But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't true. The sensations were too real, too complete. He could feel the stale air moving across his skin. He could smell the mold and the chemical tang. He could taste the metallic residue of whatever drugs had been pumped into this body—and yes, now that he looked, he could see the small puncture wounds on his arms, the telltale signs of repeated injections.
Drugs. Someone's been drugging this kid.
The revelation should have been shocking, but in the context of everything else that was happening, it barely registered. He had bigger problems than figuring out why some unknown teenager had track marks on his arms.
The girl had stopped yelling and was now staring at him with a mixture of suspicion and annoyance. "Seriously, what's wrong with you? You're acting even weirder than usual, and that's saying something."
He needed information. He needed to understand what was happening, where he was, who these people were supposed to be. But he couldn't just start asking questions without seeming insane—more insane than he apparently already seemed.
Play along, he decided. Figure out the situation first, then worry about how to fix it.
But the girl seemed to interpret his silence as defiance, because the next thing he knew, she was swinging the baseball bat at his head.
Instinct took over. Despite his body's weakness, despite the unfamiliarity of his new limbs, he managed to get his arms up and catch the bat before it could cave in his skull. The impact sent shockwaves of pain up his arms—this body really was pathetically weak—but his muscle memory was intact. Years of sports, years of fights with his actual siblings (wait, he didn't have siblings, did he?), years of self-defense training kicked in.
He twisted, using her momentum against her, and managed to wrench the bat away. She stumbled backward, her eyes wide with surprise.
"What the hell—" she started.
"What's YOUR problem?" he snapped, his voice coming out higher and weaker than he was used to but carrying genuine anger. "Are you trying to kill me?"
The words felt strange in his mouth, spoken in a voice that wasn't his own, but the emotion behind them was real enough. Whatever was happening to him, getting beaten with a baseball bat wasn't going to help him figure it out.
She stared at him like he'd grown a second head. "You... you fought back."
The way she said it, with genuine surprise rather than anger, made something cold settle in his stomach. This Daniel kid—whoever he was supposed to be—apparently didn't usually defend himself. Which raised the question of what kind of life he'd been living in this miserable apartment with this violent girl who claimed to be his sister.
Focus, he told himself. First things first. Figure out where you are and when you are.
He tossed the bat to the side—his weak arms could barely manage even that simple motion—and moved toward what looked like a television in the corner of the room. It was an ancient-looking thing, the kind of CRT monitor he remembered from his childhood, but the interface when he turned it on was sleek and futuristic, with graphics that seemed decades ahead of anything he remembered.
The first channel showed news, and he nearly laughed out loud at what he saw. Some kind of science fiction movie, apparently, with CGI spaceships and reporters discussing something called "the Terra Nova colony" and "the Systems Alliance."
Really? he thought. This is the best they could do? Some cheesy sci-fi B-movie?
He changed the channel. More of the same. Another channel. The same story, covered by different news networks. He flipped through dozens of channels, and they were all covering the same impossible story about humanity's expansion into space, about colonies and alliances and technology that didn't exist.
It's got to be some kind of viral marketing campaign, he reasoned. Or maybe a alternate reality game. That would explain the immersive quality, the attention to detail.
But as he watched, as he saw the production values and the consistency across every single channel, doubt began to creep in. This was either the most elaborate hoax in human history, or...
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, the first words he'd spoken clearly since waking up. "Space travel? Colony ships? Come on, we barely have chemical rockets that can reach the moon. Who hired you?"
The girl—his supposed sister—stared at him like he'd just declared that the Earth was flat. "What are you talking about? Chemical rockets? We've had mass relays for decades! There's been a lunar colony since—"
"Mass relays?" The term hit him like a physical blow. He knew that term. He knew it from... from...
Mass Effect.
The realization crept over him slowly, like ice water filling his veins. Mass relays. Terra Nova. Systems Alliance. These weren't generic sci-fi terms. These were specific references to a very specific fictional universe. A universe he knew well, because he'd spent hundreds of hours playing those games.
No. No, that's impossible.
His hands were shaking as he fumbled for what looked like a phone—though it was sleeker and more advanced than any phone he'd ever seen. Somehow, without thinking, he knew how to operate it, his fingers navigating the interface like he'd been using it for years. He searched for news about mass relays, about element zero, about the Protheans.
Every search came back with results. Real results. News articles, scientific papers, government documents. All discussing these things as established facts, as part of human history and current reality.
"Are we... are we using element zero for our FTL drives?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Of course we are," the girl replied, still staring at him with concern. "Daniel, what's wrong with you? Did you hit your head or something? You're talking like you've never heard of—"
She kept talking, but he'd stopped listening. The phone had pulled up an article about humanity's discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars, about reverse-engineering mass effect technology, about the rapid expansion into space that had followed. The date stamp on the article was from three years ago.
He scrolled to check the current date.
May 15th, 2150.
Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ.
The full scope of what was happening hit him like a truck. This wasn't virtual reality. This wasn't a prank. This wasn't some elaborate kidnapping scheme. He was in the Mass Effect universe. He was in the body of some kid named Daniel Fischer, in the year 2150, just a few years before...
Before First Contact.
The phone slipped from his nerveless fingers as the implications crashed over him. In just a few years—maybe less—humanity would encounter the Turian Hierarchy. The First Contact War would begin and end with humanity's military defeat and subsequent integration into the Citadel system as a junior member species.
And after that... God, after that it only got worse. The Reaper threat that the galactic community would ignore until it was almost too late. The billions of human lives lost in the wars that followed. The systematic suppression of human technological advancement by alien species who saw them as useful tools at best, dangerous upstarts at worst.
The Spectres, he realized with growing horror. They'll kill any human scientists or politicians who get too close to developing truly independent technology. They'll keep us dependent, keep us weak, keep us begging for scraps from alien overlords who see us as nothing more than a useful servant race.
The thought of his species—his people—being reduced to that state made him physically ill. He'd always hated that aspect of the Mass Effect universe when he'd played the games. The way humanity was portrayed as this scrappy underdog that had to prove itself worthy of alien approval. The way human culture and human values were gradually eroded by constant exposure to "superior" alien civilizations.