There are few things on Earth as tragic or commonplace as the sight of child gangs. Almost every major urban centre has them, in some form or another, and they are often seen gathered around transit hubs and dubious-looking café's, jeering and shoving each other as they eye passing pedestrians with undisguised hunger. They are most easily identified by the bandanas they wear tied tightly over the lower half of their face. Brightly coloured and sometimes adorned with simple sigils they serve the dual purpose of informing other gang members of their allegiances and of protecting their throats and lungs from some of the dense smog that tends to collect in the lower sections of urban centres. Most civil servants are required to wear gas masks when venturing under the twentieth city tier, where almost all child gangs stake their squats, but such luxuries are far too expensive for children.
As a result, lung diseases are common, as are weeping throat, eye and nasal infections. Most of these children are emaciated, malnourished and addicted to any number of dangerous chemicals. Compounding the physical symptoms of ill health are the rags they wear, often torn, burned and stained in a dozen places. Desperate looking creatures huddled together out of necessity more than anything else, they all smoke, they all drink, they all swear and all of them are armed.
All of them. As of the time of this writing no recorded arrest of a child gang member in the last seven months has not included the confiscation of at least one crude weapon 'capable of causing severe bodily harm'. Pieces of garbage are picked up and used as clubs, chunks of scrap metal are sharpened into homemade knives, tools are stolen and transformed into truly creative masterpieces of warfare. Guns are uncommon, and in this particular environment that is not a blessing. Child gang wars are close, bloody and horrifying. Never assume that because they are children they cannot hurt you.
They can. And they will.
- From 'A Culture of Necessity; the Child Gangs of Earth' by Dr. Samuel H. Eisen
There are times, usually when she is at the edges of her uneasy bouts of sleep, that she thinks back to a time before she came to live among the smoke-soaked alley ways of the lower city. She does not remember much, beyond the sight of the sky through her open window, and yellow lace curtains moving in a slow breeze. Here there is nothing but a sluggish turbulence that moves through the narrow cracks between buildings, stirring great clouds of toxic smog as they scurry over piles of rotten garbage and rusty metal. She lifts the red bandana bound across her nose and mouth and spits on the ground. It is dark brown and thick with traces of crimson blood, but she does not panic. The blood comes and goes, and there is nothing she can do about it anyway.
Of more concern is the swelling in her hand, the purple tenderness across her knuckles and the stabbing pain that shoots up her arm every time she flexes her fingers. She shudders as she remembers, with vivid detail, that sound of bones cracking between steel wall and baton, the throaty laugh of the officer swinging it, the metallic twang of her own blood in her mouth. It is always dangerous to go above the fifteenth tier, at least without any money. If the police cannot take anything valuable, they are more than willing to settle for self-respect. The foot-shaped swath of bruises across the left side of her face is testament to their cruel sport.
"You look worried, Shepard." She flinches at the voice and turns around slowly, trying to keep her face neutral and free of fear. Sickly yellow eyes regard her, rimmed with red in a mask of dirt and black ash. Ditch does not bother with a bandana anymore, not since the blood started coming up with every cough and gob of spit. Instead, he wears a red jacket with a huge black X emblazoned from shoulder to shoulder across the back. "You aren't pussing out on us are you?"
"I think my middle finger is broken." She replies, cradling her wounded hand against her chest. It is not the answer he is looking for, and he grabs her suddenly around the throat and throws her against the nearest wall so hard her bones jar. His expression does not change, his yellow eyes flat and almost disinterested as he grips her face with one hand, fingers digging into her bruised jaw and clenching tight.
"You said we could count on you." He reminds her.
"That was before my finger was broken. How am I supposed to fight if I can't even make a fist?" She replies, her voice quiet and piteous, almost a whine. She winces and feels her entire body tense as he pushes her head back against the wall a little harder. The other Red's are pointedly looking anywhere but at the two of them. Ditch could do anything to her and they would not raise a hand to stop him. He could kill her and they would leave her body right here or, at most, carry it a few feet to the nearest walkway and toss it over, into the swirling world of smog that spreads out below them.
"So kick. You know how to kick, don't you?" Ditch hisses. She can smell the poison of his slow death on his breath, see the black stains on his tongue and lips. He is sixteen, but the blood cough has kept the older gangs from picking him up. His size, strength and potential for wild, random violence keeps him in control here, at least for now.
"Yeah." She says meekly. "Yeah, I know how to kick. It won't be a problem."
"Good." His grip loosens, slowly, and his touch slides along the unbruised side of her jaw. His calluses and scars scrape her skin unpleasantly, but she knows better than to show any hint of her disgust. She shudders as he drops his hand down, across her neck and tiny, pubescent breasts. He mistakes it for something different than what it is and smiles, exhaling a warm wave of air that smells like a charnel house. "If you can do this for me, Shepard, it'll be the start of big things for you. I can take you far."
She is not stupid enough to believe her, not like some. But she has seen what Ditch does to the girls that let him down, to anyone that fails. She nods and he finally steps away from her. It is easier to breathe, at least somewhat, and she takes deep lungful of poisonous air as he jerks his head toward the alley mouth and the maze of suspended walkways beyond.
"Let's go." He says, and they all move forward without question. Beyond the comforting claustrophobia of the alleyways the world is a slippery death trap. Walkways of worn steel, decades old, connect building to building among the towering skyscrapers. The poorly designed guardrails rusted away and fell long ago, or were torn off to make weapons. Everyone carries at least one, a broad hunk of metal sharpened against concrete and tucked into the folds of their ragged clothes. Most carry more than that, their clothes clinking and clicking if they turn the wrong way. Above and below is the same world at this level, nothing but walls of whirling, shifting pollution that smells like burnt hair and ozone. Her eyes water and redden in it as she claws off the ragged jacket she is wearing and hands it to the boy walking next to her.
"Quick, Finch. Tie up my hand." She whispers, keeping her eyes on their fearless leader as he sends a vagrant scurrying with a few solid kicks. His laughter is high and cruel, punctuated by a fit of hacking and spitting. The boy who calls himself Finch looks at her with dull, infected eyes weeping puss. She growls and presses the jacket into her hand. "Tear this up and wrap the strips around my hand. To hold my finger in place."
He understands and the task is accomplished while they move, wary eyes half on their task and half on the treacherous edges of the walkway. She has to snap her finger back into place so it can be bound between its neighbours and feels the bone move inside her with sudden sharp agony. She grits her teeth as Finch clumsily loops and knots bits of cloth around her fingers, knuckles and wrist. A crude bandage at best, but it should serve its function well enough. Just in time, they have reached their destination and the contest is already waiting for them.
In the upper tiers of the city, where the skies are still blue and do not give people cancer, the gangs are territorial for a reason. Protection money, addicts to take advantage of, pride and a host of likewise as violent and petty reasons make border disputes important, deadly important. Down here there is no such urgency. The child gangs have no connections for drugs or weapons tech to sell, and no customers that could pay for it anyway. They can not offer protection from anyone, and pride is something many of them left behind long ago if they ever had it in the first place. Down here territory disputes are pointless, but they happen all the time anyway. Sometimes, like now, it is an arranged fight between two people at the same place. That is hard, brutal. Someone always dies. The alternative, however, is a full out gang war and when that happens many, many children die. Even Ditch tries to avoid that.
"Bug. Are you ready for this?" Ditch calls as they round the corner and catch a glimpse of the View Street Pythons already assembled at the platform. A wide, circular track of metal where the walkways converge there are still no railings here, no safety nets or anything that can prevent the loser from suffering what will probably be a terrifying death. A cold sliver passes down Shepard's spine, but when Ditch waves her forward she moves with strong false confidence to stand at his side.
"It's Wasp." The other boy replies. He, like Ditch, is older than anyone else in his gang and in charge because of it. He eyes them all with mud brown, infected eyes that weep thick brown tears down his face to the bright green bandana knotted over his mouth and nose. When his gaze finally drops to her she can see the sneer twist under the cotton folds. "And is this your champion? Are you fuckin' with me?"
Ditch is not phased, or if he is he does not show it, and merely claps her on the shoulder as though he has the utmost confidence in her. She stiffens and stands straighter under Wasp's diseased gaze, dropping her wounded hand to her side and setting her jaw tight. "Shepard is going to feed your boy his own teeth." Ditch says confidently.
"I'm going to fuck up whoever you put in front of me so badly you won't even want him back." She snarls, lifting her bandana to spit again. The Pythons laugh and jostle each other with elbows but the Reds remain stoic and silent. There is a reason she is here, a reason she was chosen for this, a reason she has not been killed, or stolen and sold into slavery, or recruited by some dilapidated whorehouse. She reaches into herself, as the rival fighter steps forward, and slides into the still well of darkness she carries within her.
The boy that faces her is perhaps two years older than her, and sporting no broken digits but she is suddenly not phased. The world has gone very quiet, the edges of everything drawn in stark clarity that her senses absorb and analyze with lightning quickness. Shepard has never been called a smart girl, has never been to school and seen how her natural instinct translates to book smarts, but she sees the battlefield in a host of statistics and equations. She knows how to bend limbs, how to manipulate bones and force people off balance. She sees every weakness and the many different ways she can exploit them, measures the options in her head and acts with quick, deliberate intention. She does not know how or why she can do all this, but the wonder of it rarely holds her attention any longer.
Her opponent swaggers forward, rolling his eyes as his friends jeer him on. He glances over his shoulder at a particularly aggressive supporter and she takes that moment to strike. Her toe slams into the tendon and cartilage of his left knee with all the momentum her tiny, eleven-year-old body can handle. The boy howls as his leg crumples and Shepard darts forward, steel-clad toes seeking out ribs and stomach and face. Bone crunches as her heel comes down on his hand and the boy under her makes a high sound that breaks at the end and becomes a wet wail of agony.
The Reds are the ones shrieking and jeering now, their voices a red haze in the air. There is blood on her boots, on the tattered hems of her pants and it flies up as her toes crush his nose and splatters her bandaged hand. Once more she is cradling it against her chest almost gingerly, careful not to jar it too hard as she mercilessly continues to kick at the boy underneath her. The contest does not end until one of them is dead or the leader calls it off. The leaders almost never do though. They would be left with a wounded member, a burden that would need to be coddled and protected. A weight not worth carrying.
Finally, his voice breaks entirely and his arms begin to sag, broken fingers twitching against the metal. She raises one boot and brings it down on the boys neck. He shudders under her and she grinds down, harder and harder, feeling his body seize and twitch under her. There is chaotic movement all around, screaming and swearing and red bandanas held up like bloody flags of triumph. Ditch jumps on an abandoned crate and makes rude gestures at the stoic and unblinking Wasp who stares hard at her with his infected eyes as the body goes still and finally, mercifully silent. The wind moves the clouds of sooty air above and below them all around, but the world is still, balanced on the dark viciousness filling her. The thing she leaves broken and empty on the steel is pulverized meat and nothing more.
"You weren't kidding." Ditch shouts, grabbing her around the shoulders and shaking her roughly from side to side. His yellow eyes are feverish, high with the smell and sound of violence. Hands rain down on her from all sides, battering her bruises and the ball of knotted cloth around her broken hand but she feels nothing. The sound of her blood pounding in her ears drowns out the high childish voices rising in praise of her brutality. "You really know how to kick."
The Pythons push her nameless opponent over the edge of the walkway and his body spins down, broken limbs flailing grotesquely, blood spinning in an arch of flying droplets. As he disappears in the clouds of acidic pollution Wasp raises his bandana and spits on the swath of bright crimson that remains behind on the dull metal. His spit is viscous black, like tar.
"You win today." He says, and the Pythons turn, slinking away and cutting their banners from the streetlamps as they go, forfeiting territory. They will be back, there will be more fights and eventually a war. Ditch and Wasp do not like each other, and will throw their meagre followers at each other until almost everyone is dead and someone calls themselves victorious. For now, they head back to their hovel feeling like they have accomplished something, like life is temporarily worth living.
The building they call home has windows and a door that closes, which makes it better than most people at this level. They even have a battery powered air filter that they stole from a matronly woman on the seventeenth tier a few months ago. The air in here is stale and recycled but they tear their masks off as the door closes and gulp it in greedily. Compared to the outdoors it is fresh, clean, gloriously mild on their swollen, tortured throats. Shepard shakes her bandana out against her leg and little puffs of soot and dirt flare up and settle on the already filthy ground. She heads for her narrow pile of rags, stretched out among the thirty other territorial little living spaces in the main room, but Ditch calls her name and gestures her over.
He has his own room, just off of theirs, and the only heater they own is in there. The only reason they have not spread through the rest of this burnt out shell of a home is because they can leech some of its warmth. Every night is still cold, but a pile of rags keeps the worst of it away, as does the tight pack of their bodies in the small space. Ditch holds the red blanket that is tacked up to separate his room from theirs and beckons her in. Her stomach clenches with sudden tension but she obeys wordlessly and steps into the dim, warm room.
"You did good today, Shepard." He says going to the unstable table of scrap he has cobbled together against one wall. He has the luxury of a mouldy mattress too, and a blanket with nothing but a single oily burn on one corner. He pulls a unmarked bottle of some sort of cheap, clear homemade liquor out of a pile of trash in one corner and pulls it open. He takes a long drink and winces at the burning intensity of it before he hands it to her. She drinks as well, hoping it will make what is inevitably coming easier. "I can get some real gangs interested in you. Move you up a few tiers, where the air is still breathable."
She takes another long drink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and holds the bottle out to him. Their eyes meet, blue and sickly yellow, and she glances away almost immediately. She does not want to play this game, would rather be out curled under her pile of foul-smelling blankets nursing her throbbing, pounding hand. But his promise is sweet, drawing her in. Getting out of here is the only way she will live past eighteen, she knows this for a fact. There is only so much time a person can spend breathing toxic air before their body gives out entirely, just as Ditch's is doing now.
"I can do you that favour." Ditch breathes, taking another drink and stepping closer, leaning around her to put it on the table. His arm brushes her side and she has to clamp her teeth tight and cling to her rigid self control to stop herself from visibly shuddering. "But first, you have to do me a favour."
She has been expecting this. It is not the first time Ditch has demanded favours from the girls of his gang, not the first time he has demanded it from her. Usually, he is wretchedly drunk, and it is easy to waylay him or trick him and slip between his fingers. Or at least, it is easy for Shepard. Now though, there is still the clear intention in his piss coloured eyes, the smell of liquor on his breath mixing unpleasantly with the odour of his internal decay. There is very little in the world she finds more disgusting than Ditch, but sometimes sacrifices must be made. Dignity, pride, self-respect, all of these are secondary to survival. Down here, surviving is all that matters. It will be better, once she moves higher, into gangs with money and influence.
"Have another drink." Ditch says, he seems amused by her hesitation. She turns around, reaching for the bottle and feels his hand suddenly on the back of her neck. He shoves her against the edge of his table and pushes her face down, against the rough, unsanded wood. His other hand scrabbles suddenly at the length of scrap rope that holds her tattered clothing in place and she closes her eyes. The same dark stillness that she finds in battle is waiting for her there and as his breathing rises, breaking and unravelling into ragged gasps, she slides into it.
It is over quickly, at least, and when he lets her go she just slides down and falls in a heap on the floor. She felt nothing while it was happening but as the tall boy does his pants back up her body starts to ache, and then to burn with the pressure of everything that has happened. Her face is strangely wet. She tastes salt on her tongue.
"Don't worry." Ditch says, picking up the bottle and taking another deep swallow. He looks healthier than he has in weeks as he tosses the liquor back, high on his own cruelty and power. He hands the bottle down to her and after a moment of blank indecision she takes it and begins to drink in huge, burning gulps. "It gets easier."
He is right about that at least. Maybe it is just the liquor making everything thick and numb and colourless but the second time it is much easier to feel nothing, to go far away in her head where nothing horrible is happening to her body. When Ditch finally slips off to sleep, his emaciated body spread over his foul-smelling mattress she pushes herself to her feet and dresses with mechanical numbness. She goes out, under the blanket to the main room and curls up under her pile of oily, half-rotten rags and closes her eyes. There are better things coming for her.
Higher in the cities, the sky is still blue on windy days. There will be more food, more security, warmer places to sleep and the fighting will be less pointless. She can put the darkness to better use that petty squabbling on behalf of a stupid ringleader. She feels herself trembling and grits her teeth again, pressing her face against the floor and wishing vainly for sleep.
She wonders what his name was. The boy who they pushed over the edge to be lost to the lowest, most terrible tiers of the lower city in a curtain of spraying blood. She can still smell the hard copper of it on her skin, in her hair and clothes. Her stomach rumbles in her drunken haze, her skin itches under the layer of filthy sweat that clings to her. There has to be something better for her than this. There has to be something more to life.
She does not sleep, but that is not unusual. When Ditch wakes and swaggers out of his room acting like nothing is different, nothing has changed, she does the same. All of them go out into the poison clouds in their daily search for food. Nothing changes.
Allegiance is a series of stand-alone moments from the life of Commander Sarah Shepard, Earthborn Sole Survivor. They will document her life from childhood through the first and the second game, and her transition from Renegade before death to Paragon after being rebuilt by Cerberus.
This story is really just for muse run-off from my other fic `the Destroyer`so the chapters probably will not be as long and updates may be more sporadic. That said, I haven`t picked a romantic interest for this incarnation of Shepard yet, so feel free to suggest one in the comment section as the story goes on.
That`s all for now!
- Windeer