The Untold Story of Zeta Squad
Sorry about the wait.
Chapter 5: Nightmares
"I don't care for the full report, Lieutenant, I just want to know what the hell happened to them." said Admiral Jesse, trying to keep his voice neutral. In front of him, the young pilot displayed a few emotions in her face. Worry, anger, but no fear.
"Sorry Sir." Jenny replied crisply. She then went on to explain that the battle was almost won, and the next thing she saw was Adam's tank explode. Jenny flew low to see if they were all right, only to see Adam sprawled on the ground, his helmet fractured and his back armor blown off. Seeing him like that with none of the others helping him, Jenny could tell that something had happened to all four of them. At that she instructed all the forces in the area to cease their actions and search for them. It didn't take long to find them all. The four were brought aboard her pelican and she returned to the Midnight Shadow as fast as she could. Jesse listened intently and waited for Jenny to finish before he started talking again.
"How did no one notice this sooner?" he asked.
"No one really kept track of them Sir, they were all over the place." Jenny responded, "They were also on a separate comms channel from the rest of us." Jesse paused. Then he gave a large sigh and relaxed his arms, which were clamped tightly behind his back.
"What the hell could have done this to them?"
"I don't know, Sir. They could tell us, but they're..." Jenny's violet eyes flickered with worry, "They're all still unconscious, Sir." Jesse stared out the Shadow's view deck, down at the planet below, knowing that there was still something out there that had the upper hand on them.
"I suppose the better question..." he said to no one in particular, "Is why did they leave them alive?"
Jenny walked silently through the halls, not really paying attention to anything. The Spartans were her best friends, and seeing them out cold, laying on the deck of her pelican like broken playthings had shaken her. She was lucky that they were found so soon because, well it was obvious, some of them might not have made it. Although that was still a bit of an overstatement. The Spartans were still unconscious with extreme injuries, and it was unsure to her exactly how bad it was. Thinking about it made her worry, and she was thinking about it so much that she bumped into someone without realizing where they came from.
"Sorry. I-" she began. Then she saw who it was. It was Scott, the ODST, with Dallas beside him.
"It's okay." said Scott, his voice sympathetic. Everyone knew about what had happened to Zeta, and it was a massive hit to the marines' moral. Scott seemed to know that it affected Jenny more than anyone, and calmly walked on, Dallas following him. Jenny walked on for a little more, then heard a voice behind her.
"Hey." She turned around. Scott and Dallas had stopped and were looking back at her.
"When the Spartans come to... tell them we said thanks." said Scott.
"Sorry too." added Dallas. Jenny managed to half smile back at them, then they turned their separate ways.
The med bay was the busiest Jenny had ever seen it, which was not a good sign. Doctors and nurses moved all around, some carrying medicine, some pushing carts, some typing on data pads. Jenny approached one of the senior medical officers, a ginger man named Doctor Kennedy, who was giving orders to other personnel.
"Hey Doc." she said, making him jump a bit and turn to face her, analyzing her face through a pair of thick glasses.
"Ahh, hello again Lieutenant." he said, his British accent thick.
"How can I be of service? I hope you don't have more half-dead patients for me." Jenny's eyes widened a bit.
"No, nothing like that. I just want to know how they're doing." Kennedy turned back to his data pad and pulled up the diagnostics on Zeta squad.
"To be honest it's all up in the air right now. Spartan 01-"
"Don't call them by there numbers." Jenny interjected, almost fiercely, startling the Doctor, causing him to drop the pad "They are human beings." Kennedy picked up the data pad and pushed his glasses farther up his nose.
"Very well. Sorry. Um- Chazz has five broken ribs and a crack on the top of his spine. The ribs can be easily repaired, but the neck is going to need to be fused back together. He is currently in surgery, undergoing that. The biggest problem is his arms. Both have been snapped just bellow the shoulder. We are going to have use a new bio-mechanics system to repair them. That will take time and a considerable amount of pain on his part, but there is no other option. Adam has third degree burns across his back as well as bits of his armor stuck in his back and vertebra. We will need to inject a bone substitute directly into his spine, which could be rejected by his body or by his augments. He is also hemorrhaging from a blood vessel in his head from being tossed into a cliff wall. He is currently in surgery to stop the blood from reaching his brain. Those two are also the better two." he cleared his throat and continued on. "Kyle has intense third degree plasma burns completely covering the right side of his face, and he has lost his right eye. His helmet had melted to his face, and when we removed it, it tore off a large chunk of his skin. His skull has multiple fractures in it from it expanding rapidly due to heat, as well as a hole burned through. He is also in the operating room getting his skull and face mended, although he will never be the same, and we can't mend his eye. Sam... well to point out the obvious, has lost his entire right arm. The flesh was seared shut with the plasma energy from the sword that cut him, so he didn't bleed out. He also received a cut to the back of his neck that nearly hit his spine. What we have to do is cut the burned arm flesh right back to the shoulder and reach the nerve strands. From there we can graft a biotic arm to his body, in theory." he lowered the data pad and looked back at Jenny with tired eyes.
"The thing is... these kinds of operations are still only experimental and incredibly dangerous. The robotic arm surgery has only succeeded once, ironically it was on another Spartan. Normal humans couldn't survive. Even though their Spartans, they're gonna need a bloody miracle to survive." Jenny looked past Kennedy towards the doors to the operating rooms.
"Well then, let's hope their luck hasn't run out yet, Doc."
Blackness. That's all there was. Nothing but the blackness. Chazz stood there, in the dark, and stared at his arms. They were working again. What had mended them? He looked around again. Was this the after life? The elite had said that he would leave him alive. In the darkness shapes began to form. They approached him, all smiling. It was his team: Kyle walking lazily forward, Sam giving his two finger salute, and Adam sitting atop his tank.
"There you are" said Kyle when they finally reached him.
"C'mon, we still have work to do." said Sam, unslinging his shotgun. Adam stood up on Stella.
"There's one more fight ahead of us." Chazz stared at them all. He was about to speak when something else came into existence. The head of that elite general appeared, towering above them all, and moving towards his team. Chazz tried to yell, to warn them, but no sound escaped his throat. He tried to point at it, but his arms hung limp at his sides again. His boots became so heavy, he couldn't move. The massive elite head spread his mandibles wide an let out a blood-curdling roar. The black world began to shake. Flames erupted around Kyle, who fell to the ground screaming. A disembodied energy sword stabbed Sam in the shoulder, and he was dragged into the blackness without a sound. Stella exploded, and Adam was tossed into the air, and never came down again. Chazz screamed to them, but again no sound came. The elite opened his jaws wide again and flew towards him engulfing him in an even deeper darkness...
And his eyes snapped open. Chazz gasped, his body covered in sweat and out of breath. He lay on some sort of cot, his breathing sharp and ragged. It took a moment to realize his armor was no longer on his body. He sat up and lifted his hands to his face and wiped some of the sweat from his face. His hands. He looked down at his arms. They were his arms, and they were working. He flexed them and made small circular movements with them, as if he was learning to use a new piece of equipment. As he did this, pain began to flare in his shoulders. Chazz relaxed his arms, as to not cause any damage to them. Upon further inspection, he noticed two large scars, both directly beneath his shoulder sockets. Someone must have mended them. Chazz looked away from his arms and looked around the room. In an instant, he knew he was in the medical ward of The Midnight Shadow.' he was in one of the ward's recovery rooms. Farther down the room was a man with light orange hair and thick glasses. It was the chief of the medical staff, doctor Kennedy. He sat in a chair, legs crossed, reading a book. It seems he could feel eyes on him, because he looked up to see Chazz looking at him.
"Ahh, welcome back to the land of the living, Lieutenant." he said, closing his book and clapping his hands together, "Gave us quite a scare there, but you'll be fine as long as you take it easy for awhile." Chazz tried to get out of his cot, but pain flared in his arms, chest and neck, causing him to flop back down. Kennedy rolled eyes a bit and threw his arms up dramatically.
"Oh yes, let's not listen to the man who pulled you back from the dead. Let's all just jump back into action without even knowing what exactly your condition is. Bloody military. They have no respect for their bodies." he walked up to Chazz's cot and looked the Spartan in the eye.
"Look, I understand that you want to get back out there, but in no shape to. Simple as that. Your ribs and neck are still setting, and your arms are still growing used to your biotic shoulders." Chazz stopped fidgeting and looked back at the doctor, the look on his face somewhere between puzzlement and shock.
"See? You haven't even got a clue about yourself right now. You need time to recover." A pager at his hip buzzed. He removed it from his belt, read it and replaced it.
"Now your going to stay there or you will be of no use to anyone. I have to go now... One of your friends just woke up."
The sun was warm, the air cool. All around him stalks of wheat rippled in the breeze. Kyle lay back and placed his hands behind his back, a stalk of long grass between his teeth. He felt as if he could sit in this field for the rest of his life. As a Spartan, he could never remember what peace was like. In the back of his mind, he felt there was something he was forgetting, but he payed it no attention. For now he simply enjoyed the peace. He closed his eyes, listening to the sound of nearby bees and their soft buzzing...
Buzzing...
Buzzing...
Buzzing...
The noise began changing from tranquil bees to angry hornets. Kyle frowned at the sound. The buzzing was so fierce now that it sounded like roaring flames. Kyle opened his eyes, and saw the field was on fire. The piece of grass in his mouth incinerated, and mounds of burning wheat began to fall, engulfing him. He yelled to someone, anyone. He was now buried in flaming grain, his vision in his right eye black, his left eye red. The fire burned Kyle's face, and consumed all the oxygen around him. Kyle began to suffocate…
Air filled his lungs. Kyle gasped, gulping air like a landed fish. His vision came into focus, and he looked around. He was laying on a hospital bed, an IV in his arm. He yanked it out, feeling a little dizzy afterwards. He proceeded to survey his surroundings, and then noticed something was wrong. His vision was still not the way it should be. He covered his left eye with his hand. All was dark. He couldn't see out of his right eye. He touched the skin around it. The flesh was rough and painful to touch.
'What the hell happened?' he asked himself. Then it began to come back to him: The covenant armada, how there was no elites, Sam's signal, the to easy fight, Chazz disappearing, then the unimaginable pain on his face. A bell gave a little chime, pulling him back to the present. The door to his room opened, and a man with orange hair and glasses walked in, typing on a data pad.
"Praise whatever saints that may or may not exist." the man said, "Your alive. Got to admit, you gave most of us a scare, Lieutenant. I don't believe we have ever met. I am doctor Kennedy, chief medical officer on board The Midnight Shadow. Congratulations, your the second Spartan to cheat death. We can only hope that the other two can as well." Kyle stared at the man, feeling devastated that the other Spartans got hit to, but relieved that at least one was okay.
"Thanks Doc." he said his voice a little hoarse, "Hey… just how bad was I?" Kennedy stopped typing, and looked up at Kyle. Then he placed the pad down on a table and removed his glasses. He rubbed his eyes, then picked up a hand mirror from the table.
"I think it would be best if you saw that for yourself." he said, handing the mirror to Kyle. The Spartan looked into the mirror, and went very still. The whole right side of his face was terribly scared. The tissue damaged and blotchy, with a chunk missing from his cheekbone. He could see that the way his eyelid was shut, unable to be opened, and covered in scars meant the eye was gone. On top of his head, his jet-black hair was gone. The right side burned off, the left side shaved. Even the orange streak in the middle that he was so proud of. He knew somewhere in the back of his mind that it would all grow back, but all of his logical thinking was being repressed by sheer rage.
"You where right Doc." he said through clenched teeth, "It was a better idea for me to see this for myself." The mirror in his hand was shaking uncontrollably, and Kyle smashed it into pieces.
Sam couldn't move. He was on his knees in a black world. Nothing existed but him and whatever he was standing on. His legs were still and could not move, his arms hanging limply at his sides.
'Well this is just great.' he thought to himself, 'I have better thing to do than sit in whatever limbo this is.' Then a light appeared in front of him. A sickly crimson light, the color of blood. The light grew till it took the form of a three foot long double-pronged blade. An elite stepped out of the darkness, the sword in its hand. It stood before Sam, staring maliciously at him, as if he were a piece of meat. Sam glared back at it, then he saw movement the the left of it. A far ways back, he could see Kyle, his sniper rifle trained on the elites head. The elite laughed, and a focus rifle beam emerged from the blackness, striking Kyle, who fell over and disappeared.
"NO!" screamed Sam, desperately trying to move. The elite slowly walked forward. It reached out and grabbed Sam's right arm and raised it to be level with the ground. With its other hand, it raised the sword high, and brought it down on the arm, severing it right below the shoulder. Sam began to scream, and then stopped. There was no pain. Why was there no pain? He looked down at the little stump of what was left of his arm. Seeing that and his arm dangling in the elites hand made him sick. The elite gave a cruel chuckle and threw the arm behind him. A pack of brutes emerged from the shadows and pounced on the severed arm tearing it into shreds... and then eating it. Sam could do nothing but sit and watch in absolute horror. The elite obscured his vision once more. It laughed in relish over its victory. In the background, Sam thought he saw three more elites. Then the one in front of him raised its sword again, and thrust it into the Spartans visor…
Sam felt himself come back into consciousness. His years of training kept him from opening his eyes or changing his breathing pattern when he woke up. Last he checked, he was on a battlefield, beating the hell out of a bunch of brutes, but he could tell there was something he was forgetting. He also had an odd feeling that whatever he had been dreaming about was important, but dreams left his mind the second he woke up ever since he went through the Spartan augmentation process.
'Okay, time to stop thinking and start doing.' he said to himself inside his head. Eyes still closed, he began to figure out his situation. First thing he realized was that he was no longer in his armor, but in some very uncomfortable garments that he couldn't identify. That was a pretty bad first sign. He proceeded to discover that he was lying on some surface that felt like a cross between a steel table and a bed. He also had a thin sheet covering his body up to his shoulders.
'A military ship bed it was then.' he thought, slightly relieved. He still did not open his eyes. He felt relatively fine, although his neck was really stiff, and his right arm felt numb. Judging by the feel of the air around him he was a small room, but bigger than his quarters or the brig. He could also sense no other presence in the room.
'Well I guess the coast is clear for now.' he thought. He brought his right arm up to his face and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
'Wait a minute,' he stopped, his hand hovering over his still closed eyes, 'Why does my hand feel so cold? And how is it so smooth?' He moved his hand a foot away from his face, and opened his eyes. A metal hand looked back at him, the mechanical fingers slacked. An arm was attached to the hand, steel bones and artificial muscle encased in metal. Something clicked in his head, and Sam remembered the end of the battle. Kyle being shot, then the elite, slicing his arm off, and destroying his helmet. He sat alone in some hospital room, staring at the thing on his arm. He lifted and lowered it like he would his normal arm, and flexed his fingers.
'Alright, you split-jawed, hinge-head bastard,' he thought, the voice in his head spitting with rage. His new fingers were clenching into a fist, shaking uncontrollably.
'now you've made this personal.' he raised the mechanical arm… and drove it through the wall.
"Huh?" he was floating. At least it felt as if he was floating. He was in someplace dark. Adam looked around, he figured, he couldn't feel his neck, and wherever he was, he couldn't tell if he was actually turning his head. He tried to move something, anything. Nothing happened.
'Okay. I'm in a place that is only black and have no body. I must be dreaming.'
"Adam." came a voice. A toneless, female voice. Out from the shadows emerged Stella, her gun barrel pointed at him as if it was looking at him.
"Stella!" Adam cried out. The tank continued looking at him.
"Adam, why?" she asked.
"Why what?" he asked back. A blue light emerged from the back of the tank.
"Why didn't you save me?" The tank exploded in a fiery blaze.
"NOOO!" screamed Adam. Another figure emerged from the darkness. It was Damien, his old armorer friend from basic. Damien walked up to him, his face full of sorrow and anger.
"Great job, Adam! You went and got Stella destroyed!" he yelled at him, "What was the one thing I asked? HUH! That you took care of her. And now look what you've gone and done, you bastard! Why didn't you help her!" Adam had no head, but if he did, tears would be flowing down it.
"Damien, I-"
"Why Adam?" came a new voice. A young man with blonde hair and gold armor appeared beside Damien. Sam was missing an arm, blood flowing out the wound. His skin was chalk white, his grey eyes dull and lifeless.
"Why, man? Why couldn't you save me? I would have for you. How could you just leave me to die?" Adam was about ready to burst into sobs.
"Sam, it's not like that. I-"
"Why Adam?" said Stella.
"Why Adam?" said Damien.
"Why Adam?" said Sam.
Adam tried to shut his eyes, to block out the voices of his friends, but he had no eyes to shut. He could only stay there listening.
"Why Adam?"
"Why?"
"Why?"
"I'M SORRY!" he screamed.
His eyes snapped open, at he sat bolt upright. In an instant, he took in his surroundings: the bed he was on, the bandages wrapped around his head, the medical ward he was in, and the three men in hospital gowns sitting around him.
"Hey, your up finally." said Chazz, relieved. Adam took in the blue eyed Spartans changes. He sat in a chair, leaning back in it. The hospital gown he wore had no sleeves, revealing the large incision scars on his shoulders. Adam instantly recognized them to be scars from bio-mechanics implantation.
"Thank Christ." came Kyle's voice, a little raspier than normal. He was sitting in another chair, leaned forward, on the opposite side of Adam's bed. The demo-Spartan's eyes widened when he saw the green eyed Spartan's face: the blotchy skin, the angry scars and the lack of hair or his right eye.
"What happened to you guys?" asked Adam, "I got hit by-"
"An elite general." said Sam, "According to Chazz, a different one got each of us." The grey eyed Spartan was leaning against a wall, arms folded. Adam looked over at him, and gasped. One of his arms was made of metal, exposed gears and wires softly whirring away.
'Would that have happened if I had been able to help him?' thought Adam, feeling bad again.
"Sam, I'm-"
"Sorry, I know." interrupted Sam, "You were apologizing to lots of people in your sleep. It's cool, though. There was nothing you could have done." That didn't make Adam feel any different.
"It just seems like I failed everyone. You guys, Damien, Ste-" he stopped mid-word. A panicked thought came to him.
"Stella." he said quietly, "Did she-" Kyle and Sam looked at Chazz. The Spartan closed his eyes and sighed, then shook his head.
"That elite knew what he was doing. He completely destroyed her. Her AI system couldn't be salvaged. She's gone." Adam looked down at his lap, his eyes becoming very reflective. So that was it. His most faithful companion had been killed right in front of him, and there wasn't a damn thing he could have done. The despair he felt brought untold amounts of stress, which triggered his increased aggression augmentation. This then combined with his own natural hatred to create fury like no one, not even Kyle or Sam, had felt.
"Well guys," said Adam, very calmly, but with the air of someone who was prepared to tear apart the universe itself, "I'd say we have business with these elites. Time to show them exactly who they decided to pick a fight with."
