1: FREEZERBURN

The ONI symbol on the floor of the only shuttle bay looked worn out, in need of a new coat of paint. But the only man standing in the doorway to the laboratory beyond the bay did not look inclined to attend the matter in the least. Dressed in a white lab smock with large front pockets, black slacks poking out the bottom nearly disappearing under the brighter shade of the smock. Doctor Gary Tam was the head scientist at the asteroid lab, his group often working on scientific and medical mysteries. The lab was equipped with several isolation cells for just this circumstance; and was also embedded in an asteroid far from any planetary ecosystem also for the same.

Tam didn't look like a typical doctor, of any field, with a large, square jaw and blunt, angular features. His deep-set brown eyes seemed to see all and comment on nothing, but his hazel hair was kept in a standard military buzz cut, suggesting he'd either had an incident with hair at one point in the lab, or had been a soldier at some former point in his life. He also did not wear glasses, or carry a magnifying glass, or even keep a stethoscope around his neck.

Indeed, the only thing denoting him as a resident of the asteroid laboratory was the white smock. Above him, the iris airlock door had finished sealing shut, and the massive Longsword bomber had come to a final rest. Moisture in the air had begun to ice up across the frozen black hull, a strange color indeed for a standard Longsword bomber. Though typically a regulation gray, this Longsword looked odd in more ways than just its color. The variations were slight, proving only enough to be noticeable, and not enough to be obvious.

Tam waited patiently for the hatch to open, but when it did, he was mildly surprised to see what came walking down the ramp to meet him on the floor. The seven-foot-tall Spartan was clad fully in his Mjolnir armor, a green behemoth to reckon with. Coming to a stop in front of the doctor, the Spartan looked him over once before offering a loose salute.

Though not in the right branch of ONI to have deserved it, Tam found he appreciated the gesture. To prove that point, though, he threw an equally sloppy salute back. "Welcome to the lab. I heard you have something for us."

"I have a unique medical case that needs specialized attention." The Spartan corrected, his voice gruff and his tone correctional. Salutes or no, he was all business, and he evidently felt somewhat protective of the cargo he was about to give up. "Do you have containment suitable for Flood contamination here?"

Doctor Tam felt taken aback by the request, as nothing of the kind had been mentioned over the deep space comn that had told them to expect this Spartan in the first place. "Well… I… yes, I suppose we do. If the Flood in question is of benign nature. Nothing in here is especially bulletproof, mind you."

"That will do." The Spartan turned away, and headed back up into his bomber, so Tam followed him. He was led to a side area behind the cockpit, where a cryo-stasis pod that looked like it belonged in a frigate had been wired into the systems. The pod was active, but due to the odd conditions it was in, the glass front had iced over, leaving the occupant obscured.

"In that?" Tam asked, pointing at it.

The Spartan nodded, reaching up and running a gloved hand over the ice, slicking it away. Tam felt his eyes bug out of his head as he realized what lay within the pod; another Spartan! Even frozen, the nature of the second Spartan's condition was plainly evident. The Mjolnir armor looked to be coated in several large splotches of very nasty looking brown goop, pocked over with bullet scarring, and even cracked badly in several places. The visor was intact, however, leaving the identity of the afflicted unknown.

"Well… at least it is contained for the most part already." Tam decided. "I should be able to get this into containment without spreading anything." He nodded once. "What happened?"

He got a blank golden look. "Flood happened."

Tam met the look with one of mild indignance. "May I have a more detailed report of the circumstances leading to this one, please?"

"An infection form attached itself to his back, and had cut through his armor before I got it off of him. He's turned a sickly green. Beyond that… he's lost a lot of blood, and had some other injuries before the parasite got him."

Tam nodded as he listened to that, then crossed one arm over his chest and cupped his clean-shaven chin in his other hand. "I understand. Alright… does this pod have an independent power source? I would like to move him without thawing him out just yet."

"It does, but it's small. It should be sufficient to get him into whatever containment facility you might have, given the size of this asteroid." The Spartan told him. "I'll be back through here to check on him. I expect progress when I do."

Tam looked back up from the pod, at the Spartan standing guardian over his fallen sibling. They were a dying breed, but no less devoted, no less effective, and no less protective of their own. Tam nodded. He well knew the idea here was to figure out how to combat an active Flood infection, not to disassemble the infected. Not that he really wanted to disassemble someone as valuable as a Spartan. "Alright, start cutting him loose; I'll call up some of my staff and get him moved stat."

Satisfied with that, the Spartan nodded, and circled the pod to attend its power cables. Tam stepped out of the Longsword to use the comn bud in his ear, and once the call had been made, he stepped back inside. He watched as the one Spartan cut the other one loose of the ship, and when the pod sat independent at last, he stepped back.

Tam dropped his hands into his smock's pockets, studying the pod. "What's his number?"

"Zero-nine-three." The Spartan answered.

Tam nodded, once. "I'll look up his file, see what requirements he has."

The Spartan looked down at his sibling, resting a hand on the domed glass as gently as if he handled something fragile and precious. "They think he's dead."

Tam looked up. "They?"

"You." He didn't look up. "All of Humanity. Zero-nine-three is the only Spartan to survive public execution at the hands of the Covenant. They broadcast the event on every channel we were using at the time."

Tam whistled in awe. "That's… something. I'd forgotten which Spartan that was, but I did see the broadcast. It was terrible."

"He got back up, and back into the fight, in time to clear my path so I wouldn't be slowed down when it counted most." Finally, he looked up. "Zero-nine-three is the reason I was able to catch Truth. The reason Humanity still exists. Treat him kindly."

Eyes wide, Tam nodded.

"I am going back to ONI HQ. I need to check in, get my own name off the missing list. Once I am through orientation and debriefing, and can get loose, I'll be back. This will take a while. I understand that. But I do expect some progress. And I do expect him to look better off than he does now."

"I'll see to it personally." Tam promised. Behind him, three of the laboratory staff appeared, walking up the Longsword's ramp. They looked over the scene before them, each somewhat apprehensive of the tall, green-clad soldier standing over the cryo pod like he intended to fight them for possession of it.

But as they transferred it to the conveyance tray, and wheeled it away, the Spartan just stood there, watching it go, seeming sadly. Tam followed the pod out, but though he knew the Spartan was watching all of them, he didn't look back. Soon enough, he'd made it through the airlock that led from the bay to the rest of the lab, and the Longsword was out of sight.

Partway up the hall, they all heard the faint ping signaling the shuttle bay had just depressurized in preparation of opening again. The Spartan was leaving; best that he was, Tam mused, as they didn't need one super soldier being motherly and concerned over their shoulders while they tried to work on the other one. In fact, it was probably best if the occupant of the pod his staff was pushing didn't see any of his siblings at all for a long, long time…

At the end of the corridor, they turned left, heading down through the lab towards the containment cells, a collection of nine twin chambers, one windowed to the next, for study, access and observation. Over the many years the place had been in use, none of them had been used. Most projects handed down to the asteroid staff were usually shipped in by the cellular or molecular sample… not in live specimens.

As he watched them cycle the pod through the environmental airlock between the first twin chamber to install it in the sealed room beyond the glass wall, Tam hoped the Spartan he was about to thaw out wasn't so badly infected that he turned into a volatile and dangerous Flood combat form in there… if he did, he'd need to be put down, no two ways about it.

Not even ONI's best could revert a transfigured Flood form back to what it had been before. He crossed his arms as the staff locked the pod in place, and began to hook it back up to an exterior power source. While often capable of sustaining an occupant for several days – up to a week – on batteries, trying to thaw said occupant on just battery power was a risky ordeal. More often than not, the thawing process would suck the battery dry too quickly, and the occupant either came out badly freezer-burned, or died in the pod.

Finished, the staff members all came back through the airlock on the side, to stand next to Tam. "When do we thaw him out, Doctor?" One of the junior staff members asked.

"I want equipment installed in here to handle the results first." Tam decided. "Priority."

"Okay." Hardly anything was militaristic; as the staff members left, Tam wondered briefly if the Spartan hiding in cryo would feel out of place. A good many of ONI's scientific and medical staff were civilians, making sirs an uncommon occurrence. It was likely the man in the pod hadn't mingled with civilians since adolescence.

After the brief reiteration of his exploits, Tam felt reasonably assured that he hadn't even been back in Human space for more than a few months. Spartans weren't like Marines; they didn't have social lives, or 'folks back home'… all they had were each other.

A forest of over-sized, super-powered, augmented Humans who had spent their childhoods playing with fire, guns and HE. Something as benign as 'social' probably wasn't even a word to them. Tam eventually left, shaking his head at the enormity of the task laid in his hands. Nobody knew how to combat Flood with biology. The only way to control Flood infestation was with bullets and fire. Lots, and lots of fire. This time, neither were an appropriate response.

Tam oversaw the installation and setup of the equipment over the next three days, and once everything was in place – or everything he could think of out of hand, anyway – he decided to go ahead and thaw out the Spartan.

Much of the staff gathered to watch, even though most of them wouldn't be assigned the project. Tam looked back over them briefly, noting faces; standing in the back, he noted even the most reclusive of the staff had come out for this event. He frowned momentarily, wondering how the Spartan would react to realize he'd become something of a bug in a jar for the day. That sort of treatment would make anyone uncomfortable; that they would need to keep him in an environmentally isolated cell for the duration of his condition likely wouldn't go over well, either.

He didn't say anything, though. Most of the staff hadn't been off the asteroid in a long time, and seeing someone new was a novelty regardless of their condition or situation. That the new body happened to be a Spartan only put a shine on that preexisting novelty. As the lid of the pod lifted away, frosted air poured over the lip of the cradle, and pooled on the floor before disappearing. Tam crossed his arms, tapping his fingers on his biceps. Nothing was moving, in there.

The two people in environmental suits in the chamber with the pod didn't look up from it, nor did they signal to anyone else what was going on – or why nothing was happening. Finally, one of the suited scientists dropped his hands on his oxygen hood, and Tam ran out of patience. Pressing the comn switch to open communications between the rooms, he asked, "Well?"

The hands-off scientist turned around to see him, dropping his hands. "I guess the Spartan wasn't kidding when he said his pal here was pretty bad off. Johansen is getting the readings now."

"You mean he put this guy into cryo when he was already unconscious?" Tam asked. His question caused a few of the staff standing behind him to stir and mutter.

"It's a guess. Might be why he's in cryo to begin with." Behind him, Johansen looked up at last.

"Got the readings. George, hand me the contact lines for the data." He stuck a hand out, reaching across the open pod. George looked around, trying to determine which was which, before selecting a line and handing it across to Johansen. He, in turn, plugged it into a port on the pod, then looked up. "Alright, Tam, take it away."

On the other side of the glass, Tam turned to the nearest console, and flipped on the monitor. Data streamed across it for a moment as the two operating systems synced, then it asserted itself as open windows with readings on them. Pulling the chair out from under the desk under the console, Tam sat down in it, and played his fingers across the keys, bringing the displays up under a different format.

Eyes turned from the window to the console, everyone wanting just as much as Tam had been to know what the holdup was. As readings came up in graph form, Tam leaned back in the chair. "Wow."

"If that's off the guy in the pod, shouldn't he be awake?" A female staff member behind him asked.

Tam shook his head. "Not for a Spartan. Most of their systems are accelerated or heightened; these are normal only for a normal guy."

"Oh."

Tam frowned at the readings. His understanding of the Spartan Project was minimal – such as the tidbit he'd just mentioned. But while the readings looked low, he had no idea what would be ideal. Running a hand over his head, he wondered where to start. Blood pressure was minimal, heart rate was slowing down… neural activity, on the other hand, was through the roof. Spikes as sharp as knives slung in both directions off the chart, their points vanishing off the edges of the available graph.

"Looks like he's… dreaming himself to death." The woman piped up again.

"I doubt that mess is dreaming, Kaitlyn." Tam mentioned. "I don't know what he's doing. It could all be directly related to the infection."

That comment earned him a moment of silence, as the gathered scientists all shared a look. Finally, one of the pair inside the cell spoke up. "Whoa!"

Johansen jerked back from the pod, his eyes bugging out of his head in terror as he watched the Spartan jerk straight up from the pod, grab George by his head in one hand and smash the man's skull with the other.

Bright blood splattered the inside of his hood, obscuring the real damage and hiding his face. For a moment, things froze like that, as the Spartan in the pod seemed to take stock of his surroundings. Still holding George up, he looked around once, before pausing at Johansen. Slowly, he lowered the body to the floor, letting go of it.

"Jesus." Johansen whispered, his back pressed to the wall.

The Spartan seemed to sag, as both hands went to his helmet, though he'd need to unseal and detach it before it would come off. Not once did he make a single sound.

Staring through the glass at the sudden demise of his coworker, Tam felt his own brain might have flatlined; finally, he blinked, and glanced down at the readings. The EEG looked more normal, but everything else had just spiked, instead; although while the heartrate was impossibly high, and for it, had brought up blood pressure, that second number went right back to dropping steadily again.

"Bleeding." Tam whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "He's still bleeding, somewhere."

"He just killed George!" The woman behind him shrieked, breaking the numb silence at last and setting loose a landslide of noise. Tam grimaced, but when he looked up from the screens to fuss at the lot of them for it, instead he found himself looking back through the glass.

Most of the clamor died back on its own as they watched what he was watching; slowly, seeming painfully, the Spartan pulled himself out of the cryo pod. But when he tried to rest his weight on his own feet, he seemed to buckle, and collapsed instead. From his new place on the floor, he just sagged farther down, as if getting up had caused him to black out.

"Johansen… get George and get out of there." Tam said, feeling hoarse. "The rest of you, out. I need four volunteers, prep for surgery."

Hardly an hour had passed, and already things were going badly.