4; RABID ANIMAL ATTACK

September 20, 2552

Back in March of 2528, Steve got drafted. Frank hadn't been sure what to make of that, but at the time, he hadn't had a lot of time to sit and think about it, either. Mission briefing, drop, do the job, extract, sack time, do it again. That had been the routine for nearly his whole career… a career that had lasted far longer than some of the men he'd served it with.

Brandon was in another regiment, now. Grissom was dead, half his skull blown to vapor by one of those adhesive plasma grenades. His old Sergeant, Vargas, was forcibly retired after taking too many bullets to be justifiably alive but surviving it anyway. It left him crippled for life, and more or less useless as a soldier. He was reputedly on Mars. Frank was his own Sergeant now… and if things continued as they had, he wouldn't stay one for long.

There was a Pelican pilot he remembered the name of, but she'd been shot down over an outer colony a few years back. Keeping count of the people he knew who were still alive was becoming easier than keeping count of the ones he knew that weren't. That was rather saddening, actually. But they still, somehow, always knew to call him Animal.

The Covenant were a household theme now days. People had been born and grown up under the ominous cloud of oppressive news, people who had never known a time when Insurrectionists had been the worst of Humanity's problems. Frank carried a block of ice in his guts wherever he went… mostly because he knew acutely that his long-missing twin was right at the heart of every major battle the military engaged in. Some of those weren't even on the ground. But a small part of it was that after all this time doing the exact same thing as said twin, he hadn't found the missing other yet. That was disheartening above all else. The odds of them ever meeting before being cremated by the Covenant were slim, and got slimmer with every passing day.

Flint was, to a fault, magnetized to battles. Much in the same way those mystical Spartans were. Frank had seen a Spartan or two, had marveled at them and their efficiency, much like most every other Marine. He wondered often if his twin had met one, seen one, or even knew much about them. They were, so said intel, special forces times ten. That explained why they usually wiped out armies by themselves.

Oh, it took time. Everything did. But only a Spartan could just run in, do his thing, and run back out again without dying spectacularly. Frank actually remembered the name of the ODST who had tried that… he'd called it the 'Spartan jig' before he went in, claiming that Spartans weren't all that special and that anyone with enough equipment, and enough training, could do as good a job. He had hated the guys, hated them with a passion. Referred to them as 'walking tanks' with a sneer on his face.

Frank had watched him die through the scope of an SRS.

While hardly willing to try anything of the sort himself, his team had been selected to go in after the overly ambitious ODST and clean up the mess he'd started. Three large bulbous purple tanks lobbing fiery plasma mortars later, the plan was altered and they'd stood back and rained SPNKr rounds until they were out and the plain was scarred and hilly. It had helped. That left only one of the wormy orange behemoths with the arm-cannon-thing, and all those dozens upon dozens of man-sized leaf-bug aliens called Grunts.

Why in the nine hells anything would want to wear a tank so poorly armored filled with combustible gasses in a hostile environment – like one filled with oxygen – was beyond Frank. But it seemed they were the most numerous of all Covenant species, and he saw them wherever he saw Covenant.

In fact, he'd once seen a place that didn't have any other kind of creature there… it was all just Grunts, waddling around and on occasion treading their knuckles like some overgrown reptilian-bug ape.

Today, September the somethingth, twenty-five fifty-something, he got a notice over the COM that told him something very peculiar and interesting.

There was this commander type. Frank didn't recognize the… man?… 's name. Ack, it was Japanese, it could be a woman and Frank wouldn't know until he was looking the other in the eye. Anyway, the commander type had evidently gotten a peek at Frank and his squad in action, more than likely from a fighter pilot's nose camera or something, because Frank did not recall seeing anyone with epicanthic folds and wearing bars and pips out in the field. The sight had evidently given the commander type some ideas about Frank's use.

He was being transferred back of the line for a period of (no less than) fourteen days, for sequential training (whatever that meant) in advanced warfare and weapons. Uh, oh. Anyone could have guessed where this was going even without reading the rest of the notice. Skipping over the majority of the text, Frank looked for patterns in the typing like burrs in a plate of textured metal. He found it – an all-caps reference to a different branch of the UNSC, followed by a set of serial numbers and reference tabs.

He sighed.

"Yo, Animal. You look glum." The sound of his squadmate's voice raised Frank's gaze from the tablet, but he didn't bother to offer a placating smile to the greeting. Dodge (so named before Frank met him) was not particularly fond of being 'grinned away' as he put it. If Frank tried to brush him off, he'd get prodded further.

"They don't want me to be a Marine anymore." Frank answered.

"They? Your folks, or the brass?" Dodge asked. He had all-around blunted features, with a heavy brow and a large jaw, and ears that stuck out like regular jug handles. While some people could wear those features amiably, this guy managed to wear them as if they were badly affixed forehead appliances. With his hair cropped regulation-short, it made him look even worse.

"Brass." Frank answered. "I've got a transfer notice effective immediately."

"Transfer, eh?" Dodge echoed. "Oh, I was thinking they'd discharged you."

"I discharge like a bullet does. With a bang." Frank put in, half-grinning at Dodge's expression. "Nah, they want me to go be an arrogant overdressed pod-junkie."

"ODST? That's not fair!" Dodge suddenly whined. "I put in for that a year ago, and they never replied, even to tell me no!"

Frank gave the man a skeptical look. "You applied?" That Dodge was unqualified for such a position was something of an understatement… the man personified the quintessential dumb brute. He just didn't really resemble one much until he opened his mouth or tried to do something complex.

He could field strip a rifle, but that was about as technical as he got. Frank, on the other hand, would disassemble his radio equipment on a regular basis. It had taken him some six or seven times doing that (with help) to figure out how to reassemble it again, but he'd done it and successfully. Now he could go so far as to hotwire a Covenant door to make a locked one slip open.

Tinker-toes was a close second up next to Animal. But nobody actually called out Tinker-toes if they wanted his attention. "Ah, well, better luck next time, then." Frank wasn't about to engage Dodge in enough conversation to try explaining to him why he would never be inducted into the pod-junkie hall of flames. If he ever managed to get it through his thick skull, he'd promptly decide that it was all Frank's fault, somehow, and he'd never forgive Frank for it.

"You could put in a good word for me, right, Animal? They noticed you, I mean, we're in the same squad, they might notice me next, cos I'm like right next to you, man." Dodge rattled.

Frank just stood up, dropped his nose back into the transfer notice again and proceeded to wander off. When Dodge got started thinking up probabilities, he didn't tend to quit until his biology changed – which could sometimes take a while. Nature's call (in either direction) just wasn't all that motivational to the man.

He almost started to look forward to his transfer when Dodge got up and followed him.

Almost.

.

September 28, 2552

Flint was in distress. Large portions of Frank's upper chest ached, but it was a back-of-the-mind, miserable ache, as if he'd been pummeled but a while ago. The throbbing punishment felt weirdly ethereal, somewhat removed from what it usually felt like. Whatever had happened, though, it was serious. Flint had never, in all their forty and some-odd years of life, been distressed like this.

Even before he was mysteriously kidnapped and replaced by an alien. Frank stepped off the dock of the UNSC Rapture in Water, feeling his scalp pulling tight under his officer's cap. He was about to go from being a Sergeant to being a rookie again, so he felt it reasonable to wear it at least one more time before it became inappropriate to do so.

But as the undress-uniformed ODST sent to get him looked him over, Frank got that sinking feeling that he always had right before Flint did something terrible. Only this time it was much worse than terrible. Frank wondered absently as he exchanged salutes with the ODST if it weren't like comparing shoestring potatoes with a scorched world when using the word 'fried'.

It just wasn't the same…

Frank felt relieved when the greeting proved brief, but he didn't miss that the ODST noticed that.

"Most swabbies like you tend to want to yammer more than you do, you know." The fellow mentioned, turning to lead him through the dock platform to the training ground where he'd spend the following two weeks.

"I'm not Fleet." Frank grumbled, starting to feel sick. For the moment, whatever Flint was up to, it was gut-wrenchingly frightening, but whatever odious ending it had had not yet come to pass. All it did to Frank was make him irritable. "Don't call me swabbie."

The ODST laughed at him – it was a partially mocking laugh, but the man was observant to a fault… and Frank wondered if he weren't telepathic or something else equally as creepy. He'd noticed the wrinkle between Frank's bright blonde brows was not of indignation. Marines often squabbled with ODST's. This one had noticed right away that whatever was bothering this Marine, it was not that he was being needled by an ODST.

Reaching the first pressure door, Frank got a good idea of what might be so wrong when a sharp pain lanced through his head from over his left ear, and caused bells to ring in both ears. He tried valiantly to hide his grimace, and thanked whatever gods there were that the moment had come when the ODST leading him around had had his back fully turned, and his attention elsewhere. The door opened, and they resumed walking.

Frank's stomach flipped, so he set his jaw and tried not to breathe… it didn't help much but it gave him something else to think about than his endangered twin. Whatever in the ninth hell Flint was doing, it had not only rumpled Flint, it had rumpled Frank. The induction into the ODST classification was no time to be having twin-trouble, though. They'd ditch him for medical issues at the drop of a hat. And where he went from there would be very much in question.

Feeling himself start to sweat, Frank adjusted his grip on his duffel and pulled it upward to sling it over a shoulder, holding it at the crook of that wrist and trying to use the motions – each one however subtle – to offset his over-used link to his brother. For once, he wished he hadn't put so much effort into keeping that link so open. If Flint had done anything except the opposite, Frank would be rather surprised. Perhaps he'd been the smart one.

Being both in the war-besotted military, perhaps it was very much the smart thing to do. Frank had been shot full of holes enough times – and so had Flint – that he understood that each soldier got enough battle-wear to not need to share with someone else's. But Frank always had… for all this time, he'd justified the burden of non-injury-related pain in that it let him know his search for his twin was not in vain. Flint was out there. The massive amounts of trouble he was in was testament to that.

They reached the far end of a long corridor with doors along both sides and stopped again at the one with the keypad. Frank looked around, then back the way they'd come, then tried to focus on the ODST, wondering what the fellow looked like in full battle rattle. He was neither broad nor narrow shouldered, seeming more or less average with all average features. If his hair had been an unremarkable brown, he might have passed as the type of guy who could vanish into any crowd under any circumstances.

But it had distinctive auburn highlights, and Frank could tell that that tan was unnatural. The man had to have burnt bright red a dozen times in order to get that dark. And he was still paler than Frank. Being an O'Neil made him from the kind of bloodline that would make him white as a ghost if he avoided the sun for more than a week. Those types came in the redheaded and blonde variety, with the occasional rare brunette thrown in for spice.

Being a blonde looking at a redhead, Frank felt pretty sure he was looking at a variation to his own theme… Celts were notoriously difficult to kill. It made sense that this guy was an ODST… though Frank would have rathered not be one. He just hadn't been given the time to find and file the proper paperwork to tell the brass no on this one.

Bummer.

The thought struck, completed, and was off on its way to memory to be replaced by more recent thoughts when the ODST turned around and made eye contact at the exact same moment that Flint hit something so hard, it speared through him.

Frank's view of the world went topsy in a heartbeat, and he heard the ODST yell something, but he was already going down, and he knew it. Flint was fading out, too, but also painfully aware of what was happening around his person. The unverified sense of shattering glass raining around him, the unmistakable rush of unrepentant gale force winds, the stirring sensation of a fighter craft working itself to pieces around him.

In that moment, Frank knew his feeling of something wrong was more than just. His apprehension spiked into complete terror… in that moment, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was losing his brother, and when this was finished, Flint would die.

Frank latched onto the arm that reached for him, sinking his fingers through the flesh on it as if it were memory foam. After all this time, all that he'd been through, all the long searching he had done, all to come up dry, to have it end this way, without ever seeing his twin.

For the first time in thirty-four years, Frank felt Flint seem to look back, across their bond, at him, and acknowledge that he was still there. As the last of him faded out, Frank tried to reach for his brother, forgetting for a moment that he was nowhere within reach, and instead got a double fistful of the ODST in front of him.

"Flint…" Where the rasping voice had come from, Frank wasn't sure, but he knew he'd been the one to try to squeeze the word out. Tears streaked down his face, the searing, fiery agony pulling at the ligaments of his left shoulder sending tendrils of molten fire up his neck and across his ribcage. When the last of Flint had evaporated, Frank found the face in front of him was within focus again. His brows met in confusion, but the look was returned.

"Is there something wrong with you, man?" The ODST asked.

Frank wasn't even sure if he was capable of answering.

.

October 3, 2552

The medical officer sat back against the table behind him, and heaved a perturbed sigh. "So is there a trigger? Or is it random?"

Frank didn't even bother to look up. "You, like all before you, would never believe me if I told you."

"Let's hear it anyway, Sergeant." The ODST to Frank's left, standing there with his thigh-thick arms crossed, was some kind of exceedingly high ranker, but Frank hadn't looked at his bars to know what kind. He outranked Frank, though, so it was good enough.

Raising his eyes to focus on the medic's face, Frank set his jaw. "I am an identical twin. My brother is also in the UNSC. When he is hurt, I feel it happen."

The medic's expression registered just what Frank was used to seeing when he admitted that – incredulous disbelief. "That has never been documented. In anybody."

"Wilder, that's enough." The ODST issued. "I've heard of it. Milder." Frank felt the man's eyes focus on his ear, and start to bore. "Has it ever been a problem before?"

"Once or twice." Frank shrugged, finally casting a glance at the ODST. His rich sienna skin shone as if it had been oiled, but he had the strangest blue-on-magenta eyes Frank had ever seen. Each iris looked like an exploding supernova caught in a still frame.

"And do you hear voices when people speak to him?" Wilder asked, apparently seeking to probe and see how far the ridiculous notion went.

Frank shot him a dangerous look. "We share a nervous system. That's all."

"Mind explaining what that episode in the hallway was?" The ODST put in, gruffly.

Frank heaved a sigh, and looked back down. Sitting on the examination table, he felt like a bug in a jar… with no sign of his appeal going away in sight. "Hard to say. I think… maybe he was flying a fighter and got shot down. I don't know."

"You don't keep in contact with your twin?" The ODST asked.

Frank worked his jaw sideways, and looked back at the other trooper. "He was taken off the school grounds when we were six. I've been looking for him ever since then. Everyone else is convinced he's dead, but I know better."

"But you know better." The echo was to the same tune as the medic had used a moment before.

Frank frowned at him, too. "If you want to tell me you think I'm making it up, go ahead. You won't be the first and you won't be the last. I can't prove a damn thing."

"Why are you so convinced that everyone else is wrong in supposing your twin is dead?" The ODST asked, cocking his head to one side.

Frank rolled his left shoulder, trying to work some of the foreign ache out of it. If Flint even still had a left arm anymore, it would be a small miracle. "Because before he was taken, I could look at him and know. We felt each other through our fingertips… if I did something, he'd know what I was up to by interpreting the motions I went through. Afterwards… the boy they said was by brother was about as dead to the world as they come. I couldn't feel him. He never responded. He didn't feel me. But the sensations were still there. My brother was still alive, still ambulatory. Just… elsewhere. I don't know where, and I haven't found out yet. I watched the boy they said was him die a horrible death." He shook his head. "But all I could feel was the exertion of basic training. My twin is out there, and today he crashed. He's hurt, and probably isn't going to live."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because when something goes through you…" He poked himself in the shoulder, just under the collarbones, inward of the joint itself, "here… it tends to bode badly."

The ODST cocked an eyebrow at him. "That's just meat."

Frank shrugged. "Ever crashed a fighter craft, sir? What part of any given ship could come up through the cockpit and come and get you that would be spear-shaped? How big do you suppose that piece would be?"

"Captain, really." Wilder protested. "This is preposterous. He's got Anavetris Syndrome, at best – an overactive nervous system firing random signals. There's no way you could link the nervous systems of two people, especially if they haven't even met since they were six years old."

"Modern science knows next to nothing about the nature of identical twins or why they are the way they are, doc." The ODST mentioned. "They're simply impossible to study in a purely scientific basis. You have to take too much on faith. What he's saying could easily be true."

Wilder harrumphed, but left it at that.

"O'Neil…" The Captain began, catching Frank's attention again. "In the event that this missing twin of yours… dies… what do you suppose that will do to you?"

"I hope I never find out." Frank muttered.

"You said it yourself you think the crash was fatal."

"Yes, sir. But he's still with me… for the moment. Maybe if luck holds out someone will find him and pry him out before the bird pops."

"You're mighty optimistic." The ODST Captain mentioned. "Either way… I'm suspending your Shock Trooper training until I know more about this… twin-thing… or Ana Syndrome or whatever in hell it really is. I won't have one of my men go down in a nervous fit in the middle of a battle when I need him mobile and ambulatory most."

Frank heaved a deep sigh, and looked back down. "I figured this would happen."

"Why did you not see fit to inform us of this before? Or the UNSC in general?" Wilder asked.

"It's not a disease." Frank answered, looking up to glower at the medic. "And that I am a twin is noted on my personnel file. The UNSC does know."

.

October 18, 2552

Without incident for two weeks and a day, Frank was finally sent forward to go ahead and do the training regimen to get himself started into the Shock Troopers. Day one was okay. It was a little like basic training with all the variables amped up. Frank felt sluggish, knowing his twin was not moving. He'd gotten up and walked somewhat for a span, but he hadn't gone that far. His steps had dragged, his motions felt weak and slow to Frank. There was no doubt in his mind that the injury the crash had given him was significant – it was enough to slow his energizer bunny self down.

The fact saddened him considerably. At present, Flint had not moved hardly a muscle to even stand up in several days. If he was on medical leave, that was good. Hopefully someone was tending him properly.

On a thin foam pad facing off with a trainer who had told him to treat him like he was an Elite, Frank had just about put the man down when he felt Flint move again. He slowly stood up, seeming to amble more than walk. Frank finished his twisting flip and brought the mock-Elite down on his belly, both arms captured up behind his back and one of Frank's hands pressed into the back of the man's head.

Without even waiting for the call to do so, Frank shifted backwards, and let go, standing up apart from the trainer. The guy emitted a gag sound, though it was more than likely an expression than any exhalation. He pushed to his knees and twisted around to look back and up at Frank. "You got a grip like a vise."

"I practiced." Frank admitted, quietly. "Done this before."

"Jujitsu?"

"Nope… no formal training aside from boot." Frank shrugged. He'd refrained from mentioning the fact that he'd gotten most of his 'training' from his twin in the same manner that he'd done for most of his life. It had been scolded out of him enough times that he'd finally fallen out of the habit of finishing that sentence. Flint was not, after all, a 'formal' trainer. He'd just been easy to follow when he moved.

The trainer was not a small man, towering over Frank in much the same way that Brandon had, but Frank was used to seeing such men about and was not especially intimidated. Even once the trainer had gotten a hand around Frank's arm, it hadn't saved him much from being flattened in a tangled ball. He stood himself up, dusted his palms on his thighs, and turned around to face Frank again. "Again."

"Okay." Frank answered, obtaining the traditional stance of fight-readiness. He'd found over the years that he really didn't need it, but it helped his trainer opponent recognize that he was not ignoring the man or his instruction.

The trainer moved to engage right as Flint moved aggressively, twisting sideways. Confused, Frank followed, ducking right out of the way. Flint tore the other direction, grabbing a fistful of midsection and giving it a vicious yank. He brought up a leg, and seated that boot into the side under his fist, then let go and kicked hard enough to lift himself off the floor.

As the opponent staggered back, he hit the ground, yanked on something on the other side of him, twisted around and stuck his other leg out to sock the unfortunate other in the head with that boot. Frank's trainer didn't go down right away, but he looked shell shocked at Frank's sudden speed and his method of attack going so sideways. Before he could recover at all, Flint surged forward two steps, hauling something heavy along with, then backtracked into it, and on the rebound he shouldered into the initial target, and it seemed to slip right out of gravity when it fell away.

Had he just pushed someone off a high ledge?

Frank's trainer overbalanced and hit the mat with a loud whump. "Ugh! Damn, O'Neil! Quit a moment!"

Frank stepped back several paces, almost fully off the mat, getting that sinking feeling again. "Okay… okay…" This was bad.

Seeing his expression work down into a cross between apprehension and terror, the trainer sat up and looked at him curiously. "O'Neil…? You alright?"

"I… no." Frank decided, suddenly. Someone pulled Flint out into a splay, as if he'd been tied to two separate trees. Though if the trees were really trees, Frank wasn't sure. Regardless, the posture was not a good one, nor did it bode well given that he'd just had to fight off someone who was pulling him somewhere. Flint kicked someone else, and they too went off in freefall.

The sinking pit went deeper, as a welling sense of foreboding sank in with a sense of permanency. Frank watched as the trainer stood up, and walked towards him. "Hey, look at me." He grabbed Frank's chin, and peered into his eyes, checking first for some indication of a latent head injury. He had managed to smack Frank in the noggin once, but it had been a glancing blow and hadn't even hurt. Frank lifted his chin out of the man's hand and shook his head, clenching his fists.

Why was Flint tied up to two wide-set posts? Hadn't he been picked up by a UNSC ship and been sitting in a medbay all this time? To Frank's knowledge, the UNSC didn't have a medical procedure that involved being tied to standing pillars as if one were the vitruvian man.

"Simmons! Fetch me Wilder, I got me a feeling." The trainer beckoned, to a man across the room. Simmons jumped up and left the room almost instantly, but Frank was focused inward.

There was a moment of absolute calm, as if all that was wrong had suddenly been alleviated, but the moment passed, and right as Frank looked up at the trainer he'd been sparring with a moment before, he felt heat circle one wrist.

"Oh… fuck…"

"What?" The trainer asked, confused.

Frank knew what was coming before it came, but he didn't have time to react. He focused his blue eyes on the trainer with the most piercing expression for one single millisecond, and then he stiffened with a look of sudden pain. He got only a single gasp of air out as his arms hugged inward, clutching at empty air, then the whole world went black.

"O'Neil!"

.

October 19, 2552

Frank railed off the table with the most pained scream he'd ever emitted. He caught the medic on his right in both hands and throttled him as he bore his whole weight down on him, bringing both to the floor. Hands grabbed at him from all sides and hauled him free of his victim before he could crush the larynx and seal the man's fate, but he only fought them for a moment, before all life seemed to drain away, and he relaxed completely into total limpness.

At first his breath was ragged, but as he blinked the film out of his eyes and tried to look around, he found the world a colorless place indeed. Masked faces floated in and out of view at all angles, and as the bands cinched around his wrists to hold him down, the monitor dots were reaffixed to his chest where he'd ripped them free by extending beyond the length of their attached wires.

He inhaled once, tasting the air. It was dry, and stale. Exhaling, he felt his whole body tingled as if he'd been recently stabbed by a thousand tiny needles. As the initial buzz of motion died back, an unmasked face joined the masked ones, and came to rest looking down at him from the right. The expression on the Captain's sienna face was grim and set, but he had a look in his eyes Frank decided he didn't like much at all.

That was the look of a man who had come to his own conclusions, and had bad news.

.

October 22, 2552

Frank felt empty. He wasn't sure which way was up, anymore, but every time he checked, it was the same direction as last time. The notion just didn't come naturally anymore. He didn't feel dead… not so much. But he did feel hollow, and as if the world had a wholly other quality that he'd never before witnessed. One thing he did not need to be told, though, was that his twin was finally and truly gone.

Flint was dead.

What held in the place of the broken connection was the seething, burning hatred of what had happened to him. Frank was now more or less convinced that the UNSC had not, after all, come for his brother, and rescued him from the crash. Instead, it was the Covenant, and they had murdered him after a brief stay in captivity.

What Frank was not expecting was to be called into the Captain's office on the second day after being revived… according to Wilder, his nervous system had spiked so hard it overloaded his cardiovascular system and shut it down… a self-inflicted heart attack, more or less. Frank knew it was because of what had happened to Flint. He'd felt it… whatever it really had been… and it had had the same after effects.

Sitting wearily in the chair across the desk from the Captain – his name was Cummins, Frank had learned, with the callsign Adept – Frank nodded his greeting to the man. If Frank ever did manage to become an ODST, he well imagined his career as one would be short indeed. "Sir."

Cummins began with the heaving of a sigh.

Frank quirked a brow. That was odd.

"I have something I want you to see." Cummins said, reaching up to the display of his office computing unit and turned it around so Frank could see it. Captured in still-frame was the opening shot of what looked like a video. Frank glanced at it once, looking back at Cummins before focusing on the screen. He couldn't see much… it was what looked like a bajillion colored que-tips lined up on the farthest possible shot of a Covenant super structure.

"What is…?" Frank began, but then Cummins hit 'play'.

The video clarified, and panned about to show a much closer image. The face of a strange creature Frank wasn't sure of the origins of appeared, and words poured through the speakers on the desk's top. "The Great Journey is not for the infidels, or the weak of heart. All Humans will burn in the fires of our ascension, and not one will live to witness our glorious salvation!" Frank suspected it lasted a bit longer than that, but Cummins fast-forwarded through the rest of the speech to the part where the camera swung away from the robed, bearded creature with the long neck. "Here, one of your wretched Demons… watch how helplessly he dies!" A thin, bony arm extended from the alien, to point at a Spartan in Mjolnir armor. He looked quite well beaten, with soot and dirt and old blood caked across his combat skin, the metal of which was pocked and dented heavily with sign of harsh wear. Across one side of his breastplate were the telling lines of traumatic fracture, with an angular hole punched through the armor itself just under the raised pauldron on the left. The fellow had been tied between a pair of freestanding pylons, but what held him were energy cuffs on invisible energy cables… and no matter how hard he pulled on them, they didn't budge more than a quarter of an inch.

Frank's brow knit as he watched the supersoldier haul back with all his might, digging coils of metal out of the flooring with his boots until a hairy beast that resembled a giant ape circled around in front of him and barked something. In response, the Spartan reached forward, smashed his face off the beast's snout, then kicked it in the guts so it flipped over itself and promptly tumbled off the far edge of the suspended platform.

"Why are you showing me this?" Frank asked, confused.

"This hit every channel, every frequency, on all the airwaves from here to the dark space outside our galaxy in the same hour you went down." Cummins answered, as a pair of ornately dressed Elites appeared. "ONI couldn't scrub it fast enough… everyone who had a screen to look at and a signal to pick up could see it, and now it's all over the news."

Frank cast him a glance. "I don't understand…"

"Watch."

Focusing back on the screen, Frank observed a stillness between the Spartan and the gold Elite on the left, with the white one earning not even a glance. There appeared to be some kind of staring contest going on.

Finally, the Spartan looked away, to glance up at one hand when that cuff came alight with brightly twitching energy. Frank's mouth opened in protest, but any words he had remained silenced. The other cuff lit up, and as the sound of the roaring crowd below began to fill the speakers with a static hum, Frank felt the only reason he didn't hear the foreground was because everyone was being silent.

When the lit cuffs suddenly stabbed inward with what looked like giant electric arcs of lightning, the Spartan's exoskeleton snarled with branching lines for just the briefest of instants… he pulled inward, stiffened for the breadth of a gasp, then dropped against the cuffs as if cut from puppet strings.

Frank twitched. "What… what happened?"

"They killed him." Cummins answered, deadpan. He twisted the screen around to face himself again, then looked at it long enough to shut down the media player. Focusing on Frank's face, he continued. "With a raw estimate of some three hundred volts of electricity straight to the heart… it killed him instantly. You want to know what got my attention, Sergeant?"

Frank's brows met. "Sir?"

"According to what I was able to gather from the data attached to this vid, there was a time delay of precisely five minutes between the live show and my seeing it on my screen here." He folded his arms across the desk. "I am then informed that at precisely oh-eight-thirty-five – precisely five minutes before the death-scene played – you performed an exact replica of that piece of theater I just showed you, and dropped dead in front of my hand-combat trainer. You died, O'Neil."

Frank's knit brow slowly relaxed apart, as pieces began to click into place.

"Yes, you get it, now." Cummins nodded. "My thoughts exactly. When the Covenant killed that Spartan, you folded up like a swatted fly. I regret to inform you that your twin… for whatever purpose this may have… is still as dead as you nolonger are." He breathed out through his teeth, then added, "I also will say that I do believe you, now."

Frank frowned. "That's impossible…"

"Why? Are you saying that somehow, the man you've been looking for, for all these years also managed to suffer the exact same fate at the exact same moment as you and this unfortunate Spartan did?" Cummins asked. "I'd say the evidence is rather irrefutable… especially considering what Wilder told me about what he found when he examined you post-mortem."

"Post…?" Frank breathed. "But… how long was I dead?"

"An impossible five hours." Cummins answered, with a sigh. "At the fifth hour, your nervous system began to fire randomly at your brain, so he elected to try to revive you. Remarkably enough, it worked. He then speculated that you were not truly dead, but in a state of self-inflicted hibernation… and all of you, down to the microbe, shut down completely for that time period."

Frank exhaled slowly. "Sir, I… there's no way my brother could be a Spartan. Aren't those guys supposed to be… orphans?"

"ONI keeps many secrets, O'Neil." He twined his fingers together. "I want to ask you something very important."

Frank's brow re-knit almost instantly.

"I can have you discharged on medical reasons, right here, right now. You can go home. Or, given that the source of your Ana Syndrome is now entirely gone, you can complete your training to become the finest ODST ever made, and you can make the bloody Covenant pay for what they did to your brother." He paused only briefly. "They did, after all, rob you of the whole reason you joined this outfit in the first place, you know. You will never find him, never see him, ever again."

Frank looked down at his hands, then up again, feeling mixed and confused. "I need… some time… to think."

"I understand. Don't take too long." Cummins advised. "But I'd keep this minor detail of who your twin was quiet… it might irritate the already irritated spooks up at Intel."

Frank nodded numbly. His little twin brother, a Spartan? Younger by about ten or fifteen minutes, the face in his memory still that of a small, freckled six-year-old boy, it was difficult to imagine Flint being the army-destroyer that all Spartans were renowned for.

It would explain, however, why he never came back home…

.

November 4, 2552

Frank had at first thought it would be more or less normal – sans Flint – to go on and do regular, normal daily things. More than once he wondered if he shouldn't just retire on medical leave and go and see his elderly parents. He was forty-two, after all. Not exactly getting younger.

But the sans-Flint part had begun to eat at him from the inside almost by the end of the first day. He found himself constantly groping for that lost, severed tie that had held them together for so long, catching at it like the stump of a lost limb and forgetting for an instant out of every moment that it was gone.

That Flint was gone.

Frank found it very hard to accept that he'd never get to see his twin, never get to meet his lost brother, get to see what his face looked like without a mirror and some guesswork. Doubtless identical twins didn't grow up to wear different faces. So it would be, theoretically, like looking at a mirror, without the mirror.

And of mirrors, Frank almost couldn't bear to look into them anymore. He felt he saw Flint, and not himself, shaving every morning, and his imagination would transform the reflection into the rotting, decaying form of skin and bones and mush that flesh turned into given some time. Eventually, he could take no more, and he smashed his fist into the one he'd been using until it broke and his fist was flayed by the fragments.

He picked the bits out of his knuckles himself, almost numb to the pain of infliction and extraction. Trying to feel his world now was like trying to squeeze water out of the dust of time. There just wasn't any.

Today, his bandaged hand in his other, Frank finally decided. He would go home, and he would try not to decay slowly into so much dust. There was no point in being here, after all… no point at all. He took the steps towards Cummins' office, when he met Simmons in the corridor, and paused to look at the man.

"Hey, Animal." He was short, stout, built like a tree with dark brown narrow-set eyes and sandy brown hair over an olive complexion. To Frank he almost seemed to smirk at everything he pointed his face at. "Made up your mind yet?"

Frank was about to answer when a thought struck him. "Simmons… have you ever – " Lancing pain shot up through his side and dropped him straightaway to his knees. Simmons jumped forward and grabbed him, keeping him from going any farther.

"Whoa, Animal! What the hell? You okay, man? What was that?"

Frank gasped several breaths, trying to measure them and keep from hyperventilating and passing out. Indeed, though… what was that? "I don't… I don't know…" Maybe he'd been wrong? Maybe he really was making it up? Doubts and fears swam in a mixed jumble through his head for a small eternity as what seemed to be a small caramel spot bloomed through the entire picture of Simmons, the corridor, his own sleeves…

Simmons pulled him back to his feet, holding him steady and watching him to be sure he didn't do something similar again. "You take it easy, there, Animal, you don't wanna die again."

Frank raised his hands, looking at them with renewed fascination. He raised his gaze to Simmon's face, and noticed for the first time that the man's eyes were three different shades of brown, and that there was a burn scar over his left eyebrow that said 'HOT' with a small semi-circular line over the top of the word.

He frowned at it.

"Why does your left eyebrow say 'hot'?"

Simmons gave a guilty grin. "I opened a Warthog radiator before it was cool, that's why. The cap blew off and stamped the warning stenciling into my head."

Flint buried a fist into someone's guts.

Frank recoiled, the horror on his face transforming quickly into an unholy glee. Luckily, Simmons saw the whole thing, even though he'd been doubled over by the hit. "What was that for?" he demanded. "Is there something wrong with you, man?"

Frank suddenly sprouted a feral grin. "Not anymore."