speed (Earth-7)

Biography 

Early Life

Thomas Shepherd grew up in a fractured household with parents who were almost entirely absent from his life. With little supervision or guidance, Thomas repeatedly found himself in juvenile detention centers, usually after getting caught in violent street fights. These constant run-ins with the law kept him away from school for long stretches, leaving him behind academically and earning him the label of a “backward boy.” His classmates ridiculed him relentlessly, further isolating him.

The Accident

Thomas’s breaking point came during a school fight in which he was ganged up on by six other classmates. The fight escalated violently, and in the chaos Thomas was overwhelmed and seemingly killed. Yet, in a startling twist, Thomas revived moments later—his mutant powers manifesting for the first time. He stood up again, alive and brimming with energy, while his attackers lay sprawled out and unconscious around him. For the first time, his true abilities began to show themselves.

Roxxon

Not long after, Thomas was captured and sent to a Mutant Detention Center, where mutants were imprisoned and treated as experimental subjects. It was there he was placed in the same cell as David Alleyne (Prodigy), another mutant whose intellect and ability to absorb knowledge had drawn Roxxon’s attention. The two formed a bond in captivity, realizing their contrasting strengths—Thomas’s raw speed and power, and David’s intelligence and strategy—made them natural allies.

The turning point came during their detention, when Prodigy discovered that Roxxon had been using Sentinels’ original processors, designed by Bolivar Trask, to track and exploit mutant powers. When David’s latent X-gene was exposed through one of these devices, Roxxon marked him as a prime target. Now both Thomas and David were fully trapped in Roxxon’s clutches, marked as dangerous mutants.

Determined to survive, the duo worked together: Speed took down guards and disrupted containment efforts while Prodigy pieced together stolen tech to outwit Roxxon. Their combined efforts resulted in building a communicator capable of reaching the Avengers’ public radio line, exposing Roxxon’s detention centers and the dozens of mutants being held. With their secret finally revealed, Roxxon’s operations were dismantled, and Thomas Shepherd stepped firmly into the role of Speed, a young mutant hero destined for greater battles alongside his peers.