Chapter One

There were loud voices in the front yard.

I looked up from where I was cooing down at Natalie, the baby I was paid to watch. Mr. Shepherd, the man paying me to babysit and Natalie's father, was making some sort of protest.

I scooped Natalie up onto my hip, propping her just above my purse, and walked through the house.

Mrs. Shepherd was reclined on the sofa. "Tawny, would you be a dear and see what that is? You can leave Nattie with me."

"Of course. Here she is." I gently sat Natalie next to her mother. She giggled and crawled in a bobbling gate onto her mother.

I glanced at the news; they'd made a list of every person who died on a planet glassed by the Covenant in 2527. I shuddered and pushed out the door.

"Mr. Shepherd?" I squinted as the sunlight pierced my eyes, my hand coming up to shield my face.

He was facing away from me, holding his arm out. "Go inside, Tawny. These men are nothing but bad news."

"Tawny Clark, you are hereby ordered to come with us. Orders of the Office of Naval Intelligence." A stocky man in a suit marched past Mr. Shepherd to present me with a very official and long-worded document. It was real paper and everything. "Effective immediately."

Mr. Shepherd held his hand out from behind the man, half-standing in the flower bed. "Hang on a second, she's a minor-"

"Actually, she has been eighteen for nearly four months now. Nice try. Come on, miss."

I could feel how serious he was. I'd dipped into the most shallow parts of his mind; he was about to call on the men in fatigues behind him to force me into the car.

I nodded reluctantly. "I'll go. I-I'm sorry, Mr. Shepherd, they look serious." As I walked to the car I turned. "Tell my parents I love them?"

Mr. Shepherd nodded, his brow furrowed.

I knew that these men didn't intend for me to leave once they had me in their grasp. Whatever this was, I wouldn't see my parents for a while.

I climbed into the back seat next to one of the soldiers, the other taking the driver's seat. The suited man climbed in on the passenger side.

"What- why am I needed by the Office of Naval Intelligence?" I asked.

The man turned to me. "Long story short, miss, you were sloppy. When you responded to the thoughts of one of our men we were able to trace several incidents hinting that you have some degree of telepathy."

I remembered that. Usually I had to intentionally listen to hear thoughts, but occasionally someone thought something so intensely I mistook the thought for spoken words.

The taut, grouchy-looking man I'd made that mistake with most recently must have worked for ONI.

I looked up at the man. "I was sloppy? I'm...I'm not a trained intelligence operative, I-I'm just a girl."

"Far from it, actually," the man argued. "I almost feel bad; they're sending you off to Dr. Halsey and her freaks in shining armor."

My brow furrowed. I could have easily delved into his mind and discovered what he meant, but I didn't like intruding on people if I didn't have to.

He smirked. "Didn't take the bait, huh? Come on, I bet you're itching to find out what I meant. So many secrets in my head."

"With all respect, sir, this was not part of the objective." The soldier next to me kept his back straight and met the man's eyes evenly.

The suit sighed and faced the front.

His severe eyes met mine in the mirror. "We'll be there soon. The first thing you'll do is sign a nondisclosure agreement, capische?"

I remained silent.

This man didn't care about me; I might as well have been a half-dead possum on the road.

When we rolled up to ONI's HQ in Elysium city I stepped out.

I was quickly flanked by the soldiers, their guns held up at the ready. Were they to protect me or contain me?

I winced as I took a step and my knee gave out. I caught myself quickly, too quickly for the suit to notice my struggle, but one of the soldiers shot me a concerned look. I kept my gaze ahead.

I was sat in a grey room with a metal table and chair, both bolted to the ground. An interrogation room.

The suit slapped the nondisclosure agreement down in front of me and breathed down my neck until I finished my signature. The NDA was also real paper, I noticed.

"Right this way, miss." The suit led me back out into the hallway, into a medical room. I was told to wait for a practitioner.

So I sat there, on the cot, twisting a gold and garnet ring around my finger. I was shaking a bit; I didn't know what these people wanted with me.

But I'd heard about ONI. Secretive, immoral, dangerous. Everything my parents and friends stood against. My uncle, who was an Insurrectionist, worked tirelessly to free Eridanus II and other colonies from ONI.

A graying man with a datapad walked in, his eyes kind but wary. "Hello Ms. Clark. I'm here to conduct your medical exam. Now, it says here you have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I'll place an order for various joint braces."

I leaned forward. "Could you check- I have an ileostomy as well."

He glanced back down at the datapad. "Oh! How did I miss that? Of course, there will also be a supply of anything you need for that. Now, have you been feeling ill recently? Have you left Eridanus II in the last fifty days?"

I shook my head to both, wishing this was over. At the same time I hoped it would drag on forever so that I could prevent whatever fate was waiting for me.

"I'm terribly sorry, ma'am. If you'll just let me-" He stuck a needle into my arm, hitting the vein in the crook of my elbow.

I jerked back. "What was that?"

"I'm so sorry."

"What...what did you do?!" My body became too heavy all at once.

I felt sharp pain blossom in my head as it came into sharp contact with the metal exam table. My eyelids became weighted so heavily as the practitioner turned to someone entering the room.

oOOOo

My eyes refused to focus as I sat up. Next to me was a glass wall. I could see...me?

It looked like another me was lying on the exam table in the next room. That me was still asleep, though.

Maybe it was a delayed security feed, I reasoned, and that was a screen instead of a glass wall.

I looked down and saw my purse beside the bed. When I looked through it I found almost everything intact, my lip oils and my paper notebook and my pencil and erasure. But they'd taken my holocomm.

The door to my room opened and a different practitioner walked in. She was short and curt and kind of plain looking.

"Ma'am, you are to board a shuttle departing for UNSC cruiser Spirit of Fire within the hour. The soldiers who secured you noticed you limping." She held a knee brace in her hands.

I took it, slipping it on over my leggings. My eyes never left her.

She watched me for a moment before her gaze flicked past my shoulder.

I turned and saw the girl who looked like me sitting up. She turned as the door opened and a third practitioner walked in.

It wasn't a security feed.

The other me screamed. "What happened to me?! I-I can't feel you!"

The man winced and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, but I could feel how apathetic he truly was. He didn't care about that girl's cries; he was only pretending.

"We extracted your powers," he explained in a falsely-sympathetic tone. "You're free to return to your family."

The identical me shoved away from him, tearing her hands through her hair. I could feel her distress through the wall as tears sprung up in my eyes.

I turned on the woman behind me. "What is this?!"

The woman's expression was neutral. "She's your flash clone. It would appear your abilities did not survive the cloning process."

"A-and she thinks she's the real me?"

The woman nodded.

"How awful. Is this something you do regularly?!"

"I can't discuss this with you. Come on. If you're ready, the shuttle is waiting."

I stood, tears trailing silently down my cheeks, and shut my ears against the hollow screams from my clone.

I couldn't help her.

The woman led me through an extensive facility and out onto the tarmac, where two armed soldiers escorted me to the shuttle. I climbed in, strapping myself in like the other soldiers I saw on board.

How had my life gone so wrong? Just this morning I'd helped my dad make breakfast and met my mom in the chicken coop with scrambled eggs from our own hens. Life had been normal. Predictable. A little boring, maybe, but safe.

Now I was on a shuttle full of soldiers, headed off to an unknown fate while my flash clone was sent back to believe her greatest strength was stripped from her.

Then I remembered the brief unit on cloning we did in my junior year of high school; flash clones never survived more than a year after they were made.

My hand crept up to my mouth as fresh tears welled up in my eyes. I sat there, crying silently, as the engines in the ship spun up. Any other time I would have been fascinated by the technology around me, but now all I wanted was to go home.

When the shuttle took off I watched resolutely out the porthole. Nothing I did would change this. I could feel the indifference radiating off of the soldiers around me.

I shrunk into myself as the shuttle docked with the UNSC Spirit of Fire. The same two soldiers stood at my shoulders, leading me to a hallway labelled "Senior NCO Quarters".

I was left to my own devices in a small room. I took the time to take in my surroundings.

A bed in the far right corner, a desk in the far left, and a locker immediately to my left.

I opened the locker and found plain t-shirts - long sleeved and short sleeved - and black leggings and sweatpants, along with a stack of bras and underwear. In a small metal drawer there were several pairs of socks. A pair of boots and a pair of tennis shoes sat on the floor of the locker.

I curled up on the bed, gazing out into the room, and hugged my bag to myself.

I was tired, but I didn't want to sleep. If I never slept the rest of my life I would be happy. The last time I slept, scarcely ten minutes ago, I'd been cloned and prodded.

They must have taken my DNA, for the door to my room to open for me, and they almost certainly took that DNA while I was unconscious.

I'd never felt so violated in all my life.

oOOOo

I sat there for several hours, waiting for something to happen. Surely if I was so important as to be kidnapped, cloned, and guarded they would plan to do something with me?

Apparently not.

I was in that room for hours, occasionally crying as various realizations hit me.

I would never throw scratch out for the chickens with my mother, laughing as they pecked around our feet. I wouldn't get to work on the plane with dad. It was several hundred years old, so it needed an insane amount of attention. Attention I would never again give it.

A sob tore out of my body as I realized I would never be able to work towards getting my ASV mechanic's license. It was what my father and I always dreamed of; opening a mechanic's shop of our own, when we were both certified to work on air and space vehicles.

I'd never skip stones on the lake with my friends.

All of it was gone in a matter of minutes.

I cried for a few hours. I must have looked pitiful curled up on my bed. I tried to make myself as small as possible.

Surely this was another nightmare, from which I would wake at any moment. I would feel disoriented for a few hours before it faded from my memory entirely. I would go back outside and collect eggs with my mother, avoiding the vengeful blind rooster as he lunged for our heels.

I would go out with Zeke and Laure and the others and they would pull me out of the funk this nightmare would doubtfully cause. We would laugh and joke and sing and have fun.

But I never woke up.

After a few hours I began to accept this new life of mine. Well, I accepted that it was my life. I still didn't like it.

I sat up in the bed, wiping my face.

My stomach gurgled. Had it done that before? It must have been 10 PM.

I checked the clock on the desk. 2128. After a quick calculation I cursed; it was 9:30!

I padded towards the door. When it sighed open I started; there was a tall, battle-scarred man standing beside my door.

I looked up at him. "He-hello?"

"Hello ma'am." He smiled down at me. "I'm Second Lieutenant Bradley Davidson, and I've been instructed to guard you during your time on the Spirit of Fire." He had a thick Spanish accent.

I wiped my face again, self conscious of the tear tracks undoubtedly visible. "I was just going to get food. I-I don't know where it is."

"That would be the mess hall, ma'am. If you'll follow me, I can take you there."

He set off at a brisk pace. I noticed, being an empath as well as a telepath, that he wasn't as hostile or cold as the medical officers I'd met at ONI. I didn't trust him yet, but I didn't distrust him either.

As we walked through the maze of passageways I felt fear blossom, cold and dreadful, in Davidson's heart.

My head shot up and I couldn't help but gape; a seven-foot soldier decked out in imposing green armor was walking down the hall. The air around him was filled with dread and intimidation, none of it his own. He himself was disturbingly neutral.

The only people I knew of who could exist in such an emotional void had suffered horrible trauma.

As he walked past I wondered what he'd been through. Something horrible no doubt.

Even as I collected a tray of food and sat at an empty table in the mess hall I couldn't shake my thoughts. Of course, almost everyone aboard this ship had trauma of some sort that I could feel. They were soldiers, after all.

But such a deep trauma as to leave someone completely numb? His was the only case. The mysterious soldier in armor, who left a trail of fearful marines behind him.

What could make a marine so fearful? He was on our side, wasn't he?

oOOOOo

Author's Note: I'm rewriting Chipped! Just adding a few things! I started posting this story before I'd really fleshed Tawny out, so I wanted to go back and fix some of that. All of the major plot points will stay the same, don't worry!

Love y'all! Thanks for your patience!