The Twin Shepards
Prologue: Under Cover of Night
Earth, 2154
"And you're sure about this?" the woman at the orphanage asked, staring into the basket before her.
"I'm positive. My wife's dead and I've been drafted into colonial service." The man's thick, half English accent growled under his cloak. Matthew Shepard stopped for a second, and his voice cracked as he began to speak again. "These kids are all the Shepard family has left."
The two infants in the carrier gurgled happily at their father. He smiled back at them, offering a finger for them to play with as he signed the forms.
"They'll be safe, right?" he asked warily. The elderly woman behind the desk sighed, having repeated the same words over and over again what seemed like a million times before.
"Lieutenant Shepard, they'll be fine. I understand your hesitation and confusion, believe me, I know. Your children will be safe, and you can arrange meeting times when you're off-duty." She smiled reassuringly, albeit half-heartedly, and took the form off him. Looking once more at the children, he noticed his daughter had fallen asleep.
"I... don't know if I'll be returning. My commander says it's a suicide mission." He frowned, stroking the baby's cheek.
The woman remained silent, searching for words that never arrived in her head. She looked down at the two children, fearful that they mightn't see their father again. She looked back up, but he had already left for the shuttle that would take him to Shanxi.
Eventually, Matthew Shepard was killed in action during the First Contact War, a fact his children never learned. The children never knew their parents. They survived after their orphanage was closed in the hidden underbelly of Vancouver. Eager for better lives, they joined the Alliance Military when they came of age. Hal was posted to Akuze: a lush world on the outskirts of Alliance space that had suddenly dropped out of contact. Arriving on the surface, his patrol found the settlement intact, but no survivors. At nightfall, the thresher maws struck – mindless abominations of teeth and tentacles that rose up from beneath the earth. Constant gunfire couldn't drown out the shrieks of his fellow soldiers as they were dragged down to a gruesome death. Fifty marines died on Akuze; Hal was the only one to make it back alive. A monument on the planet commemorates the massacre; a grim reminder of the price humanity must pay as they spread throughout the stars.
Faith, on the other hand, was assigned to the campaign to rid the Skyllian Verge of batarian slavers and other criminal elements. The final battle came when Alliance forces laid siege to Torfan, a slaver base built miles below the surface of a desolate moon. The superiority of the Alliance fleet was wasted in the assault on the underground bunker, but she led a corps of elite ground troops into the heart of the enemy base. Nearly three-quarters of her squad perished in the vicious close-quarters fighting, a cost she was willing to pay to ensure not a single batarian made it out of Torfan alive.
Both suffering from serious psychological scars, the twins were put together and reassigned to the SSV Normandy in 2183 under the command of Captain David Edward Anderson. Their lives had until this point already been filled with turmoil and distress.
Little did they know it would only get far, far worse.