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| - "SPARTAN-A239." The young man known as Emile-A239 glanced up as a wave of furious pounding shook the door at the far end of his cell. A moment later it slid open, admitting two guards clad from head to toe in combat armor. Their sidearms were unholstered and aiming somewhere between the ground and his chest; from the expressions on their faces, Emile could tell they'd use them on him in a heartbeat if he gave them half a reason to. The intensity in their expressions brought a twisting smile to his lips. Were they trying to scare him, or were they that terrified of a manacled fifteen year old? For a moment, he toyed with the idea of making a go for them. He'd take down one, use him as a shield while he dealt with the second, then sit back down and wait to see the expression on the next face to come in here. The thought of it kept the smile on his face, even if it was nothing more than a flight of fancy. His hands, clasped together between his knees, were handcuffed while his legs, planted firmly on the cell's dusty floor, bore similar restraints. But even with the manacles, he could feel the raw power that had coursed endlessly through his body ever since the augmentations so many months ago. He missed his armor, with its tight, intimidating helmet and the hardened gauntlets that could turn every punch into a skull-crushing blow, but even without it he looked at the guards and mulled over how easy it would be to kill them. He didn't rise when Lieutenant Commander Ambrose and Chief Petty Officer Mendez entered the cell. If the insubordination displeased them, they didn't show it. The Commander simply raised an eyebrow and settled down on the bench facing Emile. The Chief stood behind him, arms folded as he looked down at the young Spartan with those cold, furiously calm eyes that had terrified each and every member of Alpha Company since the day they'd been dropped off here at Camp Currahee. Since the augmentations Emile had thought himself impervious to fear, but those eyes still managed to send shivers running down his spine. "Emile," the Commander began. He'd always been able to tell Emile and his fellow Spartans apart, all three hundred of them. His brown eyes bored into the prisoner, seeing everything and giving away nothing. It was a different kind of blankness from Mendez's cutting gaze, but the Commander had always been a tough one to read. Emile had always respected him for that. "We all know the situation, so let's not waste any time," the Commander continued. "You understand what you're being charged with?" Emile raised his head. He'd been stripped of his uniform, but he wore the dull grey prison khakis with dignity as if they were a uniform themselves—which they were, of a sort. He was an ugly young man with brutal, jagged features, as if a sculptor had begun to chisel them out of granite before losing interest and moving on to a more desirable project. He gave the Commander an unpleasant grin. "Yeah. I know what I did. Won't apologize, if that's what your here for." Mendez's arms quivered, but the days where a slap from those hardened muscles could send Emile sprawling had vanished alongside Emile's augmentations. The Commander raised an eyebrow. "Emile, do you really understand how serious this is? You killed a man." "Not a man," Emile corrected. "A Spartan. A154." "One of your brothers. Your own team leader." The Commander shook his head. "For all that Anthony was a disgrace to the program, you had no business killing him." "He had it coming." The sentiment had been running through Emile's head for days. It felt good to put it out in the open. "You and the rest of the company are subject to UNSC military justice," the Commander pointed out. "You should have reported the problem to the chain of command and let us deal with it." "You wouldn't have done anything," Emile told him bluntly. It wasn't an accusation, just a statement of fact. "Not after the augmentations. You'd have just reeducated him and put him to work somewhere else." "Not your call to make, Spartan," Mendez growled. "He was the best marksman in the company, right alongside A266. He's no use to anyone now." Emile shrugged. "Spartans police Spartans. If he was such a good shot, he should have seen me coming. Anthony went after Rosenda. I did the program a favor, killing him. Company doesn't need rapists." Rapist. The word hung in the dim air for several moments. No one said anything for a long time, which was fine by Emile. He simply stared straight ahead, shifting his gaze from the Commander to Mendez to the guards and back again. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing left to say. He'd done right by the rest of the company by killing Anthony. Given the chance, he'd do it again in a heartbeat. Finally, the Commander sighed and shook his head. "No," he said quietly. He sounded disappointed, though whether the sentiment was directed at Emile, Anthony, or somewhere else entirely was impossible to decipher. "The company doesn't need rapists. But it doesn't need murderers either. You won't be returning to duty with the rest of Alpha." Emile had figured that one out days ago; hearing it from the Commander didn't sting nearly as much as he'd thought it would. "You'll find another use for me," he said. "Bet I make a good opera--" "You're facing imprisonment. You could be executed," the Commander interrupted. "Under the same laws that would have dealt with Anthony, you could face the death penalty. If some of the brass have their way, you could be dead by this time tomorrow." The threat was so ridiculous that Emile very nearly laughed in the Commander's face. Of all the things to wave at him, the Commander had chosen death? I don't think you know me half as well as you think you do, Commander. You think I'd have touched that piece of shit if I was scared of dying myself? "Can't love life too much, Commander." The ugly young man glanced down at his shackles, then back up at the others and smiled. "Everyone dies. I'm ready. How about you?" Years passed. The room changed, time and time again until Emile found himself in another cell just as airtight and impregnable as the one on Onyx. He did not see the Commander or Mendez again, or for that matter Rosenda or any of his fellow Spartans. He had been sealed away, to be ignored and forgotten as the rest of them marched on to the battles and victories they'd spent their lives preparing for. The grinning skulls who had sentenced him to this featureless crate might as well have killed him. He had scorned death in front of the Commander; perhaps that was the reason he was still alive, because this was a more fitting punishment. Yet Emile did not regret killing Anthony, just as he did not regret taking the lives of the Covenant and rebels he'd been thrown against before that fateful night in the company barracks. Anthony had been the team leader, yet he'd used that position to take advantage of Rosenda, his teammate. After a betrayal like that, he'd left Emile no other choice. Spartans policed Spartans. He was no longer manacled. There was no need. His meals arrived through a slat in the cell door, delivered by the automated hands of a machine. They didn't let him into the exercise room, not after his first day when two of the other convicts had though they'd have some fun with the young new arrival. After the fierce battles he and his comrades had waged against the best the Covenant had to offer, those two deaths had carried less meaning than the killing of a single Grunt. Everyone dies. He'd killed three more since then, friends of the first two who'd tried to take him in the showers. No guards had stepped in to stop him, so he'd enjoyed the unbridled pleasure of removing yet more trash from the collective cesspool of humanity. No one came near him in the showers after that. This was a ship, he knew that much. He heard the warnings blaze in his cell whenever they moved in and out of Slipspace, heard the shudders as the vessel moved and decelerated, could even occasionally feel lurches in his stomach as they passed through the atmosphere of one planet or another. The faces in the locker room changed whenever that happened, and he guessed some prisoners had been taken off while others had been brought on. It didn't matter to him; he had never been taken off the ship for anything. His entire universe consisted of this square metal cell, the showers, and occasionally a big empty dining hall when some unseen warden decided he could eat a meal outside his cell. Perhaps he was meant to go insane. Maybe they'd locked him up and thrown away the key just to see how long he'd last when they cut him off from the reality he'd known and boxed him away beyond any trace of light or hope. Maybe they were waiting for him to scream out, to claw out his eyes and beat his hardened skull in against the walls of the cell. If so, then Emile was an even worse disappointment than he'd been to Commander Ambrose. He and his fellow Spartans had been trained to resist the most hideous of interrogation techniques. Silence and solitude were child's tricks; he'd never been much of a talker anyway. Besides, he knew he was not alone. He knew because someone let a single fly into his cell every day, without fail. The insects couldn't get into the sealed cell on their own, which meant that they were coming in through the door slat, probably alongside his meals. There was never more than one and they always arrived with the meal that Emile had decided to consider "dinner" in this place without clocks or sunlight. Someone was probably playing with him, releasing the fly just to get a kick out of watching him catch it. Emile didn't mind. Whoever did it gave every day a purpose and a challenge, no matter how insignificant. They gave Emile a mission: Catch the fly, then kill it. Today's fly wasn't particularly bright. It buzzed loudly and circled Emile's head, occasionally settling down on the empty food tray beside him on the cot that served as both a bed and a bench in the sparse cell. He waited patiently for what felt like hours, giving it a chance to wise up, but it didn't. He waited another few minutes, then shrugged and snatched it out of the air when it buzzed in from the corner of his eye. Emile considered the struggling insect for a moment, then plucked one of its wings off. The fly's buzzing intensified as it flailed about in a desperate attempt to escape. Emile let it struggle for a while, then plucked off the second wing. Its buzzing grew louder. It was, he thought to himself as the fly writhed and twisted between his fingertips, a terrible, terrible waste to keep him locked up in here. He was still certain that had he not acted, Anthony would not have faced a fate even remotely like this one. No, the suits had made an example of him to prove that they wouldn't be soft on Spartan criminals like he'd said they would. He began ripping off the fly's legs. One by one, they came out and drifted to the floor. It was such a practiced ritual by now that Emile removed every one without breaking a single joint. The wingless, legless fly twitched, shivered, and went still. "Mission accomplished," he said aloud, tossing the fly's carcass into a corner of the cell. It landed atop a pile of identical corpses, hundreds and hundreds of dead flies. The first fifty had been cleaned out of the cell when he was in the showers; Emile had voiced his displeasure to one of the guards by dislocating the man's arm. They'd revoked his shower privileges and cut his rations for a month, but the message had gotten through. No one touched the fly corpses again, and so the altar of desiccated corpses remained in the corner, a tribute to every day he'd endured in this metal box. They wouldn't kill him, Emile was certain of that. Someone up there, the Commander, Mendez, someone, had to have known that this was a worse fate by far. He refused to justify their decision by dwelling on it, but the fact remained that his fellow Spartans were out there bringing death to the Covenant while he was in here finding solace in his ability to snuff out flies. He was still alive. Some day, he would die because everything died. But today he was alive and that meant there would be another day to see through to the end. Emile stood and stretched. He cast a glance over at the pile of flies, their deaths proof that he was still alive and breathing. Fixing his eyes on the wall in front of him, he launched into the combat exercises Mendez had taught him and his fellow Spartans. "Techniques to keep your minds and bodies sharp," the Chief had said then. "No matter where you are, you can always turn to these to remember who you are." And Emile remembered who he was. Damn straight he did. My name is Emile-A239. His fists struck air, followed by a swift series of kicks. I am a Spartan. He twisted, extending his back leg out until it slammed against the cell wall behind him. I am a weapon for killing humanity's enemies. The fists came back up, blocking an invisible punch before surging forward in a trio of palm strikes that would have caved in the lungs of an enemy so that they drowned in the open air. And I will not be here forever. And just like that, the door's seals hissed and withdrew. Emile stopped the drill mid-punch, waiting for armed guards to train their rifles on him from the other side of the opening door. But unlike every other time he'd left the cell, there was no one. The dim light of an empty hallway beckoned like the glimmer of a sun in a sunrise that Emile hadn't seen for years. The intercom above the door crackled. "SPARTAN-A239," an accented voice—a woman's voice—ordered. "Exit your cell." Emile stiffened. No one called him that. No one. The guards called him "prisoner" and the other convicts didn't call him anything at all. But now, here was someone calling him a Spartan again. Something kindled inside him, something he hadn't felt in years. Perhaps this was just a trick, some underhanded way of executing him without risking casualties. Emile didn't care. Everyone dies. I'm ready. He wouldn't pass up this chance to leave the cell behind. The hallway was deserted. The woman's voice didn't say anything else, but Emile didn't need to be told anything more. He strode forward, putting one confident foot in front of the other. Whatever game was going on here, he'd play along. In seven years of endless, cycling patterns nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Emile could already feel the air around him growing lighter with every step. Was this freedom? A door off to the side slid open, and four men entered the hallway. They were all clad in Marine combat armor, but Emile knew from a glance that they were prisoners. Their unshaven faces and sloppily buckled armor told that story in an instant. They spread out in front of him, blocking his path and glaring malevolently out of viscous, feral eyes that Emile had come to know all too well. Three of them was armed with a weighted pipe; the fourth hefted a humbler shock prod. Emile looked at the four prisoners and said nothing. There was no point. These men were going to attack him now, and that meant they had just a few seconds left to live. Why waste his breath? To their credit, they gave it their best shot. The one with the humbler stepped back while the other three spread out and moved forward, trying to surround him. It would be sporting to let them complete their formation before tearing into them. Emile was not a very sporting person. He went for the prisoner just a few steps away from his friends than the others were. The pipe shot for his gut, but Emile didn't even bother trying to block it. The pain surged up, but by the time it reached his brain Emile had dislocated the arm holding the pipe. The prisoner cried out as his arm shattered inside the combat armor under Emile's twisting grip. He thrashed limply as the Spartan twisted him around and threw him into the two other pipe-wielders. By the time they'd untangled themselves, Emile had armed himself with the first one's pipe. "Right," he told them, hefting the length of metal. "Let's do this." The two who didn't have a broken arm came from either side, pipes swinging for his head. Emile's pipe shot out and struck one's head with a crunch that echoed down the hall. His hand shot up to catch the other pipe an inch from his temple. A swift kick caved in the prisoner's kneecap; the followup strike snapped the screaming man's neck before he hit the ground. The first attacker was struggling to his knees, clutching his arm and whimpering. The sound irritated Emile. A second ago this guy could have killed him with a look. Now he was just after sympathy. Emile brought the pipe down on the injured man's head and put an end to that. The man holding the humbler backed away, his eyes full of confusion and fear. Emile looked up at the prisoner with his sloppy armor and shock prod and saw a dozen different ways to kill him. The simplest way was always best. He hefted the pipe and charged. The prisoner shrieked and rushed to meet him, the humbler crackling with electric charge. Emile's pipe caught him under his too-high grip, shattering ribs and crushing organs. The humbler clattered uselessly to the floor as its owner toppled like a puppet with its strings cut. "Please," the prisoner wailed, ashen-faced with pain. His legs kicked against the floor in a desperate attempt to escape. "I'm done. It's over. Please, don't kill me!" "Everyone dies," Emile reminded him, raising the pipe. "SPARTAN-A239, stand down!" Emile froze, not at the command but at yet another time in the past few minutes where someone hadn't called him prisoner but Spartan—what he really was. Another door slid open, admitting a trio of guards. They kept their rifles at a low ready position but kept far away from Emile, as if afraid he might turn on them in an instant. Behind the guards came two figures in blue armor—very familiar armor. The first was a young woman with an angular face and close-cropped dark hair. The second was a hard-faced man with tight, military-cut brown hair. One look at those features—older, yes, and harder too—and Emile felt a jolt from the past, from all those years ago back on Onyx. He saw a recruit barking orders at him as live rounds crashed through the air around them... "Carter?" he asked, lowering the pipe. "What're you doing here?" "Emile," Carter replied with a curt nod. "It's been a while." He turned to the woman beside him. "Is that good enough for you, Kat?" She nodded. "We'll need to test his specs in a real exercise to get him back up to speed, but based on what we just saw I'd say that A239's incarceration hasn't dulled his instincts in the slightest." Emile recognized the accent. She had been the one who had ordered him out of the cell. Carter nodded and jerked a thumb, first at the guards and then at the prisoner still cowering at Emile's feet. "Get him to the med bay, stat. And get some body bags ready for the others." Emile followed his gaze to the three prisoners he'd left dead behind him. The sterile corridor of the prison ship was a far cry from a bombed-out war zone, but the body armor the men wore reminded him of a battlefield all the same. A familiar thrill rushed through his gut. He hadn't felt it since he'd been locked up, but not even the years of solitude couldn't make him forget what that felt like. And he knew exactly why those men had died. He was going back. "You're getting me out of here," he told Carter, turning back to face him. "Missed me that much, huh?" Carter nodded. "In case you haven't heard, the war's still going on and we're still losing. I convinced ONI that they could use you for more than killing flies." So the flies had been intentional. Emile's lips quivered in the barest hint of a smile. "And how does the rest of Alpha feel about seeing me go free?" Carter's face was as hard as stone. "Not much of anything, really. They're all dead." Everyone dies. Emile nodded slowly. "That bad, huh?" "You probably remember Jun. He's waiting in the hangar bay. Rosenda, you're old teammate, she's still active too. But just about everyone else is gone." Emile hadn't thought much about Rosenda since he'd been locked up. It was nice to know she was still alive, but it didn't make much of a difference either way. Alpha Company was gone, but their deaths only widened a hole Emile had felt since he'd been separated from them and locked up in the first place. He would find out the details later, but for now the situation was simple enough: Alpha was dead, the Covenant were still around, and he was going back to the field. Yes, his job was simple enough. The guards moved forward, still careful to stay as far from Jun as possible. They grabbed the surviving prisoner by the arms and hauled him away. Beside Carter, the young woman entered a few lines of text into a handheld datapad. There was something off about her. She wore armor like Carter—not the Semi-Powered Infiltration armor Emile had worn before he'd killed Anthony, but bulkier and more deadly-looking—but she wasn't one of the Alphas. There was something about her youthful features that unsettled Emile in a way that no person, man or woman, had ever done before. He knew without a doubt that she had been the one to come up with the scheme that had just seen him kill three prisoners. "Lemme guess," he said, indicating her with the pipe. "Beta?" She glanced up and raised an eyebrow, as if he were a child who had spoken out of turn. "Yes," she replied, returning to her datapad. "That would be me." "We'll fill you in more once we're off this garbage crate." Carter turned on his heel and motioned for Emile to follow. "For now, all you need to know is that we're going to be causing a lot of problems for the Covenant from now on." He paused, halfway through the door he'd arrived through. "It's good to have you back, Emile. And for the record? They never should have put you here to begin with." "Glad to be back, buddy." Emile stepped forward, feeling truly alive for the first time in seven years. "No hard feelings from me. I'll just have to make up for all the lost time." "Glad to hear it." Carter moved away again. Emile and the young woman instinctively fell into perfect step behind him. Yes, this was the same old Carter alright. "Welcome to Noble Team, Emile." Emile smile and followed Carter into a bright future, full of possibilities.
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