Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic, throng the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak.
-Ralph Chaplin

Okay, I guess I can give you my story. No big deal. Probably won't impress you at all, but that's the way it is. I gave up on trying to impress people much long ago. Don't do you much good and they just turn around and stab you anyway. Guess that sounds cynical, huh? Well, that's the way it is, like it or not.

I was born in Tijuana, Mexico. Don't have to say too much about that, most people know what kind of shit gets dealt there. Popular tourist spot for Americans, but it's also one hell of a nasty place. I lived in a shantytown, lots of poor people there. Don't remember too much about my mother, she died when I was little. That left me, my older brother, and my old man. My brother, he got pulled into some nasty shit when he was 15 and just kept going downhill. Last I saw of him, he joined up with a group of drug dealers and was gonna head for the States to try his luck there. Who knows if he's even alive now? Can't say I care much either way, we never got along real well.

Guess that brings me to my old man. He was what some call a shady character. Wanted to make money, didn't care how he did it. He finally hooked up with someone who got him a job as a coyote. For those people who don't know anything about that sort of thing, a coyote is someone that helps Mexicans cross the border. He finds trains for them to stow away on and sets all that up. Isn't always on the up and up, either. Charges people desperate to get out, and then helps stuff 'em away and see where it goes. Some coyotes are legit, some aren't. My old man didn't care about being legit, he'd cheat his own mother if he thought he'd make a good profit on it. Yeah, I guess you could say he was making money off of other people's dreams. You got no idea how desperate someone in Mexico can be to get out. People in America, when they think of Mexico, most see great vacation spots like Puerto Vallarta or Acapulco. They don't see, and they really don't want to see, just how poor most Mexicans are. Most don't even get all the way through school. Medical care is shit, the only way to get yourself reliably fixed or healed is to be rich enough to travel to the states for a doctor.

Not that all that matters in the great scheme of things, right? Maybe things in Mexico are better now that Heinrich took over. Sure as hell couldn't get much worse. I watched my old man in his dealings with some of those wanting to go off to America, and I couldn't help but feel bad sometimes at the way he'd cheat 'em. Sometimes he'd hook 'em up with a way to get out, other times he'd take their money, arrange to meet 'em, and then never show. I guess over time, I just made myself not care about those people. I started to figure that if they were stupid enough to trust someone like that and run off... which was an iffy chance at best... they deserved what they got. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive, and that's what my old man was doing.

Well, as I got older, I guess I started to have some of those dreams of leaving. Most people got no idea what it's like waking up to a rat chewing on your blanket. A rat that don't even respond when you kick at it, it just keeps chewing. Seemed sometimes that the rats had bigger balls than the people. They at least could stand their ground and fight for what they wanted. Even if all they wanted was a shitty old blanket. I think it's when I started having those thoughts that I decided it was time for me to stand up for what I wanted. And man, I wanted out in the worst way. So I started making plans, and paying closer attention to my old man's business. I kept my ears open for when he actually planned on working a legit run across the border, then I spent time going around with him to talk to the people he was sending. I got all the details as to where and when and I got ready to make my move.

I figure the reason that this run was gonna be legit was because it was a big group. My old man had arranged to make sure they got in a certain boxcar at a certain time and he made sure he had enough travellers to fill that boxcar to just short of overflowing. I knew that if I was gonna get on it, someone else was gonna have to stay behind. So I paid attention to those people and then picked out who was gonna lose out. I had to make sure it was someone I could deal with, but I really didn't want to fuck up any family units that were together. So... I found a guy that was going across to meet his wife. She was nine months pregnant and had been allowed to cross the border to her uncle who lived in Texas because she had some medical problems with the pregnancy. The authorities wouldn't let her husband go, though. He wanted to be there for the birth, but I figured that what I wanted took priority. So I went to meet him on his way to the train yard. He'd seen me with my old man, so he didn't suspect anything. So when I went up to talk to him, it was real easy to use the makeshift club I had to knock him out. Had to hit him two or three times before he went out. I don't think I hit him hard enough to kill him, but I didn't stick around to find out. I went off to the train yard and took his place. I guess I've wondered a few times if I'd killed him and if he'd ever made it to his wife. Maybe I don't want to know.

Well, the ride was pretty uneventful, actually. Train pulled into the train yard in El Paso and we managed to get out and away before anyone caught us. It's amazing how different things were from where I started to where I ended up. It was like a whole other world. For the first time, I felt like I might actually make it. I didn't stick around El Paso for too long, just a few months. But that was long enough to know that I liked America. Made some money, lived better than I'd ever lived. I knew I didn't want to stick in El Paso, and I worked hard to make enough money to get out. About two months into it, I found out that my looks were marketable. Someone asked me to be in a commercial and I wasn't about to turn down that kind of money. I'd worked hard to get rid of my accent and to learn the local lingo, so maybe I didn't seem so much like an illegal. That's why they hired me, I think. They wanted someone who was Mexican, but seemed American. So I did the commercial, and a couple more too. And I saved enough money to move on. The only decision I had to make was where to go. I finally decided on Los Angeles and made plans to go there. This time... I rode in a passenger train. Real different from my first train ride, I can tell you.

When I got to LA, I did find out the cost of living was quite a bit higher than El Paso. I had enough to get by for awhile, but I knew I needed some real money to keep me going. So I started looking for ways to use my looks again. Didn't actually take too awful long before I had an audition for a magazine shoot. Came down to me and one other guy. I figured our chances were even, which wasn't good enough for me. We had to come back for one more tryout, so I had to make sure I was there and he wasn't. So I followed him the day we left the first audition and found out where he lived. Two days later, when we were supposed to go to the final audition, I made sure he wasn't going to make it. No, I didn't kill him, that's never been something I really wanted to get into. That feeling multiplied after the guy in Mexico. I just made sure this guy got distracted. He did end up going to the hospital, but lived through the experience. I got the shoot and that started me on the way to a decent career. Started doing more shoots and some commercials, and really started raking in some money. Had to make sure a couple more times that I had the edge, but after that I didn't need to. Signed on with an agency, and things started going real smooth. Until a few months ago, that is.

You've heard similar things from the other ones Mora grabbed, I'm sure. The woman showed up one day when I was finishing a shoot and started acting like some kind of strange groupie. Not like I was ever one to turn down that kind of attention. I've always liked beautiful women and figured I could have some fun with that one. She was a little too hyper for my taste, but I figured that hyperness could be fun later on, if you catch my drift. Of course, later on turned out to be somewhere I didn't expect as she just ended up taking me somewhere using that teleport thing she does. She stuck me in a place with the other guys she'd kidnapped, it was unbelievably weird. Some of us really didn't get along too well, either. Let's just say that some of us were less moral than others. I tried to stay too much out of the confrontations, I could tell that there were some people that could kick my ass and I really wanted to avoid that. I let people like Yan Fa... who's a real prick and very good at getting people to want to kick his ass... take all that heat. We weren't actually stuck there too long before Mora had to let us go. I don't know why I chose to stick around, I should've gone back to LA. Not sure how long my career would've lasted there, though. Not with the new racist police force that was put into play. Strikers aren't just in New Orleans, you know. That's just where the nastiest of 'em are. So me and some of the others struck out together to try and get our acts together.

Wasn't too long ago that me and those guys decided to see if we could hit up Mora for some kind of security. She was interested in us before and we didn't have too many resources left to keep ourselves going. We aren't white, so going legit and all that wasn't an option. But in the end, that was a bad move. We found her at a dance club, tearing up the floor, and Lin made his move by asking her to dance. I guess she took that as an invitation to fuck up his mind cause all of a sudden he was all lovey dovey with her. The rest of us figured we'd let him keep her company, and we left. I guess she took him away and decided to come back for the rest of us. We split up, she went after me. Wasn't too hard for her to catch me with her powers and shit and all I wanted was for her not to fuck up my mind like she'd done to Lin. I agreed to help her out with the others, did with Yan Fa, but when it came to her trying to fuck up Pai, I guess I couldn't stick with it. I tried to get her to knock it off. Hell, she was scaring the shit out of him. He was hiding under a dumpster and holding on for dear life and she... fuck, she was cutting off his fingers to break his grip. But then Alec, a Pantera, showed up cause Macho did the smart thing and went to the house Mora'd set up for us and there were Panteras there. Alec went out to find us and got Pai and me out of there. I'd say I wasn't too thrilled to be back with the others, but that'd be a lie. I don't care how bad we hit it off, I prefer their company to having my mind messed with. We even got Lin back and fixed.

I don't know how things are gonna go now, I wish I did. I don't know how long we're all gonna be able to stay in the same place without having the problems we did. I can say that I'm not making any waves if I can help it. I don't want to go out there again and be a target for Mora. I've heard of some of the things she's done to guys, and I'm just glad she didn't try that shit with me. Especially after seeing how she fucked up Jaedyn. I might not like the guy much at all, but fuck... that just isn't right. Hell, maybe all this'll make me turn over a new leaf, huh? Who knows what's gonna happen? I'll do what I can to avoid any of that shit happening to me, and I guess I'm kind of beginning to care that it doesn't happen to the others, either. I guess war really can change a person. And that's what this is... war.

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.
-Napoleon Bonaparte

Hope is the poor man's bread.
-Thales of Miletus