I would like to apologize in advance for the explanation in here. I know I could have said it better, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how. Please bear with me as the story does pick up the pace after all this talking.
The next morning, the Blues receive a message from Sarge asking to meet them near the entrance to the cave. The Reds receive a similar message from Wash. I hid in the cave the night before to wait for them. When both teams arrive, they quickly realize that none of them had sent the messages.
"I don't understand" Agent Washington says. "If you didn't tell us to come here, then who did?"
"That would be me" I say, stepping out of the cave. I raise my hands over my head as each of them trains their rifles on me. "Sorry for the deception, but I needed all of you in one place so we could talk."
"Who are you?" Wash asks, stepping forward.
"My name is Silver" I answer.
Before Wash has a chance to ask me anything else, Caboose steps in front of him and stares at me. "Silver? Is that really you?" He asks loudly.
I smile and lower my hands. "Yep. It's me. Nice to see you again, Carbon." Caboose reaches out and hugs me with such force I think my ribs are going to crack. "Whoa, careful, Carbon. Not so tight" I say, squeezing out of his grip.
"Sorry" Caboose mutters sheepishly.
"Hold on, you two need to explain what's going on here" Wash says. "Caboose, you know this girl?"
"Oh, yes" Caboose says, turning to face Wash and the others. "She is my older sister."
"Hi", I say, waving while keeping one arm around Caboose's shoulder.
"Why are you here?" Wash asks. "And why do you keep calling him Carbon?"
"I'm calling him Carbon because that's his name" I say. I let go of Caboose and step back to where I'm facing the entire group. "As for why I'm here, I thought that would be obvious. I'm here to rescue you." I wait a moment for their cheers to die down before adding "and, I need your help."
"I knew it! There's always some sort of catch" Grif mutters.
"What do you need our help with?" Wash asks suspiciously.
"I need you to help me track down a war criminal scientist who's hiding from the UNSC."
"We just did that like, a week ago" Tucker says. "The Director is gone."
"Different scientist" I say. "Have any of you ever heard of Doctor Han?"
"Oh! Yes! I have heard of her" Caboose shouts.
"I know you have, Carbon. I was asking them" I explain to him.
"The name does sound familiar" Wash says after thinking for a moment.
"She was one of many working on the UNSC's Samson Initiative, the program they started at the beginning of the war to find a way to combat the naturally stronger and faster Covenant races. Doctor Han, along with the famous Doctor Halsey, Project Freelancer's Director, Leonard Church, and many others, was a part of this program. They each received funding from the UNSC for the research and development of super soldiers. In the end, it was Dr. Halsey's Spartans that won the war. Still, even after the war was over, many of the researchers continued their work. Dr. Han was one of the ones who kept working after the war.
Dr. Han took a different approach to the problem than the others did. All of them wanted to find a way to augment human abilities with machinery. Dr. Han wanted to augment humanity from within. She was a geneticist. She thought that if she could alter a human's genetic code to allow for capabilities like those of the Covenant, then we would be able to beat them. The process was a success, but the subjects she created took too long to grow. It was much more cost beneficial to put armor on an already trained, adult soldier than to raise soldiers from children."
"Wait" Tucker interrupts me. "You mean she actually grew genetically altered people to train as soldiers?"
I nod my head. "Yes, she did."
Simmons snorts. "It sounds like those comics Grif is always talking about."
"It's very possible that that's where she got her ideas from" I say.
"How is she a criminal, though?" Wash asks. "I mean, I can see the moral issues with what she did, obviously, but a lot of things like that were overlooked during the war."
I shake my head. "Dr. Han isn't in trouble because of her experiments. She's in trouble because of what she made us do."
"Us? You mean you're one of the people she made?"
"Yes" I say. "Sorry, this is all very difficult to explain and this is really the first time I've spoken to someone who didn't already know about it." I take a deep breath before continuing. "Doctor Han created us to fight the Covenant. We were raised and trained our entire lives to be soldiers. We were each created with abilities derived from either animal DNA or DNA from Covenant species.
"When Master Chief and the Arbiter brought peace between humanity and the covenant, Dr. Han couldn't accept it. Her family had died because of the war and she wanted revenge. Rather than telling us that the war was over, she told us it was finally time to use our training. She sent two experiments, myself and one other, to a Sangheli colony. Dr. Han told us we would be attacking a high value military target. The truth was that we were committing genocide." I close my eyes for a moment, trying to shut out the memories. "I realized what was happening eventually, although it was too late to stop the fight from happening. I had already killed so many before I realized we had been lied to. I tried to explain to the people there what had happened, but they wouldn't listen and just tried to shoot me. I really can't blame them, considering what I had done. I managed to get off that planet and went back to confront Dr. Han, but she wasn't there. She had sent all the other experiments on similar missions to mine, and then run. I guess she realized we would figure out what had happened, or she knew the UNSC would come after her.
"I waited in the lab for a long time. I had no idea where to go or what to do. Eventually the other experiments came back. They were all scared and confused. We told each other what had happened and decided our best chance was to run. We knew we would be executed for our crimes. I would have accepted it if it was just me, but I couldn't let he others be killed. Some of them are still children. I thought our only chance would be to find Dr. Han. Maybe then we could prove that this hadn't been our fault."
"Mom did all that?" Caboose asks in a quiet, horrified voice.
I nod. "She's done a lot of horrible things."
"What do you need our help for?" Tucker asks. "If you're so highly trained, why don't you just find her yourself?"
"Well to start, most of our training comes from books. Aside from myself and a few of the older ones, we don't have any field experience. It would be nice to have some real soldiers there to help us out." I look at Wash as I say the last part, knowing from the others' files that they might not all count as real soldiers. "But the truth is, I actually didn't come here for you. I came here to find Epsilon."
"What do you want Church for?" Tucker asks.
"According to his file, he's the memory fragment of the AI Alpha, who was created from Leonard Church, Project Freelancer's Director. Dr Han worked with the Director from time to time, and they even traded resources on occasion. I need information on a deal they made that could help me track her down. And the only one left alive who might know about this deal is Epsilon."
"If you have our files and know about Epsilon, then you've obviously hacked the UNSC's databases" Wash says. I smile sheepishly before he continues. "Why don't you just get whatever information you need from their records on Project Freelancer?"
I shake my head. "That won't work. The Director wouldn't have documented these trades. They were highly illegal."
"What could he have traded that he would be that paranoid about? The only information he was ever that careful with was stuff involving the AIs."
"He traded Freelancer tech for some of Doctor Han's experiments" I explain.
"And by experiments, you mean actual people?" Simmons asks. I nod.
"She actually sold people, genetically enhanced people, to Project Freelancer?" Wash asks in disbelief. I nod again. "Who were they?"
I jerk my thumb at Caboose, who's standing next to me. "Well, there's Carbon, for one."
"Caboose is a super soldier?!" Tucker yells.
"He said she's his sister. I thought that part was obvious," Wash comments.
"You can't have genetically altered people on your team! That's cheating!" Sarge shouts.
"We do have a robot on our team, sir," Simmons points out.
"And don't forget the fact that Simmons is technically a cyborge," Grif adds.
Sarge grumbles halfheartedly, having no decent argument against this.
"You never wondered why he was so strong?" I ask Tucker.
Tucker shrugs. "We always thought it was God's way of compensating."
"I don't think God had very much to do with this." I say.
"Okay, so we know Caboose was one of the experiments. Who else?"
Wash looks to me for an answer, but I'm not listening. Something's caught my attention. I slowly turn in a circle, sniffing the air while looking for any sign of movement.
"What's wrong?" Wash asks, raising his gun and looking around as well.
"I'm not sure" I say pulling off my helmet. My white hair falls down over my shoulders as I continue searching. "I thought I smelled…" I trail off as I finally recognize the scent in the air. At the same moment I notice the dot of red light on the back of the orange soldier's head. I tackle him to the ground and shout "Sniper!" at the same moment the shot fires.
So, there it is. Next chapter will have more action, I promise. Please let me know if you have any ideas how I could improve this chapter, as I am not very happy with it. Constructive criticism is always welcome, and thanks for taking the time to read my story.
-J