Mass Effect Refugee:

The Boy : spacer background

Prologue

The year was 2186 and a young boy around six or seven was sitting on a black leather couch with a cream stripe running lengthways was watching the vid-screen, the boy was just like most kids his age was wearing dark jeans with a white hoody, the boy's face was a bit pale but did go with his dark blue eyes and short light brown hair.

The boy was looking for cartoons by flicking through the channels when he stopped on the Alliance News Network, the only thing that made him stop was a photo of his older cousin with the title

"Is this the end of all life as we know it? Or is it?!" the boy was intrigued by the photo of the person was the same as the photo of his dead cousin on the wall next to his older brother.

"Welcome to the Alliance News Network, today we will show the public of the Alliance and other Galactic communities the outcome of the commander Shepard trial." The man on the vid-screen was saying

"Commander Shepard the first human spectre has been stripped of his rank of Commander and put under house arrest for blowing up a mass relay." The man spoke emphatically as he said this.

"The former commander's excuse for blowing up a mass relay is to prevent a mass invasion from ancient mystical machines that come every fifty-thousand years to wipe out all life in the galaxy, with is announcement the Alliance military is under a lot of heat from Shepard's former Squad mates should as Garrus Vakarian, Tali'Zorah vas Neema, Jeff "Joker" Moreau, Dr. Karin Chakwas and someone whom wishes not to be named." The man on the vid-screen was saying without taking a breath.

"Who all claim that ancient mystical machines are coming back to wipe all life from the galaxy, as we are concerned is just ludicrous." The man spoke in a sarcastic manner that addressed this was a personal joke to him.

The boy was in horror, the man on the vid-screen was now just start to say that the Batarian military was looking as if it was going start a war, as the boy got up and ran to his mother.

"MOM, MOM, MOM" the young boy was in tears as he pushed the door open. His mother looked around.

His mother was having a conversation with her older sisters Captain Hannah Shepard. Hannah Shepard was a bit older than his mother and wearing military dress blues; she has neck length red hair which surprisingly was her natural hair colour which was a rarity because red haired people are a rarity, and she has emerald green eyes that matched her skin which was beginning to wrinkle, Hannah Shepard does not look it but she was going into her early 50's.

The boy's mother on the other hand was the opposite she looks as if she was in her twenties likes most people in the 22nd Century but just like her older sister was going into her late 40's, she was almost exactly like her older sister in appearance except for her hair. Her hair was the same colour as her son, light brown with it going all the way down to her lower back and she was dressed in the most common style of clothes of the time.

"MOM, MOM a man on the vid-screen said that that my cousin blew up a mass relay and that his is crazy." The boy is in tears now; his mother came down next to him and picks him up.

"It ok, it ok we know me and your aunty are just taking about it." His mother was saying in a calm voice

"Just calm down your cousin's never been the same since the battle of the citadel" still in a calm voice

"Hold on just a minute my child is not crazy" Hannah Shepard blurted out as she came up to the young boy "now you listen to me your cousin is not crazy they are just scared that he could be right."

His mother snorted "it sounds like you're going crazy too sis"

Hannah looked up at her younger sister with something more like pity than hate "are you saying that my child is having problems"

The boy's mother looked like Hannah has just bitch slapped her. "Get out!"

"what?" Hannah knew that her sister was not kidding

"GET OUT!" the boy's mother was shouting now "GET OUT AND DON'T TIHNK THAT YOUR WELCOME HERE AGAIN."

Hannah Shepard backed out of the room just before she said "you be sorry" and went out of the apartment with fire in her emerald green eyes.

The boy's mother turned around "Don't trust anything your cousin's say or do you get me?" the boy look up at his mother and said "Yes Mommy."

Six months later the boy was playing on the top of his brother's apartment, unlike his parents place his brother's apartment had a bit of green land on the top of the building. The boy was in his own head playing with a toy alliance fighter but to the boy the toy was a real life fighter as he was killing all the bad guys in space just like his big boy was six or seven years old and people were worried about a war with the Batarians, but the boy did not know this.

He was running around on the top of his brother's apartment unaware that his cousin was in the building next to his. But as the boy looked up at the building next to him, his older brother came up panting and carrying a bag with his clothes in it and had a fake grin on his face as he picked up his younger brother and ran back to their parents place.

The boy's brother was about six foot 2 or 3 with tanned skin matching his brown eyes, surprisingly for being in the alliance military he had hair a little bit longer and thicker than him and in the usual fashion he had bleached his hair blonde.

The boy did not know what was wrong or what was happening but five minutes running working back to his home was fine by him.

As he got into the apartment his older brother put him down

"Hi little bro I need you to go on the balcony for me now, I need to call Mommy and Daddy OK."

The boy now knew that something was wrong by what his brother said and the look on his face but the boy went to the balcony like his older brother said, he went through the sliding door with a puzzled look on his face as he got to the glass edge of the balcony.

The boy was puzzled about the look on his brother's face. It was not worried, sad or confused, it was more like desperation like his brother wanted to get them off world now and he didn't have a lot of time to do it. This scared the boy because he looked up to his older brother in awe. It was like his brother was his own superhero.

Five minutes past and the boy was still thinking about the puzzled look on his brother's face. He was leaning on the glass balcony edge when he began seeing what looked like falling stars, loads of them like hundreds maybe thousands of them.

Unexpectedly a loud noise came from above like it was going to split the little boy's head open. The boy was holding his head like he was trying to keep it together. When he looked up he saw a two kilometres tall mechanical ship that looked like a giant squid with four legs. Just before the humongous space craft landed it fired a red beam that burnt everything in its path and brutally hit the building next to it and a loud explosion boomed. The first blast broke the glass balcony. The second blast that came five - ten seconds later and he was knocked off his feet.

The boy got up, it was like someone had dropped a flash hand grenade. His vision was impaired and all he could see were odd shapes and weird lights. He got to the balcony and leaned on the metal pole to look down. He saw shapes that looked like people running in terror. He looked up to the sky and saw odd shapes that resembled the fallen stars he saw earlier.

He didn't hear his older brother trying to call him to get into the apartment. The boy was still in disarray about what was happening. An alliance fighter passed him and he felt the wind rushing back and he heard another thing come past and hit the alliance fighter. He looked at the building that was hit next to him. He saw two shapes that looked like people. One was dark skinned and wearing the alliance dress of blue. The other he couldn't tell if it was male or female, but the shape reminded him of someone.

The boy was still in disarray when he finally heard his brother calling him, the boy ran back into the apartment through the sliding doors. The first thing that the boy noticed was that his brother opened the cover of the air vent on the wall, but the boy didn't have any time to take anything in before his brother pulled him over to him and put him in the air vent.

His older brother looked him in the eyes and for the first time the boy saw in his brother eyes worry, confusion, desperation and all of the above, seeing all that in his brother eyes the boy just hugged him

"I need you to go in the air vent ok" his older brother said in sadness with tears brimming up his eyes.

Suddenly a loud bang and noises from outside on the balcony brought the boy's brother back to his senses he picked up the boy and put him in the air vent and the last thing he ever said to him was "go".

The boy got in and did a running crawl he turned the corner of the air vent when another explosion happened, with the explosion the air vent began to shake about one or two minutes passed and the boy backtracked to see where his brother was.

As the boy was backtracking he was breathing heavily in the air vent the boy reached the end of the air vent and he saw his home. His home was a wreck with everything turned upside down and parts of it were on fire… fire… The boy began to realise that his brother was dead as two people came in.

A portion of a shape of a person come in through the balcony with someone else, one of them went and was opening the apartment doors to get out and shouting out to the other one "this way"

One of them walked through with the newly supplied open door. The boy was still breathing heavily as the person who opened the door walked back to the middle of the room the boy tried to crawl backwards in to the air vent so the person could not see him, but the person saw him and walked over as they shouted out "hey!"

The boy did not know if the person was male or female but he now realised who it was. The person bent down by the air vent and the boy backtracked even more into the air vent as the person said "It's ok!"

With a heavy heart and remembering what his mum said about this person while backtracking the air vent still he replied

"Everyone's dying." In a voice that make you feel so, so sad

The person looked around as a giant mechanical leg came past the now broken window. The person looked around at the boy "Come here I need to get you someplace safe… Here take my hand!"

The boy wanted him to help but kept remembering what his mum said so he replied

"You can't help." In a voice that made the person think that he was sorry

"Shepard…"

A man's voice shouted out, the second person come back to look for his companion. The man did not see the boy because the boy turned a corner in the air vent and then disappeared as the man spoke again "In here."

As the boy turned in the air vent to get away, a large rush of wind hit the air vent that made a weird sound. The boy crawled through the air vent turning corners every second or minute until he finally reached light, what he saw when he finally saw light scared him half to death he couldn't believe his awe struck eye.

For him only being six or seven years old the young boy was… was… just confused, scared, angry, worried, thing that make him completely terrified and wondering if he was ever going to see his mother and father again.

A few seconds passed and the boy saw another one of those humungous mechanical ships that looked like a giant squid with four legs, from seeing this again the boy was completely terrified and just ran. He didn't know where he was going until he bumped into someone… or something else

The boy fell over and looked up at… something that looked totally grotesque. One of its arms was smaller than the other and the other arm was bigger and had a piece of metal as a hand and a human head as a shoulder. Its chest came out like a fat drunken old man with a piece of metal on it and wires going into its back. Its head was shrunken in with grotesque giant bubbles on its back reaching towards his head. Its four eyes were glowing blue and its legs were smaller than its body. Blood was dripping out of its mouth and when you looked into its mouth it was the same colour blue as its eyes.

The boy was horrified and he was about to scream, he turned his head, but a kid about the age of fourteen jumped onto the grotesque thing with a flash of his blade to its grotesque head. The head of the thing blew up like a balloon popping with a needle.

The young boy stood up as the teenager who killed the thing got off the back of the now recently dead creature. The boy noticed the knife the kid was holding was an ordinary kitchen knife

"Come with me if you want to life." The kid grabbed the hand of the young boy and pulled him all the way down to the bottom of the wrecked building.

Sometime passed and the kid looked at the boy

"If I say run you run understand." The kid said suddenly, the boy did not know what to say but the kid went on without waiting for a reply.

"There will be a shuttle by the docking bay that will get us some were safe". It's a two minute walk from here, now I need you to run. Can you do that?" the boy just nodded to the kid just before one of those things he ran into on the top of the building grabbed hold of the kid and pushed him to the ground and bit onto the nape of his neck.

The kid just looked into the eyes of the boy and shouted out "RUN" blood started to come out of the kid's mouth and the white of his eyes started to go completely white as he shouted out again at the boy "RUN" just before he died.

The boy just ran with his hands on his head covering his ears towards the new landing shuttles. Alliance soldiers were standing guard looking for anything that could harm the refugees who got there first.

Shuttles were still landing by the time the boy got there. He then stopped in-front of a shuttle that was picking up refugees and looked around at the carnage of all the broken buildings that were destroyed by these unknown enemies. He saw buildings half destroyed, fighters being shot down by flying black creatures that reminded the boy of old folk tales about dragons. He saw more than one of these huge two kilometre spacecraft before he looked up in the sky at a ship with the name Normandy. The boy dropped his hand from his head and looked into his cousin's blue crystals eyes or was it emerald green the boy could not tell. But he's knew his cousin was looking back.

He noticed that his cousin suddenly looked at something behind him as a loud noise filled the air. The boy put his hands on his head to cover his hands again as the sound filled the air. He looked around at a smaller spacecraft that looked oddly shaped like a spider with four legs and something coming out of its back. It came through a building behind it, and opened up its front to show four small mechanical eyes and one massive technological eye, the boy looked in horror as the spacecraft looked at him. The boy paused for a brief moment before he ran to the shuttle. The boy was unseen while he tried to climb up in to the shuttle, it was at least a head bigger than what he could do alone, a few seconds passed before he got in the shuttle and stood up before looking straight in to his cousin's eyes.

An alliance soldier tapped on the shuttle door to alert the pilot to close the shuttle doors.

The shuttle took off as the mysterious craft looked at them suddenly a red beam hit the left side engine of the shuttle as his cousin looked in horror, the shuttle crashed to the ground with an explosion which melted it into a smoking wreck with fire on top of the wreckage, his cousin looked at it with horror in his eyes and turned and walked into the cargo bay of the ship named Normandy.

Seven days later

The mother of the little boy put up a photo of him and his older brother with the caption last seen on Earth on the refugee missing persons and remembrance wall on the refugee docking bay on the citadel. The Citadel is a massive construct, similar in shape to a pentagram. It consists of a central ring 7.2 kilometres in diameter, from which five arms protrude, each 43.6 km long and 330m thick.

The young boy's mother was in orange refugee clothing carrying a metal bag on her back, her long hair light brown with a little bit of dull blonde in it. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail now, she was looking at the photos of both her children as someone tapped her on the shoulder. She looked around to see her older sister wearing an alliance admiral uniform. The first thing she noticed that her sister was holding an alliance flag, she fell to her knees and started to cry.

"I regret to inform you that your son has died in active duty" Hannah Shepard said in a voice that sounded like she was trying not to cry as well,

"And on a personal note." She said in voice with a lot of sorrow "I'm sorry for your loss sis… and I got more bad news from someone who knew my child your little boy was killed on Earth" With a tear coming from one of her eyes.

"Thank you Hannah… I'm sorry for what I said before." She said still crying.

"It's ok just look out for yourself" Hannah replied.

"Do you want something to eat before you go back out there Hannah?" Hannah looked at her younger sister and replied "I'd like that very much." Hannah picked up her sister and they went out of the refugee camp to get something to eat.