Chapter 1: Cast Down to Earth
The small alien wailing in his arms was soft: too soft, like it would dissolve between his talons if he clutched it any closer to his armor. It—no, she?—even smelled soft: this soft smell leaking into his nostrils beneath the metallic tang of the blood of its parents. Or at least he presumed they were the small alien's parents. The two humans lay in a tangled, bloodied mess at his feet. Maybe they resembled the small human in his arms? So many humans looked alike. How was he supposed to know?
Another shot rang across the street. Damn it. They were gunning for the child as well. Garrus activated his shields and turn his back to the street, shielding the child from the shots. They were coming from the same skycar that had hovered in the street for only a few seconds before gunning down the two humans: black, darkened windows, no identification plate, shielded. He glanced over his shoulder as he ducked behind the cover of a broken crate. The tip of a sniper rifle was peeking out from the window, but the interior of the skycar was too dark: he couldn't see a face attached to it. And he couldn't get an interior with his other eye—his new eye, what had once been his visor—so the skycar had to be lined with something. The shooter could have been a mech, anyhow. Not that there was much of a difference between mechs and people now, but it was still a hell of a lot easier to memorize an organic's features than the expressionless face of a mech. Didn't matter anyhow.
The human in his arms didn't seem hurt, but it was crying and wailing. It was easy for the sniper to pick out what crate they were hidden behind: it remained in the car, firing out round after round at them, waiting for Garrus to slip up and poke his head out from around the crate. Then the child would be easy prey.
Who would try to kill a human baby? Was this the galaxy Shepard died to save? Garrus knew, all too well, that it was.
He didn't know what to do. His head was muggy from the day's early morning round of drinks. He'd been on his way from his morning round of drinks to his noontime round of drinks, having picked up a few extra credits from a hacking job last week and therefore able to afford such a luxury. He had rounded the corner onto this street and heard two shots ring out: precise, lethal. A woman had screamed. Two figures had slumped to the ground. He never knew when to get involved anymore, but this was easily the most overt display of violence he had seen since the Battle of the Catalyst and it awoke something in his blue turian blood that had been dormant for years. He had rushed forward, heedless of the danger, while the sniper was reloading. The sniper was slow. Adequate aim—not that it was difficult at that distance—but really slow on the reload. He considered checking the vitals of the two humans, but saw immediately that it was useless: it would be hard to survive without their heads. But the stirring and thrashing of something in the arms of the woman had caught his attention and he had just enough time to grab it before the shots rang out again.
And now he was trapped behind this crate. Stupid. He only had his pistol on him. His Mantis sniper rifle he'd traded away a long time ago in exchange for a long tab at a local club. He regretted it now, of course. But he wasn't sure what to do with the human in his arms. Could he hold it with one arm? Would he drop it? Damn it, why wouldn't it stop crying? Well, that was obvious, really, but how was he supposed to shoot, with a pistol and a miniscule target nonetheless, while this thing thrashed against his chest?
A shot grazed his shoulder, bouncing off his shields. He could hear the dim sound of sirens—someone had alerted the authorities. He needed to end this.
He let the child slip out of his talons and laid it, as gently as he could, on the cold pavement against the edge of the box. Startled by the sudden loss of contact, its face smoothed over for a moment. Then, it started wailing even louder than before.
But Garrus had become deaf to the alien's cries. He pulled his pistol from his back. He shot a burst of electricity from his omnitool at the skycar: it snaked along the surface and he heard a satisfactory cry of alarm from the driver's seat. Human. Male. Good. The driver, at least, was organic, so the shooter probably was too. Killing mechs had so little satisfaction, though maybe a little more since they had become so cheerfully sentient.
He steadied the pistol along the top of the crate and fired at the end of the rifle, the only thing he could see. He missed. By a lot. His slugs peppered the side of the skycar, scuffing the paint but not penetrating any deeper than that. Damn it. He really was drunk. Or inept. Though, weren't those two things really one and the same? But it was enough to scar them off. He heard the driver yell again and the skycar took off, barrelling down the street and out of sight.
There would be authorities here soon, but he really didn't want to encounter them. Even with his face tattoos removed, even with the lines the years of aimless wandering had etched upon his face plates, he was still paranoid that he would be recognized. The old scars didn't help. Neither did the visor becoming merged with his face. Would Alliance MP be able to find the child behind the crate when they hauled their incompetent asses here? Certainly. It was making enough noise. With barely a backwards glance at the wailing thing, he got up from behind the crate and, as nonchalantly as possible, tried to sidle away from the numerous curious and terrified glances being shot his way from the humans gathering in the street.
An Alliance MP skycar pulled up. A few wearied officials got out, shooing people back into their shops and homes, leaning over the bodies of the two humans. Garrus used his visor—his eye, really, but once it had been his visor and he had to keep reminding himself it was now a permanent part of him—to watch them work from the other side of the wall by the alley. Curious. There were heat signatures on the bodies of the humans. The bodies were still warm, but rapidly cooling in the chill air. Obviously, they were very dead, but he expected at least the bright-hot glow of identification tags on their chest. Weren't those mandatory for all humans now? And, technically, for all registered alien landed immigrants? (He himself was unregistered and had been lucky enough to avoid questioning…so far, at least…)
His suspicions were confirmed as the agents shook their heads to each other after probing at the bodies with their omni-arms. No identification.
Damn it. No identification meant submission to DNA processing and, with how long that would take, they would send the human child to The Tanks in the meantime. It was small. It wouldn't last long. Then, it would be processed down into fertilizer. It disgusted Garrus just thinking about it. But an abundance of orphans and a shortage of food had meant that the humans had resorted to despicable means to keep themselves alive. It wasn't that the unclaimed children were killed, exactly…more that an inadequacy of medical care meant that vast majority of them usually died. And then they were recycled.
Shepard never would have stood for any of it. This sort of thing was exactly what they would have fought against. Together. Once. A very long time ago.
This was the humanity she had died to save. This.
Garrus looked back down at the child on the ground. This time, he really looked. Etched along its arms and forehead were the green circuitry possessed by most humans now. The circuits flashed and flickered—was it trying to establish a short-range network? With its mother, probably, but she was now a headless corpse, bleeding into the gutters. The child's hair was dark, its eyes bright blue. And around its neck was a tiny image attached to a chain around its neck. He didn't have to look any closer to know what it was. He had seen them on many of the humans around Earth, especially children. And every time he caught sight of one, it would usually send him back into the nearest bar and asking for another round of expensive dextro-safe drinks.
The image on the child's chain was a picture of Shepard: her face was oddly stylized, her hair surrounded by a strange circle. It was etched out of plain metal: technology-less to remind the humans that wore them of their organic roots. The shape of the metal was like old human currency, he'd heard someone say once. Someone. It had been James, shortly after the Catalyst. After the War. After they'd limped the Normandy back to Earth. When they'd caught sight of one on a young boy's neck, James had called the kid over and asked to see the necklace. The boy had handed it over to James reluctantly, obviously intimidated by the bulk of the human marine. James had looked it over, shaking his head sadly, and muttered that Shepard was a new saint. Garrus didn't know what that human word meant, only that it had something to do with one of the many human religions. In a post-Reaper galaxy, humans, especially children, were now wearing her around their necks as a way to protect themselves. James had translated the human etchings on the back of the medallion for him: May The Shepard Always Watch Over You.
A bystander was pointing to the alleyway, to the crate where the child continued to cry. Garrus had to move. Quickly, he bent down and scooped up the human child into his arms. Its tiny fists opened and closed. Was that normal? Was it broken, somehow, with the death of its parents? Maybe they had been networked at the time. Maybe this child felt its parents die. Maybe that was what had broken it.
There was a ladder at the back of the alley. Cradling the child in one arm, he pulled them both up it and onto the rooftops—away from the sirens, away from the death.
