Shelby/Introduction
Aw fuck yeah, a photo album. I love these things!
Shelby Christine McCallister, born and nearly raised in Prosperity. Most of her school and teenage years were spent in Toronto, Canada, living with her father and younger sister after her parents split at age 7. A very proactive teenager, Shelby enjoyed hiking, volunteering at community centers, tutoring fellow students, and breaking the law. She wasn't a freedom fighter, but that changed when the Infection hit, a chance meeting sending the virus coursing through dormant blood.
The plague, as it hit Shelby, answered a lot for her. It gave reasons for why some things didn't make sense, and why others felt right. After that fateful party, she spent a week with her dresser against her bedroom door while she sought the warm, fuzzy safety of blankets under her bed. That week was not easy, and she'd learned many things and made many friends in that dark room. The last time her father or sister had seen her was when her friends carried her limp, drunk body in the door, and they'd put her to bed. As soon as she was better she took a hike, and found her new family waiting. The less her old one was involved, the better.
I knew there was somethin' else. I fuckin' knew it.
The midden was home now. Shelby cut ties and made new, more deranged ones. Ever curious, the learning didn't stop with her absence from school. There was a whole new course load, and she was quite the teacher's pet. She finally got the justification she'd wanted, and learned those whispers weren't just for hiding from. She was aspectless for the first year of her life as a Ratkin, but learned the lores and rites of her new family regardless of her inability to change. Her connection to Mama Rat, she learned, had been there since she could remember. Her voice of reason, calm, and guidance in the back of her head, and she wanted to repay Her. She wanted to be a Seer, the mystic that helped others find their own ways by nudging them in the right direction like she'd been. But Mama had different plans for her, and it took Shelby a long time to finally concede to asking if she was doing something wrong.
The right idea, the wrong method.
A Twitcher. The dying world's fury, sadness, determination incarnate. Shelby was going to help people. Just, in a more direct way. Mom finally had to be blunt with her. "You're doing it wrong. Leave the rites and spirits to the Seers, you are my soldier." And after the second and just as enlightening installment of the Infection, Shelby finally saw where she was going wrong. Fanaticism finally had propulsion, and it was one hell of a sweet-sixteen birthday present. There were few in the midden that wouldn't fall behind Shelby when she started moving. The tallying of APB's at the end of the day became competition. She was their pup-general, and eventually she learned what every great martyr did. Not everyone sees it your way, and when it came to dying for it, there was usually only one stake. Yours.
3 years were spent terrorising and educating the Canadian populace before all those idle paranoias about being watched came true. In retrospect, she'd wished she never started to ignore them. They came with the job, though, and sometimes led to unfavorable outbursts. Even if she had listened...They'd finally pissed off the right people. Shelby and her Rat Race compatriots hadn't blinked before the world turned upside down, in a bad way. Most of them ran. The ones that hadn't were stupid. Harsh, but Ratkin truth. They were taken along with Shelby to the Institution. She'd never see them again. 6 months were spent with no lights other than fluorescent 6 hour shifts. Food and interrogations came at regular intervals to her cell, the doctor making house calls. Both worsened as she stayed defiant, one climactic session bringing her to bite off her own tongue to keep from any screams from spilling errant secrets. She learned two very important things during her stay. Psychics suck, and Premium isn't just something you put in your gas tank.
Losing six months of your life isn't easy to recover from. Especially when the first thing you remember, as you wake up on that sunny California beach in a life preserver atop the tattered remnants of a straight jacket, is that it wasn't a dream, even though it will be, for many nights to come. But she was good with debt, and she sure as hell owed one.
