"Something's coming." Nate dropped out of his tree and into a low crouch, reaching back over his shoulder for his sniper rifle as he did so.

"What?" Eli was immediately beside him, sniper rifle level.

"I don't know. Go collect the troops for me."

"Yes, sir."

"Angel Team – on me. Incoming unknown contact."

Eli left to gather the Helljumpers and Marines, and Cas, Raph, Zeke and Lin fell into formation behind Nate.

The movement Nate could hear came closer. Whatever it was, it moved quietly, and quickly. Nate did not think it was human, but refused to rule out the possibility. He listened carefully, shushing anyone who made a sound. The tension mounted until nobody dared to move a muscle. Even the Marines held their collective breath.

"Zeke," Nate breathed, "is there any native wildlife that moves on two legs with a run similar to a human's?"

"No, nothing," Zeke said. "The closest thing to hominids are the Triffids you've already seen up in the trees. I hate to tell you this, but if it sounds like a human, it probably is a human."

"Not even Spartans are that quiet," Nate denied. "Not when they're moving at that speed. Prepare yourselves – it's almost within range."

The sound of more than fifty silencers being clicked off almost entirely drowned out the sound of the stranger approaching. Nate consulted his suit's sensors, but whoever it was, they were still outside of sensor range.

"Hold your fire! I'm not hostile!"

Nate blinked. "Prove it."

He heard a sigh over the comms. "Does oly oly oxen free mean anything to you?"

"Spartan," Raph said, rather obtusely.

"Obviously," Cas mocked him.

"Enough," Nate said to them. Into his comm mike, he said, "How do you know that signal, soldier?"

"Same as you do. From way back in the day, when – wait a second. I don't know you." The other Spartan finally came into view. Her armor was matte black, like ANVIL, but nearly as bulky as MJOLNIR. "How is that possible?"

"Are you one of the thirty-three?" Zeke asked.

"Yes and no… are you?"

"Obviously not," Lin replied.

"Yes and no," Eli repeated. "What does that even mean?"

"That's classified."

"I'll find out anyway," Zeke said confidently. "There's not a security system that can keep me out. No firewall strong enough… no encryption complex enough."

"Fine. Agent Alpha – who I am now – is not one of the thirty-three. My cover, whose identity you are not cleared to know, is."

Raph's body language suddenly became wary again, almost hostile. Nate watched him out of the corner of one eye, and whoever this Agent Alpha was, she also watched the loose cannon carefully.

"I have to apologize for Raph. And I have to ask what you're doing here. New Berlin has been rebel-controlled for decades." Nate saw the brief flicker of doubt in the stranger's body language and realized he had struck gold. "You're going to have to prove to us that you're not a rebel spy."

"Me, go rogue? I think not. I hunt rogues down."

"She's a Solo," Lin realized.

"What in hell's name is a Solo?" Cas asked, clearly bemused.

"They hunt down rogues. Most of their job is hunting down deserters and Insurrectionists – not that much different to what we do – but they were created for the purpose of eliminating rogue Spartans, because nobody else can." Lin nodded with an almost frightening finality.

"What say you, team?" Nate asked. "Do we trust the Solo?"

"I have a bad feeling about this," Raph said.

"Shut up, idiot," Cas grumbled. "You always have a bad feeling."

Eli reappeared, reacting to the Solo's presence as if she had always been there. "Only time you're in danger from a Solo is if you're a rogue. Are you a rogue, Raph?"

"No!" Raph's indignation was clear… but Nate suspected a false note to it. He frowned and resolved to watch his explosives expert more carefully.

"Then you've got nothing to worry about. Tell me, Solo, is there any man or woman here who is the subject of an ongoing investigation?"

Alpha shifted her weight, an uneasy gesture. "No… but I need to get onboard the Devastation. My assignment demands it."

"ONI sent her," Andromeda said bitterly. "It remains to be seen whether they have managed to corrupt her enough to plant false evidence. Be alert, but believe her words all the same."

"How, exactly, is that possible?" Nate asked the AI.

"That is up to you to figure out. Hey, information at last – Cynisca has been following the General via the surveillance cameras aboard the Devastation. Turns out he is an unfaithful bastard. Oh dear. It's a soap opera playing out right under our noses. I shall ask her to see if she can turn anything up on our new friend, here."

"Thank you, Andi."

"Well, Nate?" Lin watched him, body language expectant.

"I can hardly say no to a sister," Nate said after a long pause.

-LATER-

"Why's she here, anyway? We haven't got any rogues!" Raph was muttering to himself with a mixture of indignation and righteous anger.

"I worry about him," Andromeda commented. Nate wearily agreed, tired of the constant company and the always having to babysit Raph. He wished Eli would hurry up and finish the final inventory checks, so that they could all be debriefed… so that they could finally discuss the strange events of the past few months without fear of being interrupted. There was never anything missing or out of place that could not be easily accounted for. Nate was tempted to just make Eli sign off on the list without the lengthy double- and triple-checking process.

"Oh, no, no, no. With your luck, I guarantee the day you do that is the day something is missing."

"Go away, Andi."

"I can't. My chip is in your brain."

"Well at least shut up, then, because I'm going mad as it is. Why didn't I make Eli babysit Raph?"

"Eli's too soft on him. I know you're worried about his reaction when that Solo announced herself, and especially so about his reaction when Eli asked him the hard questions."

"I hate this," Nate admitted.

"I know. Cas should be back soon. When he comes back, you should go to the gym. Sweat it out. Maybe you'll come up with an answer. You think better when you're working out."

"I'm tired. I don't want to come up with an answer. I want someone else to come up with an answer. By the time Eli's done with the inventory checks, Anderson will be asleep, so we can't debrief tonight anyway. I might as well try to finish 1984 and have a crack at getting some sleep for a change." Nate was grumpy enough without all the stress that weighed on his mind. He hadn't slept well – deeply, without the nightmares – in years, and while his body was well adapted to intermittent and often interrupted sleep, stress took its toll.

He didn't know how to deal with the fact that there were thirty-three other Spartans, and some kind of a secret group of enforcers among the thirty-three. He just couldn't wrap his head around that. And then there was the whole thing with Raph. The explosives expert was getting more and more volatile. The team's bonds were beginning to fray at the edges. Gone were the friendly, good-natured jibes. Those had been replaced with mocking and ridicule. They still worked seamlessly as a group, but Nate could feel the tension thrumming in the air.

It was even present with just him, Raph, Andi and Lin. Nate was close to all his team-mates but for years, Lin had been his closest friend. She, Zeke and Eli could read his mind with unfailing accuracy. Now, Lin sat on the other side of the room, determinedly avoiding eye contact. It was unnerving.

"Something is wrong in the team dynamic, Nate. It's not just you."

He was never going to get used to Andi knowing his thoughts even before he did. "I get the feeling something's been off for years. I just haven't seen it before now."

"Stress widens the cracks. You see it now because everything has changed, and they all have to adapt in their own ways. Played right, this will bring the team back together again… but I wouldn't know the first thing about fixing a Spartan team dynamic, so don't ask me for advice."

"Go find Alpha's file for me… and figure out her alias. I want to know everything."

"I'm on it. Whoa, this will not be easy, even for me – this security is second to none. Zeke and Cynisca would probably be a better choice for this mission."

"Backing away from a challenge, Andi?"

"Me? No, never. I was only saying that it will take me a while."

Nate let out an exasperated sigh. "Just get going, will you?"

"I am going."

-LATER-

He was in an ordinary house on an ordinary block of land in the middle of an ordinary street in an ordinary suburb of an ordinary town. Nate was not used to not knowing what planet he was on, but whatever planet it was, what he had seen of it thus far was just as ordinary as the house he now stood in.

The one thing that was not ordinary about the house was the size of everything. The top of Nate's head only just came up level with the kitchen benchtop. He had to reach up if he wanted anything. He glanced around the unfamiliar surroundings and wondered why everything was so big. He was eight feet tall, wasn't he? What was the use in having so much space? It was just excessive. Impractical and crazy.

There was a noise from outside. He ran to the door, legs sluggish though not heavy. This was a dream, he realized, and in dreams he was always slow. The doorknob was out of reach so Nate fetched a massive chair and dragged it over to the door. He clambered up with some difficulty, and turned the knob. The door opened. He jumped down and ran outside.

It wasn't just the house that was out of proportion. Everything was. The fence – the street – the cars – all of it. Nate wondered if this was another of those horrible shrinking nightmares where he shrank down to the size of an ant and eventually got squashed, but it didn't quite fit. There was already a sense of dread and foreboding.

Suddenly an enormous thing came at him, so fast it blurred. Nate frowned. That wasn't right. Nothing blurred for him. His eyes were too sharp. He tried to raise his weapon to defend himself but it was too big and too heavy in his hands, so he dropped it and cast around for something less unwieldy. He saw a stick and dived for it. The monster lost interest in him and instead went for a pair of obviously civilian humans who stood two or three feet taller than Nate.

Nate moved as fast as he could to try to defend them, but it was too late. He wasn't fast enough. He wasn't strong enough. He wasn't big enough. He looked down at himself and saw the soft, slender arms and body of a young child.

All his life, Nathaniel had been afraid of not being good enough. Now he saw that he had never been good enough.

Nate woke with a jolt, drenched in a cold sweat, panting as if he had just sprinted from one end of the Devastation to the other and back again. He forced down the panic and tried to control his breathing before someone noticed.

"Why can't I have one goddamn night of decent sleep?" he asked himself. "One night without interruptions. Is it really so much to ask?"

"I'm sorry. I tried to intervene. Your subconscious is… determined."

"No, no, it's not your fault." Nate got out of bed, shivering despite the comfortable temperature, and started looking for his book. If he couldn't sleep he might as well read.

"Boss?" Zeke mumbled, roused to a state of half-wakefulness by Nate's quiet activity.

"It's fine, go back to sleep," Nate said, trying to keep his voice even and calm.

Zeke sat up, fully awake. "It's not fine. What's on your mind?"

"Really, it's nothing. I just can't sleep."

"There's always a reason," Zeke insisted.

"I'm trying to figure out why Command would order all those good men and women to their deaths, knowing full well that it was an idiotic strategy and putting specific orders in place to stop me from taking charge of the situation to minimize deaths," Nate lied. As he spoke the lie, it became the truth. His mind started going over possible reasons for each and every facet of the order.

"I have the file," Andromeda announced. "Cynisca helped me decode it. That was one hell of a heavy code."

"Excellent work, Andromeda," Nate said, quickly stripping off his drenched t-shirt. He rummaged through the supply case in the only corner that wasn't occupied by a bunk, searching for a fresh shirt. He couldn't find one that fit him.

"Two of yours got shredded when the rebels attacked that base on Eden," Zeke said, "and the other one's being laundered. Use one of Cas's. He won't complain."

"I will," Nate said with a frustrated sigh. "Loose shirts get in the way."

"Then go shirtless. You wouldn't be the first soldier ever to walk around without a shirt on."

"I might be the first Spartan. Plus, we're not allowed tattoos… and all of us have them anyway."

"Which Command knows already, because Medical's been over us with a fine-toothed comb a million times since we got the damn things."

"Yes but if we get in trouble for breaking uniform regulations we'll cop it for the tattoos as well while they're at it."

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"Go ahead, Andi," Nate said cautiously.

"What about wearing your zero-suit and then putting your fatigue trousers on over the top? Cas and Raph do that all the time. Nobody will take a second glance."

"Good idea." Nate fished his zero-suit out of the supply case and stripped down completely so that he could struggle into it. "I don't know why we don't just leave these on."

"We have this discussion every time," Zeke said, already struggling into his own.

"I know. I figure Command could have Engineering do something about the one major design flaw, at least…" Nate kept grumbling, but so low even he could barely hear it.

"Want a hand?" Zeke said, already fully ready to go – trousers included.

"Please. Ugh. Slightest hint of sweat and getting in and out of these things is impossible."

"That's more than a slight hint, boss. Another nightmare?"

"Mph." Nate couldn't deny it, but he refused to confirm it, so the sound was noncommittal. Zeke stayed silent and before long had fastened Nate's suit. Nate slipped into a fresh pair of trousers and enjoyed the feeling of the zero-suit against his skin. It wicked away the sweat and fit the way it was designed – like a second skin. A moment later the cool, fresh sensation disappeared, and he couldn't feel the suit at all.

"They invented the zero-suits not to protect your modesty, but so that the engineering teams didn't feel too awkward. Most people are not comfortable with nudity. You are, because you have been trained and conditioned to be just as comfortable naked as you are fully covered."

"I wouldn't go that far," Nate said. "I'm not comfortable out of armor full stop."

"I take it you want to see the files yourself, rather than rely on my interpretation of them?"

"Files, plural? I sent you for one file."

"Yes, well, there are four pertaining to this person we know as Agent Alpha. Unfortunately I can find nothing that definitively connects her to any known Spartan, but based on physical stats and combat style, I believe I have found her cover. The fifth file, therefore, is that Spartan's file."

"Did you find out how many Solos there are?"

"Nothing definitive. I have found files on Alpha through Lima but cannot breach a firewall to access anything more."

"You, incapable of breaching a firewall?"

"It is completely impossible without the passcode, which I haven't any access to, and I cannot calculate what it might be. I have tried the obvious such as SOLO and ALPHA, and the usual ONI passcodes, but now it is locked up tight. I suspect it will need to be reset from the inside before I can make any fresh attempts."

"I think for now we can assume that you've found all of them."

Nate hated having to wait while the door's systems verified his identity and confirmed that he was allowed in. He appreciated the necessity of the system, but wished it wouldn't take so damned long. Zeke was silent behind him and to his left.

What felt like an hour but was really only about a second after Nate stopped, the door chimed and opened, and he and Zeke walked into the chaos that was Engineering in the early hours of the morning. Most of these techs had not been to bed, and the rest had gone to bed early and gotten up especially to be the skeleton crew only to find the others were nowhere near ready to sleep just yet.

"They're well overdue for a good night's sleep," Zeke said conversationally. "The guys who get up early to be the skeleton crew aren't lacking, but the guys who stay up late haven't slept more than a few hours a night in weeks. I'm not sure what they're obsessing over, but whatever it is, it's big."

"If it takes four techs, it's big," Nate reminded Zeke. "I got buried in bodies on Reach. Every time I had to go into Engineering for some reason or another they swamped me. Something about Sword being so close to Castle, but so painfully far… I was a big deal down there."

"Bet that was nice."

"Ugh." Nate was not a fan of people as a whole. He got tired of his own team. Raph was part of that but not the biggest part by far.

"Over here." Cynisca appeared over a holoport beside a terminal. "I've fought them off for you already."

"Put me in the terminal, would you?"

Nate reached to the slot in the back of his head and did as Andromeda asked, almost disappointed when her cool presence disappeared from his mind. Her form appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen, and a file came up.

"This is the file you requested. There is not much here, as you can see. Just a few passing references that ONI gathered together during a period of time where they lost track of her two years ago. Alpha was seen on Eridanus II, that sort of thing. She dropped out of contact while on a mission, and later explained, as you can see, that her target found out about her mission and she had to maintain radio silence to get close enough to take him down."

The file disappeared and another appeared in its place.

"This file was rather more difficult to obtain. It details the rogues Agent Alpha has eliminated. Thus far the count stands at three Spartans including Soren whose file Zeke has already downloaded, countless Insurrectionists, and more Marines than the UNSC cares to admit. I have transmitted it to your datapad for later detailed perusal."

Again, the file vanished, and another took its place.

"Here you will find the mission reports, including helmet-cam, that Alpha has lodged. One mission report lacks helmet-cam as on that mission her helmet was almost completely destroyed, along with all data her AI partner was unable to salvage from the damaged systems. You will be interested to read in said report that she lost an eye, which was replaced with bionics, not cloning. This is a large file and is in the process of being transmitted to your pad."

Nate skimmed through a random mission report, but didn't play the video. With techs everywhere, it was best not to draw attention. He was accessing files he technically was not cleared to access. Suddenly, Andromeda closed it, and pulled up a MJOLNIR schematic. Nate sensed a tech pause and glance at the terminal.

"As you can see, diagnostics proved inconclusive, but with a little creative thinking, your tech expert was able to… oh good he's gone," Andromeda said. She closed the MJOLNIR schematic and pulled up the final 'Alpha' file.

"This is Agent Alpha's official ONI file, detailing her physical characteristics, service record, and medical data. She is highly decorated and a very capable soldier with a strong sense of morals and leans towards sniping as her favored combat style. She works with a smart AI called Snap Frost, who is eight and a half years old and has remained operational for a year and a half beyond the expected lifespan of such an AI."

"I haven't seen any sign of Frost," Cynisca commented. "Before I became Zeke's partner, I knew Frost well, and he likes to leave hints of his presence. I have seen none."

"Perhaps he is staying within Alpha's systems? If he knows you he knows of your impressive capabilities and he will be privy to some highly sensitive information. Perhaps he wishes to avoid giving up that information," Zeke said.

"Unlikely. Snap Frost is somewhat rash and childlike. He has most likely been decommissioned. This file has not been updated for nearly six months."

"Finally," Andromeda cut in, "we have this file, which I will bring up alongside to highlight the similarities. Leader of Dusk Team, Ariane-072. Same height, weight, build, combat style, hair and eye color, ethnic background, birthplace… the list goes on. The only difference is service history… and no mention of Snap Frost, though she does work with an AI whose nick is Frost. Frostfall. By the way, you six are older than the thirty-three… Ariane's birthdate is the only one recorded and it was not easy for me to gain access to it. She is twenty-seven years old."

"That's her," Nate said softly.

At the same time, a newly-familiar voice said, "How did you get access to that?"

"How did you sneak up on me?" Nate answered the question with a question, without bothering to turn around.

"Answer the question, Spartan!"

"Only if you answer mine."

"I walk silently using a combination of skill and special soles, and I have been trained in how to contain my energy so that I cannot be sensed by those sensitive enough to feel the presence of others."

"I work with an AI whose clearance level is above Tier-1, meaning she can access near anything without opposition, and her skill-set is impressive and diverse. She can hack into almost any file, slip through almost any firewall, and plenty I don't know about yet."

"Andromeda," Alpha said without looking at the little squirrel in the corner of the screen. "I should have known they would give her to someone. Hello, Cynisca – Sadri said to tell you Minaret is sorry."

"What is she talking about?" Zeke asked Cynisca.

"I'll explain later," the AI said, shrugging her elegant shoulders.

Nate turned to look at Alpha and was surprised to see a very feminine face staring back at him. Her bright green eyes and fiery red hair took him by surprise as well. "All right, Alpha, how do you know Andi?"

"You were wondering what happened to Frost? He went rampant. I was offered Andromeda as a replacement… a Solo cannot operate at full capacity with no AI partner… but refused. Frost was a squirrel as well, and after what he did, I cannot place any trust in Andromeda."

"And why are you here?"

"The same reason you are, Nate. To kill Insurrectionists, to round up deserters."

"And the other thing," an unfamiliar voice – Nate assumed it was an AI – said in his comm earpiece. "The other thing is our primary objective as well. ONI is not happy about the lack of news, Spartan."

Nate's blood ran cold. This was bad news.


AN: SURPRISE! hahahaha see that coming? Bet you didn't. It's been planned from the start, although I am letting most of the story evolve on its own. Not sure I'm happy with this chapter as a whole, but I like the dream sequence. It's a strong insight into Nate's mind and his insecurities. We have something coming up that's big and is about to turn everything REALLY topsy-turvy... which will be fun I'm sure!

As always, please review. Let me know what you like, what you don't like, what you want to see in future chapters... etc etc.

Halo is not mine, story and characters are barring the occasional reference to canon characters [ie Soren]