hue appeared underneath him and pushed him up to the ceiling. His allies opened fire on the asari as she extended her arm, causing the batarian to fly backward. She ducked back behind the crate, unscathed.
Ethan blinked and stared at the asari on her ability to manipulate some strange energy. Before he could read what happened, one armored shooter saw him and turned to a helmeted woman. She carried a flamethrower, with a large tank full of gas on her back. “Take him out! We don’t anyone snitching on us!”
The Courier sighed and brought his chin up. Great. Another bunch of idiots to deal with.
The woman nodded and moved towards the Courier. Taking advantage of the tank’s exposure to gunfire, the Courier used his Pip-Boy. It activated VATS—Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Peaking from cover, he aimed down the sight of his pistol. According to its calculations, he had a decent chance of hitting the tank. For each shot, the chances go up slightly.
Time slowed down around him. Adrenaline rushed through Ethan’s body as he fired three times at a rapid pace. Before the flamer realized what happened, it was too late for her to react as the last shot hit the tank. The tank exploded in a fiery blast, engulfing her and two of the shooters nearby.
“Holy shit!” one shooter, another woman, barked. “Someone needs to take him out! Now!”
“On it,” said a turian with white tattoos on his face and blue lights appeared on his chest and his head. He approached the Courier with a bulky shotgun. A shot rang out, taking out the Courier’s shields. He recalled from the clerk that the shields provided by his omni-tool were weak. In a fight like this, it would last for a few seconds. To survive, he had to be quick and resort to hit-and-run tactics.
He got out his Bowie knife and waited. When the turian was around the corner, Ethan threw him against the adjacent wall. A struggle ensued as he thrust his knife at the turian. The turian attempted to push the knife away from his neck and dropped his gun. Ethan dazed the turian with a head-butt and stabbed him in the neck, dropping him.
More gunshots went off behind him. He turned to the hooded man shooting back at their attackers with a pistol. “Hey!” the hooded man shouted. “Get over here unless you want to get shot!”
Ethan nodded, hearing the man loud and clear. As he looked around for another weapon, he found a rifle attached to the turian’s back. He snatched it off and found it forming in his hands, adjusting to his size. As he inspected it, he found it was blocky, its barrel triangular. He smirked, finding it convenient somehow.
Stepping out of the alleyway, the Courier turned and fired at another shooter, a batarian, in several three-round bursts. The batarian’s shields had been taken out, as seen with a blue blur surrounding him.
He slid behind a crate, next to the asari and the hooded man. As he did so, something broke like glass. His shields gave out, he realized. A sharp sting went through his right arm like someone swiped a knife at him, and it bled. The wound on his arm sealed on its own accord. Under most circumstances, the injury would be severe enough to be treated. But the Monocyte Breeder implant from Dr. Usanagi he bought years ago covered that, speeding up his healing process.
The two strangers stared at him, wondering why he showed up out of nowhere. While the asari seemed to be astonished by his regenerative abilities, he had other priorities to focus on, such as not dying.
“What are you doing here?” The man’s voice sounded digitized like he spoke through a mask. The Courier figured it was his translator’s doing. “You’re lucky your shields held up like that.”
“Lucky is what I’m good at,” Ethan smiled, nonchalant. He stood up when his shields refreshed and activated VATS again, shooting down more of the attackers in his direction. “You know, seeing the sights, killing people. The usual. You?”
The asari blinked after ducking back behind the crate. “I’ll be quick: we’re looking for a body of a friend. Feron’s my contact here.” She tilted her head to the hooded man.
The hooded man frowned. “Liara, you sure that’s a good idea? We just met him!”
“He helped us so far, so it’s a good time as any.” Liara, the asari, looked back at Ethan. “We’re looking for Commander Shepard. Feron had some information on her whereabouts.”
“Who’s Commander Shepard?” the Courier asked loudly over the sound of slugs banging against the crate. He popped out of cover and grabbed an attacker that ran up to them, tossed him and slammed him onto the ground. Ethan pulled his knife out and cut the armored man’s throat, ending his life in an instant.
When he looked back at the two, he realized he wasted his breath as the two gave him incredulous looks. “You…” Feron said.
“How did you not know who Shepard is?” Liara asked.
“You think you’d know her by her reputation since you’re a human,” said Feron.
“I’m new around here.” Ethan poked his head out and found more troopers coming in.
“Aren’t we all?” Feron had shot another attacker.
“Yeah, sure,” Ethan retorted. “We can play Q&A after this if you like.”
A metal slug flew by, missing them by inches. “A wise idea, I might add,” Feron replied.
“At least we agree on something.” Ethan put his knife away and continued firing at the shooters. No matter how many they killed, two more entered the fray. Liara gathered the blue energy and formed it into a sphere in her hands. In a second, she launched the ball at the group in question. It suspended in the air, pulling those nearby toward it and flew around the object as if they were like a string attached to a ceiling.
This gave Ethan and Feron the advantage. They focused their fire at the floating shooters as the Courier used VATS whenever he could. He ducked as one of them flew above him. He continued firing, with Liara firing her pistol at another new attacker running in on the scene.
One of the turians entered the fray with a large, bulky rifle in hand. Liara leaned out of cover and pulled off a new trick. A blue barrier appeared on the turian, preventing him from moving.
Without warning, one shooter dropped dead with a bloody hole in his head. “Sniper! Look out!" one other shooter, a dark-haired man with tanned skin, cried with fear in his eyes. Another shot pierced through his head.
Several of the attackers got shot down. Capitalizing on this, Feron ran first, dashing away. Liara came next, tossing away another attacker with her powers and grabbed Ethan’s arm, following the hooded man. None of them looked back as they ran.
“Which way?” Liara wondered.
“Anywhere safe, obviously,” Ethan answered.
As they rounded another corner, the three stopped when they stumbled upon two huge men in hulking, white armor, carrying smoothly shaped rifles. A fair-skinned, dark-haired lady, clad in a dark-sleeved white uniform, led them. It was hard for Ethan to tell if she was beautiful or uncanny.
“Or not.”
“Relax. We’re working toward the same goal: Finding Commander Shepard,” the woman stated.
“Shepard’s dead,” Liara pointed out.
“That’s what they say,” the woman scoffed. “But Shepard has beaten the odds before.”
“Who are you, anyway?” The Courier stepped toward the woman. “And what makes this Shepard so special?”
The woman and her men gave him confused looks. “I’m Miranda Lawson. Shepard’s a hero, a bloody icon. And yet you have never heard of her?”
Liara sighed. “I’ll try to explain to him. He has helped us so far.” She turned to Ethan. “I’ll explain later. Shepard…” She curled her lips. “None of us would be here if she hadn’t stopped an invasion on the Citadel and saved the Council.”
“Oh, okay.” Ethan nodded and turned to Miranda.
“I admit this wasn’t what we expected,” said Miranda.
“What do you want?” Liara asked.
“I’m here to take you to someone who’s interested. He wants to meet you. Work with us, and we might be able to resurrect Shepard.”
The Courier scoffed. He wanted to say resurrecting the dead was impossible, but he bit his tongue instead. If he can go from one universe to another, he was sure resurrection could be within the realm of possibility.
Feron glanced at Liara, frowning as he folded his arms. “I don’t trust this set-up.”
Ethan looked at Feron. Under the hood, with what little lighting they had, he had scales for skin. At least Feron doesn’t look like a Mirelurk, but they were amphibians. “What are you talking about?”
“Cerberus is pro-human,” Feron explained. “They’re only interested in Shepard because she’s human. I doubt they’d mourn her if she’s a hanar or a krogan.”
“A bunch of racists,” Ethan huffed. “Good to know. Those people who attacked us… Who are they?”
“They’re Blue Suns. They’re a mercenary group consisting of humans, turians, and batarians. I think they were hired…”
“Hate group or not, we have similar goals as Cerberus do,” the asari butted in. “Let’s meet up with them.”
“Come with me.” Miranda brushed strands of hair off her face. “And you can bring your friends, too. We're not being choosy today.”
The woman and her bodyguards headed off. Liara followed along, with Feron hanging back.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Feron commented as the Courier caught up with him and the others.
“Let’s see. I got myself into a gunfight with you guys, and now we’re working with a human supremacist group to find a dead hero.” Ethan couldn’t help but smile, holding back his laughter. “Of course you have a bad feeling about this!”