The apartment building stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the city. It stood on its own and looked over a broad spread of Vancouver. Not a remarkable building by any means - it was about thirty years old, squattish, stylish, made of steel, and had four windows set in Shepard’s flat of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
The only person for whom the flat was in any way special was Commander Shepard, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for about a year, ever since he had been placed under house arrest because the Batarian Hegemony was annoyed that he destroyed a colony of over 30,000 Batarians. Shepard was about thirty as well, dark buzzed hair and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about. He worked in the military which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too - most of his friends worked as mercenaries.
It hadn't properly registered with Shepard that the Reapers wanted to knock down his building and kill all Humans instead.
At eight o'clock on Thursday morning Shepard didn't feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a Reaper, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
Toothpaste on the brush - so. Scrub.
Shaving mirror - pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a second Reaper through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Commander Shepard's bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word Reaper wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with.
The Reaper outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
He stared at it.
"Black," he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. "Black," he thought and stomped on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He'd been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people's faces. Something about an imminent invasion he had just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he'd decided, no one wanted a Human extinction, the Council didn't have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. "Black," he thought. The word black wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and standing defiantly in front of a big black Reaper that was advancing across a scenic lake.
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