Oh hayyy, I'm just here comin' back atcha with another Fred-centric story.

I mean... I felt compelled to after the last one, even though I'm satisfied with how it played out. I just feel we could all use a little more Fred in our lives, and also less (maybe? I hope) morbidity. I'm not planning a tragic conclusion for this one, let's put it that way. There will still be angst, and drama, and sex. It's gotta have romance and it's gotta have people doin' it or it's not written by me. I mean... I'm not going to look too closely at what that says about me as a person. There'll be a plot as well (I think), and the female OC has an interesting background (IMO at least), and it won't be straightforward. Slow burn material. But mostly it's gonna be Spartans (Fred namely, but also some John, Linda, and Kelly) dealing with shit which doesn't involve them kicking alien ass - y'know, that other greatest of threats to humanity - feelings. Big BIG feelings. Did I mention it's about Fred? I love Fred.

TRIGGER WARNING: Pregnancy/Infant Loss is mentioned.

Mature themes.

And Fred.

If the relative obscurity she'd enjoyed during the past six years of her life hadn't been reassurance enough, this newest revelation was all the proof Lyra required that the Office of Naval Intelligence was 100% in the dark over what she'd participated in seven years before. Not only had she never been approached about it, nor ever noticed even an eyebrow raised in her direction from any of the number of ONI personnel she'd had the distinction of working beside throughout her career since those fateful events, this latest assignment was the final nail in the coffin of her dwindling paranoia.

There was no chance - not even 0.0000001% of a chance - that she would have been transferred to this facility, to work on this project if there'd been even a sliver of a shadow of suspicion concerning her. None whatsoever. They could not know.

Paradoxically, the knowledge did not make her feel better.

She reread the assignment outline. She reread it several times, but the content never changed. There on her tablet in bold black font, staring her in the face, was the evidence.

Projected test subjects: Blue Team

A burst of disbelieving laughter escaped her before she got ahold of herself. Fortunately, her office's walls were fairly soundproof. No need for any of her colleagues to know that she was teetering on the edge of a mental breakdown just from being faced with two innocuous words, but reality had slammed into her in that moment.

Her knee-jerk reaction to request reassignment was at once dismissed on the basis that was bound to provoke questions. Why wouldn't she want the assignment? It was precisely her area of expertise and a project many in her particular niche of the highly competitive field would trip over themselves for. The UNSC almost never sought outside contractors for these sorts of classified ventures. It was assuredly only as a result of the recently resolved debacle which had been dubbed the Created Uprising - a conflict which had seen demand for the skills of software developers like herself skyrocket. She still shuddered to think what might have been had the AIs succeeded in their bet to subjugate mankind. How they'd thwarted Cortana was still under wraps, so thickly wound up in red tape that she seriously doubted the true events would ever see the light of day. She'd met the impressively intelligent smart AI on a few occasions after being hired to work on the coding which would allow it to not only pair seamlessly with the newly developed Mark V MJOLNIR, but also to interface directly with the armor's wearer through an advanced neural linkage. When news had broken that that was the AI responsible for the mayhem which had ensued when UNSC and civilian vessels, satellites, stations, and relays alike had begun being systematically knocked offline, she'd been understandably shocked and appalled. Then again, the woman who'd created the AI - whom she'd laboured under the supervision of - had been arrested years before under dubious circumstances, so should it have come as a surprise?

The insane notion of faking a medical emergency came and went in a fraction of a second as she anxiously chewed the inside of her cheek.

No, she couldn't turn it down. Couldn't play the coward. She would have to go and complete the job and make the best of a painfully ironic situation - it would bolster her CV, if nothing else. Further set her apart from other developers.

Maybe she'd score a pay increase?

Snorting at herself, she dropped the tablet onto the surface of her desk. Then immediately chastised herself for her careless handling of the device. Picked it back up and opened a new browser, tapped in the subject of the search, and spent the next thirty seconds scrolling through media articles on the infamous Spartan-II team. Most of them, at a glance, were detailing the purported exploits of one Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, or simply the Master Chief. His presumed death, his heroic achievements. There wasn't much about the other three - basically squat. But she'd expected as much. And anyone monitoring her device wouldn't find her research odd considering her assignment to the upcoming project.

Setting the tablet down more respectfully this time, she sat back in her ergonomic chair and resigned herself to a chain of sleepless nights to come. The project was slated to commence in two weeks' time. Just long enough for her to develop insomnia habits and subsequently and contradictorily dose herself on far too much caffeine to cope.

One thing was for certain. There was now a bottle of red in her apartment earmarked to be demolished the moment she finished up for the day. Except that was when she'd probably start wondering about it all again. Picturing the tiny, lifeless bundle they'd placed in her arms post-op and scrutinizing any and all details she recalled for information about what the other contributing half of the stillborn's DNA might look like.

It'd been so long since she'd tortured herself in such a way. At first, the anguish and guilt and pain had felt like something she'd always live with. Like they'd never leave her, not that she'd believed she deserved for them to. Not a minute had gone by that she hadn't hated herself. Agonized over it. Why? Why had she been so blind? So dumb?

Looking back now with a critical eye, she knew part of it was that she'd presented herself as an easy target, that she'd been flattered by Catherine Halsey's growing interest in her efficiency and aptitude, and had foolishly admired the doctor's intellect. She'd allowed herself to be suckered into the whole thing.

The strings Halsey had pulled to have her retinitis pigmentosa corrected, a condition she'd only been diagnosed with the year before and which her own doctor had gravely advised her there was no cure for, had been the first step. The procedure, Halsey had claimed, was innovative - a variation of the augmentations her Spartan-IIs had undergone, in fact - and thereby classified. She saw it all now. That'd been the first tidbit of information Halsey had offered her about the program she'd designed and executed to produce highly functioning tactical combatants of peerless standing. Lyra had leapt at the opportunity to save her failing vision and Halsey had arranged the surgery.

The diagnostic workup and evaluations which were performed prior to her approval had been available to Halsey, and that was when she'd noted the otherwise highly compatible nature of the unassuming software developer's genetic and physical makeup for the Spartan program. This, she'd later explained, combined with Lyra's above average intelligence and ingenuity had led Halsey to pursue a former hypothesis that offspring created from the Spartan-IIs could potentially and theoretically surpass them as next-level tactical combatants by virtue of inheriting superior genetic qualities and being more easily augmentable.

It'd been the most ludicrous and megalomaniacal line Lyra had ever before been fed. And she'd eaten it up.

So naive. And so fucking ambitious.

Halsey had been stroking her egos though she'd been a favoured feline pet. Oh sure, it'd taken some weeks for her to come around to the idea of a kid, of being artificially inseminated with the sperm of a guy whose name or background she'd never be privy to and whose recommending qualities amounted to unrivalled determination, natural athleticism, and superb problem solving skills. Those weren't considerations an up-and-coming twenty-four year old had previously contemplated. But she'd agreed in the end. To make the best of it, she'd not only agreed, but had allowed them to schedule her into a private reproductive clinic and do it not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions as a result of the first two pregnancies 'not taking'.

They'd taken, alright, and then her body had rejected them and there'd been blood.

So much blood.

Why, neither Halsey nor the reproductive specialists could explain. For all intents and purposes, she was a healthy and fertile young female. But the third time - the third time she'd waited day after day, week after week for the terrible cramps which had never come. And all the while she'd obediently taken the supplements and suffered the injections, attended obstetrics appointments and been ultrasounded. She'd gained weight. Her back had hurt, her feet had hurt, her hands had swelled - coding in that condition had been a trial.

If only she'd known.

If only she'd known and had appreciated the small flutters of movements inside her womb, the tiny hiccups of the baby growing there, the sound of her rushing heartbeats on the monitoring equipment.

Regrets. She had so many.

Week thirty-one she had begun to feel unwell, more than what she'd learned to live with. Week thirty-two they had scheduled her for an emergency preterm cesarean - her blood pressure was dangerously low and she'd become bedridden. She had gone under anesthesia thinking she would wake up a mother with a brand new baby to hold, to stare at in wonder, to protect.

She'd already decided against going through with Halsey's proposal. The MJOLNIR on which they'd booted up the first few trial runs of the software she'd been working on had had 117 painted in white block lettering on the chest and she'd overheard the sometimes derisive, sometimes worshipful under-their-breath chatter of her military counterparts present. It hadn't phased her much then. Some difficulty and jealousy were to be expected between the ranks, right? Especially considering the undisputable superiority of the Spartan-IIs as soldiers. Techies were notoriously critical of their less sophisticated fielded brethren.

But the more she'd later thought about it, the more it had bothered her to imagine people murmuring those things about her child, her flesh and blood. Halsey had also proven vague about what she'd envisioned a training program for a new generation of Spartans to entail.

Lyra wasn't opposed to or even unfamiliar with strenuous and orderly preparatory regimes - she'd completed over a year of basic training with the UNSC herself before opting to be discharged to pursue her current career path. She hadn't minded it. She'd relished the challenge of physical exertion and unyielding expectations. But then it'd grown stale and she'd foreseen a life of monotony for herself, closeted in some military facility completing the same tasks day in and day out, and if she was lucky, progressing up the ranks to more of the same. A job in the private sector provided her with the ability to choose her assignments, to suggest improvements or changes to projects when she saw fit, to increase her knowledge and skill at seminars. It'd been a no brainer.

But that wasn't what Halsey had been proposing for her child. She'd been naive, but not that naive. She'd known the reason the Spartan-II program was so confidential wasn't just because it needed to be protected from sabotage or duplication by the Insurrectionists, or that its innovation was part of what fueled its success against the Covenant, but also because there were aspects of it the general population wouldn't have responded well to. And it was those unknown but ominous aspects she'd found herself growing more and more troubled over during the weeks leading up to the c-section.

But then it had been over and she had woken up and been handed a tiny limp bundle and her world had fallen to pieces. She hadn't even named her. She'd been numb, then inconsolable, then numb in turns. And it'd gone on and on, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. For weeks. For weeks and weeks, until during one visit from a coworker who'd begun to fill the awkward silence following the prerequisite 'how are you', 'you look well', 'it'll get easier' with inane chatter about a piece of software she was developing when Lyra had forgotten about the pain for one whole minute and had pointed out a critical flaw in the layout of her colleague's half-completed program. Just one minute when the crushing guilt and sorrow hadn't been unbearable. Then it'd miraculously happened again a few days later. And it'd continued to happen, small but increasing intervals when she could think, could function, could be herself again instead of the emotional train wreck she'd become when they'd put her dead baby in her arms.

Button nose, tuft of dark downy hair, pouted lips.

So small.

So soft.

There weren't many defining physical features on an infant. She hadn't even gotten to see what colour her eyes had been. Not much to go on to put together a fictional picture in her mind of what the father might resemble. But she knew she'd be pondering it again in the days ahead.

She probably wouldn't even see him, wouldn't even be in the same compound as he was. She needed minimal access to the actual MJOLNIR and none to the Spartans who would be sporting it. There'd be a few test runs to ensure the software booted up successfully and operated as it should, but with a previous version from the last iteration to build upon, this should prove a fairly easy gig for her all in all. Work wise, anyway. Psychologically speaking was another matter.

She'd just stock up on coffee.

And wine.

Lots and lots of wine.