Chapter Five: Placida Coram Tempestate
April 9th, 2154 C.E. 23:07 UT
Earth, United North American States, "Old" Toronto
Joshua Shepard walked through the trashed parkway on his way home, a whisper on the wind his only companion. He adjusted his leather jacket and swatted at a wrinkle in his dark blue jeans; they were dirty and worn from decades of prior use and lack of washing. His vision went from his body to the road; it was hardly a road anymore, as almost nobody owned a car, at most a bike. Instead there was a ramshackle village of dwellings alongside the way, spilling out on the road, made up of loose fabric and discarded trash, mostly old vehicle chassis and rebar. It was partially built along the side of a collapsed wind turbine, its days of power generation long since passed, while the frame was looted and stripped. Everything was lit by lantern, hung overhead by chicken wire, with a handful of incandescent and neon lights adding the slightest hint of modernity. There was a veritable swarm of downtrodden and battered people, young and old, closing shop and taking stock of their 'homes' before heading to sleep or other less legal pursuits. An old Italian couple Shepard knew as the Sarneses were arguing on their porch about what Shepard guessed was rather trivial matter; "Non posso credere che hai dormito con quella puttana!" Sounded innocent enough.
There were two identical twins with ridiculous African names with too many clicks and clacks whom he nicknamed Danny and Jammy, who looked like they were raising a 'wall' to replace a nearby discarded piece of sheet metal. "Danny, Jammy! How goes it?"
They glowered for a second at each other, then Jammy turned with a mocking smile and said; "Fook oaff!" Obviously not in the mood to talk, Shepard moved on and left them to chatter and click amoungst themselves and work on… whatever it is they were doing.
Looking left, he saw the little boy who ran as his mule from time to time, Finch, who was cooking a pathetically small snake over a fire with a stick. "Finch! You little shit, how's it going?" The boy looked like he needed a pick-me-up. "Oh, Shep! I'm... fine, just getting a bite to eat before bed." He needed much more than a bite; he was a bag of bones. "Uh huh, I bet." Shepard was rather unconvinced. The boy looked sadly at his roasted snake, then back at Shepard. "Need something carried? Laundered?" Shepard answered simply and directly; "Yeah, I have a valuable package." He handed the boy a roll of twenties, enough for a few weeks of good eating. Shepard would make-do without. Without either saying another word, he gave Finch a pat on his shoulder and continued on.
A lone woman of advanced age and acting ability stood leaned against a relatively intact wall, clutching a cigarette, a rare commodity. She left very little to the imagination in any sense of the term. Given how there weren't any cig butts on the floor and how fast she was sucking hers down, Shepard suspected she had, had her lips around another commodity quite recently. Obviously Shepard knew her on a purely professional basis.
She turned her head up at him and gave a smile with a semi-toothless grin; "Hey sooga', lookin' for a…"
He knew where this was going and cut to the chase; "I'd rather stick my dick into a blender, Brenda, thanks." He tipped his imaginary hat and flashed a smile at her now-scowling face. "Yeah whatever, screw off Josh. Fucking inbred hillbilly mother fucker." Shepard loved this woman. "Hey! I'm not a hick! Get it right!" Not missing a stride, he continued out of the town. As he passed all of his acquaintances, he went under a hastily-constructed overpass, and trod back into the grim darkness of the road home.
The silence was deafening. There were only the musings of insects and distant clangs of heavy industry, with what he swore was the occasional howl from a Wolf. In a brief flash of intellectual insight, he remembered that wolves had been extinct on Earth in the wild for going on a hundred years. At least there are still some on Mars and Demeter, a thought that brought little light to the desolate path ahead; their absence only made the unrequited darkness of the road worse. It allowed far too much time to think and stew about 'things'; His soon-to-be son, his deal with the Guardians, his plans for the future, Hannah…
His head was pounding with a headache; his long hours of ordering around his fellow degenerates had put a strain on him. The Reds were big on organization, at least the higher-ups like him were, but the grunts who did the dirty work were big on getting paid and doing as little work as possible for it. It was a pittance, of course; almost everything they earned went into the gang immediately, unless Strauss 'skimmed' it for 'discretionary spending'.
"Fucking asshole..." He muttered under his breath. Strauss "The Boss" Kabel didn't found the Reds to restore order to the destroyed city, like the Oriental Cabal did in Los Angeles or the Seventh Column in Boston. He didn't do it for a sense of belonging and brotherhood like the Guardians did. He did it for money and power, and exploited the situation to suit his own ends and achieve selfish goals. Shepard's headache worsened.
Sounds like you, his subconscious opined. And it was right. He was contemplating betraying the group he'd run with since he was six; he'd been with Strauss for thirteen years and never wavered an inch from the path of a typical "Loyal Red". The payoff had been modest at best and afforded a mediocre lifestyle on a good day, but it was better than living out of the landfill like the million other fools who still lived in the desolate city. I do it for them, for all of them. It was a hard sell, even to himself.
He drew a deep breath, catching some of the 'fragrant' fumes from what remained of Industrial. The air quality was shitty everywhere you went in Canad-… "The United North American States" anyway, but huffing on the air coming from downtown was like tarring your lungs. Covering up his nose and mouth with his shirt to no avail and still looking for a distraction from his thoughts, he turned to look at the 'sprawling' downtown Toronto. It took him all of five seconds to extract every detail of the scene, and it only depressed him further; there were only three Hi-Rises still standing, one of which -the ancient Toronto Dominion Tower- had partially collapsed and was used by squatters. The other two were relatively modern buildings set up by Eldfell-Ashland Energy to oversee 'redevelopment of the area', code for 'Steal money from the poor idiots who live there'. Every other 'building' was a dirty industrial plant or yard, with century-old decayed condos interspersed between. He recalled from his childhood watching a Chinese fighter jet kamikaze the base of the CN Tower; it had fallen into hundreds of other buildings, including the incomplete space elevator, and killed fifty thousand people in what he morbidly called "the biggest game of Dominoes the world has ever seen". The city and region had pretty much fallen apart already, but combined with the invasion and a second global economic collapse, it was the final nail in the coffin; nearly all of the residents had left for Europe or the west coast and all of southern Ontario had become a desolate wasteland as a result. Only the poorest and most desperate had remained, with few exceptions. He could only imagine the devastation had the space elevator been completed. At the very fucking least, the old tower's saucer section had been turned into a restaurant again, one of the few quality ones still around, so that crazy Yellow bastard could at least be credited with some good grub. Irony, since he was sleeping with the fishes.
He didn't drown, you idiot. Shepard's inner voice was being rather unhelpful today, as it was most days. Perhaps if he listened to it more often his life wouldn't eat so much shit, but he didn't live life by intuition. Shepard lived by thinking ahead, planning and executing plans quickly and flawlessly. Thinking about the long-term consequences wasn't part of that; get the job done no matter the cost, screw the repercussions. Look where it's gotten you. Again, with the helpful remarks.
He had a sudden surge of resentment and fatigue, the kind he got when he hit a "speedbump", as Andy had called it with his characteristic understatement. He took a baggie with a fine, luminous blue powder out from his pocket, and looked it over once. "Fine cut indeed, heh." It was rated as $100,000/gram, so it damn well better be. He poured half into his hand and without hesitation drew it to level with his chin throwing it into his mouth and tossing back his head. The unrelievedly awful taste lasted for but a moment before the effects started. He clenched his fists as he continued walking; the fresh infusion of Element Zero flowed through his veins, invigorated the nodules throughout his body and gave him a rush of adrenaline that he desperately needed to stay alert. Looking down at his clenched fist, he noted a few small, moving blue lights under his skin, showing him that he was ready to try again. Don't do it, an inner voice warned. Ignoring the instinctual warning, he stopped walking and took a look at his fists. He focused all attention, all thought, all his anger into the whites of his knuckles and palms of his hands. He willed it to work, to obey his orders, to bend. It paid off; a sudden swirling corona formed around his fist and forearm, illuminating the battered road and a nearby overturned car. With a sudden boost of confidence, Shepard took a look at the car he saw nearby; supercompact, about 1000 Kilos, much too large to manipulate. He diverted his gaze from the car to the detached car door sitting next to it. "Perfect."
Outstretching both hands, he did a forward-backward motion with his arms and let loose. "Lift!" He knew you didn't have to say anything for it to work, but his dabblings in fantasy had given him a certain preference. A massive surge of static electricity lanced from his hand to the destitute door, momentarily shocking the aspiring biotic Shepard. Finally after an awkward delay, a pathetic bluish-purple orb of energy coalesced in front of his hands and flew in erratic circles, vaguely moving towards the door. It neared the pavement and impacted the door, only to rocket off and ricochet back right at him as if it had a personal mission of vengeance. He tried to duck, but the projectile was moving so fast that the only change he affected was to have it hit him in the forehead instead of the chin. He fell like a sack of lead potatoes and hit the ground as hard… and stayed there for a good while. Told you, dumbass. You cast a warp field, not a lift field; you do down-up to lift. With his headache only getting worse, and his annoyance with his gloating inner voices not helping, he dragged himself up, feeling even more drained than he did before his laughable display of power. "Goddamn stupid Mass Effect shit."
What kind of name was "Mass Effect" anyhow? It was pretty catchy, if unimaginative; the force that had an 'effect on mass' was called 'mass effect'. Stupid smartass scientists. Red Sand was ironically named as well, given that it was a glowing blue, literally as far from red as it was possible to be. He had always wondered why it was called as such, and it pissed him off. Probably named after Mars. Of course, Mars wasn't that red anymore and there wasn't really that much sand regardless; most of it had been converted into dark soil decades ago or buried kilometres underneath its new ocean.
Clutching his head and giving it a good shake, he looked at the nascent moon above him, brightly lit an off-colour blue in a chemically tainted sky. It sat above, mocking him with its indifference, above the concerns of the blighted world beneath. His mom had used the phrase "Once in a blue moon…" when he was younger, to talk about things that came only once… or not at all. It was fairly ridiculous, since pollutants made the moon appear blue most nights, but it had originally dated back to the 18th Century when the air was clear and clean; before the poverty of Humanity had been made apparent. It made Shepard think of what was one of kind, of what mattered to him. That narrowed the list right down to… a single thing. There's two things now, don't you think? His mind once more chimed in, and for the first time all night, he agreed with it.
One hour later
Shepard stepped up to his home's front door, the entrance to a modest home, opulent in comparison to its surroundings, which wasn't saying much. It was after midnight, and the light of the moon cast long, ominous shadows wherever it was felt.
He took his keycard and his mechanical key out from his pocket, pulling out a few dollars and the packet of red sand out with it. He unconsciously scrambled to catch them before they fell to the floor, sweeping up all four items in one smooth motion. With a small spring in his step, he recovered from his grab and did a little twirl, whistling the complimentary "Phew!" sound as he patted himself on the back for his daring rescue of his abused substance. Quickly unlocking the door, ensuring he was completely silent, he peeked through the door and scouted for any potentially murderous pregnant women. Detecting nothing but the sound of his own anxious heartbeat and the high pitched crickets outside, he entered the solid darkness of the front foyer, slipped off his shoes and jacket, and made for his bed. If he was quick and silent, Hannah wouldn't…
"Joshua Matthew Shepard!" The light flicked on, revealing the aforementioned, frightening, pregnant Hannah staring with an anger that could eclipse the sun.
"Cock sucking Christ!" Shepard drew his pistol and pointed it at her feet, driven by habit. His alarm transformed into relief, then back into alarm upon the realization that he was screwed.
"Don't do that! Goddamn, you know how I am!" He holstered his weapon and walked back a step from the woman who promised bodily harm.
Hannah Walker stood, revealing a curvaceous form and a pregnant bulge, and practically stormed to the imbecile she called her boyfriend. She gave him a solid backhand across the face, causing him to recoil in anger. Making a grotesque frown and parting her blonde hair, she grabbed the skin of his neck and drew his face to hers. She gave him an angry kiss, pulled back with her usual aggressive grace, and gave him a light head-butt to the nose. "Shit! Ah, fuck!" It would be bleeding very, very soon.
"You rat bastard! Where have you been! I've been worried sick!" Her previous rage gave way to concern, laced with rage. "Here I am, the size of a house while you go gallivanting around doing God knows what! What in the hell were you doing?!"
"I've been busy lately! You know that! I had to talk to Andy and Ash, and you gotta' know they live all the way downtown! What did you want me to do? Use a car? Take a bus?" Public transportation in quasi-abandoned megacities was notoriously… unreliable. And cars? It would be at most a week until it was stolen and in a chop shop, never mind the complete absence of H2 stations from the city.
"No, but you can at least call me to tell me these sorts of things! For all I know you're face-down in some ditch somewhere, or shot by some thug, or…" Her eyes glistened and her voice trembled.
"Hannah… I'm sorry, but everything's okay now!" Doing his best to sound reassuring and comforting, he placed one hand at her side, another on her stomach, and faked a smile as genuinely as he ever had. This bothered her even more than she let on.
"No, it isn't Josh! How long are we going to go through this, how long will I have to worry about you? I'm not a soldier like you, I can't take this anymore!" She looked at him, a tear falling from her cheek, almost pleadingly. This gave him pause, she had never called him a soldier; he wasn't so sure he liked it.
"Everything I do Hannah, I do for you, you know that? Well… maybe not so much anymore…" He rubbed her baby bump gently, and put a kiss on her cheek. She smiled at him for the first time in quite a while; "… But, y'know, all the same. And stuff." She raised an eyebrow at him and mocked a little; "So, you care about me 'all the same. And stuff'. Very reassuring" He really didn't have words, nor did he need them. "Hannah… I… care about you, and… Well... Christ I'm bad at this gushy shit..." He trailed off, nothing else to say.
Hannah's thin smile parted into a grin and she cradled her belly with both hands. "House and all?"
Shepard never genuinely smiled, moreover, he did it only in the presence of a select few individuals. She was one of them.
"House and all."