Chapter Seventeen: Mitchell Memories
November 18, 2552 1600 hours
Mitchell Residence
North America
Nicole stood looking out the window at the snow falling on the grass, smiling as Laura wrestled with Skeeter in the powdery whiteness. It was still too early for snow, but the weather forecast only called for a few flurries, which would melt as soon as the sun came out. Remembering how she'd met Laura the first time, and remembering how she'd forced the truth out of her a few years later, she wondered if there was any way to make up for what ONI had done.
September 4, 2527
Ross High School
North America
The young girl hid in the restroom stall, crying bitterly. The other students teased her mercilessly, even though they were high school students. Why can't they just leave me alone? Can I help it if I have cancer? Hearing the bathroom door open, she feared the worst: more bullying. The footsteps stopped in front of her stall, but the voice that followed was not what she'd expected: it was gentle, musical, and friendly.
"Are you alright? Is there anything I can do to help you?"
"Please, just go away and leave me alone," she sobbed, nearly choking on the words.
"I can't do that," the kindly voice replied. "You're upset, and you need someone to talk to, or to vent your frustrations on if nothing else."
A hand gripped the top edge of the door and pulled it open. The girl recognized the face of the girl on the other side: she'd just transferred in from out-of-state. Her dark brown hair curled a little around her face, and her dark eyes sparkled with mischief and intelligence behind a pair of silver glasses. She looked really strong, and was about six or seven feet tall, but her smile was kind.
"You're in band, aren't you? Horn player?" When she nodded, the dark-haired girl continued, "Band starts up in about two minutes, and you know how Lewis gets when people walk in late. Come on, we're playing some fun stuff today."
"I really don't want to go."
"I can appreciate it." She smiled a little at the shocked look on the other girl's face. "I know how it feels to be bullied for no reason, believe it or not. They still bully me here, just because I'm different, even though it's not my fault I'm new here—any more than it's your fault you have cancer. The trick is to remind yourself that you're smarter than they'll ever hope to be, because in the long run you are. Book smarts are all well and good, but compassion—that you can't learn from any book, and that's what makes you smarter than them."
"I never really thought of it that way before."
"Well, then why don't you? Didn't any of your friends tell you that?"
"I don't really have any friends. Once I got cancer, they all disappeared, especially after the treatments started." She sighed and touched the thinning strands of blonde hair that hung limply around her head.
"Well, you have one now. I'm Laura Morisson."
"Nicole Mitchell."
"Nice to meet you, Nicole, and don't worry—things will look up. I promise."
The next day, Nicole walked in and was promptly surrounded by the bullies from yesterday. They were starting to poke fun at her thin hair when a clear voice rang out in the hallway.
"Hey, why don't you pick on somebody more your size?" It was Laura, the girl who'd offered her friendship yesterday, but Nicole almost didn't recognize her: she'd shaved off all her long brown hair! The girl's bald head sent the bullies into shock, but one found his voice.
"So, the odd woman out decided to stick up for Baldy, has she?"
"Shove it, meathead. At least I'm doing the right thing. Why do you pick on someone who's better than you?"
"At least I'm not bald," one of them said.
"No, but you lack kindness and understanding. Tell me, have you ever seen someone truly suffer? Have you ever suffered from illness or pain and had no one to help you along? Have you ever been abandoned by people you thought you could trust because of something you have no control over? Have you ever in your entire life known what it feels like to be really and truly alone?" None of them answered. "Then next time you think of bullying someone who seems different, think of that." With that parting shot, Laura led Nicole away.
"Told you things would get better," she said with a small smile.
"Your hair—" Nicole began.
"Is waiting to be made into a wig for you, if you wish. Or it will go to another cancer patient in need. Fear not, my hair will grow back, longer and thicker than it was before I cut it all off." She smiled, and for the first time in many years Nicole felt happy.
May 25, 2529
Mitchell Residence
North America
For three years, Nicole and Laura were the best and truest of friends. Nicole's parents even approved of her new friend, especially when she'd offered her own hair for Nicole. They spent a lot of time together, but Nicole was worried by a number of mysteries surrounding her new friend. One was the way she took the insults, beatings, and bullying hurled at her from almost every direction: she acted like it didn't matter, which most people never did. Another thing was how tall and broad her friend seemed, she looked like she could play football and win. Then there was her extremely adult way of talking, which stood in sharp contrast to the fact that she struggled with her grades. One afternoon, shortly after graduation, these mysteries suddenly came into sharper focus when Nicole's older brother Nathan, home on leave from military training, opened the newspaper.
"Nicole, have you heard anything from Laura recently?"
"No. Why?"
"Because according to the obituaries, she's been dead for a couple days. There's mention of a private ceremony, her ashes were cremated and scattered along the Sandusky River, near her house."
"That's impossible! Her parents would have told me if that were true!" jumping to a communications screen, Nicole dialed her friend's home and got her mother on the line.
"Mrs. Morisson, is Laura okay? I just saw in the papers—"
"I'm sorry, Nicole. Laura's dead. I'm sorry we didn't tell you before, but Pete wanted a private ceremony before he was shipped out." Laura's father was a Navy officer.
"Mrs. Morisson, I can't believe it. I never would have thought Laura would die. What happened?"
Laura's mom looked bothered for a moment.
"Laura had cancer," she said at last. "We didn't realize it until it was too late. I'm sorry, Nicole. You were her best friend, and her only real friend." The viewscreen blinked off, but not before Nicole noticed the woman's eyes were empty of tears, unusual in a parent whose child had just died. In fact, she seemed more worried than sad.
"Nathe, something's not right. I'm heading over there."
"Mind if I tag along? Mrs. Morisson's hiding something, that much I noticed, and I want to know what."
They both headed over, and arrived just in time to see Laura's mom head out of the door in a white lab coat and hightail it into the backyard, where a young woman in a workout suit was doing stretches. Nicole's breath caught in her throat. Laura's alive! But what's going on? Nathan kept driving and parked the car a few blocks away, then they snuck back to see what was going on, and why Laura's mom had lied to them.
As they watched, Laura went into a series of karate moves, apparently working out in her own backyard; at one point, Nicole noticed the absence of the silver glasses Laura always wore. Since it was early evening, it was dark enough to conceal the two siblings as they watched Laura spin, apparently having done this for years. She could have fought back and injured the kids that beat her up! Why didn't she? Nicole wondered. Right as she finished thinking this, Laura stopped and looked right at them, even though it had gotten too dark to see.
"Nicole! Nathan! What are you doing here? How much did you see?" Laura almost sounded scared, which struck them both as odd.
"Laura, what is going on? First we see in the paper that you're dead, then your mom says you had cancer, and now you're suddenly alive and a black belt? What's going on here?"
"Damn!" Laura swore. "Nick, Nathe, you shouldn't be here. If they find out…it may be already too late. Just get out of here, and don't come back. Don't ever come looking for me, do you understand? Dammit, just go!"
"Not until you tell us what's going on. Nathe and I aren't leaving here until you do—you owe us that much."
Laura suddenly got really quiet, and Nicole could almost see the worry and concentration on her friend's face. "Come inside, but be quiet. Let me go first, and I'll tell you when it's safe." After a few minutes, Laura called them inside. She sat them down in chairs in the living room and began to tell them everything.
"You realize you've put all of us in a dangerous position: my family, your family, and yourselves not the least. I know I owe you an explanation, but I'm going to be breaking a lot of rules just by telling you all this. Everything you're going to hear is classified under the highest levels of the UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, and if you tell anyone, all of us could die.
"When I was four years old, the spooks at ONI decided they needed a 'test case' for one of their special warfare projects. They ran a genetics study and figured I was the perfect candidate. Mom and Dad volunteered me for active duty, on the condition that I be allowed to visit them once in a while. I've been training as a soldier ever since then, and once I hit twelve I was as lethal as any Marine, and as stealthy as any of their SpecOps troopers.
"At the time they told me I was the only one in the project, but then ONI made the mistake of sending me to Reach to observe my interactions with the other 75 trainees in the program. Once I got back, I did some hacking and found out the truth. There's been conflicts with them ever since, but they don't know how much I know, and I'm trying to keep it that way. Once I turned fourteen, they…did things to me: experimental procedures designed to make me faster, stronger, smarter, and more durable. I barely survived, so they thought the kids on Reach had better odds. Thirty of them didn't make it, and twelve were permanently incapacitated. I don't know about the rest."
"What did they do to you?" Nicole asked, her tone unusually quiet.
"You don't want to know, trust me."
"There's one thing I don't understand, well actually there's a lot I still don't understand," Nathan voiced. "For one thing, how did you convince them to let you come here for three years? And why the bogus obituary?"
"Once I was conscripted for the program, ONI eliminated all traces of me—according to public records, I died of pneumonia at age four. I still came back to visit, but no one could ever get close to me except my family—and sometimes not even them, because of my training. No matter where I was or what company I was in, I was always alone, and after awhile it started to wear me down. After pointing this out to the brass, I was able to convince them to let me attend high school; we had to do a lot of fact-fudging to make me seem normal, and we forged a transcript and transfer notice to silence suspicions. I even made myself a pair of glasses to look more normal—plain window glass was all it was. After years of being trained for intelligence and combat, it was a challenge to try and blend in."
"You seemed to do fairly well at it," Nicole commented dryly. A lot of things were beginning to make sense now, but Laura's story was still creepy in the highest degree. Laura saw the look on her face and understood.
"I know, it's a lot to absorb in such a short time; be glad I'm just giving you the bare basics. Anyway, once I got into high school, I realized I'd have to dumb myself down a lot, and not fight back when I was being bullied. As hard as it was for me to stand and take the beatings without swinging back, it was even harder to act dumber than I was academically. It felt so wrong that I started doing two sets of each assignment: one perfectly correct and one to turn in to the teacher. At first, I enjoyed the whole idea of fooling everyone in the school, but after I met you, I did it more so that I could fit in, so I could be the friend you deserved for a little while." Laura's dark eyes filled with tears, something Nicole had never seen in all the years at school. "Every time you talked about going away to college, I wanted to tell you the truth. The fake death notice was so I could disappear and return to 'active' duty without any awkward questions being raised. I wanted you to know the truth so many times, but telling you would have signed your death warrants. If ONI ever finds out that outsiders know about me, or any others like me, they'd see to it that those people disappeared. I didn't want you to die on my account."
"We're not going to die," Nathan spoke sharply. "Nicole and I have too many people who would ask questions, and I just enlisted with the Marine Corps. Any disappearances from us would raise a lot of questions."
"Still, don't talk about this to anyone, and watch what you say in your house. ONI keeps bugging ours, which is why I made you wait while I disabled them. There's a chance your place might be bugged as well. Be careful, and watch the shadows."
November 18, 2552 1615 hours
Mitchell Residence
North America
Nicole was still looking out the window when Laura came back in with Skeeter; she was quiet enough, but the little corgi was making more than enough noise for both of them, between barking and running around on the floor. Laughing at the amount of racket, Nicole wandered into the living room, where Laura was seated on the floor near a sofa.
"I would have thought he'd wear himself out playing in the snow," she laughed as Laura threw a ball for him to chase after.
"You of all people should know how hyper corgis can be," Laura replied, melodic laughter lacing her voice. "And Skeeter is one very energetic little guy." At that moment, Skeeter jumped up and started licking her face furiously, causing her to laugh even more than she already was.
"Okay, Skeeter-butt, down! Down!"
Skeeter finally wore himself out, after about ten more minutes of hyperactivity. When he went to lie down under one of the tables, Nicole looked at Laura.
"You never did tell me what they did to you, the procedures they used."
"As I said, you wouldn't have wanted to know. Although I suppose by now you deserve to." A blank stare came in her eyes as she recalled the files she's read.
"I was transported to a space station for the procedure, since the end result would require a ton of microgravity therapy. Once I was up there, ONI doctors grafted armor-type material on my skeleton, used special injections to increase my muscle density, boosted my thyroid output to make me larger and stronger, increased the blood flow to my eyes so I could see farther and clearer, and did something to my brain to increase my memory and reflexes. I don't really remember the operation itself, but the results—" she trailed off. After a while she continued:
"I'd wake up in the morning and my eyes would bleed a bit, plus I could barely walk. Most of the time I'd walk a few steps and land on my ass. Everything in my body hurt, especially in my bones—it felt like someone had put shards of glass inside my skeleton. When I wasn't doing microgravity therapy or learning how to use standard military equipment, I was being injected with proteins and having to eat five meals a day. All my coordination was gone, and it took a long time to get it back. By the time I did, though, I was faster and stronger than the simulations had predicted. I can lift three times my own weight, move at close to 60kph, and see in the dark. I can also hear just about anything, and my memory is even longer than they had hoped. ONI got what they wanted: an intelligent killing machine. What they didn't expect was that their killing machine on Earth would have a conscience, and a heart. I'm everything they wanted, and at the same time I'm everything they didn't want."
"They did all that to you?" Nicole whispered.
"Yes, they did, and they did it to the others too. A lot of the Spartans on Reach didn't even make it, but since I barely survived with my 'flawed' training, the bastards figured they'd have a much better chance of survival. For them, the risks were acceptable." She frowned. "And since their 'superior' killing machines have been racking up successes, they've buried me here except for the occasional suicidal black op. I've become a useless weapon, so they'll try to throw me out. What they didn't count on was my keeping one step ahead of them."
"And there's nothing we can do to expose them? No way to tell the world the truth?"
"Not without committing treasonable offenses and getting innocent people killed, no. I have to deal with this on my own."
"No you don't, Laura. You've got your mom, Lorienna, your dad and your brothers--whenever they get back, and you've got Nathe and me." Laura smiled at that, unaware that Lorienna and Cortana were listening in, unaware that Cortana was already making plans to give her four more people to rely on. The first step is to connect her to the Spartans, and it seems Linda is fitting the bill perfectly. Maybe there's hope yet.