Earthborn

The cops have left the alleys and gone back to whatever it is they do when they're not rounding kids up and taking them away to be used as slaves in the colonies by adults who pretend they just want someone to love. Still, she doesn't leave her hiding place. Not just yet. On days when she thinks that she might not make it to tomorrow, days like today, she has to tell herself the list before she can go back outside.

Plus, she can't stand on her ankle. She's not sure what happened, exactly. She thinks she twisted it trying to escape. It could be sprained, maybe, if she's unlucky. If it's broken, her number's finally up.

Deep breath. Quiet breath. No point in thinking about it, since she can't fix her ankle right now.

Time to tell herself the list.

What can she do? What does she have?

She is small. Eight years of severe malnutrition will do that, although she was probably going to be small no matter what. Most of the other kids are bigger than her, even the other littles. Small can be bad, if she's running away, or fighting a dog or an older kid for food. But small can be good too, when she needs to hide, or to escape from the cops and the nuns.

She is smart. Smart enough to realize that almost everyone around her is stupid. Smart enough not to tell them that. Smart enough to figure out that the not-pictures scrawled all over the city have meaning, and to learn that language. Smart enough not to sleep overnight in the shelters, no matter how cold or hungry she is. Smart enough to survive.

She is tough, tough, tough. People have tried to kill her before, and it hasn't stuck yet. And she hasn't starved either. If she dies, it will only be because she's given up and decided to die. She'll never do that. As bad as things are, they're not worth giving up on. Not today.

That is what she has all the time. How can that help her right now?

She has some food tucked away in her clothes. Almost half an apple, if you can believe that. She was saving it in case she ended up getting caught by one of the gangs. Something to buy her way out of a beating. If she can't walk by the time the sun goes down, she'll probably have to eat it though. If not tomorrow, the day after, for sure.

So, she can stay here for two days if she has to. It's unlikely that anyone will find her. Even if someone does, he'd have to be the size of a five-year-old to squeeze into this space. Even if she can't stand on her ankle, she can take a five-year-old. Only if she has to, though. She tries not to beat on littles. She doesn't like being beat on, why would she beat on someone else?

Should she try to wrap up her ankle now, or should she leave it alone? She remembers watching some nuns deal with a kid who'd fallen from a low rooftop into the street. She thinks she was six then? She'd been impressed that the kid hadn't died, and had made a note of the way he'd fallen: on his feet, legs half-bent. There'd been a cracking sound when he hit the pavement, he was screaming like an infant, and she could see something yellow sticking out of his shin, but he was alive, and his head wasn't bleeding. When your head was bleeding was when you were probably going to die.

Anyway, the nuns had made a big show of tying boards to the kid's legs. She doesn't have boards now, but she has the sharp piece of metal she uses to keep away dogs, bigger kids, and pedophiles. (She knows better than to try to stab the nuns. They're easy enough to get away from if they catch you, so long as you're not afraid of pain or spiders. And honestly, there are more important things to be afraid of.) She could unwrap the rags that make the metal safe for her hands, and use that to tie it to her ankle. But is it too soon?

There's not enough space to sit up, so she twists her body around enough that she can see her feet. She doesn't like not facing the entrance to her hiding spot, but this is important. Her ankle looks purple and bruised, but not swollen.

Good. She'll leave it alone for now.

The street below her is as quiet as it ever is. She turns her face back to the opening, letting the wind push sour air into her face. This place is secret. It is safe. Her ankle probably isn't broken. Chances are good she won't die today. She is small, she is smart, she is tough, tough, tough.

He's back again. Sister Mary Verena is almost certain that the scrawny urchin who sometimes shows up in her soup kitchen—or, less frequently, in the rooms set aside by the local police for Colonial Relocation of Homeless Children—is a boy, but she can't be sure. He never stays around long enough to use the bathroom, apparently, and these children are all so undernourished that it's impossible to even guess at their gender before puberty. Regardless, no matter how many times he's spotted or caught, he escapes back onto the street. It's incomprehensible to the nun. Each time she sees him, she wonders if he stays alive through pure luck. Surely, an intelligent child would realize that life in the colonies, with a family who wants him, is preferable to the streets.

He never gives a name either. Some of the more humorous volunteers for the Children's Relocation Society call him Houdini. Privately, Mary Verena thinks of him as Gentleman Jack Sheppard: slight, and silent, and slippery.

"Hello there, my child," she says to him, when she unlocks the door to the room they're keeping him in. "Will you be staying with us this time? I think you're finally ready to give relocation a chance."

He doesn't reply.

Over the years, the boy has always worn the same threadbare clothes. They started off far too big for him; now they're only slightly baggy. Dark pants, a maroon sweatshirt with a hood and large pockets. A very dirty knitted cap that he probably wears to look a little more intimidating, but really just draws attention to how thin his face is. Sometimes he has shoes, but not today. She wonders where he's hidden his knife. If she asks, he won't tell her. He'll just continue to stare at his hands, and when she leaves the room, he'll escape.

"You'd be happy in the colonies, you know. With a family. Don't you ever wish you weren't alone?" She knows a little about the primitive society that the street children have created for themselves. Like any primordial group, might makes right among them. Jack is too small to have fought his way into a gang; he will never be anything but alone in this life.

"In the colonies, your life would be easier. You wouldn't have to fight to survive, you know. You could go to school. You could do anything you wanted. Wouldn't you like to live somewhere where you didn't have to run from the police?"

He glances up at that question. On another child, a normal child, his smile would be sweet. But Gentleman Jack just looks arrogant, and a little offended. He doesn't smile, he sneers.

"I nay have to run from them."

Rough living has given most of these children an exaggerated sense of their own abilities, but really! "Am I to understand that you were generous enough to allow the officers to catch you?" He's not the only one who can be scornful.

It's hard to tell whether Jack really has large, wide eyes, or if the smallness of his face just makes them seem bigger than they are. Their color is hard to determine. Probably brown, or green, or maybe very dark blue—she'll never be allowed close enough to know for certain. He narrows them in contempt. Rolling them would be too much trouble, apparently.

"Adults see what you wants to see. And while you watches that, you misses other things."

"What, pray tell, are we missing, Jack?"

That's a mistake. He zeroes in on the name, and loses interest in sharing any more with her. "Jack?" Her university psychology professors would be ashamed. This was the first time she's ever gotten more out of him than a 'yes' or 'no,' but now she's let him slip away.

"It's as good a name as any," she parries.

"Jack?" he repeats.

Mary Verena sighs. "Jack Sheppard, known as 'Gentleman Jack' during his lifetime. He was a highwayman in England about… four hundred and fifty years ago."

Jack doesn't respond to the insinuation that he's a criminal. It's unnerving. A child should not have this sort of patience. He waits, unblinking for her to reveal more. Sister Mary Verena is a nun, and silence has been an important part of her life for years, but on the streets, silence sometimes means survival.

She doesn't bother keeping quiet. They both know that she will give in eventually, and there is no point in dragging things out. "Jack Sheppard was best known for his numerous escapes from prison. He was famous for it during his lifetime. It made him a hero, after a fashion."

The boy considers this information, and she can see him weighing something in his mind, watches him decide whether asking a question will earn him more than it will cost him. She waits. There are several things he might want to know about Jack Sheppard, but she wants to see what this Sheppard values.

"They bagged him." It isn't a question. He knows too much about how the world works for it to be.

"Yes," she says. "He was hanged."

"Nay matter how many times you escapes. The time you nay gets away is the only one that matters. Hero's nay worth anything."

"And yet, here we are, talking about him, almost five centuries after his death." Let him chew on that.

"Sheppard."

"S-h-e-p-p-a-r-d," she spells. Belatedly, she wonders if he even knows how to spell.

"What did he need the extra 'p' for?" The question is contemptuous, rhetorical. This child sees waste everywhere, even in how a man spells his name. He turns away from Mary Verena then, staring at his hands once more, and she knows that she won't get anything more out of him. In truth, this is more than she'd ever have hoped to get out of him.

"Well, I'll come by again to check on you at lights-out," she says. When she goes out, she checks twice to make sure the door is locked.

.

When she does her rounds that evening, Jack has vanished. No one even bothers acting surprised. Sister Mary Verena sighs a little to think of what the willful boy is rejecting out of hand. Still, she remembers what he said about people missing things, and so she tries to stay sharp.

When she says good night to the littlest children the Society's taken in this week, all of them crowded into one room to protect them from the bullies among the bigger children, she pauses to take a headcount. They don't usually count the youngest children since their numbers change so quickly; people prefer to adopt small children, and far too many are rescued too late to escape the fatal effects of deprivation. But for some reason, tonight she remembers what Gentleman Jack said, and she counts the children.

She can't be certain, but she thinks one is missing. A boy, around five. He was missing a tooth, which was why she remembers his face. Of course, it's possible that he's just died. Somehow though, she doubts it.

"Heroes are worth something after all, aren't they Jack?" she says quietly to herself.

.

She hates having to let the coppers get ahold of her, but none of the others are any good at finding ways out of the pens, and someone had to rescue Bug. Even if he's as useless as a damn jelly-alien for getting caught. He's lucky the Reds don't abandon their own. He's lucky that she's a Red. He's lucky she doesn't bash his head in to teach the other littles in the Reds a lesson and leave him for the nuns to find. She tells him so as she drags him back to the base.

If she doesn't let go of his hand as they scurry through the streets, it's only because she knows that letting go of him would be as good as handing him over to the cops. No one's that heartless. No one wants to get someone spaced. Everything might be hard and unfair here on Earth, but at least there aren't any aliens to attack you. At least you're not a slave.

That night, during her turn on watch, she thinks over what that nun said. "Sheppard," she muses. She likes the idea of a man no one could catch. Even if they did catch him in the end. Tomorrow, she'll go to the park, and lift a datapad from some witless tourist. Before she hands it over to the Reds though, she'll find out whether Sheppard is a name she could stick with. She's never had one last very long before.

Keeping herself alert for trouble, she frowns a little. She hadn't liked that fancy spelling. It's not her way to try and pretty things up, not unless she's trying to fool someone. If she decides to keep Sheppard, that second 'p' will have to go.

Numbers, numbers, numbers make sense. What doesn't make sense is the way what numbers do is always true, how she can use numbers to prove the way things work, but then the world moves in these irrational ways despite all that.

The Reds are starting to look to drugs and beyond. Hyper is in charge now, and he has big plans. Guns, he says, are the future. That doesn't make sense to her. Who would they give guns to? No one they would sell to has the credits for firepower. Everyone who does have credits is too dangerous, a threat to the Reds. Giving them guns would be suicide. Being in charge has made Hyper forget that the Reds are about survival.

She doesn't like how complicated things are getting. If she can't find the right way to convince Hyper to back off of his stupid plan, she'll leave. She doesn't need the Reds' protection anymore; she's a teenager. It's been a couple years since she started to bleed most months like a grown female, in any case. If you can make it to this age without dying, you're probably safe from all the ways a kid can die. Adult dangers are another matter, but it doesn't take a genius to see that adults think in ruts, which makes them easy to predict and escape. The trick is not to start thinking like them once you get big yourself.

There are tests to tell you if you're a genius. Someone told her that once. Briefly, she wonders where she could get one, considers the library, the extranet, and the university that's located on the pretty stretch of the river. It would be interesting to see if she could beat the test, but it wouldn't serve any useful purpose, so she lets go of the idea.

Tests. How smart can she be if she's wondering how to prove she's smart? She knows, and that's enough. This question of running guns is a real problem. That's what she should be thinking about.

What she needs is a way to make credits that's better than guns. If the Reds get into guns, they'll end up in a war. People die in wars, and she's never been particularly interested in dying. She smiles. She's never been particularly good at dying, either. Caddy, the big girl who'd been number two in the Reds when she stepped up to join, had called her 'Roach' until Shepard had knocked her around some and proven that she didn't have to take any shit she wasn't willing to take.

The streetlights flicker on, and she leaves the spot on the sidewalk where she's been sitting. It doesn't matter that the sun will be warming that bit of pavement for the next half-hour or so. When the lights come on, the drunks come out. No one wants to get caught by the drunks. They hit harder than other adults, and they mark their territory by pissing on it, like dogs. If you get in the way, they'll piss on you, too, and laugh about it.

What can the Reds sell besides guns? Hyper doesn't like the idea of drugs. Everyone wants to be in drugs, he says, and though she hates to admit it, he does make a good point.

She's sitting on a wall at the edge of the street now, not quite high enough to reach a rooftop if she needs to run quick, but the drop to the ground won't be bad. There's a scrabbling sound behind, her, and she twists, tenses, gets ready to run.

It's Turtle. She rolls her eyes and grabs the back of his shirt to help lift him up.

"Hiya, Shep!" Turtle is always happy, and loud, which she doesn't understand.

"Hiya. Where's Finch?" The two of them are inseparable. Finch keeps quiet, but Turtle tells everyone that they're brothers. It could be true. They joined the Reds together, and they look a little alike. Scrawny.

Turtle shrugs. Fine. If he doesn't want to tell, it doesn't matter.

"What you do?" he asks.

"Thinking."

"You always think."

"So?"

"So, I think, too. Why you nay step up when you have the chance? You lead better than Hyper, I think."

She blinks and stares at the boy beside her. Where has this come from? Dissent is dangerous. The Reds work together to stay alive. More than that, if Hyper thinks she's a threat to him, he'll kill her. That's what she would do.

"Nay want to lead."

"Nay want Hyper to lead, either."

"Who cares?"

He shrugs again. For a minute, she considers pushing him off the wall. He probably wouldn't hurt himself too bad. But she doesn't hold with beating on littles. Even big littles like Turtle.

"Just think things'd be different, we have you in charge."

"Why me?"

"You smart. We all know it."

"Smart enough to know Hyper's bigger than me. Smart enough to keep my mouth shut."

"Smart enough not to sell guns?"

"He found some?"

Turtle makes a face. "Worse. He found a way to make money to buy guns."

That is bad. Hyper's ideas are almost never good. Usually they involve someone getting really hurt. Stupid! She shouldn't have gone off on her own. Hyper needs watching, needs someone to talk him out of the thoughts he has. It's no harder to think when she's following Hyper than it is when she's on her own. She didn't need quiet that much.

"Anyone dead?"

"Nay." Turtle hesitates. "Maybe wish they dead."

She doesn't wait to hear more. She's on the ground, on her way back to the Reds' hideout.

.

"Hiya, Boss." Hyper likes it when she calls him boss, which is why she does it. If it keeps him from pounding on her, it's worth it.

"Shepard." That's not good. Usually Hyper calls her something else, like "Brains," or "Backup," because she lets him, and it reminds everyone that he's in charge, and that she works for him.

"Heard you gots guns?"

He grins. "Not yet, but soon. Look." He gestures her over, and pulls up one of the old floorboards. There's a flat plastic disk hidden there. A credit chit. She whistles.

"Where you get this, boss?"

Hyper makes a depreciating gesture, the picture of modesty. "Sometimes I get good ideas."

"I'll say." She hates that part of her wants to touch the chit. She's never had enough money to need one. What did Hyper think of to get that much?

It's stupid, but she hesitates before asking him. Hyper is not very smart. How galling that he could think up a plan to make money that is more successful than her plans. She shakes herself out of that mindset. Pride is worthless, but knowledge keeps you alive.

"You got the best idea. Share with me, boss!" Her voice whines a little, which stretches Hyper's grin a little. He likes the thought that she needs something from him.

"Use your brains, Shepard." He waves to the dark corners of the room. "I find something the Reds got too much of, and I sell it."

Something the Reds had too much of? What? They'd had a good run finding food lately, but not enough to…. She freezes, and stares at Hyper. If she's right, it's time to leave the Reds.

"Where're the littles?" she asks.

"You need to fill out the whole form," the recruiter says, shoving the datapad back at her.

She frowns. She did fill the whole form out.

He sighs as though she has done something unforgiveable. She fights the urge to bash his face in. This idiot doesn't realize that his job hinges on people like her signing up for the Alliance. If she didn't need…. She has to hide somewhere, and the army is the best place to do that. If she didn't need to hide, she would walk away in the hopes that her absence would cause some sort of disruption in his pay. Even though that's statistically improbable.

"Your name," the man says.

"Yeah?" Shepard is a name people have, isn't it? Other people?

"We need a first and last name."

"Why?" There's nothing wrong with her name! What does 'first and last name' even mean? Who needs more than one name at a time? It's just something people call you.

"We just do." He taps his nametag with a thick finger, and she reads 'SC J. Watts.' Well, that's ridiculous. One of his names is just letters.

She shrugs, and remembers Gentleman Jack Sheppard. She types 'G.J.' into the datapad, only to have the thing returned to her again.

"What now?"

"Look, either give us your real name, or go somewhere else and quit wasting our time."

Idiot. There is no 'us.' There is no 'our.' The army is an animal beyond his control. He doesn't work with it, it's consumed him.

That thought makes her pause. She asks herself again; is this escape important enough to sacrifice her freedom? To become part of the animal? They will try to turn her into a tool they can use, and if she fights it, they will crush her. Can she fool them for a few years?

She looks back at the recruiter, sees the stripes on his arm, and remembers that they mean that he is an officer. Officers have to take orders, but they give them, too. If this fat man, who's too dumb to know the answers to her questions, can be an officer, she could be running her own ship in no time.

So, she has to give herself another name. What a waste. She glances back at the recruiter. He probably won't let her name herself 'Jack.' Even though she's not entirely clear on what the difference between boy and girl names is, she knows that Jack is a boy's name. Most of the names she knows are boy names; it's easier for boys to stay alive. And she won't name herself after a nun.

Out of nowhere, a memory comes to her. The blond whore who'd worked the block of Tenth Street between Beacon and Garrison. When Shepard had been young, during her first years on the streets, the whore had shared food a few times. Once, she'd let Shepard spend the night in the building where she was squatting, but in the morning, a gang had kicked them both out. She hadn't stopped the gang from beating Shepard up, but she'd taken a few blows that were meant for the kid. Now, Shepard realizes that the prostitute hadn't been more than a kid herself. Sixteen at the oldest, and a small sixteen if that.

"You're little, like me," she had said once. "Nay wish to be big; won't happen. But I keeps an eye out for you. Littles should look out for each other."

When Shepard had been younger, and stupider, she'd thought the whore was her mother. That she was kind because she felt bad for leaving her baby to the streets. It might even have been true. They'd been the only two blondes on the streets, after all. Of course, thinking that, Shepard hadn't known whether to love the older girl or hate her.

It doesn't matter. What matters is a name. Who cares where it comes from?

Shepard cares. It's a weakness, but she doesn't have to tell anyone. No one can make her use any name but Shepard, anyway. She types the streetwalker's name into the datapad, and hands it back to the man.

"Jane Shepard." He looks up. "Welcome to the Alliance."


Author's Note: So, this is a little different for me. Consider it a bonus for the release of ME3, since I may not finish Massive Epic in time.