2195 CE, New Calcutta, Earth (Present Day)
Late September in New Calcutta should never be this cold, Shepard thought as he stared out of the window at the spectacle on the street level below. The rubber seals around the window panes had long since eroded away, leaving gaps where the cold seeped in like sharp little daggers jabbing into his finger tips. He retrieved his hand to tuck it under his arm. The heating unit was set to high, but failed to make a noticeable difference to the room temperature. The dented aluminium walls seem to suck all heat with sentient intensity.
"Street level" was also technically a misnomer since New Calcutta was a haphazard, multi-tiered metropolis. The widespread trend of building densely-packed skyscrapers in the twentieth century had been followed by two centuries of sporadic maintenance and unsanctioned expansion. Sky bridges originally built to link mile-high towers had proliferated and interconnected over time until in many areas of the city, they'd meshed together to form massive platforms tens of metres thick and several square kilometres across, creating entire new street levels altogether.
It'd been a day since they'd landed on Earth and he'd led them under the cover of darkness into the outskirts of the city. That caution had been well placed. They were now holed up in a dingy motel ensconced within the top few levels of a run-down twenty-first century skyscraper used partly as support strut for an artificial street tier extending over the edge of the Hooghly Slums. The muted holovid projector in the room had been playing a newsfeed showing protests and rioting in many cities on Earth for what seemed like hours. A glance out of the window revealed passersby moving about lethargically in the cold, dressed inadequately for the light grey snow falling overhead. The smell of abject misery in the air was palpable even from this distance.
The last three days had involved one hurdle after another. Just before the MSV Daedalus reached the Attican Traverse, Miranda decided to settle for sabotaging just Shan's and his IDs on the reasoning that three faulty IDs would've looked too suspicious. That'd forced Shepard to put his ability to talk them through customs check into gruelling use. On Liara's advice, they'd found berths on a smuggler ship that carried passengers with a no-questions-asked policy past the legal net by the expediency of dropping them at an unmarked location outside New Calcutta.
Unfortunately, the ship's port-of-call was a system ten light years away which had required a day's travel on a short-range hauler to reach. They'd also had to find another way to get to Sydney. Miranda had fumed over what she'd considered unnecessary delays, but grudgingly came round to the reasoning that the more hops they made, the easier it was to shake the Alliance off their track. For all intents and purposes, Shepard and Shan would've disappeared en route the MSV Daedalus while she'd have reached the Attican Traverse and remained there.
Shepard scratched his bristly chin, grateful for his foresight in not shaving. In the last week, he'd almost grown enough of something resembling a beard. They'd managed to bypass customs check on Earth where security would've been at its toughest, but he harboured no illusions their luck would hold out.
The door opened. Shan entered the room they shared, hands laden with bags, one of which he tossed over to Shepard who caught it neatly.
"You wouldn't believe how much that cost." Shan gave him a look of incredulity. Shepard glanced at the price tag and grimaced.
"Same with food?" He gestured at the bag of takeout in the younger man's hand.
"Everything. And I had to keep one hand free for my pistol on the way back here. The looks I was getting—I kept thinking I had to play it safe. It's a war zone out there."
Grimly, Shepard's eyes returned to the holovid projector where the announcer was reporting on the riots in London before setting aside the box containing melanin-blocker pills that when ingested would change the colour of all new hair growth. Stripping the wrapping off the bottle of bleach, he walked into the small bathroom. Several minutes were spent squinting at the fine instructions before he set aside the bottle to wet his head under a creaky tap. As he did this, there came the sound of the door being opened and slammed shut.
He glanced back into the room to see Miranda depositing herself in a threadbare armchair with a huff. She'd kept her knee-high boots but changed to a pair of thicker pants, and swapped out the shirt beneath her zipped up leather jacket for a grey sweater. Her pistol was out in evidence, strapped to her right thigh.
"Problem, ma'am?" Shan's food-muffled voice drifted into earshot.
"Forget about getting to Sydney by the orbital shuttle service," she stated as she crossed her legs tightly. "We'd need working IDs, not to mention the fact that the next available service leaves in three days. Three days!"
Shepard glanced up at his reflection on the discoloured mirror. He poured a generous amount of bleach over the top of his head only to feel it trickle down his face. With a curse, he slapped the bottle on the sink and then scrambled to right it with one hand while he used the other to quickly spread the substance over his hair. After making sure he didn't manage to get any bleach into his eyes, he poked his head out of the bathroom.
"We'd never get pass a weapons check with the shuttle service anyway. Something covert might serve us better." He scratched his head, frowning at the growing burning sensation on his scalp.
Miranda looked up and gazed at him quizzically.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to bleach my hair," he said with a look of intense concentration on his face. "My head feels like it's on fire."
"Don't tell me you applied it straight from the bottle."
"Isn't that how it's done?"
To his consternation, she began to laugh.
"You'd better wash it off before blisters start forming," she finally subsided enough to instruct as she entered the bathroom. "Where's the skin gel? Or the gloves?"
"What are you talking about?" Shepard muttered as he duck his head under the tap for the second time.
Miranda lifted the near-empty bottle of bleach before putting it down with a sigh. Turning towards the bedroom, she raised her voice.
"Shan, I'm going to need you to get more hair bleach. Make sure you buy equal amounts of protective skin gel this time. It's usually on the same shelf. And bring back a box of disposable gloves too, please."
"Right away, ma'am."
The sound of Shan exiting the room came as the running water finally did the trick. Shepard exhaled and touched his scalp gingerly.
He was rewarded by a faint snicker.
"Cut me some slack," he groused, running a towel over his head. "I've never had enough hair before to need to do this."
"Neither has Shan, it seems," she murmured.
He looked at her leaning against the door, and couldn't help but join in her mirth this time.
Over the past three days, they'd gradually found the right footing for a comfortable working relationship. Shepard found himself cherishing the sense of rightness that occurred more and more often during moments when their minds worked in tandem, arriving at the same conclusion almost simultaneously with a certainty that said they'd covered every possible contingency. And it was times like now that he realised with a pang how much he'd missed her company all these years, missed hearing her rare but infectious laughter.
Why did it take you so long to figure out you could make her laugh like this again?
He cleared his throat against the lump in his chest.
"I think we should consider renting a personal shuttle," he said, leaning against the sink. "That'll give us the widest selection of options, plus a clear advantage in planning our approach vector."
"The idea did occur to me," she replied after a while. "Except it'd make a big dent on our existing finances. But I suppose at some point I have to stop worrying over things like that. The bigger problem might be getting our hands on unregistered firearms that won't blow up in our faces."
And so it came to this, he thought with an inward sigh. He'd kept his reservations about landing in New Calcutta from both Miranda and Shan up till now. But it was a masquerade he knew he couldn't play at for long, not when the success of their mission hinged on coming clean.
"I might know of someone who could get us what we need. If I can find him," he added quietly, "It's been a very long time since I was last here."
She gazed at him in a way that suggested a thought just came to mind. But before it could be given voice, the door opened again and Shan appeared at the bathroom entrance proffering the requested bag of items.
"Thanks, Shan."
"No problem, sir."
Shan gave him a meaningful look, mumbled something about something he'd forgotten before leaving the room and closing the door with more strength than was necessary. Shepard shook his head. Likely, they'd need to have a talk about the potential pitfalls of good intentions. But he didn't dwell long on it before directing his attention to Miranda who was rummaging through the contents of the bag.
Setting aside the bottle of bleach with its accompanying gel, she slapped on a pair of gloves with efficient movements.
"I'll show you how it's done," she said, business-like, as she walked up to him. "After this, you're going to have to touch it up every other day or so, especially the beard area. Until the pills start taking effect."
Shepard nodded and then braced his feet apart to lower his height for her convenience. She hesitated even as his belated awareness kicked in at the same time.
"Uh, probably easier if I sit down."
Saying that, he shoved the toilet seat down and sat on it.
"I think you're going to want to remove your pullover," she said after a moment.
"Oh, right."
He undressed in a swift motion, shivering slightly in the cold air, before wadding the clothing into a tight ball with his hands. Soon after, he felt her fingers run lightly through his hair, parting it so she could apply the coat of gel that tingled on his scalp. He slowly relaxed in her gentle ministrations, surreptitiously breathing in the scent of her body at the same time.
"Chin up," she instructed as she came forward to slather gel on his cheeks. He complied, and accidentally met her eyes. The effect was immediate. Her gaze darted away like an allergic reaction as he managed just in time to stop himself from cringing.
"Sorry," he said, and then wondered what the hell he was apologising for. Quickly, he tore open another packet of gel and busied himself smearing it over the rest of his head until she slapped his hand away and muttered about how he was laying it on too thickly.
"What you said," she began brusquely again after a while, "before Shan came in—reminded me it'd slipped my mind you were born in New Calcutta. That information was mentioned only in passing in your files. I remember you telling me you used to run with the gangs, but other than that, you talked very little about that part of your life."
Her voice trailed off into uncertainty here even as Shepard closed his eyes, but for a different reason this time.
"I'd have rather it stayed that way."
He dared a straightforward look at her as the earlier sense of despondency he'd felt slowly dug its claws in again. Her eyes didn't slide away this time.
"I never expected to come back. There are many things here I wish I could forget. And it's not just this city I'm talking about." He grimaced, the smile he was trying for slipping off from the weight of returning memories. "At any rate, we'll need to hit the slums tomorrow for supplies. You'll get your glimpse of my life before the Alliance. Whether you like it or not."
Miranda bit her lip as if she was on the verge of saying something, then thought better of it. The rest of the work was conducted in deep silence.
As he'd promised, Shepard led them down one level into the Hooghly Slums proper the next day. Where it was visible, the sky remained overcast, a pathological sign of a planet in the throe of climatic upheaval. From orbit, it'd been impossible to separate the continents from the oceans with the blanket of white haze that covered much of the planet. Earth was deep in the grip of a nuclear winter, the result of the six-month Reaper standoff that had in the last days seen mass accelerator weapons, fired in desperate indiscrimination by friendly forces, raining destruction on the surface. The final shot had been when crippled hulks, dreadnaughts, cruisers and Reapers alike, spiralled into a decaying orbit. Their mass precluded the option of burning up on entry. Instead, they'd hit the ground like gigaton warheads, flattening all structures within a radius of tens of kilometres and kicking up massive amounts of dust into the atmosphere.
New Calcutta, as its inhabitants knew it now, lay crushed beneath a grey slate sky that reflected feeble spots of light from the ground, locking the Indian sub-continent into a climate of deep, unseasonal cold. Cheap prefabricated buildings rubbed shoulders with low-slung architectural relics from the last century in this part of the city. Many of these had their tops unceremoniously lopped off by the elements. Pedestrians learned never to walk underneath unless they wanted to risk the occasional rubble that fell and shattered sidewalks.
Shepard tugged the hood of his jacket securely in place only to push it back a while later to scratch his head.
"Stop doing that." Miranda admonished, walking at his side.
"I can't help it," he said under his breath. "It itches. And I look like a damn punk."
It was like Shan had mentioned. Hostility and apathy rubbed shoulders with each other to generate a raw abrasive feel in the air. Police presence was non-existent while signs of abject poverty were in sight everywhere. Now and then, young men with tattooed faces and colourful hair nursing firearms rode pass on overburdened hovertrucks.
"I think you fit in just nicely." Miranda said blandly, inclining her head at another truckload of garishly-dressed youths that sped by.
"Funny."
They made no attempts to conceal their pistols, but neither did they try to attract unwanted notice. Both Shepard and Shan wore Alliance-issued black boots and pants, nondescript enough that they could've been purchased from any store on Earth. On her part, Miranda had her own jacket hood up, this being not the kind of crowd she wanted to stand out in.
Following Shepard's lead, they crossed flights of stairs, walked down side streets and balanced their way across rickety gangplanks used to link the disparate levels of one tottering building to another. Upended drums with rubbish thrown into them were kept burning on streets by splashes of cheap kerosene, creating a ubiquitous sour smell that pervaded the cold, dusty air. Groups of people congregated around these spots, grimy faces staring with suspicion at anyone who walked pass. At one point, they walked past a dark lump on the ground an accidental kick by Shan revealed as a badly-decomposed body.
Shepard didn't even give it a glance. Inexorably, he led them deeper and deeper into the slum, back to the places where he had been a young punk himself. Despite more than twenty years of absence, certain more permanent landmarks became familiar again. That was the easy part. The trickier work was trying to recall the location of a particular street corner in a quieter area. Shan's look of uncertainty and Miranda's impatience became apparent as he led them yet again down the same flight of stairs. But this time he took a different turn and saw with relief the little corner where a cobbler had set up shop.
"Comm-check," he instructed as when they reached the end of a small alley across the street from the corner. "Stay here until I call for you. I'm going to see if I can contact an old friend. Don't use my name from now on."
Making sure his earpiece was secured and live, Shepard tugged his collar up and walked up to the old cobbler who was toiling away at a shoe lopped over a leather-covered brick with a rickety hammer. Shepard knelt down and studied the features of the man. The decades had not been kind, but as the seconds went by, he became sure that it was the same man that'd plied his trade here from before. Carefully, he placed a hand on a hunched and emaciated shoulder.
"Uncle Raj? It's BJ. Do you remember me?"
Cataract-clouded eyes gazed at him in a squint, but then the decrepit old man shook his head and muttered in a phlegmy voice, "No, no..."
With a shake of his own head, Shepard glanced at his chrono. It was close to mid-day. If his memory served him right, the person he wanted to meet should come along soon. And he could only hope against all odds that twenty years wouldn't have changed that routine. Upending a wooden box, he sat on it, knees apart and arms resting on top of them. Turning around, he could see Miranda leaning against the alley wall, watching him. His gaze slid away as he prepared himself for what was hopefully a fruitful wait.
Tuneless whistling came into earshot before a short and stoutly-built man carrying what looked like a takeout box limped round the bend at the other end of the block. Shepard studied his old comrade in great relief before standing up and pushing his hood back.
"Abish."
Dark eyes widened on a pudgy face marred by deep scarring.
"BJ? S'that you?"
Shepard lifted his arms in a cooperative fashion.
"The same. Figured I'd wait here for you to bring lunch to your old man."
Abish's eyes narrowed.
"What do you want?"
"I need help, Abish. I didn't know who else to go to. There's no one left I know here."
Slowly, as if in pain, Abish knelt down beside his father and took away his tools before opening a box of food and carefully placing it on the old man's lap.
"Thought that was you on the vids," Abish muttered as he gently wrapped his father's hand around a fork. "What could Admiral John Shepard, saviour of the galaxy want from someone like me?"
Hesitation marred Shepard's brow as he wondered how much of the truth he could trust his old friend with.
"I'm a fugitive. The Alliance is after me," he confessed reluctantly. "You used to be a whiz with equipment. I figured you wouldn't have lost your touch."
Abish leaned over to pick bits of food from his father's jacket before shaking his head.
"Not everyone escapes the life they were born into. Unlike you." The bitterness in the other man's tone was apparent. "You slipped away to the stars like a greased pig. Left the rest of us to rot here. What makes you think I'd help you?"
Shepard sighed and hunkered down beside him, shivering in the biting wind.
"S'that what you think? After that heist, company troops were all over the place, bagging corpses for experiments, digging out survivors," he said quietly. "They saw my face when I pulled you and Wim outta there. One year, they kept at it. I had to enlist to take the heat off the gang."
The other man studied him as he said this, taking note of his bleached hair and patchy beard but remaining silent.
"You could probably raise the alarm. Maybe even turn me in for a nifty reward. But I don't want any trouble. Not for you, not for your old man," saying this, Shepard turned his head and nodded at Shan and Miranda who stood with easy assurance at the entrance of the alley, hands resting on their pistols. "I just need access to some supplies. For old times' sake?"
Resentment warred with admiration in Abish's eyes.
"You never lose your touch, do you, BJ?" He muttered as he fingered the scar tissue on his face. "Don't even remember much of that year. Just pain in, pain out. Couldn't hold a gun after that, so they made me quartermaster."
"Did Wim survive?"
Abish was quiet for a while.
"The fucktard recovered. Only to die two years after you left. Took a full clip in the chest playing hero in a turf war."
Shepard rubbed his forehead and sighed.
"Just you and me left then."
"Yeah." A wistful look came to Abish's eyes as he gazed at his father. "Da used to tell me you brought him food when I couldn't." He took a deep breath. "Just this once, BJ, for old times' sake. What kind of supplies you looking for?"
Standing up, Shepard offered his hand to Abish which the other man grudgingly accepted. Quietly, he gestured at Shan and Miranda to join them.
"Armour, equipment and unregistered firearms for the three of us. We'll pay for them. And you won't see me again after this."
Abish frowned as he took in the three of them.
"Head to Hotscotch Complex, 13A. Skeeter's my contact. Tell him I sent you and that he'll get his lemonade when the sun kisses my ass."
"Hotscotch Complex?"
For the first time, a slow smile appeared Abish's jowl-heavy face.
"Betting you won't forget where that is."
The place that Abish directed them to was located further out in the slum, almost at the edge of the city proper. It took an hour's walk to get there, but they had to spend an extra hour navigating the bewildering changes in streets and buildings. As they moved further away from the tiers of artificial streets, the heart of New Calcutta slowly emerged in view.
The centre of the city stood high above the surrounding land, gleaming new skyscrapers rising from the top of old construction. It'd come to the point where tearing down the old city underneath the new was no longer feasible and the increasingly derelict buildings below now doubled as supporting struts with additional support beams raised, massive concrete and steel structures, to shore up the weak areas. The middle and upper class lived exclusively on the top tiers of the city with easy access to sky vehicles, while the most affluent opted for penthouses at the top of the highest skyscrapers, several kilometres in the air in the middle of the city.
Shepard knelt down near the edge of the last of the artificial street tiers to gaze over the sprawling property known colloquially as Hotscotch Complex. Covering several square kilometres, the place had an industrial feel to it, towering metal tanks and a complicated piping system that linked many of the buildings together. On the far end, the burnt out shells of several structures suggested that something catastrophic had happened at some point in the past.
"What is this place exactly?" Miranda asked as she couched down beside him to prevent their silhouettes from standing out to potential observers below.
"It's an eezo refinery and storage facility. Defunct now." Shepard explained quietly. He narrowed his eyes to scan over the area. There was a decided lack of movement down there, but without more sophisticated equipment, which they were hoping to obtain from the exact same location, there was no way to be sure.
"Do you trust your friend?" she queried, going to the heart of the question he asked himself.
"Abish used to take his debts seriously. You don't get far if you don't honour obligations. That's all I can say."
"Is there something else you're not telling us?"
He saw her study him intently, the memory of their talk on the issue of trust came vividly to mind.
"No," he took a deep breath. "It's all water under the bridge now."
She closed her eyes briefly and then looked away, a gesture that seemed to lash him like a reproach. Inwardly, he couldn't help but cringe.
On the far side, Shan lifted his hand.
"If I may ask, sir, what does 'BJ' stand for?"
"Just a silly nickname." Shepard replied tiredly after a while. Pulling his pistol out, he rose to a half-couch and made a beeline for the rickety staircase at the edge. Behind him, Miranda and Shan followed suit.
Ten minutes went by as they skirted the perimeter until they located the warehouse stamped with the giant letters 13A on one side. Biotics made climbing the fence a non-event, and Shepard took the lead as they approached the building. With one hand on his holstered weapon, he mentioned Abish's name and gave the passcode to the entrance guard. Once they were allowed to step into the interior, he saw with relief that the number of guards was well within the numbers he'd expect for a weapon-dealer.
A balding man dressed in an expensive business suit introduced himself as Skeeter, expansive showmanship gestures subtly betraying his origins as a two-bit salesman. Shepard took the part of the genial customer while Miranda grilled the weapon-dealer over details like pricing and quality issues, falling into the roles they'd played so many times before as though the intervening years never existed.
Sub-machine guns, thermal clips, a box of grenades—as Shepard mentally ticked off almost every item on their list, he thanked Abish silently for giving them a high level password. Most of the equipment was excess military stock, nothing flashy but reliable at least. And as it turned out, Skeeter had a workshop secreted at the back of the building that made armour-fitting a job taking only hours instead of days.
From wariness, the atmosphere became almost relaxed as they waited to pick up their custom-fit armour. Browsing through some esoteric wares, Shepard nonetheless kept a lookout for his other two now-teammates. He noticed Miranda who was at one end of a long table, inspecting a selection of combat visors, doing the same. Which was why she reacted with the same low-level alarm as he did when Skeeter moved in to engage Shan in conversation.
Putting down the item he was looking at, Shepard strolled up just in time to hear Shan ask the innocuous question, "Why is this place called Hotscotch Complex?"
Skeeter puffed up perceptibly as he went into story-teller mode.
"Oh, it's very much a local legend. Except it's real and did happen. This used to be an eezo refinery own by Hoshichiri Heavy Industries. Twenty years ago, a gang tried to conduct a daring heist of a massive cache of refined eezo. Partially for the profits, but also in protest of Hoshichiri's business practices—indiscriminate dumping of hazardous material, lack of environmental safeguards, you name it, they failed at it. Unfortunately, the operation went horribly wrong. A firefight between Hoshichiri guards and the gang took place. No idea if it was an accident or something else, but the whole cache blew up. Took out the entire compound over at the west side. Over fifty people died on the spot. Many, many more were badly burnt in the fallout."
Miranda had closed in on the group as he was saying all this.
"That must've been the damage we saw from a distance," she observed. "Still, it didn't look like a crippling enough blow for a complex this size to be shut down."
"Oh, the best part is yet to come. What happened after that was Hoshichiri conducted a giant manhunt, sent squads into the slum looking for the survivors. The few they managed to haul away were never seen again. After that, one of the kid survivors rallied the gangs, got them to fight back. If you've spent time in the slum, you'll know how hard it is to get that whole lot to point their guns at one target. But the skinny git did it. Got the gangs to conduct sabotage for months until city authorities stepped in. He followed up by organising protests, made such an ugly splash that Hoshichiri had to abandon this facility. It became known as Hotscotch Complex after that." Skeeter chuckled conspiratorially. "And a damn good place to set up shop in since it's pretty much a local monument. Authorities can't get within a mile without risking a slum uprising."
Shepard cleared his throat.
"Mind checking if the armour's ready for us, Skeeter?"
"Oh right. It's getting late out there. Bet you've got a ways to go."
Contemplative silence fell within the group as the weapon-dealer walked away, but thankfully, it wasn't long before he returned to say that everything was ready and they could take the goods and leave.
The next two days went by in a flurry of preparations. They booked a personal shuttle which was in the process of being prepped, with the take off slated for the next morning. Soliciting the service of a professional forger with the timeframe they had was out of the question, so Miranda set herself to the task of creating false IDs for them. Enlisting Shan as her personal runner, she sent him off with detailed instructions on materials she needed, and for a whole day, knocks on her door elicited snarls of frustration. Finally, by exploiting a loophole in the damaged database infrastructure, she managed to doctor fake IDs that bypassed security measures on local machines to display fictitious profiles. These wouldn't stand up to a rigorous check, but for cursory inspections they'd suffice. Immeasurably pleased with herself, she dragged Shan out on a shopping trip in one of the higher, more affluent street tiers to purchase stylishly-cut long coats and shoulder holsters so they could hide their light armour and weapons underneath.
Shepard couldn't help his bemusement as he was presented with his coat, which he now wore as he exited a hardware store in the slum. On his part, he'd continued to refine their equipment list, adding components like ropes, wire, cutting and welding tools as well as electronic parts used in the construction of makeshift alarms and timed explosives.
Walking down the street, he pulled his hood up and made his way to the pharmacy where Miranda was working on assembling a med-kit. But he didn't get half way when he came upon the rare sight of Alliance military police hauling a young man onto a crossroad and beating him up. A small crowd began to congregate when an old woman started screaming at the police to leave her grandson alone.
"Goddamn Alliance scum..."
The mutter of discontent began with a single voice, but it was soon followed by another and then another until an ugly murmur filled the air.
"Get the fuck out. Where were you bitches when Earth burned?"
"We don't need shitasses like the Alliance mucking into our business!"
He stood transfixed between the desire to do something and holding back for fear of exposing his identity. Sensing the tension, the Alliance police began forming a perimeter. Someone hurled a bottle from behind. It shattered on the ground. Another attempt to do the same near the front was put to an end by a baton swing.
Too late, Shepard realised he should've walked away immediately. Turning around, he found himself hemmed in by bodies that began to surge forward as one mindless entity. The sound of a gunshot ripped through the space. He turned back just in time to hear a loud roar as men threw themselves at a feckless policeman who'd fired the shot.
All hell broke loose. The crossroad collapsed into mayhem as more and more of the crowd joined in. Ramming his purchases into a capacious inner pocket, Shepard tried to shove away in the opposite direction, caring less and less about hurting people as it became obvious he was going to be embroiled in a riot. The name-calling had risen in volume. Terms like 'traitors' and 'public enemies' were hurled around indiscriminately. As Shepard jabbed an elbow against a particularly foul-smelling man in front of him, he felt someone rudely yank his hood off, exposing his face to the crowd.
"Hey, you look like that Admiral Shepard!"
"It's Shepard! Kill the traitor!"
Fists began to pummel him, having no effect when they hit armour, but there was no such protection for his head. He tried to shield his face the best he could, but a blow caught him on the temple, dazing him. From there, all it took was one misstep, and Shepard fell down into the crowd. Booted feet were far more effective than bare hands. After several failed attempts at rising, he could only raise his arms to protect his face as the blows began to rain down hard.
Just as he began to feel blood trickle down his face, the assaults suddenly eased off. He dared a look and was faced with a sight he would never forget.
In a distance, men were being thrown into the air, trailing waves of incandescent blue fire. The ones closest to the phenomenon fell on top of those behind. The effect was that of a mob being physically shoved away to make space where there was none before. Closer and closer, the surge approached, cutting a swath through bodies, until he finally saw Miranda at the epicentre of it. Here, deep within the shade of a street tier that stretched for kilometres above, the brilliant fire that danced over her lithe armoured form torched the air around her, enveloping her in an unearthly nimbus.
Screams of terror grew as people tried to dart away, slapping wildly at the flickering blue flames to no effect. She paid no heed to all of that as she flung an arm through another arc, widening the path in front of her. The sound of another gunshot tore through, but the bullet ricocheted against Miranda's biotic barrier before bouncing off harmlessly. She turned to glare at the perpetrator. With a snap of her wrist, she yanked the pistol out of his hand where it revolved in the air. Clenching her hand in a mimetic motion, she crushed the weapon into a formless lump of metal. Terrified murmurs began to grow, with cries of "Kali, Kali" rising from the cacophony.
Belatedly, Shepard remembered to fire up his own biotics, creating a shimmering barrier around himself. Except it was no longer necessary. The rabble in his vicinity tottered and finally collapsed as Miranda approached, scrambling to get away from her no matter that they stampeded over one another. She reached down to pull him to his feet, a final surge of blue energy radiating like a shockwave from her body as she expanded her own shield to merge with his.
Shaking his head to rid the dizziness, Shepard gripped her hand and ran for the nearest alleyway. Turning after turning he took, not caring that he was soon lost in the winding maze. The roar of what was now a large-scale riot interspersed with gunshots shook the air. They had to backtrack several times when they hit cul-de-sacs or when alleys opened into chaotic streets filled with combatants.
Every few seconds, Miranda turned her head to check for signs of pursuit. But all they came across were hapless slum-dwellers, mostly women and children caught unawares by the violence, huddling in corners with eyes averted. In an unspoken agreement, they gradually slowed down. Shepard's breath came out in bellowing gasps, the assumption that he'd acclimatised to Earth's standard gravity after New Canton's point eight slipping away as his muscles ached with a vengeance.
"Damn it," he cursed as they rounded a corner into another dead-end. Towering walls hemmed all vision to reveal only the underbelly of the street tier high above them. In the distance, siren calls began growing in strength as city authorities finally sent reinforcements into the slum.
Miranda stood slightly apart, breathing far more easily, as she fired up her omni-tool. After a minute or two, she switched it off.
"I can't get through to Shan on the short-range. Let's hope he's all right." She looked at him, hands resting on her hips. "How long do you think it'll take for that mob out there to disperse?"
"Won't happen for a while," he said, grimacing at blood on the hand he'd wiped his forehead with. "And the cops will be combing this place like a fine sieve. We need to get away from here."
She took a few steps as she directed her gaze all around before stopping at a manhole cover almost camouflaged by decades of grime in a corner.
Shepard followed the path of her eyes.
"Bad idea. What with the kind of things that go into the sewers. Dead bodies will be the least of our troubles down there. Besides," he added with a wry grin, "we'll never get the smell out of these spiffy new coats."
She sighed in well-practiced exasperation.
"If down isn't an option, I'm guessing up is?"
He exited the cul-de-sac in a brisk walk, scanning for a route overhead.
"Most likely. Once I get my bearings and know exactly where we are."
"I hope it doesn't involve hours of backtracking this time," her voice drifted from behind.
"Not everyone's a goddess of destruction who carves a straight path through," he chuckled with unabashed admiration in his voice. "You were amazing by the way."
She made an inelegant snort which led him to turn around with a grin.
"C'mon. It'd just be like a trip to the amusement park," he said, invoking memories of a happier time they shared.
Miranda simply shook her head, although the most oblique of smiles crossed her face.
"Lead on, Peter Pan."
As it turned out, the backtracking wasn't as drastic as Miranda feared, although Shepard decided to omit the fact that he'd never been in this part of the slum before. His difficulty in locating landmarks by virtue of being hemmed into the narrow confines of alleyways was alleviated when they managed to access a corroded slide ladder hanging overhead with the aid of biotics. From there, they began wending their way upwards, through dusty stairwells, flimsy exterior ladders, haphazard ledges and rickety gangplanks, keeping their barriers up at the same time in case of stray shots from below.
Makeshift bridges connecting one building to another further up gradually transformed the nature of their route, brick and mortar shop-houses gradually replaced by glass and steel fabricated towers. Walking past the shattered windows in a derelict office tower, Shepard glanced out and halted on his tracks, dumbfounded.
They were only ten stories up, but with the prevalence of low-lying buildings in the area, the slum stretched out more than a kilometre away. Fighting was taking place in almost every visible street. At certain chokepoints, uniformed police clashed with gangs that fought back with Molotov cocktails and small firearms. Drums of flaming rubbish were being toppled over and fuel thrown into the mess to create firewalls. Elsewhere, pockets of skirmishing continued to rage as slum-dwellers attempted to overwhelm hapless groups of police trapped behind the frontlines.
"Is it always this bad?" Miranda asked quietly as she took in the spectacle.
"Not that I can recall," he muttered. "Haven't seen anything like this since the Hotscotch incident."
"Let's keep moving," she said after a while. "We'll need to make a far bigger detour to get back to our street level."
"Maybe not." Shepard squinted at a skyscraper in the distance and cursed the fact that they'd left their visors back in the motel. "Can you make out the word on that building over there?"
She walked up to the edge of the wall, narrowing her eyes.
"It's Nikon, I think." She turned to him in immediate understanding. "That's the name of our motel. Can we can get there without hitting the streets?"
"It's worth a shot. We're entering my old hunting grounds." With that, Shepard took the lead again, plunging them back into the bewildering maze. The landmarks were becoming more than familiar, right down to the rubble-filled corners and unstable sky bridges that spanned this part of the walkways. With only the slightest of hesitation, he tackled turnings and stairwells, looking out of windows whenever possible to gauge the distance to their destination.
He knew his luck wouldn't hold out against the odds of twenty years likely having changed certain things. Moments later, that fear became reality as they came up against a brick wall that stood innocuously out of place at the end of a fire-blackened corridor. A quick glance through a gap in the wall revealed the Nikon Tower rising just several blocks away, the top of it disappearing through the base of next street tier.
He wracked his memories furiously as they backtracked to the last intersection. But no matter how hard he tried, only a single route came to mind. The words he'd said to her—that she'd likely see parts of his past he'd rather stayed hidden—a few days before came vividly to mind. But there was, he realised with a sinking heart, no other alternatives.
The roar of the riot, coming from five stories below, was deafening. Shepard didn't need to look down to know that they were directly above a chokepoint where the fighting would be at its most intense. Going down to the streets would be suicide. Taking a deep breath, he made for the stairwell and began descending towards the heart of the chaos.
Two levels before they hit the street, Miranda reached out to stop him with a grip on his arm, concern evident on her face. Smiling at her, he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before releasing it.
"This way."
Exiting the stairwell, Shepard jogged along a short hallway that showed signs of extensive fire damage from the recent decades. At the end of an apparent dead-end, he knelt down and began shifting through a pile of blackened timbers to reveal a hole in the wall and a dark tunnel beyond it. It was a tight fit; he could barely scrap his shoulders through although Miranda fared better. They ran along at a half-bent, the sound of metal gantry underfoot echoing faintly in the confined space. Sounds of the fighting slowly abated the further they moved until their breathing and footsteps were the only audible noises. Progress beyond the passageway was blocked by a wooden door crudely hammered together with slabs of plywood.
Cautiously, Shepard cracked the door open to peer through before swinging it back against the wall. He stepped through into a dimly-lit corridor with doors located in regular intervals on both sides suggesting this used to be an office previously. Threadbare carpeting deadened their footsteps further until faint sounds drifting through the closed doors could be heard. They were trotting down the hallway towards the bend at the end when Miranda paused at the sound of a child's sobbing that was quickly stifled. A staccato banging followed soon after before fading into the background.
"What the hell was that?" she muttered as she caught up with him.
He didn't reply as they rounded the bend to find themselves in another long, unmarked hallway very similar to the one before. The muted sounds continued to filter into the space, whimpering noises too high-pitched to come from an adult interspersed with sporadic bumps and grunts.
Stopping in the middle of the passageway, Shepard mentally counted the number of doors before placing his ear against the one on his left. After a minute or so, he opened it to be assaulted by an overpowering smell of stale sweat and sex. He paid it no heed as he crossed the tiny room and began pushing away a heavy mattress overlaid with stained bed sheets shoved against the wall. A backward glance revealed Miranda standing at the doorway, a look of disquiet dawning on her face as she realised what this place was. But a moment later, she closed the door and came forward to assist, lending her strength until they exposed a metal trapdoor set into the floor.
A hoist of the rusty handle revealed the dank interior of a giant metal pipe beneath the flooring, far tighter than the tunnel they'd emerged from. Traversing this space was a nightmare, made worse when it started sloping upwards steeply. It'd been a snug fit when he was a kid, and he found he had to hunch deeply to get through now. After ten minutes of painful crawling, Shepard lifted a hand periodically to knock on the ceiling until he was rewarded by a hollow sound. Twisting his body in small movements so he was lying on his back, he reached up to locate the seams of a hidden panel before pressing down on a spring to open the hatch. Ignoring the agony of pulled muscles, he extricated himself before reaching down to assist Miranda out.
They were high up above the streets, on a small platform linked by a series of pipes that snaked in and out of the ceiling gantry immediately overhead. Three sides of the landing were cordoned off by a metal railing while the remaining side was blocked by a wall with a primitive and torn control panel inlaid into the bulwark. The remains of a makeshift camp with campfire scorch marks on the floor gave hints to the reason for the unorthodox passage they'd just took. Straight across the span of a relatively deserted street, their motel building towered, shattered windows of the lower storeys standing tantalisingly out of reach.
He knelt down and pulled out the bag of purchases from his coat pocket to extract a coil of rope. Grasping his intention, Miranda walked over to examine the gutted panel in the wall. The telltale glow of biotics enveloped her body as she laid hands on an L-shape metal inset. Ripping it out to the groaning accompaniment of stressed metal, she offered it to Shepard who made twin strangle-knots across the piece. It took a few attempts before he finally managed to swing the heavy end into the tower. A little nudge of biotic energy finally settled it firmly into place over a window ledge. Securing the other end of the rope to the metal railing, he fired up his biotics to lower his mass before swinging over the edge to grapple across. When they were both safely across, he looked back on the length of rope with faint regret. Unceremoniously, Miranda retrieved a knife from her boot and cut the link.
Punching the button that would take them to their room floor, they finally took the luxury to lean against the walls of the lift as it carried them upwards in fits and starts, rising above the lower tier of the slum and onto the next level. Upon reaching his room, Shepard walked over to look out of the window. The relative normalcy on this level of the city was almost mind-boggling in contrast. Shan's filtered voice broke into his musing and he turned around to see Miranda speaking into her omni-tool.
Shutting it down, she approached the window. "He's fine, although he says it'd take him at least an hour to get back up here."
"I should probably hole up in here until it's time to take the shuttle."
"It was a fluke that they correctly guessed your identity," she said as she lifted a hand to examine the wounds on his face. "If you're under unofficial remand, it would be stupid of the Alliance to publicly reveal your disappearance."
Unslinging a brand-new medical pouch she'd been carrying across her back, she divested herself of her coat and dropped it on the bed. From the pouch, she took out a pack of synthetic swabs and a bottle of disinfectant.
"Come here so I can tend to those cuts."
Shepard looked away from the window, and was on the verge of demurring, then changed his mind. Rising to his feet, he activated the hologram system with a voice command.
The newsfeed came on as he sat down tiredly on the bed, reporting on the full-scale rioting that was taking place below them. The headline "Hooghly Slum's Fourth Riot of 2195" flashed periodically across the base of the holographic projection. Miranda glanced at the projection now and then, a grim expression on her face.
Closing his eyes, Shepard called off the newsfeed. The room settled into a deep silence. Outside the window, fresh snow was falling. It had all started off as a vague sense of dread about coming back here and bit by bit, what he'd feared came to be and passed. What he'd expected was the renewed abrasion of old wounds but all he felt was relief at the chance to exorcise old ghosts.
"I never knew my parents. I was abandoned at birth. John Shepard was the name I gave myself when I enlisted. Wanted it to be with two 'p's, after Jorgum Sheppard, hero of the 2067 Kathmandu Uprising, but I misspelt it."
He chuckled at the memory, lightheaded with his decision at catharsis. Briefly, Miranda's hand paused over his face, and then she resumed her ministrations.
"I joined the gangs when I was old enough. And then I hung on until I could enlist with the Alliance. What I said to Abish about taking the heat off the gang? That was all bullshit. More than anything else, I wanted to get away. One year after Hotscotch, I developed biotic abilities. It became my ticket out of here. Service represented everything that was the opposite of this. Other than the rioting, the nuclear winter, nothing's changed."
He winced as she probed a particularly deep cut on his left temple.
"Sorry," she said and gentled her touch. After a while, she murmured, "Hard as it was, your time here did prepare you for the work you had to do."
"I don't regret that part. All this—is who I am. But I used to entertain ambitions of coming back when I've made my name, try and make a difference here. What this trip taught me was to recognise pipe dreams for what they are."
Over the decade, they'd occasionally swapped stories from their past, interesting anecdotes shared over pillow talk. Some of what he'd said, Miranda already knew, but certain things just didn't have that visceral impact until seen. She seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion for a veil of reservation clouded her expression.
"Can I ask you something?" she said hesitantly as she finished applying protective covering over the worst of his hurts.
Shepard queried her with raised eyebrows as he helped repack the med-kit.
"What was your life like before the gangs?"
And then there were some truths that just hit too close to home. But maybe, the time to keep secrets from each other was finally over.
Still, he couldn't help his dread. Hand arrested in the motion of wrapping a roll of bandage, he looked at her in stark honesty.
"Do you really want to know?"
This close, he could see the indecision warred in her eyes, her indefatigable sense of curiosity overlaid by what could only be sympathy.
She bit her lip and finally shook her head.
He lowered his gaze, and because he felt compelled to, murmured, "Thank you."
They sat there on the bed in the companionable silence for a while. Hands slowed down in the packing of swabs and sealing of bottles along with the lessening of the tension in the air. Gradually, Shepard became aware that their legs were side by side, that he could feel the heat of her body radiating through the ceramic plating of his light armour. More importantly, she didn't seem to be bothered by it.
"I hadn't thought about my father in a long time until I heard about his death," she said softly after. "That was when I realised the mental hold he had over me was gone." She shrugged. "I'd have thought the revelation would be more earth-shattering, except I seemed to have misplaced the farewell note."
He replied the rueful look on her face with a commiserating smile. Placing the last object in the box, Miranda shut the medical kit firmly. She lowered her head, allowing her long dark hair to fall free, before brushing it back with her hand.
"Sometimes, I find myself missing the person I'd been before. But I can't imagine doing certain things now I'd have done ten years back. Neither do I want to go back to justifying every aspect of my life beyond my father's charity. I'm done with that." She exhaled softly. "We'll just have to accept we can't go back to being who we were."
It was though he was slowly granted a vision as she said this. And for the first time in a long time, Shepard felt a glimmering of optimism for a future that might not be so bleak. After all, the galaxy was a large place. The mission still came first, and strangely, he found himself looking forward to it as the days of preparation slid pass. But now, he could finally allow himself to wonder what he could do after all this was over.
Likewise, he couldn't help his rising sense of intrigue at her revelation. And he wondered if he might be granted the chance to see the changes she'd mentioned about herself. It was obvious that Oriana's rescue would provide part of that key. After so many years, there was finally a personal stake to the mission again. Perhaps that was the perspective that'd been missing for both of them all these years. Wrapping up all of that was a painful and tremulous hope that just maybe, he could still somehow earn her regard and trust again.
He was done apologising, but he wasn't going to stop there.
