"You're a thief, Commander Shepard." Kasumi gave her sly little grin.

Dylan glanced up from his datapad, the percussion of his fingers halting suddenly. He blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You're a thief." She sat down on the opposite sofa, glancing at him appraisingly. "I wasn't sure before – I thought it might just be an infiltrator thing, a sniper thing, something I'd overlooked - but Garrus doesn't have it."

"Doesn't have what?" Dylan closed his book warily, eyeing her. He had learned that once Kasumi got onto an idea she would dog you with it until you relented. She knew everyone's business.

"The...lying walk. The walk that says you've been a guilty man. Thieves have it, I have it, you have it. It's in the way you walk into a room of hostile diplomats and convince them you belong, the same way I'd walk into a soiree or a bank." She leant back on the lounge's sofa, her voice soft. "It's a kind of…daylight robbery, in the way you move, in the way you sit as if you belong in a place. You're not as much a goody-two-shoes as I thought."

Shepard blinked, glancing at her. "Do I come off all…squeaky clean?"

Kasumi shrugged. "To the uninformed. I didn't work it out right away, and I'm actually pretty clever, you know." She grinned again, a kind of savage excitement filling her eyes. "So spill; where'd you get the walk? Why'd an Alliance lifer ever need to pretend to be respectable?"

Dylan could tell she wanted a story. He could give her that, he supposed. It had been a long time since he'd told anyone.

"You're wrong." Dylan cleared his throat. "About the Alliance lifer part. People who look at military folks say 'must've enrolled at eighteen' or whatever and think that means the military is…everything about them. They see people in uniform and don't see the subtle differences, the kind of bun she keeps her hair in, whether she cut it off out of frustration, why this guy keeps his sleeves rolled up without care and this other guy irons them in."

Shepard paused a little, sitting back in place. "It says things about people, you know? We all had a time before we were in the military or before Cerberus, even if we were spacers before, even if our parents were military. We were all people before we were soldiers."

Dylan paused to take a drink, weighing his words in his mouth. "I grew up in the asshole of Earth, basically. They had this programme for orphaned kids in Toronto – that's where I was - to replace old orphanages; it was called the Juvenile Reclamation Project but we called it the JRP. It was supposed to make us useful people or whatever. Instead of putting us in badly funded satellite orphanages scattered across cities or dumping us in foster homes by default, they put us together in this big complex thing. Kind of like a boarding school? I mean they stopped funding it properly after it had given them a political edge, but-"

He scowled a bit, pausing. "I'm telling this in the wrong order. It's better from the end."

2164

The ceiling had exactly forty-two panels, seven across and six up, and each one of them formed part of the room's lighting – an unsatisfying white nothingness, a light that let you see things but conveyed no other property. It was really strange - they used it to keep the suspects in a state of dislocation. There was too much oversight, so they couldn't play dirty like some of the more…expedient departments, elsewhere in London – but they could fuck with your mind. All of the rooms were like this – not strictly uncomfortable, but built and populated in a way that made it impossible to tell the time, remember the date, keep track of whether a new day had elapsed or not. All of their methods were perfectly humane by the standards of the British government – but more importantly, humane by the standards of the Alliance government.

Dyl had tried to keep some kind of order, some kind of routine. The thing that broke the other guys was being stuck by themselves, without contact with the group. Dyl was better, though. He knew he was. He'd always been solitary, and this was just an extension of that.

He guessed that he had been here around ten days; he could feel stubble coming through, and for him that took longer than a week. He'd chewed off a nail out of nerves when he first got here, and it was already a bit longer. That meant time, surely.

"Mr. Shepard?" There was a voice at the door, the first to be addressed to him in a long time; it sounded alien. He spoke, and his voice was less strong than he would've liked, quiet from lack of use in this place. "It's Dylan, really."

"Dylan." The woman smiled; Dylan's hackles went up. "Come with me, Dylan."

She said it kindly, but it wasn't a request. He gathered his limbs together and shuffled after her, through antiseptic corridors that seemed more suited to a hospital than a prison. I'm in prison. Jesus. Eventually she stopped, indicating a small room. Where were all the guards? He had been scanning for cameras or defence turrets or drones or anything really – there was nothing he could see. Maybe it was all hidden. Great.

"Please sit." Again, that tone of steel under pleasantness. There were two chairs, one on either side of a table. Everything was the same palette, it did something to your eyes. Dylan was sure he was forgetting how to see colour.

He dumped himself into one of the chairs with all the nineteen years of recalcitrance he had built up in his bones. It did not go unnoticed.

"I inform you now that your level of incarceration and future treatment by the Alliance Court relies heavily on the answers you give me today." The woman wore muted nail varnish; it suited her, but in a nondescript way. She was so well put together that it was faintly eerie. Her words carried weight though she spoke them lightly – Dylan did not doubt that the Alliance superstructure would make him disappear if they so chose. In the last decade they had extended their tendrils through major governments the world over; certain criminals were extradited without due process, certain technologies and funds seemed to become available to them without question. There was little love lost for the Alliance where Dylan grew up.

"You stand charged of cyberterrorism, conspiracy to subvert Alliance operations, trespassing, illegal possession of firerarms, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy to commit murder, theft of Alliance intellectual property, conspiracy to commit espionage, and are suspected in one count of attempted murder of an Alliance Parliament member, as well as twelve further counts of murder. Do you intend to challenge these claims?" Her voice was very clear, the texture of glass. She had a British accent. It was all like some terrible spy story on a vid he'd watch back in his little bunk in the JRP, curled up small in one corner. But I'm the villain here.

He mulled over her words for a few seconds. He could lie, he supposed, but it was actually all true and he'd been arrested mid-job so that seemed like a bit of a stretch. He could downplay his own involvement – except his burrower programmes did the job and by now they had undoubtedly realised that all the probe attacks their systems had been taking down automatically over the last few months were from the same source – namely, him. He could spill names left, right and centre – but they might not believe him.

I'm useful. I beat them. The thought came quietly, but it had a lot of appeal. He'd beat them – eventually, at least. He could probably do it again, given time. The Alliance Command weren't stupid, and tons of people wound up 'conscripted' for not entirely savoury reasons. He could get off-world. They'd hide him, maybe.

"No point really in denying it, is there?" He shrugged. They had let him keep his clothes, which struck him suddenly as bizarrely humane – he shrank within them. "If you think I have any loyalty to the bastards who planned this stupid bullshit, you're wrong. I was just hired because I'm good at hacking." The bravado helped. It gave him something to fall back on.

She pursed her lips, but Dylan could see she was almost…relieved. It was the first bit of humanity he'd seen in this woman since she arrived. On the table sat a small recording device, probably video and audio together to downplay any allegations of tampering. She tapped a few buttons and it issued to life.

"Speak."

Kasumi blinked. "Jesus. So you actually were a thief?" Her hand had a gentle grip around her drink.

Dylan shook his head. "I was a hacker. Back then I was just some scrawny kid in a lucky place. Toronto exploded with the spaceflight industry, right? First after Mars, then especially after the First Contact War. Huge manufacturing base there for weapon parts and spaceflight tech, because it was the only city large enough and close enough to the Arctic spaceflight stations. The Alliance had a lot of people, a lot of information there."

He took another draught of his drink. "I was just some random JRP kid who grew up in its shadow. It wasn't a great place to be. We were all orphans, we all had it in common, half of us were traumatised…it was chaos. They put us all together in this big compound as a flagship political gimmick and then pulled funding once it wasn't fuelling their election campaigns any more. After I was about six they stopped with permanent psych staff, even. It wasn't…it wasn't a good place." He watched the liquid at the bottom of his glass settle, then stood to get some more. If he was going to divulge this shit, he was going to be drunk.

"I remember I got put in one of the old staff rooms after they slashed funding and tons of the adults left – best rooms in the compound, you could see Toronto's tallest building, Apex Tower. It was later bought out by the Alliance." He snorted. "Everything eventually got bought out by the Alliance. I used to dream about spaceflight, but my only skill was computers so I stuck to that. Used to fix the other JRP kids' personal machines, fix the limited stuff we had on the compound. Made me popular, actually."

Kasumi grinned a bit. "I knew you couldn't have been that much of a recluse."

"Oh no, I was. They kind of hated me 'cause I was weird, but they preferred their computers working." Dylan grinned. "Eventually I was one of the kids who wound up caught in gang stuff. Everyone did, honestly. We didn't have any other way to make money, nobody hires the really poor kids for part time work. When I joined up with Tommy's people was when I started learning how to hack properly, beyond kids' stuff."

2160

The display lit up. They called this attic the Nest, which made Dylan their pigeon – picking over the crumbs that the public data streams left lying about. Tommy had given over as much tech as possible to give his people an edge; Dylan had promptly filled his little room with blankets, cushions, a mattress – when he wasn't sitting cross-legged in his desk chair watching info flow by, he was sitting around watching TV or sleeping. It had been a few months since he'd been to school, longer since he'd gone back to the JRP. A lot of kids left that way; nobody really had the resources to track them anymore.

It wasn't so much that Dylan was any good at hacking – it was more that the other five dollar gangs in the area didn't have anyone doing it on their side. There was a guy, Kyle, getting too big for his boots – he ran a group of guys called the Kestrels. Tonight they were the target.

Dylan's face was illuminated only by the glow of his computer screens – he had already done most of the busywork, all that was needed now was to crack through the shallow defences the Kestrels had set up. Jamie had boasted about his mech, his turrets; it had kept the other gangs in check, intimidated them. Tommy had been smarter – nobody outside the group knew about Dylan, knew that was why raids had been going so well for Big T the last few months.

Chatter came in, issuing in Dylan's ear. It was Tommy, issuing orders and moving the others into position. Tommy had a sense of planning, a sense of operation. He was charismatic. When he detailed how a safehouse would get taken quickly, you believed him. Nobody had any doubt that he took their activities – and their lives – seriously.

Dylan tapped away. The defences were weak, they were child's play. Kyle had sat a mech outside his front door and expected nobody to ever bother challenging him. It was a stupid mistake. On screen, the paragraphs of data suddenly gave way to a video feed, a living room filled with young men toting machine pistols – Kestrels, fortified in their safehouse. Another one popped up beside it – this one was a bedroom, a guy behind a curtain looking out on the street below, talking into a receiver. Another feed showed a courtyard view of the mech, which paced from side to side, surveying the area. It was all on the same system. Dylan had control.

He burrowed his way into the mech's command console – designed to be easy to use, to allow manual control in case something went wrong. It was intuitive, and anyway, his requirements were simple. He turned the mech around slowly, watching with no little amusement as the figures in the safehouse shuffled nervously. He didn't blame them for not trusting the mech.

Dylan sent the order to fire the mech's sole missile. Two feeds cut out immediately, while through the courtyard feed he could see the entire front of the safehouse collapse in on itself, brick and metal crumbling under its own weight. He didn't have audio, but he could imagine the noise. From his ear he heard cheers, and orders to move in – Dyl fired up the mech's machine guns and opened fire.

It was the first time Dylan ever killed a man that directly.

Maybe an hour later he heard a clatter of noise downstairs, signalling the guys' return. He had just finished wiping his ID from the mech's OS when Tommy, along with three of the guys, climbed through the trapdoor that led to his sanctum.

"That was fucking awesome!" Tommy was grinning. Whenever they did a job Tommy got like this, all manic, bounding about, full of endless energy. Dylan dislodged himself from his computers and settled with the others, accepting a proffered drink from his right. Tommy's arm went around his shoulder, and Dylan felt warm lips on his.

"A side of you I've never seen." Kasumi grinned, hugging her knees.

"Yeah, well. I wasn't always boring." Dylan shrugged. "Tommy was magnetic, and he liked only me. It was all very clichéd, really, apart from the whole gang warfare thing."

"That does tend to add a bit of spice." Kasumi gave a small smile. "It was the same with Keiji."

A look passed between the two of them, quickly broken.

"Anyway," Dylan cleared his throat, "Tommy got taken out the next year. We got too big for our boots, and someone with bigger boots stepped on us. But…they kept me. I was a good hacker, especially for my age, and I didn't have an identity or anywhere to go – perfect for inculcating loyalty."

"Who's 'they'?" Kasumi blinked.

"Mercenaries. It's actually technically classified, I think." He snorted. "Sorry. They're gone now, it's not important. The important part is that I was drafted into this group. They trained me to hack properly, showed me how to point a gun in the right direction, all that sort of shit. I think they really thought I was completely loyal. Maybe the rank and file didn't know I was with Tommy, I dunno, maybe they assumed I'd forget about my old life. Anyway, they provided people to get jobs done. I was part of their infiltrator corps – I was accurate, good improv hacker, but I panicked under fire. That's what got me."

2164

The rumbling of the engine just made the nerves worse. It got at his stomach, somehow. They'd been travelling for over an hour, making their way through the rush hour traffic. It was policy to stay discreet until the very last moment – no covert airdrops or big entries; sensible and professional.

Everyone else in the car had at least five years on him – Hunter was running the job. Big, had a face like a bird and brilliant reflexes in a firefight but was less solid as a sniper. He'd be taking out the guards with field of view of the sniping spot. Lia was their tech – she'd be fusing open doors on the ground, getting through their physical defences. Jenny was going in alone to raid his office and wipe his machines before the police got to the scene and Dylan's little bug was detected. That left him to take the actual shot.

He got the impression it was supposed to be a trial by fire for him. He wasn't their best, he wasn't the oldest; he could snipe, but it didn't just take high scores on a firing range. He'd spent most of his time the last year typing away at a display, trying to find a crack in the concrete wall of the Alliance mainframe, and he wouldn't have even been successful at that without a lucky break. His hands were shaking even now. A fucking Parliament member! That wasn't some shitty little gang in a neighbourhood nobody cared about.

"You'll be fine." It came as a growl, from Hunter. They'd all subverted many of his stereotypes about mercenaries – in many ways it was like how he imagined working in an office would be. There was no reason to undermine each other when the money was based on doing well. Troublemakers were sanctioned, those who bullied were sanctioned. They slept on site, and despite his habitual distance Dylan felt affection for a lot of them. They weren't bad people.

"Just make the shot. He's another figure on a firing range, alright?" Hunter was staring at him. He had very clear grey eyes; they should have been intimidating, but Dylan took comfort from it. Hunter made his stomach hurt a bit, actually; all broody and wide-set.

"Alright." His voice was swallowed up by the noise of the traffic.

They got out near the Assembly building, on the other side of an industrial lot covered in snaking scaffold that would soon house the xeno-diplomatic wing of the London Alliance HQ. It would have wings custom built for Asari and Salarian tastes, as well as pressurising units for suit wearing species. The Turians were not yet trusted on humanity's homeworld. For now, the shell of the new building provided dark cover.

The team moved as one, slotting their stealth pistols into place. They approached one of the three service entrances that brought supplies in to Parliament dignitaries, and Lia got to work, her omni-tool glinting in the harsh strip light - a brief moment of exposure. Less than ten seconds and her burrowing programme had broken the seal; it was a world away from Dylan's ad hoc improvisation in the Nest.

No guards, thanks to prep work. This operation had been in planning for months; they had forged IDs claiming they were part of security. Wouldn't stand up to a check at the front door of this place, but nobody would challenge them now they were inside. They moved as a group, and barely got a second glance – security teams combed this place regularly, or travelled out of sight as attachés to parliament members. Since the building was half under construction their outdoor security had gotten sloppy; that was the weakness the further-ups had identified.

"How was the flight?" Hunter had slid into character, grinning knowingly at Lia. Once again, Dylan marvelled at the man's ability to slip into a role on the job. Possibly a little bit at his cheekbones, too. Good lord, I need to stop.

"Don't even start." Lia threw back a sardonic grin, chuckling. "Wanted tea. I asked him what kind. He said 'fruit'. Thanks a bunch, councillor, there is no way I'm getting this one right. Request that vague, you always pick the drink they're fucking allergic to or is unlucky or whatever the hell it is this time. The fuckin' baby was that way the whole flight. I'm security, you know! Not a fuckin' babysitter."

Hunter huffed a laugh, shaking his head. "Maurice is the same. Cares way too much about what kind of ramen you put on his seat tray. Politicians are the only people in the world who expect good food on an aeroplane." They continued like this for a while. Those who passed barely listened, but it gave a better impression than four automatons walking in unison, and distracted passers-by from Jenny, who was looking for their secondary route towards the offices. She turned left wordlessly as the rest of the group turned right – she would leave separately, as soon as her job was done.

Hunter led them into a stairwell and up what felt like a million stairs – Dylan was nervous, shaking. He had to trust that once his eye lined up to the sight he would feel the rush of calm, the simplicity of exhaling and squeezing, the slight judder that seemed to sit apart from the rest of the world. The steps were endless. Hunter and Lia kept up their chatter until they reached the very top of the maintenance stairs and then made a brief goodbye – Lia to go with Dylan, Hunter to go alone.

She didn't speak. Each of the doors that led to the overlook catwalks triggered an alarm when somebody tried to force it open, or if they used the wrong electronic key. She was quick-scrambling each door to accept any key; if anyone checked the system it'd be detected in a heartbeat, but by that point they intended to be gone. Dylan followed her halting footsteps, hyperaware of the folded cuboid between his coat and his clothing, the shapeless thing that he had learned to assemble into a murder weapon.

The final door was opened – Lia gave him a nod, and one brisk pat on the shoulder. He nodded back, and moved onto the catwalk.

The design of the Assembly incorporated several security features that made monitoring the floor of the main diplomatic wing as easy as possible. One of these was the catwalk system – designed to give guards a view from which they could radio down concerns to guards on the ground. The potential vantage point it presented was mitigated by the heavy line of sight that the upper-floor guard posts had over the catwalk; nobody had imagined someone could get up there without being seen.

Of course they hadn't reckoned on their entire camera system going dark at once and guard posts C through F suffering sudden and simultaneous brain haemorrhage by stealth pistol. Not a soul sat at any of the desks - Dylan was truly alone up here. It would be his responsibility to get out after he'd taken the shot.

He fished out the strange little death box and assembled the rifle. It was dark, but his hands moved by habit, by training. He didn't need to see. A few clicks checked that the rifle was stable, that it wouldn't explode when he pulled the trigger. Overheat gauge was blue. He dropped onto his front.

Through the scope he had a view of the entrance – there was a guard half-asleep next to the door; a clock on the wall told Dylan it was four in the morning. The MP had arrived about forty minutes earlier, which meant he should arrive any minute now.

The seconds ticked by. All the logic in the world told him that he was invisible to those below, but it didn't feel that way – his limbs felt awkward, exposed, he could barely feel the support any more and was becoming increasingly aware of how high up he was. It was cold up here. He was trying to go over in his head what they'd told him at camp – breathe, think only about the task and not the ramifications of the task, imagine your body as separate from yourself. Stay focused. But he couldn't. His wrist ached. There was an uncomfortable itch where his coat met his undershirt, just above his hip. The rifle was heavy. A thousand distractions pierced his concentration, so that when he glanced back through the scope and saw the MP shedding his suit jacket for the security scanner, he jumped slightly.

It was now or never. He was shaking. Oh god, this was not how you were supposed to take the shot. It was supposed to be clean and professional; it was supposed to be like in the vids. I'm fucking nineteen, this is not a normal thing. His mouth twitched, he locked his body in place, he positioned the aiming line over the guy's face. He forced himself to fire, more to get it over with than anything else.

The panic was as a gas – it spread throughout the room gradually, as people began to realise what had happened. The rifle was silenced, but the ping the round made as it rebounded from one side of the security scanner was loud enough. The MP collapsed; blood poured from his arm. Dylan felt his whole body seemingly drain of blood at once. Without thinking, he dropped the rifle – it fell impossibly slowly, clattering on the marble floor over fifty feet below.

Before he could think, he was running – there was no attempt at stealth, no smooth movements – he was running on blind panic and adrenaline. He pushed through one of the doors Lia had opened for him and stopped short, staring at his three options – down, left, or right. He picked down. His feet thundered down the metal staircase, beating out a staccato as frenzied as he was. Just over halfway down he heard the alarms go off, and his blood froze all over again.

The sound of people filled his ears. A woman burst through the staircase door and rushed past him without even giving him a glance - Dylan stared as she rushed away, then glanced at the window next to him. His early-morning reflection looked gaunt and young. He felt about twelve. Watching people die through a tv screen was easy, it went like a computer game, he could press buttons and remain detached. There was no detachment in this. He would've cried if he could remember how his body worked.

He realised with a start that he was standing still. At that exact moment, three men burst through the stairwell door. They were clad in combat gear, holding rifles, they had hate on their faces. Dylan turned to them, his fear suddenly transmuted into an odd, fatalistic calm.

"It was me," he said, and put his hands up.

Kasumi had gone quiet.

"I can stop, if you'd like." Shepard stared. Of the two of them, he hadn't thought it would be Kasumi who would have to pause.

"No, I…" she hesitated, readjusting herself. "When you began this story, I imagined a...secret hardened criminal. Someone who had your gait, your liar's step, right from the beginning, right from your induction. But I think I understand it now."

"You do?" Shepard blinked. "What's there to understand?"

"Later." Kasumi waved a hand, frowning. She wiggled a little into her sofa, then leant forward. "The story has to end, that's only proper…and I'm interrupting you. Go on."

2165-2170

The fast-track infiltrator programme was built to accommodate pasts like Dylan's. His data would be uniquely encrypted, to mask his membership in the Alliance military whenever he was on leave. His passport details and personal records – of which there were few, mostly related to his JRP days – would be completely wiped. His IDs would be as secure as those assigned to relocated witnesses.

To be safe, they moved him offworld – an Alliance facility near the original Mars colony, minimal civilian traffic. He was isolated, drummed into military life – albeit slightly less regimented than the more organised infantry forces. It was strange, how much they both valued their recruits and kept them under lock and key. There was nothing they weren't allowed to request, so long as it stayed within the boxes– Dylan asked for computer games, junk food, hair dye – it all showed up with the next shuttle out. There was no point in restricting a den of hackers from the new, burgeoning extranet access streams; they'd just find a way into them and besides, the military's hold on their infiltrators wasn't about physicality – it was the illegality of most of their existences. Dylan couldn't have gone home if he wanted to – he'd be stranded in rogue space his entire life. In the end, most of them capitulated completely, forged some kind of loyalty or indifference at least.

Much of their training was combat focused, a continuation of what Dylan had been used to. He suddenly found himself becoming more than just wiry – there was bulk to his body, a more solid hold to his sniper rifle. They taught him to see the image in the scope of a rifle like he saw hacking a video feed – distant, detached, something that could be processed outside of the physical. Slowly, his shakiness improved, and over time his scores climbed far above his peers. He never achieved more than an average proficiency with the rest of their tech expertise; he could wire open a door, sure, but he wasn't exceptional. His superiors groomed him for delayed combat operations on-ground, long periods of improvised hacking within local systems without the luxuries of high-end equipment – he was good at working with what he had.

By the time they deployed him alongside other infantry, he went by Shepard – an easier name, a name that carried nothing with it, a name that was neutral. Dylan's surname had never meant much to him – now it was a new identity, shrugged on like a coat and carried as if it was natural. Nobody doubted that this one was an Alliance man through and through – professional, of few words, even-handed and familiar with a bit of on-ground ingenuity. He felt as much of an actor as a soldier, moving through mess halls and ship bridges like they were sets. But when he settled into a bunk with one of those old space adventure holovids, something remained. Something he had carried with him his entire life, an identity that was more about what he wasn't than what he was. When he stood to attention or slacked his body into cafeteria seating or curled just a little more onto the trigger, he was assuming an identity. Wherever he went, he was an infiltrator.

"I was wrong." Kasumi had cocked her head to one side – she was giving him a strange look, like she was unsure whether to feel pity or not. "You learned to walk like a thief once you were inside, not before."

Shepard nodded, relaxing slightly. "They fabricated most of my history after the fact, after I became…prominent. A JRP kid made good was the story, and…maybe that's for the best. I'd rather be inspirational. People use it to justify inner city scholarships ...and I mean, they should, because maybe I would've gone that route and never have spent half my childhood learning how to kill. Kids like I was deserve more than the story I actually have to give. Kids like I was…I think they deserve the myth."

Kasumi looked at him for a long time, her expression soft. "I will consider this between us, Shepard."

He grinned. "For once, I kind of believe you."