Mass Effect: Earthborn

Chapter #05 It Starts With an Email

Chapter #05

It Starts With an Email

10.22 a.m., November 1st, 2169

The ‘Graffiti Wall’ in Harlem, New York City.

The artwork was amazing right here. Literally thousands of different artists had left their mark, however small or big, on this wall. The ‘vandalized’ area of the wall was about 200 yards wide and went at least as far vertically.

Even though it would count as vandalism, the ‘Graffiti Wall’ in Harlem had become quite famous. So much so that there was an entire site on the extranet devoted to it, and it was one of the minor tourist attractions on Manhattan.

We were all here, the entire gang. This was where we would usually hang out; on the staircase that lead down to the open space where the wall was located.

As I was baking in the sun, I looked down towards the wall where Rachel and Sabrina were had broken off from the group with some spray cans. They had been going out for almost a month now. They had bonded over their artistic side, since they both liked, and were very talented at, drawing, painting and ‘vandalizing’.

They looked cute as they were down there, spraying some color that had yet to take the shape of anything specific.

I sighed again for the third time in an hour. It was the heat. The summer had stretched quite a bit longer than usual, so despite the fact it was November, my omni-tool told me that it was 68°F. Those who actually had a jacket had just thrown it down on the ground.

“I’m bored!” Mark suddenly proclaimed. I looked up. He was sitting a couple of steps further up, wearing a wife-beater and some baggy pants.

“So think of something” Sasha said. She was the beautiful girl of the group, the Mary Sue of the group. That was my conclusion when we had a theme in class about the different archetypes of fiction. Basically, there were no obvious flaws about Sasha.

She was beautiful, clever, athletic, a social butterfly and she was leaning up against her boyfriend: Eric.

“He needs to have a brain to do that” Eric said while looking directly into the sun with his eyes shielded behind his stylish sunglasses.

“Yea? Well screw you Eric” Mark countered. It’s not that Mark was dumb, he was just more brawn than brain and he had a habit of doing things before thinking them through.

At that moment, Danny came back. He was almost Eric’s polar opposite: more brain than brawn, but like Mark, he had a problem with thinking. At least when it came to smart mouthing bullies. I couldn’t count on all my fingers and toes how many times I had saved him from some punk who weighed more than Danny three times over in pure muscle mass.

“What are we talking about?” he asked while carrying the sodas he had bought for the group.

“Mark is bored again” I answered while I sucked up as much vitamin D as possible.

“So race him” Danny suggested as he sat down.

“He’ll lose. Again.” Eric said while smiling.

“No I won’t!” Mark tried to defend his honor as an athlete.

“Prove it” I simply said, with an intentionally arrogant tone.

As quick as his legs and gravity would allow him, Mark stood up. “Oh yea? Well we’ll see about that Ice Queen!” He was terribly enthusiastic, thinking that he could win this time.

It wasn’t because he knew that Ice Queen was my ‘codename’ with the Reds, but it was a nickname that had, more or less, stuck to me during the last couple of months.