Mass Effect: Far Rim


 * ''There are some places
 * ''we should not go.
 * ''There are some answers
 * ''we need not know.
 * Miracle of Sound, DNA

Prologue: Waking to a Nightmare
It was always disorienting to wake up in a sleeper pod. A dark, confined rectangle with hardly enough volume to fit you, like a coffin tilted back at an angle. It may as well have been one, the way cryostasis slowed your life-sustaining functions. The lingering chill of cryo made Travers' skin, muscle, and bone ache as the last of the vapor was drawn out of the pod's interior by vacuum tubes as others pumped in warm oxygen. The air was anything but fresh, and the heavy synthetic smell of plastic filled his lungs, almost making him sick. Coughing to trick his body into thinking it was clear, he narrowed his eyes to prepare them for the blinding light that would flood in when the pod unsealed.

With a hiss of hydraulics, the hatch panels cracked open, but to his surprise there was no glare of artificial light. Outside his temporary coffin, he was aware of little more than he had been inside the pod's dark, confined volume. His eyes adjusted quickly to use what little illumination there was, coming from dim motes lining the walkway between two rows of sleepers.

Grasping the sides of the pod, he pushed himself to a right angle with the floor and stepped onto the walkway, the metal grate rattling a bit as he began to wonder where the cryo technician was. There should have been someone to make sure he was alright. And who'd turned out the lights? Travers stretched a bit to loosen the fabric of his sleeveless shirt and long pants, then headed down the walkway to chew someone out about protocol.

Even here on the edges of the Terminus Systems you had to run a ship right. Especially out here. If you left something to chance and it broke, there wouldn't be anyone around to find the ship's lifeless hulk drifting through space for a few centuries. It got cold real quick if any of the life support components failed. It was already cool enough here to see his breath in the dim light. Where was everyone? The sleeper area was odd enough, but as he stepped into the common dining room, there were still no lights on.

A flash and crackle of electricity startled him, and as he looked for the source, he saw a panel from this deck's low ceiling was hanging almost off of its frame, with a mess of severed wiring hanging down from it. It continued to snap and spark periodically as he approached, each time giving him an instant of blue light bright enough to clearly see the area of the floor around it. Shadows became clearer the closer he got, and saw the panel wasn't just hanging down, it had been crumpled by some powerful force and nearly ripped free.

Travers began to feel the sensation of goosebumps on his skin as he wondered what had happened while he was out, when he heard the rythmic gasps of someone breathing loudly nearby. Desperate for answers and not to be alone in the dark bowels of the ship, he quietly stole away from the damage and towards the sound.