This is just a fan fiction. The story is fiction and not related to the
main Halo story.

Halo: The Strike On Earth

A Spartan 115 Story

Chapter 1:

School, I hate going to school. Why did I have to be a failure? I'm sixteen years old. Well, I look it. I'm actually forty-something. But I was a science experiment; I have no birthdays, birth-parents. The closest thing to a parent I have is Doctor Halsey. Though she doesn't treat me like her son, she doesn't treat me like anything but a soldier.

I was a failed experiment. Something went wrong, no one is to blame. Halsey blamed everyone though. She's a bit crazy.

I had to come out of the test-tube when I was only about six or something months old. That made me about fourteen really. I grew until I looked sixteen but my body stopped, no-one knows what happened and Halsey didn't take a second look at me once I left her lab. So now I am stuck looking infinitely sixteen years old, but ageing in the mind. I'll die of old age one day; my brain will stop because it's old. My heart ages too, slower than my brain. I still look sixteen though.

I am what happens when people try to grow super-soldiers out of a test-tube. I am a super-solder still. I did the training and fought in the war on Reach. I was there for the Fall of Reach. We haven't seen any Covenant after that war, and I haven't needed to go to war since Reach.

After becoming a legend for all the stories I am trying to forget the UNSC sent me to this school. Barmoor High School and I repeat the same year, every year. I have to pretend it's because I failed the year. But it's because the UNSC must keep me secret. All my friends go ahead without me. They barely question me not ageing, it's barely noticeable.

If you're wondering why they must keep me secret it is because there are people that'll pay top-dollar to have me and preform painful experiments on me to work out why I don't age. Hell, after looking sixteen for forty-odd-years I'd love to know why I don't age either. People would love to have the ability to not age, you would think that anyway.

This is an eternal hell. You wouldn't think it, but it is. I make friends in all the years I am here, they are younger and know less than me, but they grow to me. But then they leave school and move on with life while I am still here, acting like a dumbass sixteen year old student in High School, unable to move on. Because I am some stupid failure!

Ageing on the inside and not the out is a painful process.

"Matthew, hey." Alessandra comes walking down the path to join me and the others for lunch.

"Hey," she always mentions me first. She has a crush on me. Has for a long time, I'm not into her. I can't be. I'm like, thirty years older than her and it just seems wrong for me. Unfortunately I am the only one that can know that. Not even my best friend Jay; whom I tell everything.

Everyone I am friends with now, are people I met two years ago. They are two years ahead of me in school. It depresses me, that once they leave I will never be allowed to see them. Ever again.

I take another bite of my jam sandwich, and chew slowly at the thought. "What's up?" Stuart asks, noticing I am depressed. Yes, even super-soldiers get depressed. Actually; I don't know if it's just me or all of us do. We're considered an entire different species by the UNSC. We aren't but they look at us like we are.

"I'm just thinking, you guys are leaving at the end of this year. Even if I don't repeat, I still have to spend another year or two without you guys." I say.

"Don't worry dude, we can still hang out out-of-school." Stuart mentions.

That is what every lot of my friends say in the last year before leaving. "We can still hang out out-of-school."

I know we can't the UNSC won't allow it. I am only allowed at home with my two fake parents who are just foster parents that are being payed to follow a story. I'm sure they would follow the story without pay, maybe.

I grunt. I stand up, swing my um-teenth school back over my shoulder and strut over to the bin. I through my rubbish – a chip packet and bread crust into the bin; the same bin I always do, every day, for the past twenty years.

Twenty years I have been coming to this school. Because the first ten was training, the other ten was in the Fall of Reach. Reach was a good planet, even though I only saw it during the war.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to war, because this place is boring and I do the same stuff every year. There is no excitement. At least war gets me adrenalin pumping, of my, I have totally forgotten what it feels like to feel fear. Fear of death, running for your life from enemy gun fire.

And sometimes you just wish too hard. I hadn't noticed it before but now I have, basically because it was overhead.

Wind is gusting around everywhere, students are running and teachers do their best to hold them back; while the helicopter slowly comes to a land on the ground in front of me. I go to walk forward but Alessandra latches onto me, so I stop and walk back so she doesn't get hurt by anything.

The black helicopter with the UNSC symbol, the eagle, slows its rotor blades to the slowest they can go. And the wind slows down to a slight breeze.

The doors on each side of the helicopter slide open and three soldiers jump out from each side pointing handguns out. Everybody screams, the teachers try to force everyone to run, most people do. I don't know who stayed, but I did still with Alessandra clinging to me, who fingers begin to dig into me.

"Lower your weapons mean, nothing needs to be shot here." I hear the recognised voice: Spartan Miller.

He spots me almost immediately and walks straight to me, with a big grin on his face, and that's when I notice the pain in my face from my big grin. I take control and put my serious face on, I am professional.

A teacher jumps in front of us, probably expecting he'd be a hero saving his students instead of himself.

"No need for that sir. We are part of the UNSC, we're here for Matthew." Spartan Miller says.

"No," the teacher says in a deep, scared voice. "Run kids run!"

Alessandra runs and tries to pull me at the same time, "Let's go!" She screams.

I pull her off of me and she falls into the dirt. "Sorry," I mutter. I walk past the teacher, who tries to stop me but I avoid, and arrive next to Miller. I salute. "Sir," I say, standing tall and brave.

"We have an issue…" He hisses, we walk over towards the helicopter a few meters for him to tell me, "Our frigates have picked up a Covenant fleet heading towards Earth."

I feel nervous, yet also excited. Am I being called into war again? I look to Alessandra brushing herself off in the dirt.

"You know what they want?" I ask.

"We didn't exactly ask," Miller says. "We need you back."

I smile, and deep down dance. I'm going back to war. Most people may think that isn't a good thing, but I was grown in a test-tube to be a super-soldier and fight in wars. I build up with excitement and get all giddy wanting to get to the lines already, then remembering I might be a bit rusty.

I do home-gym and light martial arts training at home with tutors that I get hired, but that's about it.

"I'm in." I say, Miller leads me into the helicopter; the six marines jump in too and shut the door. I hear the engines get louder and faster, and then I feel the helicopter lift off the ground. I didn't even say good-bye to anyone I'm too excited.

Going back to my home environment, the place I was designed to be: The Battle Zone.

What brightens my mood even more is Miller mentions they have saved my amour from the Fall of Reach.