Stranger In Their World

Prologue

It Begins

"This does not look good," I muttered, as I watched the advancing Covenant forces through the scope of my SRS99 Sniper Rifle. How I loved the weapon. Experience had taught me that four shots to a Banshee would turn it into a flaming wreck (best attempted while it was over enemy forces; that one time did not go well).

Ten Grunts, three Elites and a Hunter pair could be seen heading to the mining facility my team had to defend.

'What to do?' I silently considered. I could attack at once. It would take a few seconds for them to notice where the shots were coming from and by that time I could have taken down the Elites and maybe some of the Grunts. Or I could wait until they were in sight of my team-mates and launch a joint attack on the aliens. It took only a second for me to decide.

'Fuck it,' I thought and opened fire.

BOOM! One of the Elites fell to the ground, a gaping hole in his head.

BOOM! A second Elite fell to the ground, meeting the same fate as his friend.

BOOM! The final Elite fell to the ground, taking a part of his head off.

BOOM! My final shot hit one Grunt and passed though to hit one of the Elites' dropped plasma grenades.

Pausing to reload, I watched the explosion kill all but three of the grunts and damaging the back armour of the Hunters.

"KILLIONAIRE!" a voice bellowed. I was really regretting putting the volume up so high.

Yeah, I'm playing Halo Reach firefight, in case you hadn't noticed.

JUNE 2011

CO. FERMANAGH, NORTHERN IRELAND, EARTH

"Seriously dude, you have to stop doing that." That was one of my matchmaking team-mates.

"You're just mad that you don't have my awesome skills," I taunted.

"Skills, my ass! You got lucky shooting that grenade."

"And the three Elite headshots in a row don't mean anything, did they?"

"Yes, yes you're a Halo god, now can you two quit arguing and KILL THOSE FUCKING HUNTERS!" Another of my matchmaking team-mates.

I rolled my eyes, knowing only too well that they couldn't see me.

"Fine, I'll kill the-"

The screen went black.

Fucking power cuts.

Power cuts around here usually last for about a few hours so I decided to go out for a walk in the woods near my house to pass the time until I could get back to playing Halo. Some people might say I was a 'Halo addict.' I call those people, assholes.

I went to the kitchen and stuck my head I through the door.

"I'm off for a walk. I'll be back soon." I told my mother.

"OK, just don't take too long," she replied.

"I won't."

I went up to my bedroom, my very messy bedroom, and grabbed my denim jacket and a copy of the book Halo: The Fall of Reach before heading out the door. Minutes later I walked into the woods.

I made my way through the woods until I reached a small clearing. I'm not sure if you could call it a clearing or just an area with slightly less trees. Either way it worked as a place I could go when I wanted to be alone.

One of the trees had been chopped down a long time ago so I sat down on it to read.

Suddenly, a hand reached round my head and covered my mouth. I panicked and started swinging my arms around trying to get rid of my attacker but my strikes did nothing. Eventually, I fell unconscious.

UNKNOWN TIME

UNKNOWN LOCATION

This day was not going well for me. A power cut in the middle of my greatest Firefight game yet was bad enough but getting knocked out and kidnapped while out on a walk? Now it's... Well, maybe I'm going a bit too far. But still, today's been a pretty crappy day.

'Wait a minute, I haven't even opened my eyes yet. Where the fuck am I?'

Slowly I opened my eyes to a sight I'll never forget. I was lying flat on face on a glass floor. But that wasn't the important part. That was what I saw through the glass.

I was staring down at the surface of an alien planet. How did I know that it was an alien planet? Well, I couldn't see any familiar landmasses. Also, the fact that there were dozens of other space stations dotted throughout my field of vision might have a clue.

Just then I heard a sort of 'whoosh' sound behind me. I was so surprised at what I was looking at through the glass floor, I barely noticed the noise. I'm normally fairly alert to things around me so that should help you realise just how suprised I was. I mean, it's not every day you go out for a walk in a forest, get knocked out and wake up looking out a glass floor of a space station.

Oh, right. The noise. Turns out it was a door opening. The woman who walked it was distracted by something in her hand so she didn't see me until she nearly tripped over me.

"Who are you and what are you doing lying on my lab floor?" the woman asked. That shocked me out of my daze and I spun around onto my back until I was looking up at her.

She appeared to be fairly young, somewhere in her early 30s. She was attractive, in an older sort of way. Her hair was jet black coloured and her eyes were a grey/blue mixture. She looked oddly familiar, but I was fairly certain that I'd never seen her before.

I was lying there in shock. What was I meant to say. 'Hi, I was knocked out, kidnapped and dumped here. Nice to meet you.' I heard more footsteps from the door. Someone else was coming to see this woman.

"Doctor, I need to-" The voice cut off quickly as the speaker, a young girl around the age of 14 entered the room. Her hair was blood red and her eyes were an emerald green. Overall she looked quite ordinary, someone you might see while out shopping or something. Like the older woman she was also familiar. Again, I couldn't tell where I'd seen her before.

But, as I was about to find out, looks can be deceiving. The next thing I knew, she rushed towards me and leapt onto my back and pulled my head back sharply. It really hurt. For a moment I thought she was going to tear my head off.

I admit it did look bad. You go to speak with someone and you find that they're standing over a teenage boy who you're fairly sure shouldn't be there. It's only natural that you should feel threatened. But I thought that the whole 'Intruder! Attack!' thing was uncalled for.

Wait, it got worse. I then found out she was pressing a knife against my neck. Now I was really scared. The 'teenage girl leaping onto my back' thing I can deal with. Finding out that same teenage girl has a knife against your throat? That's something else entirely.

So I did the only thing that seemed reasonable at the time. I panicked. Well, I say panicked. What really happened was that I started firing questions out so fast that I left no time for them to be answered. Even in the state I was in I knew that moving too quickly while someone has a knife against your throat is a bad idea.

"What the fuck is going on? Who are you people? Where the fuck am I? What is this place? How did I-"

"Not another word out of you."

The girl's knife pressed a little harder against my neck. I think it might even have drew a little blood. That got me to shut up.

The older woman (the girl called her 'Doctor') intervened.

"Linda, get off the boy," she ordered.

The girl, Linda, immediately objected.

"Doctor Halsey, we don't know who he is or how he-"

"Linda," Halsey said firmly. "Now."

The knife left my neck and she got off me. She shot me a dark glare.

"I'm watching you," she said. "Any sudden moves..." She didn't need to finish her threat. Any sudden moves and I'd be lying on the ground with a knife stuck in me.

Doctor Halsey held out a hand to me to help me up off the floor. For a few seconds I just stared at it. Doctor Halsey. I felt like I'd been kicked in the face. Now I knew why they looked familiar.

Somehow, I'd ended up in the Halo universe.

I fainted.

Please review.