"You are so full of shit!" Elizabeth shouted at the observation window, finger pointing up at John as he leaned over the admin panel and watched her testing. "This isn't fine at all!"

He opened his mouth to respond, but Lisa leaned across him and pressed a button, then spoke. "Sorry, Force. I told you I had to find out the extent of your abilities. Did you think I was joking?" she asked, her eyebrows raised. "Now come on, I need you to run the exercise again from the beginning. As soon as that's done I'm putting you in the suit."

Elizabeth turned her back to them down on the deck below, running her hands through her sweat-matted hair. She was getting her ass kicked – not because she lacked skill, because she was surviving just fine – it was just that she was so out of practice that her body didn't want to work with her as quickly as she wanted it to. Had it been this hard before? She'd started picking up the pace towards the end, but not before going almost completely deaf as a concussive blast from her left had thrown her into the thick steel wall. She had no idea how much reinforcement the room had in it to survive this kind of a beating, but it was marginally less then she had in her own body.

"Five more minutes, I promise," Lisa said. She backed away from the mic as the lights dimmed in the room, her eyes flicking back and forth between Elizabeth's monitors and Elizabeth herself. She crossed her arms, a frustrated sigh coming from her. It was loud enough to bring the Chief's attention from the skirmish below to her, and he moved over to the monitors.

"What?" he asked, arching an eyebrow at her. He watched her face as she studied the charts, her brown eyes narrowing as she leaned in a little, as though she were looking for something specific. He noticed that she made a very particular face when she saw something that she didn't like in her work.

"She's not peaking," she said, pointing at something specific on the screen. "She's supposed to have way more neuro-response than this." She looked back down at the training deck, eyes reflecting the flames that exploded below. They may have been holographic, but they were still intense when the room automatically began adjusting the oxygen levels to compensate for them.

"This isn't intense enough," she said suddenly, raising her arms as though she'd just had an epiphany. "We need to go to ground. It'll be easier once we're out in the woods and not in a huge metal room; her body will respond the way it's supposed to. Why didn't I think of that before?"

Below, there were a series of gunshots and it directed his attention elsewhere; he watched as she took hold of a shotgun and began shooting at the grenade-carrying Grunts rushing rapidly from the flames at her. "I think this is intense enough for the moment." When Lisa looked at him, he exhaled through his nose. "I know how I sound," he snapped.

"Your makeup is totally different from her own," Lisa protested. "She's only ever known high pressure situations. I can't possibly replicate the circumstances for her initial experience to Spartan Alpha, and I don't want to. Nobody should ever have to go through that," she added, trying to calm the Chief down. "But I do need her performing how she's supposed to be, or I can't make sure that she's not going to drop dead at a later date."

The Chief's face froze, all the anger forgotten as he felt a beat of panic, his blood rushing cold. "What do you mean drop dead?" he demanded. He took a step forward, advancing his massive frame on Lisa quickly enough that she took a visible step back.

"The Alphas. I sent you the data, did you not look it over?" she demanded. "No? Okay, well, if you had, you'd have seen what I was talking about. Something was inherently wrong with their mixes. Some of them were reported to have just died. That's it. Fell to the ground, heart stopped, brain stopped. Everything stopped. My father's notes all say that in testing they showed common abnormalities, but I can't get to the point where they'd appear because she's not under enough duress."

He didn't respond, but he did back off. "So, what? Her abilities are only activated by stress?"

"No," Lisa said. "But the abnormality only shows when the patient is under extreme conditions – fear, urgency. Maybe we don't have to go to ground, but we do need to replicate that somehow. If we can't, then I can't clear her medically, and I'm afraid that our time with her beyond that may be incredibly limited."

She watched as the Chief's eyes darkened, and he folded his arms across his chest. "What if it does show? What then?" he asked. He felt he was doing a very good job of not reacting to the situation too much; inside, he was ready to panic. Really panic. He could hear what they'd say about him now. Probably be a lot of people he'd pissed off at that trial, no doubt.

"If it shows, then I can fix it. He came up with a formula after it happened to correct the abnormality. It was too late for them, but it won't be for her." She paused. "Did you think I was just pushing her for the sake of 'science'? She knew my mother – my actual mother. I've got a lot of questions for her before I burn that bridge," she chastised.

"You're one-hundred percent sure that this is what you need to bring on the glitch?" he asked again.

"Yes," she said firmly. She glanced down as the lights came back on and the room emptied out. Elizabeth was standing in the center of the room, shotgun in hand. As soon as she dropped it, it vanished, and she stepped away from it quickly. "And then I can stop running her through the ringer and put her in a suit," she added, motioning for the woman to come up into the observation room. "Of course, that'll be a whole new round of training, but not like this."

He nodded. "You'll need to dig a lot deeper than what we have here. She was committed to a mental hospital. See if you can't program that sort of scenario. That should give you the reaction you need. Don't spawn any weapons for her, either. In fact, if you really want to be thorough, knock her out first. When she comes to, have her try to get out of the hospital from a locked room. Up the settings – put it on the most difficult, the one where you aren't technically supposed to beat it."

"Spartans beat those scenarios all the time," Lisa protested, though she was otherwise shocked at his sudden suggestion.

"Yeah, but we've been trained from childhood. She hasn't. You recreate the night of her breakout, though, and she'll be very convinced she's trying to get out. To get to me." His tone was coarse, and he swallowed, disliking how rough his voice had become. He didn't want to think about what he was about to put his mother through – putting her back in that place was one thing. He could remember as a child that she did not like to be confined or cooped up otherwise; it wasn't a phobia, but if she had been drugged and held somewhere against her will? He could only imagine what this would do to her.

Elizabeth came through the door, wiping sweat from her brow. "That was ridiculous," she breathed. "I hope you got what you wanted. What were those little freaks that kept throwing explosives at me?" she demanded. "Every time I aimed at one he would scream and run the other way."

"Grunts," John answered, giving Lisa a lingering look that Elizabeth missed through her fatigue. He kicked a rolling chair to her and she extended her booted foot out to stop it, then dropped down in it with an appreciative nod. "Only one faction of the Covenant."

"Oh," she said, a look of realization in her eyes. "They look so different on the computer." She shook her head, then lurched forward, folding over at the waist and placing her elbows on her knees to prop herself up. "Did you get what you needed?" she prompted again.

Lisa had an expression on her face that Elizabeth didn't like. "What? Oh, did you two have a fight?" she asked sarcastically. "Sweetheart, I'm sure you're just as good of a shot as she is," she began. She jerked to the right as she felt a stinging in her left arm. "Ow!" she cried. She focused on her son, who stood over her with a syringe. "Damnit, John! You need to warn me before you -"

She fell out of the chair and landed on the floor in a heap.

"You program it in while I carry her down there," he said over his shoulder to the doctor. He paused, turning to regard her more fully. "You owe me for this, Lisa," he told her sharply. "This is going to wreck her."

She nodded. "I know," she said softly. "If there was any other way -" she paused. "I owe you one, Chief," she concluded. After he left the room, she sighed. "Guess we're not going to have that shooting contest," she said to the empty room.