Bioware owns the Mass Effect universe and all characters within. If you don't recognize a character, it's probably mine.
Beta: the wondrous and brilliant pixelatrix
Written for NaNoWriMo 2014. Posting as chapters are completed and polished, hoping that this will drive me to finish it.
Zaeed Massani wasn't overly fond of most children, but at the moment, he downright despised the lot of them. He'd been woken from an already-restless sleep by four of the little buggers breaking into his flat. Three of them, all boys in their early teens, were currently cleaning out his safe and gun locker. The fourth, a little blond girl who couldn't have been more than five or six, had been left to guard him. He would have found the situation laughable, except the little half-pint was a biotic, and he was currently caught in a powerful stasis field.
He was surprised when she dropped the field after only a couple of minutes, whispered "I'm... I didn' want... I'm sorry," and bolted for the front door. He quickly shook his limbs and cracked his neck before he retrieved a pistol, hidden in a secret panel of the liquor cabinet.
"All right you little tossers," he growled as he walked into his office. "I'm giving you until the count of three to drop everything and get the hell out of my flat."
The oldest and biggest of the boys, only an inch or two shorter than Zaeed, turned and took two steps toward him. "And what'll you do if we decide to stay, old man?"
Zaeed rolled his eyes and closed the distance between them before he violently headbutted the bastard. The other two quickly dropped what they were holding and ran, leaving their fallen leader crumpled on the floor.
Bloody kids.
Zaeed pulled the kid to his feet and chucked him out of the office window onto the fire escape landing. It would give him a good scare when he regained consciousness, and if he happened to fall, no real harm done, falling from one floor up.
A sharp knock on the front door a few minutes later roused Zaeed from checking his gun inventory.
Now what?
Looking at the security monitor, he muttered a string of curses before opening the door.
"Evening, officers," he said as cordially as possible to the two uniforms standing in the hallway. He didn't need the cops on his case, not right now. "Anything I can do for you?"
"Do you live here, sir?" one of the officers asked. "Couple of kids just came into the station, claiming some tattooed guy broke into their place, brandishing a pistol. They said he knocked out their older brother and their little sister is missing."
Clever little bastards.
Zaeed sighed deeply before replying. "Actually, officer, the whole lot of them, little sister too, broke in here and were clearing out my goddamn safe. Yeah, the girl ran off, but she did that all on her own, and yeah I knocked out the ringleader. But if those four are siblings, I'm the bloody King of France."
"Can we see some ID, sir?"
Zaeed grudgingly stepped back to let the two men into his flat and went to find his omni-tool.
Satisfied he was telling the truth about the night's events, one of the offers asked, "Where is the eldest boy, the one you attacked?"
Zaeed led them to the office and showed them the teen who was still lying unconscious on the fire escape.
"Would you like to press charges, sir?"
Zaeed scoffed. "Are you bloody joking? Getting this lot locked up will only lead to more trouble for me."
"How so?"
He hesitated. He knew the kids were part of the 10th Street Reds and had targeted him specifically, though he didn't really know why. But he'd seen the little girl hanging around his building the last few days, and even caught a glimpse of her following him once or twice.
"Sir?"
"Never bloody mind," Zaeed said gruffly. "You think it'll stop the little shits or their friends, then take this one in."
The officers nodded and went to the balcony to drag in the punk, who was just coming around.
"Wha– oh I'm gonna kill that little bitch," he muttered to himself before he looked up and saw the three men looking at him. He turned and glared at Zaeed. "You fucking attacked me, jackass!"
"And you broke into my apartment," Zaeed retorted. "I warned you to get the hell out."
The officers thankfully chose that moment to drag their prisoner away, leaving Zaeed alone. He glanced at the clock. 04:30. Too late to go back to bed but too bloody early to do much of anything else.
He glance curiously at his omni-tool when it beeped with an incoming message.
Saw your lights on and the police leaving just now. Not another break-in I hope. Come over and have a cup of tea before I open the bakery. – Helen
Zaeed smiled. Helen, Mrs. Chapman to everyone but a select few, was his elderly next-door neighbor and owner of the bakery across the street. He'd moved into the building just after the war, when he'd been discharged from the Alliance military without so much as a thank you for your service. Not long after, Helen's husband Rupert had died. When she'd returned from the funeral, she'd found Zaeed wrestling with a would-be thief who'd meant to break in to the Chapman's flat and mistakenly tried his. A week later, another thief had succeeded where the first had failed, though Helen had thankfully still been at her bakery at the time. After that, Zaeed had taken it upon himself to look in on her every day.
"Children?" she asked incredulously when he told her what had happened. "Why... who on Earth would use children to break in to someone's home?"
"They're street urchins, Helen," Zaeed said, taking a scone from the plate she offered. "They do whatever they have to in order to live."
"Poor dears. I've seen some who hang around the bakery, and I've tried to offer them bread, but they shy away."
"Trust is hard to come by on the streets," Zaeed said. "You trust the wrong person and you end up dead."
Helen frowned. "You sound as if you're speaking from experience."
He nodded slowly. "I never knew my parents, grew up here, on the streets of London."
"Poor dear," she said, patting his hand. "You seem to have done well for yourself since."
"Suppose I have." He glanced at the time. "Shi– damn. Thank you for breakfast, Helen, but I'll be late if I stay any longer."
He walked into his own flat again and found someone sitting in his living room.
"How the bloody hell do you keep getting into my flat, Vido?" he asked the man reclining on the couch as if he owned the damn place.
"You make it so easy, Zaeed," Vido Santiago said with a smirk. "You continuously change your code to variations on the day the Alliance chucked you out. Someone's bound to notice the pattern."
Zaeed rolled his eyes. "All right, different bloody question. Why are you here?"
"Business proposition for you. Equal partners leading a company of mercenaries."
"Are you honestly trying to class up the definition of a goddamn gang?"
Vido smirked. "Gang sounds so... childish."
Zaeed groaned. "You heard about the break-in. How?"
"Drunk tank." Vido shrugged. "Heard the whole fake story those two punks cooked up. Guess that backfired on them?"
"Aye."
"Well?"
Zaeed frowned. "Well what?"
"What d'you think of my idea?"
"Give me the day to think about it."
"Fair enough. Should I come by tonight?"
Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Fine. Now, get out. I've got a moron to stalk and capture."
"Oh? New contract?"
"No, just thought I'd go out and randomly cuff a guy, just for the hell of it." Zaeed rolled his eyes. "Idiot."
"Christ. Someone got up on the wrong side of the bed."
Zaeed glared at Vido and shoved him toward the front door. "Get. Out."
"Just think about it, okay?"
For the moment, Zaeed had no room to think about anything but the habitual bail-jumper he'd been contracted to bring in, for the fourth time in as many months. The man had gotten crafty with avoidance tactics and Zaeed found he was having to work harder to capture him each time.
Finally, late that night, the bail-jumper was back in custody, for the time being, and Zaeed started seriously considering Vido's offer. As he walked toward his building, however, two things drove every other thought from his mind.
The first was an anonymous message on his omni-tool:
left you a gift. hope you like it.
The second was the sight of the little biotic girl from the break-in, beaten and unconscious, chained upside down to the busted light post across from his building.