Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.

- Meertle Sorn, Salarian Philosopher

"Name?" Corporal Silas asked, not looking up from his screen. He was in a foul mood propagated by a very long day following a very long night wrapped in the sweltering Caribbean summer. He had pulled his jacket open hours ago, but his shirt was soaked through with sweat and his hair was plastered to his skull, dripping hot liquid down the back of his neck. It seemed cruel to ship soldiers to Cuba during the hottest part of the year and leave them packed in a barracks filling out forms while bikini clad tourist girls wandered the beaches unescorted. He glanced up after a moment, and the scowl that had inhabited his face for the past four hours quivered at the sight of his newest hopeful.

"What are you doing here kid?" He asked, wishing fervently for a beachside cerveza in place of this spiralling bureaucracy. What the hell was initial screening for, if not to catch jokers like this.

"I convinced the woman at the desk to let me up," the boy informed him. "my name is X."

"Hey good for you," Silas drawled, turning back to the light screen projected between them. "Why don't you go slap your mother for me?"

"I don't have a mother," the boy replied. His voice was quiet, but not sad, or angry, or pathetic. There was nothing in it at all, it was smooth and cold as dry steel. "I want to be in the Alliance."

"The Alliance doesn't make a habit of recruiting little boys," Silas replied as he pulled up a game on his screen. A space ship appeared in the corner, above the columns of scrolling data. He began to guide it through a maze, inhabited by other space faring enemies and the many devious traps they laid for him. "Take a time out for a few years and grow some more."

The boy needed more than a couple inches though. He was thin to the point of anaemia, his cheekbones jutting under his thin skin like razor blades. He had a Spanish look to him, might even have been considered artistocratic had he not had twelve different colours of hell beaten out of him not too recently. The dark skin was probably a deep, Caribbean tan in its natural state but at the moment it was a truly impressive spectrum of green and purple bruises. His dirty hair was dyed a harsh, chemical red with the roots showing black and looked like it had been cut a month ago with a piece of broken glass. His clothes were only a little bit dirtier than he was, fraying at all the edges and coming apart openly at the shoulder. Above and beyond all of that, he just looked young. Small, and fragile, and far too young.

"I'm ready now," the boy insisted. No childish braying or bravado, just cold steel brushed over confidence.

"You haven't even got hair on your balls," Silas waved one hand dismissively. "I said next." His scowl deepened as his ship exploded into simulated fire, respawned, and was promptly destroyed again.

"I have so. If I show you will you let me sign up?"

Silas couldn't help it, he laughed as his ship burst into sparks once more.

"You should go left instead of right," X advised. "You can lure those enemies back after you and trick them into setting the mines off for you."

"What do you know about it?" Silas snapped.

"More than you, obviously."

"Alright genius," Silas spun the display around so it faced the boy. He could watch the ship from behind the screen quite easily. "Show me what a great general you're going to be."

It took the boy a moment to figure out the controls, during which he died spectacularly. When the game started up again he had complete mastery of the simple controls and he sent the little ship spinning through the maze, dodging and blasting away. The score in the top corner spun up toward a spectacular number. Only when the computer's reflexes pushed up into a realm humanity couldn't hope to emulate did X surrender his little ship and step back.

"Okay," Silas grumbled. "You beat a computer game. How old are you kid?"

"I'm eighteen," X replied. To his credit, he kept a straight face and clear, calm eye contact. "You know how street kids run small."

Silas stared at him, then shrugged. The kid was lying, but it wasn't really his job to check that. That rested on the doctors who conducted the physicals, the bureaucrats that checked birth records and defended the Alliance against litigation. He was just a number cruncher, and he didn't feel like fighting in this god awful heat.

"Fine. But I can't put 'X' in as a name. The system wants a real name."

X bit his lip and appeared to be thinking carefully. Scars stood out on his bruises, stretched tight over the swollen flesh. He rubbed the one on his chin as he thought, the kind of gesture cultivated over a long period of having it. A touch of upper middle-class guilt stirred inside him when he thought about the hot tub his parents had maintained in the backyard his entire life and how miserable he had been when they wouldn't pay to get a pool installed too.

"I... I'm Trinidad," he said finally. Trinidad was a city up island, a pit of filthy violence ruled by gangs where police didn't go if they had any plans to retire with their wives and fat, happy grandchildren. It was the romanticized setting of a dozen games on the extranet, dark shooters full of violence. It was the subject of a dozen case studies about containing anarchy that can't be controlled. Still, the computer swallowed it without protest.

"Surname?" Silas asked.

"What street is this?"

Shepard and Newhaven Boulevard."

"Well Trinidad Newhaven sounds like a politician," the boy said with a crooked smile, "so I guess Shepard will do."

"Trinidad Shepard," Silas typed briefly, "eighteen years old," he coughed discreetly into his hand, "born on?"

"What's the date?"

"August 9th."

"Just use that."

"Okay, this is ridiculous," Silas sighed, rubbing sweat out of his eyes. He shouldn't have indulged the kid. He didn't look like he could beat stink out of a fart, he had no business running around the galaxy playing soldier. "And illegal. You should know the Alliance screens for false identification."

"I don't have identification, fake or legitimate," the boy shrugged. "Besides, I'm smart, I know how to fight, I know how to survive, the Alliance will be lucky to have me."

"Oh really, is that how you got that pretty face?" Silas indicated the swath of bruises mottling his cheeks and the side of his head. "By being smart and knowing how to fight?"

"You should see the other guys."

"Two of them were there?" Silas rolled his eyes.

"Three of them, actually," the boy replied. His face was dead serious. His eyes, Silas realized for the first time, were blue. The pure, tropical blue of the Caribbean sea under a clear sky but with a cold depth to them that seemed to cut where they lingered. "There was one of them when I left. I'd be surprised if he's still kicking now."

Against all logic, Silas could believe him. Those were not the eyes of an innocent child. They seemed huge and haunted and out of place in his narrow face. His hands were black and blue across the knuckles and the calluses on his fingers were thick and cracked as those of soldiers three times his age. Silas' hands were soft and supple. He had never killed anyone, but he'd known men who had and the boy looked more like them then he ever would.

"Are you sure you should admit to things like that?" He asked.

"Get me arrested," the boy shrugged, "or sign me up. You could use me in the Alliance. I could be great. But even a Cuban prison is better than one more day in Trinidad."

Silas sighed.

"Fuck it," he said, "not my problem."

"That's what I'm counting on," the boy replied, "no one is going to miss them anyway."

Silas slid down the form, filling in what he could. Medical history, family history, and educational history were blank squares.

"I taught myself to read and write," the boy scowled when Silas asked him. "That's all I need right?"

"For running around with a gun getting shot at you don't even need that," Silas replied, "are you going to keep your hair that ungodly shade?"

X- no, Shepard- ran his fingers through his filthy sheet of hair. There was a weird character to this kid, Silas decided. Maybe he wasn't as young as he had thought. His mannerisms and thoughtful silences were those of a man, a man who knew a thing or two about how the world really worked. He traced the scar on his chin with one finger.

"Yes," he decided, "as a reminder."

"Welcome to the Alliance, recruit," Silas spun the monitor around and handed Shepard a light pen. Arrows flashed on the screen where he needed to sign.

He took the pen and wrote in clear, if somewhat unwieldy hand. He didn't bother to read the terms of the contract at all, and ended his signature with a broad, bold x scrawled in sweeping orange lines.

"You still have to pass the physical, you know," Silas warned him. "The doc isn't going to accept heresay on that wealth of body hair."

Shepard laughed.

"It's okay," he grinned, "I'm pretty convincing."

When he got out of the office he took the print out they had given him and read the contract carefully, and then the instructions for reaching the Alliance boot camp in Spring Hill, Florida. As an Alliance recruit he could take a shuttle directly from Cuba to Spring Hill at the end of the week. He tucked the recruitment order into a secret pocket cut into his tattered jacket and scampered up the streets of Havana, pausing only to steal a credit chit out of a half drunk teenagers jacket pocket as he wobbled toward the recruitment centre yelling about the great hero he was going to be.

"My, my, my," a voice from the alleyway he had slept in last night crept out of the darkness gathered there, "and here I thought you didn't have the guts to really leave, X."

"That's not my name anymore," the boy snarled. He was down in a crouch in seconds, his hand reaching into his pocket for the shiv pushed into the lining of his jacket. "What are you doing here?"

"Just making sure our meal ticket doesn't let his independent streak ruin a good thing," another voice chimed in from behind him. A knife came under the hem of his jacket and pushed through his rags. He could feel it cold and sharp against his kidneys, pushing him toward the mouth of the alley. "Violently, if necessary."

Shepard had no choice. He let the blade guide him into the mouth of the alley. Cat was there, reclining on a garbage can with a knife in one hand. She was tracing lines of blood on the back of her hand as though there was no one else in the world, but Shepard knew that at a word from the man leaning against the opposite wall she would rip his throat out through his mouth.

Arturo Alvarez was a rakish young man, not a terribly long way past twenty with pinched, watery eyes set under a retreating hairline and over a ferocious aquiline nose. His mouth was small and crooked and cruel, his fingers quick and never far away from a razor blade. He had given Shepard the scar on his chin, and the one that cut into his eyebrow and itched when he got nervous. Right now it felt like it was trying to squirm its way out of his skin. And there were other, deeper scars, some under his clothes and others under his skin.

"X, why Havana?" Arturo asked him sadly. "Is this alley really so much more comfortable than the apartment in Trinidad I got for you?"

"You mean the cage you got me for ripping throats open?" Shepard asked, keeping his eye on Ismael behind him. Cat and Arturo were young, not as young as him but still young, with a lean, wolfish look to them. Ismael was twice as old and far more dangerous, with the eyes of a lizard, cold and flat and compassionless. "I'm not your pet."

"Don't be stupid, of course you are," Arturo flipped his hand as though batting Shepard's words from the air. "And if I can't have you no one can."

"I joined the Alliance," Shepard spat at the gang leaders shoes. "You're never going to make another cent off of me."

"Sure I will. If you've decided you don't want to fight I'll throw you in a pit with a couple varren and sell tickets to people who like seeing little boys getting ripped apart," Arturo grinned. "But I don't want to do that, X. I know you have so much more to offer." He reached for him.

"Don't touch me!" Shepard slapped his hand away, forgetting the blade resting beside his spine in a flash of white hot rage. "Don't ever touch me again!"

"Temper, temper," Arturo laughed. "You need to learn some gratitude. I can't see an ounce of thanks in you anywhere." The tall young man stepped back. "Ismael, remind our friend who he is. Carve his name in his forehead for him, so the world knows he's off limits."

Ismael's huge, leathery hand closed over Shepard's windpipe before he had a moment to think of what to do next. The huge man hauled him back, curling his arm around Shepard's throat until the boy was crushed flat against his massive chest. The knife came up, glittering in the dirty light filtering down from the gap in the rooftops overhead. Pigeons, fat and filthy and slow moved overhead as the blade slid closer. Cat was sitting up, the promise of fresh blood enough to draw her out of her casual mutilations.

He was going to carve an X on his forehead. Arturo had said it was his name, but it wasn't. Not anymore. Shepard felt something black and cold building in his chest, pushing his ribs out so he could gulp in a huge breath of air, preparing himself for what came next.

He didn't plan it, not really. He never did, and he never had to. One moment he was staring up at the descending blade in horror and the next his booted foot was coming down on Ismael's instep, protected only by a crappy off-brand sneaker. The big man's grip loosened and he grunted in pain for a second, which was all the time Shepard needed to slip his chin under his grasping fingers and sink his teeth into his flesh. He didn't hold back, and his mouth filled with the taste of the other man's blood as his teeth snapped shut on bone.

Ismael bellowed and threw Shepard away from him with all his strength. Shepard hung onto the hand he had captured, feeling the momentum of the toss pull at the roots of his teeth. The other man screamed and Shepard bit down harder, battling the shiv out of his jacket lining through a hole cut in the bottom of his pocket. When Ismael shook his hand again, violently, the boy let go but he took a mouthful of flesh and blood with him. He spat it back in Ismael's eyes as the man howled and clutched at his fingers which were suddenly spurting blood all down the

He knew what would come next. Cat flung herself away from the wall at him and he ducked under her widespread arms, both hands wrapped tight around the duct tape handle of his little shiv. He slid away from the razor sharp edge of her blade, still wet with her own blood, and stabbed her once. The blade slipped up, through the ribs and into the soft tissues of her organs. She screamed like her namesake, the sound of it blood curling and Shepard twisted, the knife spinning and tearing in the wound and hurled Cat off the blade into the newly recovered Ismael with all his strength.

The bigger man stumbled back and Shepard switched the shiv to one hand. As Ismael was pushing Cat away from him, the girl kicking and screaming as she clutched at the ragged wound haemorrhaging blood over her grasping fingers Shepard took a running leap, his knees pulled up close to his chest. They struck Ismael on the collar bone, jarring Shepard's joints and breaking one of the other man's clavicles with a sound like dry wood underfoot. Shepard brought the shiv down, thrusting it deep into one of those cold lizard eyes and tried to ride the momentum of him all the way down. Dead men did not fall with control, however, so Ismael went sprawling bonelessly and Shepard found himself thrown, his head striking concrete.

He lost a moment. When he blinked consciousness back into his eyes Cat was flying at him, fingers slick with blood but still finding the strength to clench, vise-like around his throat. She lifted him up and slammed him onto the ground, making his ears ring and his vision blur. Once, twice, three times, his head bouncing like a rubber ball, her screams filling his world, shutting out all sanity. Shepard twisted, the blood on her fingers giving him just enough leeway to manage it, and punched her in the stab wound he had just inflicted that was still splashing blood all over the two of them.

She reared back, her fingers curling into claws in the air in front of her and she screamed like a cat in a wood chipper, high and harsh and hair-curling. Shepard struggled to his feet, blinking blood and dizziness away, and kicked her in the side of the head. She went down, still screaming, and he brought his foot down on her temple, once, twice, three times. She was still and silent. The noise was all in his head.

He looked around. Arturo would still be there, somewhere. He would be standing there smug and confident, with his fists full of money and his face full of cruelty. He would have drugs, drink, promises, everything that it took to keep a scared, vulnerable, valuable teenager close and he would hold it out like it was a gift when all along it was really poison, ready to rot in the wounds. Shepard was ready for him.

He was nowhere to be seen.

For a moment Shepard didn't understand. He was bleeding from his ears, his mouth, his nose and a hundred minor scrapes and cuts. Arturo was gone. He had run away from his prize, his pet, his toy because he was afraid to try and take an easy shot while he was being beaten up by two older people. Shepard felt like laughing, but decided not to. Breathing was painful enough.

Cat's knife was on the ground beside her, but he ignored it. Instead he found Ismael's blade, free of incriminating blood, and tucked it into his jacket where his shiv had been. His shiv he wiped off with Ismael's shirt and left beside the dead couple. This was Havana, not Trinidad. In Trinidad the bodies would never have been found but that was unlikely, even in this bad neighbourhood. He reached up and grabbed the lower bars of the fire escape, pulling himself up with the wiry muscles hidden under his layers of rags and dirt. He had to keep moving. The concussion was bad enough to make every detail of the world slam into all the others every time he moved and he needed to stay awake.

He had a plane to catch after all. And when his feet had finally left the blood-stained soil of Cuba the boy named X would be less than dead, less than a memory. It would be as if he had never existed at all. There were a thousand others who could easily take his place.

Getting to the rooftops was slow going, his shoulder was swelling up as the opposite eye swelled closed, but he made it. The buildings were all built so close together it was child's play for him to go jumping and running across the hot tin, even in his injured state. The heat of the merciless sun on clay and tin mingled with the salt breeze coming off the ocean. He followed the breeze. It was soothing on his battered face.

The sun was going down by the time Shepard reached the water side. His head was still splitting, his vision swimming in and out of focus. It was going to be a long night, he should probably spend it down on the hotel strip where the neon and crowds would keep him awake. He still had that credit chit, maybe the guy he'd stolen it from had been too drunk to call in and cancel it. Maybe he hadn't even noticed it was missing yet. It was a good plan, and he'd turned himself toward the faint glow of the strip rising out of the shadows left by daylights retreat, but he paused for a moment.

Beyond the horizon was Florida, and Spring Hill, and his entire new future was unfolding like the hidden page of a book that had seemed very open and closed just a handful of days ago. He breathed salt air deep into his tortured lungs and stared out at the flaming curve of the ocean retreating back to Florida, to the promised land, to his future. The sun was kissing the horizon, throwing sheets of brilliant colour across the water and the bottom half of the sky, so vibrant over a sea so calm that it seemed difficult to tell where Earth ended and Heaven began.

He was concussed, hurting, the taste of blood was everywhere and he wasn't sure if he was really going to live out the night. But at that moment, god, Earth was so beautiful.