"We left him." Jake-G293 closed his eyes and let Cassandra's voice wash through the air around him, unwilling to let his mind process the unspoken horror that her words and tone carried with them. Over the course of the past day he'd discovered that if he just focused on the statistics--two teammates confirmed killed in action with a third missing in action and presumed dead--then the ache in his gut and the crushing weight on his chest eased ever so slightly and he was able to go about his duties without breaking down into an incoherent wreck of a thirteen year old. And while he technically was thirteen years old, as a team leader in the SPARTAN-III Gamma company he had a certain image that he needed to maintain, and the three words that Cassandra had been repeating off and on ever since