[attr="class","TITLE"]PERSONALITY

[attr="class","CONTENT"] At one time Michael Shepard would have described himself as a happy and content family man but in the space of two years things for the young husband and father changed. Where Michael was once warm and loving he became cold and distant. The losses suffered in such a short space of time and the life changing consequences of them turned him into a violently different person. Rather than risk anyone else, no matter how distantly related it was simpler to be no longer be the man he once was. Michael is unable, or rather unwilling, to force deep bonds with people now, including the sister he was once pretty close with. Tentative acquaintanceships and mutually beneficial temporary partnerships are easier to walk away from, especially when trust is no longer something that comes easily to you. At one time stability was the bed rock of Michael’s life, now it’s something he knows he’ll never find again.

As the son of two economics professors Michael practically grew up analysing stocks and futures, world financial patterns and foreign aid quotas. His analytical skill when it comes to Eastern Europe is what put him on the CIA’s radar. As an office drone Michael wasn’t given the same sort of training as field agents but after the loss of his wife Michael’s used physical activity, the training of his body, to help centre his mind. He’s as organised, focused and methodical as he was before and can still see the patterns in movements of weapons, troops and money across the globe. Computers and the flow of data are practically second nature to Michael, almost as easy as breathing for him.

As a senior analyst Michael often found himself in a position to mentor younger members of staff. It’s a role he enjoyed but knows won’t likely be able to be in again. Michael is a man with a strong sense of right and wrong. He can plan for the future, as he always planned for things in the past, but with everything currently going on in the world Michael refuses to believe that the future will play out just as he’s planned it. That future scares Michael, although he won’t readily admit that to anybody. Especially not for his daughter, for Abi he holds his head up high, plays a real good game of pretending that everything is going to be OK again.

Before Daya died Michael was a devoted family man, distracted from that only by his work. Turning his brain off at the end of a day wasn’t easy, especially when the job cut into his evenings and weekends. Still, the instant he could get away from the office or the computer screen he went straight home to Abi and Daya. Afterwards Michael has become hypercritical of all the weaknesses, all the things he did wrong that led to the deaths of his family. He stubbornly clings to the fact that their deaths were his fault. He’s worked tirelessly to keep his anger under control but under the circumstances it’s not always so easy to keep a lid on. Despite best efforts Michael is still blind when it comes to seeing that his superiors have very different motives and agendas to the ones they reveal to him. Gullible and loyal to a fault he’s not been able to see past what he knew of his wife and his job.

[attr="class","TITLE"]BIOGRAPHY

[attr="class","CONTENT"] Michael Raymond Shepard was born to Everett Shepard and Juliette Shepard (nee Raymond) in Baton Rouge in the summer of 1981. Despite being closer to LSU his parents were both tenured professors in Economics at Tulane in New Orleans. The travel between the two cities ate into the time they had with their son but as soon as they were home from the university their time was dedicated to him. Less than three years later Michael became a big brother to Karen. Even with two kids little changed, their life in Baton Rouge remaining pretty idyllic. Both Michael and Karen excelled in school, both showing an aptitude for math much as their parents had at their age. While Karen was also a bit of a jock, running track and playing Volleyball Michael was very much the intellectual type, choosing to read or play guitar when he was home rather than dragging himself outside to work out. By the time they reached high school both Shepard kids way well above the curve in most of their subjects, taking a variety of AP classes and it was considered a given that come the time for college both would study to go into the same field as their parents. Talk around the Shepard table typically covered two subjects, world finance and economics and music. Despite their intellectual leanings both of Michael’s parents had been involved in music from a young age and that love had also been passed on to their children.

Just as predicted, at 18 Michael headed to Tulane, taking on a double major in economics and international finance. Being taught by your parents wasn’t always easy and there were a few dubious looks from his fellow students until it was obvious that he wasn’t there just out of nepotism. Michael’s parents treated him no differently to any other student, marking him just as harshly, but that just made his drive to succeed greater. Much to his younger sister’s disappointment Michael got an apartment in New Orleans in his second year. He still travelled home at weekends but during the week he was too focused on his studies to spend three hours a day driving back and forth from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. It didn’t take long for Michael’s focus to start paying off, as he started his third year there was talk about some of the papers he’d written on the financial and economic state of Eastern Europe that were beginning to draw attention from some of the bigger government agencies. Fellow students grumbled over favouritism but Michael ignored it, concentrating on the work, on monitoring the economic changes going on in Russia and the states it had once ruled over.

Not three weeks passed between his graduation ceremony and the knock that came on his apartment door at 7am one Saturday morning. Michael hadn’t submitted any sort of application, hadn’t actually been considering anything other than going on to his Masters degree at Tulane but those who had seen his work, who had read his final project on the effect of the Russian black market upon the country’s economy, had other ideas. A pitch was made, and turned down twice, before the analyst who’d been assigned to recruit him finally convinced him that working for his government was more important than a couple of extra letters after his name. Michael had one stipulation only, if he was working for them then he would do so in Louisiana only. There were mentions that it might stymy his career but Michael didn’t care, family was as important as the job and missing the Sunday lunch around his parents’ kitchen table was a deal breaker for him. He was not going to miss a single crab boil or silly bickering session with his sister over that table and he wasn’t going to lose out on the time with his parents.

Michael’s first real day in the CIA offices in New Orleans was his sister’s first day at Tulane. There was a double celebration that night in town, their parents remaining in the city after work to toast them both at one of the restaurants his parents had first discovered as newlyweds working at the university. Afterwards, his parents headed home and he took Karen out on the town to continue the celebrations, alcohol free for his sister of course. After an hour or so Karen ran into some friends and Michael was left high and dry at the jazz bar. By the time a young woman took pity and approached Michael was on the brink of just heading home. Daya Williams wasn’t ready to let him do that though and after half an hour of cajoling Michael found himself actually enjoying talking to her. It didn’t take long for the analyst in him to have ferreted out of her that she was a physiotherapy student here in New Orleans, a transplant from Hawaii who had come for Mardi Gras her first summer in college and had not wanted to leave since. A little college transfer and she was all set for a life in the south. Another couple of bourbons later, a lot of talk over the sound of the jazz band and Michael was pretty smitten. Within three months there were almost as settled as his parents, sharing an apartment in the French quarter, travelling back to Baton Rouge most Sundays still. Within a year they were married and just as Daya was graduating from college they found out she was pregnant and just as Michael received his first promotion within the agency Abi was born.

Juggling work and family became more difficult as the job demanded more and more from him but following his parents’ example Michael tried to leave the job behind the minute he escaped the office. For the most part the plan worked, Michael got to watch his daughter grow. He was there to see her first steps, he managed to take her for her first day at kindergarten, attend her little league baseball games and play the prince at her little tea parties too, complete with tiara perched on top of his head. It wasn’t until Abi was 7 that cracks began to show. There were growing hints of a covert group working on Russian soil and gradually Michael began to spend more time at the office. Hundreds of files were pulled, some going back to years before his own birth. Financial moves were uncovered but still his superiors refused to see the pattern he was certain he’d found. For a year Michael had been working on it, identifying ‘characters’ although no real names for them. Some he suspected had found themselves on the wrong end of something, a group disappearing over the space of a few years, their demise or incarceration only obvious by the sudden changes in the way the money was funnelled. He seemed to be on the brink of a break-through when tragedy struck.

A wet night in Louisiana wasn’t unusual, the roads between Baton Rouge and New Orleans no more dangerous than they’d ever been but near midway between the two cities his father lost control of the car. His parents weren’t the sort to speed but the wet roads combined with a loss of concentration, or so the cops said, made it impossible for his father to correct the swerve before they careened off road and flipped. The car burned on impact, neither of his parents managing to escape. The investigation was brief, the case closed as accidental death almost immediately and Michael and Karen were left to grieve. It was almost unbelievable that something like that could’ve happened on a road they’d travelled thousands of times before but it had. For months Michael was out of sorts, ignoring the investigation he’d spent so much time on, getting back to spending every evening with Daya and Abi. His sister was with them almost every night, the two of them drawing closer together in their grief. It was only once the tragedy had begun to lose its grip on him that Michael was able to get back to his files.

In his time away the investigation had begun to lose momentum, his bosses growing more certain that he’d been seeing things that weren’t there. Of course it made Michael more determined to prove them wrong. He spent more and more time at the office, missing family dinners, earning lectures from his sister but he couldn’t drop what was going on. Unknown to Michael there were those who were watching his family from the shadows. The sort of people who weren’t the sort to ignore a threat, especially one that could be turned to their advantage with just a little arm twisting. Things at home had grown tense but one argument with Daya after Abi had gone to bed one Thursday night twisted Michael’s arm into making more of an effort. The next night he was out of the office by 7, getting home before his wife. He relieved their sitter, taking Abi out to pick up dinner as a treat. By the time they got home mom would be there and they’d have a family dinner.

Daya didn’t show though. 8 became 9 and Michael started to feel that knot inside of him tighten. It was dark out, the full moon they were supposed to have drowned out by dark clouds and rain that had been sheeting it down since he left the office. It was close to 10 by the time he heard footsteps approaching the door, anticipating Daya arriving exhausted and wet, he went to open it but it wasn’t his wife standing there. It was two police officers, hats held to their chests, the same apologetic expressions on their faces he’d seen when they’d come to inform him of his parents’ death. Abi thundered down the stairs behind him, calling out mommy. Michael gathered her in to his side, held her tight in numb arms as the police told him what had happened. Another car crash, on a road leading back into the city from Lake Pontchartrain. They were sorry, the car had burned but there was enough ID with the body for them to be certain that it was Daya Shepard who had been in the car.

For the next month Michael remained in that numb state. Karen moved into the house, handled Abi and most of the funeral arrangements while he drifted through the whole thing like a ghost. The agency sent flowers, gave him leave for three months for his bereavement but none of it was enough. His wife was dead and Michael was pretty damn sure that his investigation was the cause. The agency found no links, the police wouldn’t even call it a suspicious accident. There was no explanation for what Daya was doing out there that night, instead of being at the hospital where she worked, no reason other than the rain for why she had crashed. She’d seen what had happened to his parents, he knew she wouldn’t have risked it, but nobody wanted to hear his theories. His wife had been the victim of a tragic accident, nothing more.

Eventually he returned to the office, a ghost of the man who had left on that rainy night months before. He tried to move on, to leave the investigation aside, to make sure he was there for his daughter, but Michael couldn’t leave it alone. In the end he asked for a meeting with his boss. He needed out of the city, away from the desk that had been his since he’d started working there. A clean break for both him and Abi. Lethford was a smaller office, far smaller, but they had a vacancy and it was far enough away from New Orleans that he wouldn’t be reminded of his wife every time he drew a breath. The man refused to stamp the transfer at first but the tears that rolled silently down Michael’s face as he told him he needed this, his daughter needed it, finally had the man’s resolve crumbling.

A week before what would’ve been Daya’s birthday they moved. Karen helped him pack up the moving van and hugged Abi close for what seemed an hour. Together Michael crossed the country with his daughter, turned the whole thing into such an adventure that they were able to gloss over the day that would’ve started with pancakes in bed and a cake decorated with so much glitter that it would be all over the house for a month afterwards. They settled into their new home, into the new office. Abi got on well at her new school and bit by bit they adjusted, completely unaware of the truth of what had happened in New Orleans. By the time the world started going to crap 7 years later they had new lives. He was out of the office by 5 every day, there at the kitchen table to help Abi with homework, playing the dutiful single father. Then the virus had struck. Suddenly all those old fears for his daughter slammed back into place. Michael grew anxious, driving Abi crazy with phone calls from the office, desperately juggling the longer hours necessitated with the work and keeping his daughter safe. With all those balls in the air, more being added all the time, Michael’s become pretty sure he’s about to drop something again soon and bring his whole life tumbling down.

[attr="class","ALIAS"]AUTHORED BY ANGE