Chapter 37

"Everything is different now!"

— Mabel Pines, Gravity Falls

July 2220

There were three times, in his entire life of constant warfare, when Joseph Ducard could say he'd actually felt his heart slow down from any combination of fear or anxiety: when he'd been told he'd been chosen for a top-secret, black ops, Alliance super-soldier program, when he'd been informed that Humanity had made first contact, and the war that followed, and when he'd been told that he personally would be training eighty children to succeed him as a SIGMA. No other time, ever, had Ducard felt the heart-stopping fear as he did right now.

"Admiral Hackett… Please say that again." He swallowed thickly, and maintained a rigid parade-rest, not believing his augmented ears.

The gravelly voiced Admiral inclined his head, it obvious to Ducard that the Admiral had better things to do than repeat himself. "Sergeant Major Two-Fifteen engaged and killed the Protocol-Sixty Six SIGMAs. Upon extraction, he left the shuttle and went to the nearest briefing room and locked himself inside. He is refusing any and all medical aid outside of cell-fluid shots until he can speak to you."

Jesus Christ… Ducard felt his throat dry up, and his heart slow as all of the potential repercussions played in his mind. "Has he spoken to anyone?" He asked, forcing his voice to remain calm. "Has he said anything?"

"Nothing beyond demanding to see you, specifically requesting that you be brought to him. He is threatening physical harm should anyone else enter the same room as him."

Ducard nodded, it made sense - given the situation he was in, and depending on what the three said to him, John would only be trusting of other II's. Anyone else could be sent by Ducard or the Ones to kill him before he spoke. "Give him the space he wants - what ship is he on?"

"The SSV Red Star. It being the largest hospital ship in local space, himself and the Marines -"

Silver fucking lining. "Send an order to the ship's captain and make doubly certain neither she nor anyone speaks to him before I get there, Admiral."

Hackett's eyebrows furrowed, "what is going on here, Commander?"

"Sir…" He shook his head, "nothing good, at all. I can't explain everything to you, but there are things that SIGMA did not know that may have been revealed to him by the Sixty Sixers. You should have told me that they were on Manheim." Even if it cost them the lives of those Marines, the lives saved by ensuring that a SIGMA II didn't go on some sort of murderous rampage would have made up for it. John wasn't just digesting world-shaking revelations, he was doing so with an AI hooked into his head, on an Alliance hospital ship, in a flotilla that had in it a ship captained by his damned mother, who he very well will recognize if he gets even a passing glance - which was almost guaranteed to happen given how he is reacting.

Ducard felt his slowed heart-rate begin climbing. If John encountered his still-living mother, after the potential revelations given to him by Montrell and his allies, that could be the straw to break the camel's back. He could snap, lose faith in the entire system, and worse would be if he could convince his mother he was who he was, he would essentially have the captain of one of the most advanced carriers in the entire Alliance Navy at his beck and call. It would not be hard to convince the crew of his righteousness, as long as he told them his story, and then he could feasibly spearhead an assault on Titan-Med, rescue his brothers, and then have an army of hundreds of SIGMAs willing to follow him.

Ducard clenched his fist, even if it meant throwing away ten years of his life, he was not going to let that happen. Even if it meant killing John - and the others too, if he were to be honest with himself - he was not willing to let that kind of chaos get unleashed.

"I am leaving now." He cut the vid-comm and turned on his heel, heading for the shuttle-bay. "Julius." He called out to the station's AI, whose holographic 'body' appeared out of the dust-tech in the air.

"Yes, Commander." The AI was unlike others, it forwent an actual 'body' in lieu of a clear orb which flashed briefly with every syllable uttered. "How can I help you?"

"Send a message to Commander John Doe S-One-One, and General Lars Utterfeln S-One-Nine. Tell them that the Sixty Sixers were found and were eliminated by Sergeant Major Two-Fifteen before I could educate him on the finer details of the SIGMA's Charter, specifically, Protocol Sixty Six. Tell them to deploy any ten available squads to Arcturus-Station and recall all of the Company Commanders to Titan-Med." He instructed the machine as he walked with purpose through the enormous medical station.

"Yes, Commander. Is there anything else I can do for you?" The machine asked, helpfully.

"Yeah. Get one squad deployed to the black-site on Earth to retrieve item forty two. If they don't get revised orders within twenty four hours from me, General One-Nine, or the Company Commanders, they are to use it on Titan Med." He repressed a sigh, and then muted the external speakers on his suit. "Titan OS, make a reminder for me to speak to Commander One-One about retirement." If this went the way he prayed it didn't, and he survived, he was done, well and truly, with the entire life. He would sooner farm on Eden or work construction on Titan-moon than suit up in his armor again.

Protocol Sixty Six… Thought John S2-15. We are not a part of the Alliance. They have no true hold over us. Their ideals can and have been predicted to differ from ours. We were made to protect humanity from all threats foreign and domestic. His stomach throbbed, still managing to hurt despite his system being flooded with cell fluid and painkillers. He could literally feel his nanomachines stitching him together from the inside out, though the odd, invasive feeling was drowned out by the pain in his shredded stomach, his forcibly fixed throat, and in his mind. The Alliance doesn't control us… McGraw went to the Alliance. He gave them the idea. He told them to make us. They told the Ones to make us. The Ones listened.

The dull hum of the Albert Einstein's reactor, even so far beneath him and so deep inside the ship, provided a good white noise for John to think. He was seated on a chair in a briefing room, a large table taking up most of the room's space. In all honesty, his weight was too much for most chairs to handle, the muscles on his suit had simply locked up when he had assumed a seating position, and when his posterior had pressed against the chair. He was faced towards the only entrance to the room, but he broke his gaze with the door to sink his throbbing head into his blood stained hands, the armor plates severely damaged from his multiple fights.

But the Ones didn't have to listen. His breathing began accelerating as his thoughts continued to spiral. They protect humanity, we protect humanity… We protect its ideal… What is its ideal? Are we its embodiment, or its sentinel? Is the ideal of humanity that the ends justify the means? Then what is that end? Does that end explain why I exist - that some humans humanity can be sacrificed so others can pursue their own? But then what is humanity? A concept? A species? A belief? A morality? Does it apply to me? Can I pursue it? Do I forsake it to protect it? Am I even human? Do I have humanity? The child-soldier asked himself, pressing his hands and his face into the metal plates of his helmet, as if he could push these confusing thoughts from his mind.

Why do I exist, to protect an ideal I do not understand, by fighting for a species that I am not, in a war I did not start, for reasons that have been kept secret from me? He asked himself, releasing his face and returning to stare directly at the door.

Interrupting his thoughts, the young AI embedded in his neck spoke through his Smart Watch, disturbing the white noise of the distant reactor. "John, do you have a moment? I have a question about your augmentations, and it cannot wait any longer."

John had been expecting this question for a while now. With little battlefield intelligence and cyber warfare for her to occupy herself with, she looked inward to find something to kill time. It had been more than an hour since he'd been brought back out into orbit, so if it had taken her this long to bring it up, it must have been something interesting. John didn't know exactly how fast AI's thought, but they thought and perceived time faster than most Humans and even SIGMAs. For a human, one second's pass was nothing, but to an AI, it was an eternity. The brief pauses Humans took to think of a clever, witty, or correct response in a conversation were endless for their cybernetic creations, and this was why it was always a significant thing when an AI took more than an instant to respond to a query; that Cassidy had spent more than an hour told John that it either expected to be muted again, which John felt an odd feeling in the pit of his chest about, or that it simply didn't understand what it was seeing, and more than an hour's worth of time and effort devoted solely to it had come up with no answer.

"Commander Ducard is not set to arrive on this vessel for another forty three minutes, thirty seconds. The crew has been given orders not to speak to me until I have spoken to him. We have time." The super soldier said succinctly, his voice hitting his mangled helmet and coming out muffled to the room around him.

"Using the Titan Suit's bio-comm systems and your own augmentations, as well as the memories I can read from your brain implants, I've catalogued -"

"Cassidy." John interrupted her, "I understand that speaking to me is new. I understand that everything to you is new. But one thing you have to know is that when given the choice, I do not have the patience for lengthy explanations. Give me short answers, and if I need more, I will ask for it." He explained, "all Twos are like this. Now what did you find?" He felt a brief feeling in the pit of his chest after it dawned on him that the machine wasn't used to him being short with it, but it would figure out either now or later what he'd taken to heart a long time ago - time was precious on the battlefield, and speaking took up more time than anything else, so short, concise answers and orders saved the most time and saved the most lives.

Cassidy took an entire second to process what John said, before she responded with, "an unlisted augmentation, secondary to the Positronic Brain Implant."

"Unlisted meaning what?" John narrowed his eyes, his augmented mind drumming up dozens of possibilities in milliseconds.

"In the itinerary provided to me by your clearance access, this augmentation was not on the list of approved ones you would be receiving at Titan Medical station."

"Is it you?" John asked, knowing that AI implants were highly experimental, and were probably partially illegal - but, then again, by sheer convenience of existence, he was breaking a law or two.

"No. It is something else. It has been active for four years."

John blinked, four years? He hadn't gotten any bio-mech augments four years ago, those had all been solely bio-chemical, among other things, being meant to make his body more pliable and accepting of the machines he'd received this year. "What is it doing?"

"It is hampering the flow of neurons through your brain. Specifically suppressing and even storing some, as if they were data on a hard-drive."

John's eyes narrowed, an implant that suppressed the flow of neurons in his brain? That sounded like it went directly against everything he'd been taught - the mind was his single greatest weapon, even deadlier than his hands and feet, and stronger than his muscles. Nearly all of his augmentations, in some way shape or form, improved his mind, almost the entire point of his preliminary augmentations was to strengthen and enhance his organs and his ability to heal, so his brain could take more trauma and still work perfectly. If he had an augmentation that specifically hampered his brain, that meant he was a liability on the battlefield.

It's been in there for four years. John thought back to the only possible point he could have gotten it, four years ago - his first visit to Earth and Titan-Med. The only things that came up were his trip to australia, where he'd hallucinated seeing a dead Two. Anecdotally, thinking back to those times also made his head hurt.

"The machine, just now - it started suppressing more neurons. They started flaring, but it -" The machine caught itself, and went with the short answer, "- it stopped them."

"Do you know what this suppression does?" John asked, his head aching a bit as he tried to remember everything he could, and oddly found it more difficult than it should have been.

"No."

"Can you take an educated guess?" Trying to remember that trip to Titan-Med felt like swimming upstream, against the grain, in a river of flowing sand.

There was a pause, "I would say that it is hampering, suppressing, or even altering certain memories, as the neurons it is hampering first travel into the machine, are suppressed or stored, and then exit the machine different. Weaker. They travel to your hippocampus, and the process repeats."

John reached up and felt alongside the left half of his mangled, damaged helmet, underneath which was his head, within which was his brain, which was apparently housing foreign, unknown technology. Did this have something to do with 1-61 and his allies? With 'Sixty Six'?

"Can you switch it off?" The way John saw things, this was a hazard to him and it made him a liability on the battlefield. It could be suppressing his muscle-memory, or the experience of a pivotal battle during training - if it came in during his first round of augmentations, it could even be suppressing something he'd seen on Mindoir, which meant it had to go. Combat memories were gold to John, they were experiences he could learn from, lessons he could impart to his brothers, strengths he could draw from, if this augmentation was depriving him of them, it had to go, no matter the costs.

"I… I think so." Said the AI, "it was difficult, but I should mention that, once I broke through its first firewall, it was almost like I was guided through it… Like whoever programmed this machine wanted me to break through its security processes, but didn't want to just let me through… There were even small, errant bits of code. They translate to binary, but the message doesn't make sense."

"What does it say?"

"Three words, all names - Prometheus, Atlas, Cronus. In that order."

John narrowed his eyes further, trying to draw any kind of connection. He knew vaguely that they were gods of some sort, but mythology wasn't something the instructors emphasized. "If you can access the machine itself, can you process the stores neurons it is keeping from me?" John asked.

"Not without shutting it off and letting the neurons travel through your mind and into the PBI."

John hesitated for a moment, but decided that, in the grand scheme of things, not much worse could happen than what he'd learned today, and if it turned out to be nothing, he could always turn it on again. "Then switch it off, I'll deal with what happens next." Not even a second after he finished speaking, the foreign augmentation was switched off, and in one migraine-inducing blur of lights, sounds, textures, feelings and experiences, John remembered everything.

To truly surprise a SIGMA, who themselves were soldiers who could feasibly say they had seen most, if not, everything the universe had to throw at them, one either had to be so utterly foolish and random that they could even make the enigmatic engineer himself blush, or they had to act in a way that the SIGMA in question could never even possibly predict, not on their wildest dreams. Given that SIGMAs themselves were the only true masters of anti-SIGMA warfare, which itself meant that they had to plan for everything and act accordingly, to the point where they would be willing to adopt a hive-mind mentality one moment, and drop it the very next, the possibility of surprising one was closer to impossibility than it was to actual reality.

Joseph Ducard turned out to be the one SIGMA in a million that would prove to be an exception to the norm, as he was surprised when he opened the door to the ship's main briefing room - a brightly lit rectangular room about five meters across, with a large table in its center and a television on one wall - and was punched in the face with all the triply augmented strength the room's solitary SIGMA Two had to offer. Even with his enhanced reflexes, he simply had no time at all to react to the punch. To the SIGMAs, it happened in slow motion, but in reality the confrontation happened blurrily fast. His head whipped back from the force of the punch, his entire body fell backwards as it was shoved forward by the strength behind John's arm, and his arms splayed out as they tried to resist the motions of his body falling backwards.

Before his feet even left the ground, the SIGMA Two exercised the full force of his biotics by opening his right hand and then clenching it tight, immobilizing the One in a biotic stasis field and unintentionally crushing several plates of armor due to a botched execution. John grabbed Ducard by his chestplate just as the frozen body began to leave the ground, and threw him back inside the briefing room. The One landed on the floor with a loud metallic crash and skidded a few feet with a horrendous grinding noise, leaving a deep dent in the metallic floor. The Two was inside the room again in an instant, the door swishing shut behind him and locking tight with a loud clank. John stood above Ducard and crouched down low, one knee pressing against the One's chest plate as he drew his gun with one hand, and disarmed the One with the other, a look of equal parts betrayal and livid contempt on the face hidden by the disfigured and mangled gas mask/helmet. Ducard actually felt a bead of sweat fall down his head as he began to comprehend just how inhumane the Two looked with the damage done to his armor and his helmet, how terrifying it was that John was still so lethal despite being covered in his own blood and fighting in severely damaged armor.

John was clenching his side-arm so tightly that not only was he slightly crushing its reinforced grip, but his arm was shaking. The gun was pointed at Ducard's face, and with an application of crushing biotic force, the One's shields shattered wholesale, and he saw a biotic warp-field slowly eating away at his bullet-proof visor. Would he have been in any other situation, Ducard would have been impressed with John's skill in utilizing so many biotic skills at once, in direct spite to the fact that he should, by all rights, have needed days, or even weeks, to get reacclimated to his augmented powers, but right now he was focused on two things, the first obviously being the clear and present danger to his life, but the second being the more subtle of the two: John was running on fumes. There was the slight twitch in the way his wrist shook, the gurgle of his wounded stomach, the dry gulps in his throat, the man was almost out of energy. When Human biotics used their powers, they burned through their energy at astonishing rates, which was why they had separate rations from regular soldiers - they and their increased metabolisms simply needed more food. If a biotic went too long without a meal, and used their powers too often between these meals, their bodies would begin turning inward to continue to fuel them. John had been under the knife for months, and had been in recovery for the same amount of time, the last time he'd eaten a full meal coincided with the last time he was on Sparta, meaning that he likely had little to nothing else to digest; like a snake consuming its own tail, John would soon, if he wasn't already, begin digesting his own muscle mass - his very body - to continue to fuel these mass affecting abilities.

Despite it all, Ducard still felt like this was a situation he could salvage - he didn't want to kill John, after all. "John, I know what they said sounds strange to you, but -"

"You stole from me." Said John, his voice cold and blank, and so quiet that he was almost whispering. This cold fury stopped Ducard dead, because the boy in front of him could not be referring to what he thought he was referring to. It was impossible - the Sixty-Sixers couldn't have known about this, the only people in the galaxy that knew were all hurtling towards Titan Med.

"What did I steal from you, John?" Ducard asked, slowly, carefully, calmly, but inside he had a sliver of fear running down his spine - try as he might, he couldn't break the stasis field, it was literally impossible for non-biotics to break stasis fields. Surviving this, let alone winning it, would become a great deal tougher, but not impossible.

Ducard silently tensed one of his fingers - discovering the smallest amount of give present within the limited space inside his armor, he sent out a lightning fast message to the captain of the ship: Prepare emergency burn, full power, deactivate inertial dampeners, sync w/AI, on my go. If he could knock John off balance, even for a second, his lapse in focus would disperse the stasis field; it was crude, but a second was all he needed. Ducard made certain to ignore that he'd just heard a report that said John had killed three ones, and he certainly didn't think about how high or low his chances of victory could be in a similar fight, especially given his environment.

"You lied to me." John stated, ignoring Ducard's question; John was crouching over Ducard, one hand clenching Ducard's breastplate, another tightly clenching his magnum handgun. "You betrayed me… But worst of all is that you didn't just betray me. You betrayed me, Justin, George, David, Eli… Every single SIGMA Two alive, Ducard." That last word told Ducard everything he needed to know. He wasn't 'Commander', or 'One-Ninety Nine', or 'sir', he was Ducard, an impersonal utterance of his last name as a sign of detachment - the only reason John hadn't killed him yet was because he had information that John didn't. "Even… And especially… Two-One Zero Six."

I'm not leaving this ship alive. Thought Ducard with finality, as it all fell into place for him. Killing two SIGMAs and confirming the death of a third, having one of those SIGMAs throw world-shattering news at him, and somehow deactivating Edward Spokane's memory-altering augmentations had broken the child, or at the very least broken his faith not just in Ducard, but all of the Ones, living or dead, past, present, or future.

Ducard set his jaw and tensed the fingers on his right hand - his reflexes and perception were great enough that he would have just one half of a second to tell the AI to burn the thrusters, if he saw John squeeze the trigger. Half of a second between life and death, and John held most of the cards. The boy wasn't stupid, he wouldn't move first, but he also was more or less in control of the situation - just one wrong move on Ducard's end, and his life was over, and his legacy would be that of a chaotic war that would upheave the whole of human society. SIGMA against SIGMA, man against man, the Alliance dissolving, cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria; and to top it all off, the giant that was the Citadel, with a vengeful Hierarchy just waiting for their chance to convince the Council to take their shot at removing the Alliance as a potential threat.

I can't take that chance - I have to do it. He couldn't wait for John to make that move, he obviously wasn't going to see reason, he was too angry, his mind too clouded by rage, pain, and the cell fluid's chemicals, drugs, and machines running through his system.

Literally just before Ducard twitched an armored digit, the biotic field restraining him vanished, his body went limp. John reached forward with his left hand and grabbed Ducard's head, he smashed it onto the deck, let go of him, stood up, and holstered his gun in one smooth motion as he took two steps back.

What? Blinked the One, as he recovered from the lightning fast assault.

John removed his helmet, revealing his face to Ducard. It was splattered in his blood, and had multiple large bruises, welts and gashes covering it. His expression, however, was what Ducard read instantly, it was one of pale fury. The boy was so angry and so confused that he simply didn't know what to do with all of the raw rage and fury welling up inside him. He was angry enough to kill a man as soon as salute him, but this anger was blinding and filling him so that he simply didn't know which to do - kill the man, or salute him. So in the absence of any true desire, he went with the intrinsic, instinctual response all humans had - he tried to understand the situation.

"I want to know why." Growled the livid child-killing-machine, who kept eye contact with the One for just a few seconds, before he replaced the helmet, his point made.

Ducard, slowly, got to his feet. He saw John seated in a chair, arms folded against his gut and his expression masked by the literally inhumane gas-mask/helmet. The man - the child - in front of him didn't actually want to fight, didn't truly desire vengeance. He was turning down his chance, for an explanation. His heart beating heavily in his chest, as he realized that there just might be a way to salvage this whole thing, ducard pulled up his own seat, warily. "Where do you want me to start?" He asked with a sight filled with the kind of complete exhaustion that could only come from a lifetime of dealing with death, battle, and unspeakable atrocities.

"With Miranda S-Two-One Zero Six. Why you stole those memories from me and lied afterwards. Why you didn't steal them from anyone else. Why you lied to all of us." John listed off, his voice coming from a mask and not a face; it was only now that Ducard realized how perfectly he'd succeeded at ripping away this child's humanity. "Then I want to know about protocol sixty six and everything it entails." Ducard nodded slowly, but John caught on instantly. "Stop stalling. The only thing that is stopping me from killing everyone and everything I see, and convincing my brothers to do the same, are the words that come from your mouth." He said succinctly, bluntly, holding no verbal punches.

Ducard acquiesced, "the SIGMA Two program was a beyond-top-secret venture for the Alliance. Christopher McGraw visualized it during the days of Jason Whyte, and it came to fruition years later. The problem was, that while they could divert small fractions of their various funding expenditures away to fund a secret super-soldier project, what worked before couldn't work again." Explained the One who'd lived through it all twice, first with the Ones, then with the Twos. "So this time they went to the private sector. They provided tax incentives -"

"Consider your audience, Ducard. Myself and my brothers were not taught economics. We were taught infrastructure."

"They went to the private sector. Instead of government funds, they took civilian funds, and convinced everyone they could to donate. One quarter of the funding for the Twos came from the government, two quarters from the private sector, and the final fourth from McGraw himself, but you know that story. The point is, people, knew about this project. Very few people, but people nonetheless. The Alliance threw around treason like it was candy, but if one of the backers really wanted to, they could be a whistleblower and blow the top off of the whole thing... Expose us all." Ducard explained, "so because of that, some people have pull with the Alliance, and could get some decisions made in regards to the program. Originally, McGraw wanted fifteen hundred children, but the lack of 'public' support and the decisions of the private sector brought that number down to six hundred twelve. You saw the results of one such backer's pull in the Alliance with the arrival of Two-One-Oh-Six."

"Miranda's father."

"Yes." Nodded Ducard, "I don't know the story, but he got angry with Miranda, pulled strings with the Alliance, and got her sent to a… Very extreme military school." But he knew that John knew this story, so he continued. "After you pulled your stunt in Australia, another private-sector approached us, but he wasn't a funder, rather a… Man… Who is impossibly well connected, and not just in the Alliance."

"How well connected?"

"We don't know. After the conclusion of the Second Contact War, the man became a ghost, but his name is feared amongst the most powerful men in the Alliance and beyond. The Salarian Special Tasks Group is aware of this man, and he hides better than them. They know as much as we do. With just a few phone calls and less than two hours of effort, he literally undid all of the political damage your stunt in Australia called. This is a man who is, or was, a trusted confidant of Christopher McGraw. The only other human being on the blacklist. He had McGraw-scale technology and he was not afraid to use it. He did more to ease the tension between the Alliance and Earth than anyone else had been able to do with decades. But to properly explain to you his actions, and his relationship with the Alliance, their relationship with Earth, and the Alliance's relationship with us, I'll have to give you some history."

"All I have is time." John stated, none-too-subtly prompting Ducard to tell his story.

Ducard nodded, "In twenty-one-thirty-three, the Systems Alliance charter was drafted up and signed. All permanent members of the United Nations Security Council forged a new governing body, one that would oversee the whole of Humanity during our trip through the final frontier. They would be the face of our race in the event of extraterrestrial contact… They would, essentially, be a space-based UN. That name had actually been put forth, with the Earth-based UN to be changed to the United-Earth-Nations, but the Systems Alliance won by one vote." He waved that bit aside, "the problem was, Earth nations wanted a say in interstellar policy, and because all of Earth was essentially one hundred percent of the Alliance's Gross Domestic Product - all of their money and resources - the Alliance couldn't even feasibly say no to anything they said. That was why it took us thirteen years to leave our solar system, and why, in fifty years, we only ever colonized one extra-solar planet. More colonies meant more sources of income for the Alliance itself, which meant Earth had less pull and less say in interstellar politics, which just wouldn't do.

"Well, come First and Second Contact and the war afterwards. The Alliance saw its chance, and a massive PR campaign was launched to pull public opinion towards mass colonization. Our colonies were doubling and doubling and doubling, to the point where we had close to three dozen, and all of them were making money. All of a sudden, Earth had a lot less pull on the Alliance than they had before the war, and before they could tighten the leash, the Alliance seceded entirely by creating Arcturus and announcing it as the organization's socio-political capital. Just like that, Earth and the United Nations had as much pull on the Alliance as Eden, or Mars, or Fehl-Prime, or Newton, and they didn't like that at all.

"Since then, tensions between the Alliance and Earth have been steadily increasing. Nothing the Board does has been able to alleviate that tension, they've even gone as far as to allow the UN to man half of the Sol-defense fleet, nothing works. Earth wants an earth-based governing structure for all of Humanity, Earth first, all other planets second. The Alliance, however, wants an equal representation for all colonies - an interstellar round table. You can see the disconnect.

"So, fast forward to today. Earth and the UN are taking every opportunity they can to call foul on the Alliance and to shift views towards their side of things. When Jason Whyte declared to the galaxy that Humanity and the Quarians would stand alone? They called foul. When Jason Whyte scared the galaxy half to death with Operation WHIP? They called foul. When the Board under Tyson declared war on the Hegemony, without even contacting the Citadel's ambassador to us, or our ambassador to the Citadel? Foul. Every single decision, foul, foul, foul. Even their Earth-centric decisions are fouled. When Tyson called for a mass cleanup of Earth's orbit? They called foul. When the Director for Quarian Affairs suggested terraforming Mars, so as to alleviate Earth's population and increase interstellar commerce with the Sol System? Foul. Nothing they do pleases them, everything they do angers them. It is, literally, everything the Alliance can do to avoid a real civil war, one that makes the Rebellion look like a border-skirmish.

"So, your stunt in Australia. I had to use SIGMAuthority to deploy Alliance forces onto Australian soil, to save your ass and bring you into custody. We knew Earth would call foul, and rightfully so - the Alliance only has clearance to conduct training operations in Russia, the middle-east, Antarctica, and the US, nowhere else, yet." Explained the One, "but before we could even consider damage control, a man approached us. He said that he could alleviate the tension, avoid war, all we had to do was test out a new augmentation he'd developed on one of the SIGMAs in Titan-med, and who better to use it on than the one who started the whole thing?" He asked, rhetorically.

John, loathe though he was to admit, found it hard to be mad at that. "So you stole from me and lied about it, to avoid civil war." Such a war would fracture Humanity, weaken the Alliance, and leave the whole of mankind vulnerable to alien war. John wanted to be angry at Ducard for taking the one thing John could truly call his own, and he still was, irrationally, but the logical, colder side of him at least helped him to understand that what Ducard had done wasn't entirely wrong, it was just the lesser of two evils.

Ducard nodded, "I didn't want to. But I had to avoid the war. Mankind above all."

"That doesn't tell me why you haven't told us about Sixty Six."

"That… Is a whole 'nother beast." Ducard shook his head and sat up. "The SIGMA Charter under Jason McGraw calls for a fair and impartial, but irresistible and immovable guardian for all of mankind. One that is unbound by laws and is ready, willing, and able to act in the interests of the greater good. You know this. What you don't know, is what McGraw meant." He explained, "you know of the Citadel's Spectres, yes?" He asked, "it is similar in concept. He wanted the SIGMAs to be their own. We do not answer to the Alliance, we do not answer to the incumbent Human government, we answer to ourselves. We hold ourselves accountable for everything we do. Protocol Sixty Six is a catch-all term for secession from the Alliance, cessation of our alliance with them, temporary or otherwise. In short, Sparta, and the SIGMAs and their families who populate it, isn't a part of the Human Systems Alliance, we are an independant military city-state situated within the Alliance's borders. We are allies with the Alliance, in that our people - our 'citizens' - are granted citizenship in the Alliance, pay as an Alliance government employee, and so on. Like how the Krogan are not a part of the Citadel, the Migrant Fleet was its own beast, and the Alliance separated itself from the galaxy to maintain its independence, Sparta is independant from the Alliance.

"This is because Jason McGraw wanted an impartial guardian for all of human-kind. One that had no allegiance to any incumbent government. We have the authority to act outside of the Alliance, and to supercede its ranking structure, all in the name of protecting and serving humanity. To give you an example of what this means… When the Gaian Rebellion started, a conclave was called. For two days and two nights, the Ones debated whether or not the Rebels were right, whether or not mankind would be better off under experienced alien rule. All SIGMAs concluded that the rebels were wrong, and as such we chose to side with the Alliance. But later, when the Alliance would come to us with a new initiative - the SIGMA Two initiative - we debated again. Again, the majority ruled that the Alliance was still the best bet for mankind… All agreed still, except for three. These three decided that the Alliance had deviated from the path, and took it upon themselves to set them back on that path by siding with the rebels."

"The three I killed."

"The three you killed." Confirmed the Commander. "They weren't rogue. Much the opposite, they were well within their rights to be doing what they were doing, even the Alliance knew that, even if they didn't want to admit it. Those three left Sparta amicably, with no ill-will, no harbored feelings of hatred, merely differing ideals. They believed that the Alliance was too evil, was too ill-fit to rule, and that mankind would prosper under alliance with the Citadel… We did not."

"And why didn't you tell us?" John asked.

"Because when the Alliance came to us, with the gall to order us to steal children to turn them into killing machines, John Doe nearly ordered an assassination mission on the Board of Directors and Christopher McGraw. We nearly started a war. It took us six and a half days of non-stop debate and discussion to come to a decision about this… But in the end, we did it, but on our terms. We didn't assault Arcturus, but rather launched a cyber assault on the whole of the Alliance travel database. Literally no one, no where, knows where Sparta is, except us and our AI. We came to the decision that we would try, the Alliance's way. We would try and train up children, we would see if McGraw was right… But we let the Alliance know that we aren't their soldiers, and they aren't our leash-holders. They aren't Earth, and we aren't the pre-contact Alliance.

"We decided that we would raise you all as SIGMAs, not Alliance soldiers. Instead of fostering an inevitable hatred of the government that stole you from your homes, we replaced that hatred with a drive not to protect the Alliance… But Humanity itself. Never once did we tell you that your job was to serve the Alliance, we always told you that you served Earth, her colonies, her interests, and her people. Not her governments. We taught you to respect authority, and to respect the Alliance, but to do the right thing above all. When you all awakened, we would have gathered you before formally inducting you into the program as ranking members, and told you everything. Shown you the method to our madness." Ducard explained.

John sat there for several minutes in silence, digesting everything Ducard had told him. He still felt hatred, the kind of blind loathing only a child who'd never truly grown up could feel. The scalding hot fury that burned only him. Behind his mask, his face was a blank slate of rapidly churning and foaming thoughts and ideas, all revolving around what Ducard had told him. The dull white-noise of the Einstein's reactor filled the silence between them.

"Is there anything else you haven't told us?"

"Do you truly want that answer, John?" Ducard deflected, almost on instinct. "There are things you'll never know, never understand. You and the Twos… You…" He caught himself, trying to find the right words. They just weren't people, not fully, not really. They would never experience the world for what it was, would never have a reason to defend it beyond a knee-jerk automatic 'it's what I am supposed to do' response. They wouldn't understand any of it, even if it was explained to him. Here was a child, who had never and would never experience the world he was fighting for, all but begging to understand the things that were just simply outside his realm of comprehension. To describe to him what the world was, how it worked, and why it worked the way it did, would be like describing color to a blind man, or sound to a deaf man - it was all but impossible. "You just aren't ready. You aren't capable. There are things we've done... Things every human being does... You might never understand." An example, Ducard knew, being that one of those six hundred plus children's parents was still alive, and was less than half of a lightyear from him.

John sighed through his nose. "You stole from us. You lied to us. And you betrayed us." John said for the second time. "I may mostly understand your reasons, Ducard, but that changes nothing. I will tell my brothers what you've told me today. You always told us that communication was the key to victory, that has never been held more true than today. Had you told us all of this from the start, the outcome would have been different, but now, your lack of forthrightness has driven a wedge between your kind and mine. Ones and Twos. In the light, we are united, we stand as one, but behind closed doors, we are separate, we divide into two. This trust we once had in you may never be regained." John said, coldly. "But… You will reap what you sow, SIGMA. You wanted super soldiers better than your best, and you got them… But you enraged and armed them and nearly made them your fundamental enemy. You wanted guardians of mankind, who would stand tall and resolute in the face of all adversity, and you got it… But you alienated them from the very race they were made to protect, and turned them into something more than and less than Human all in one. You wanted living legends that could outshine and outreach the best of you, and you got it… But to get it, you dirtied your hands with the innocence of six hundred and twelve children. You wanted sentinels who would watch over everything in front of them, and not move an inch so as to protect everything behind them, and you got them… But you made them so well that they don't even care for what it is behind them." John leaned forward and spoke bluntly, "you wanted SIGMA Twos. You got them. And you might not be glad that you did.

"We will do as you raised us to. We will be Humanity's resolute, unstoppable, irresistible, and, most damningly, impartial guardians. But think about this, as we fight for you and for everyone else… What has mankind done for us?" He sat up, stood up, and left the room without another word.

A/N:

No real news/statements to be made. Following that last line, I don't really want to say anything, lest I ruin the impact.

So... 'Till next time!

-PFB