Chapter 2

I'm real, but are you serious?

Date: May 22nd, 2553

Location: Unknown

Black smoke filled Alex's nostrils, as the mixture of blood, glass, and air filled his lungs. He gagged. Opening his eyes was difficult, because of the bright light in front of him, but he pushed through the pain and forced them open. He lay upon a table in a cold steel room. Tubes ran out of him, and wires attached to his head gave readings on monitors, which were next to him. He felt of his leg. No response. His legs were paralyzed. He tried to sit up. Nothing. Once again, he willed his eyes to close and then open again. The pain seared through his body as he did so. With all the strength in him, he struggled to turn his head, but his fingers curled into a fist in the pain, and this in itself was painful. A voice echoed through the room.

"He's awake." Said a voice from a nonexistent figure.

A door parted at the far end of a room, and a masked woman came through dressed in a white gown. She held a sharp needle, and looked at her patients open eyes.

"You're tough. You shouldn't have woken up this early. I'm afraid I am going to have to sedate you again while I finish my work." She said

Unable to say anything in protest, he watched as she injected him with the needle, which held a crystal clear liquid. He also noticed as his eyes stretched to look downward that he was barely dressed only in an undergarment. His entire body looked blue from bruises and swelling, and as he looked back at his arm, they looked bigger than he remembered. Then the woman said something.

"Goodnight. See you in the morning." And as he stared at his bluish bruise, the color of the wall started to blend with it, a soon everything faded to black.

Two Weeks Later

Alex blinked. The room was bright. Clean. Reflective even. People were in this room. Six of them. Four of them on tables such as himself, and 2 people in the white outfits the woman from when he was awake last. He sat upright. Fast. He was fast. Agile. He brought his hand up in a flash. Looking it over, he saw it was larger than he remembered. More lean.

"Hello." Said the same voice of the bodiless figure from before. "I need you to follow the woman at the end of this room. She will take you to your room."

His eyes searched the room for the source, but found none. Looking at the end of the room, he saw a man in a marine outfit and a weapon that he thought he recognized waving at him to come on.

He moved his legs off of the bed, and realized that he found it difficult to walk. But It was not as if he couldn't walk as he was expecting. His legs were twitchier. Easier to move. As he walked down the room and followed the marine, the thought dawned on him about where he could be? When was it? He distinctly remembered flying off of a hill to a situation where he would have broken bones, scuffs and cuts, possibly death. Now here he was in a strange place in perfect condition with uncanny responsiveness to his commands.

He glanced up and looked at the marine. The marine turned his head a bit and realized that he was being watched. He shrank his head, and brought his weapon to a more ready to fire position.

"It's a pity if they're wrong." Said the marine.

Alex cocked his eyebrow in question as he followed him down the end of a long corridor and entered the door on the right. Inside was the basic setup; a table, a chair, a bed, and a can. The bed looked like it had never been used, and as he had observed through the travel here, it looked like the barracks for the entire area of military personal. If he had just had a car wreck, why was he in a military facility?

He noticed a book lay on the table. "History: A Glance Back In Time" it read. He picked it up, and sat on the bed, opened the front cover, and read the contents. Hmmm, he thought. Interesting. Then he came to Chapter 3.

1950-2152: An Age Of Peace And Exploration, It read. He dropped the book, but the dead sound of the book was muffled by an intercom's beep from a speaker above his head. It was the female from before.

"I need you to report to the briefing room. We have someone... special here for you." She said.

"NO! You wait. I want to know who the hell you are and when tha..." but the intercom went dead.

This was all very strange. History books into his future, military, and who was the special guest. The only way for him to find out was to go where he was told. So he did, and as he rose from the bed, he shook his head, trying to shake off this madness.

He saw many other people as he traversed the barracks, and they all lowered their heads to him. Sure he had the body of a professional weightlifter, but what about it? There were others in the world like this? Why was he so special?

Looking on the doors, he finally came to one that said Briefing Room. He walked to it, and the door slid open for him. The room was dark, and there was an oval table in the center of it with four chairs on either side. A projection board was attached to the wall, and there were no windows, or people for that matter, in this room. He walked to the projector and touched it. Then without warning, it came on, displaying a picture of someone in a green armor. He then recognized it as the Master Chief, the character he played on what he considered the best game of all time, Halo.

"Hmm... I recognize myself. Damn I hate pictures..." said a voice from behind him.

Alex's eyes flew open, and he whipped around, almost burning the air around him. There, in the flesh, metal, and bone stood the Master Chief himself.

"But.. Bu Buhh.. How?" he said, and hyperventilated.

"I know, I'm not suppose to be real. But I am. Here in the flesh. I need your help." Said the chief.

Then, for Alex, it all clicked into place. The military. The history book. Everything. "So, I suppose that the woman over the intercom was Cortana?"

"You bet your bottom dollar!" she said, and suddenly a small pedestal hidden in a dark corner of the room blinked to life, and Cortana's Arithmetic body shaped code appeared.

Alex fought to sort through this overwhelming amount of information, and cut to the chase.

"So... What do you want me to help you with?" Alex proposed.

"We're losing the war on the Covenant here in my time, but in your time they're not there yet. If you could stop the approach, it would make things easier for the past, and the future. You were chosen because of you're ability to play the videogame, and because of you're heart. You don't give up. You my friend will become a Spartan. This is, unless you don't want to. Then we can knock you out, beat the hell out of you, and throw you back in that car of yours." Said the chief.

"Awe shit man. Always wanted to be a Spartan. Wow. Yeah, I'm all for it." Alex said. And for the next hour, Cortana explained all about how it would work. When she finished, Alex had a question. "So, when do I get my 'augmentations'?"

"One step ahead of ya, you already have them." She said, and this explained the muscle response, and the many other enhancements he had noticed

"There is one more thing," she said, "When you wake up, you will poses all of the training you will need, and it will be the same as the master chief's training. The only thing separating you will be experience."

"Just how will this work?" Alex asked. He turned his head to the master chief. The master chief rose from his slumped position, and ran to Alex. When he reached him, he punched him in the head, and knocked him out.

"That is not any of your concern, son. You will know all you need to know, and that's enough for us all." Said the chief.

Cortana nodded, and the door split and two white dressed nurses carried Alex away.

"Well, we've done it. Maybe his future will be happy to have him to help." She said to no one in particular.

But the Master Chief answered the question in his head. I don't think it's the public that he cares about. It's someone. One person, and that's all it takes.