It feels like a fever dream, lying on my back, struggling to breathe, burning up like Alessa in Silent Hill. I'm short of breath, my joints and muscles ache, and I toss and turn on my back, thrashing my arms, waving them in the air like a drowning man. It's hard to tell what I'm actually doing, and what I just falsely perceive myself doing. I might not be waving my arms at all, maybe I'm just epileptically writhing in a pool of my own blood. Maybe I'm already dead, and I don't know it yet.
The steady, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor clings to my mind as I slip in and out of consciousness. I'm not dead, but it's hard to tell what I'm seeing in my waking moments, and what my splintering mind conjures during my fits of unconsciousness. I catch short glimpses of my surroundings; men in white medical scrubs, rushing around a room filled with medical equipment against the far wall in front of me. I think I'm still on the stretcher.
I struggle to remain awake against whatever they have in the I.V drip to my left, trickling a clear liquid into straight into my veins. I try to push my way to the surface when…
Oh fuck, not again.
I can feel it coming on, as a blinding pain starts in my head. It feels like someone is stabbing me in the back of the skull, as well as my back, chest, and shoulders. Like someone's pounding nails into my eyes. It hurts so much I scream, I have to. I feel like I'm in hell. I can't help but thrash and scream in pain, until I feel a firm hand on my right shoulder.
I look up, into the face of a woman standing over me. I notice her piercing eyes and drawn back hair, among her other distinct facial features.
"Hey, relax…" She tells me, in the tone a sergeant addresses a rookie.
"What?!" I demand, cutting her off. "Who are you?! Where-" But that's all I can get out before the taste of copper in my mouth chokes me. Blood pools in the back of my mouth, thick and metallic, making it hard for me to breathe. I gag and wretch, violently spitting it out onto the floor. Drowning in my own blood? I don't plan on dying like this.
"Calm down, you're gonna be fine. Listen, my name is Sarah Palmer, and we're doing everything we can here to…"
That's the last thing I hear her say before my head begins to spin and ache. My ears ring so loud I go deaf. It hurts so bad I go blind.
I scream before I black out.
When I come back, I'm still in the room, still on the stretcher, with Palmer still there next to me, but this time something is wrong. When I look at her face, her eyes are a bit wider, a bit more concerned. When I look around the room, the people in white look stunned, and a little bit scared. Everyone's staring at me.
"Micky," Palmer again, leaning on the side of the stretcher rail, looking at me, "do you know what's happening?" She asks. She knows my name. The grim look on her face tells me something is very, very wrong.
"I… I can't feel my legs," I get out, before I'm choked again. My eyes leak and fill with blood in their sockets, my ears too.
Palmer wipes the blood from my eyes. "Okay Micky, we're doing everything we can to keep you alive right now, but you need to tell us what's going on."
All I can do is groan; "It hurts," through grit teeth.
And I black out.
Spartan Commander Sarah Palmer walked down the hall, through the large sliding door, and onto the bridge of Infinity. Lasky was waiting at the holotable, stubbornly staring into the display with determination. She could see it on his face and in his eyes. She knew that meant something was wrong.
The captain had sent her to the infirmary to visit the dying man; their new addition to Infinity. He was supposed to be a great rifleman, beyond Special Forces, so good that ONI would only deploy him in special situations.
What she had seen of him wasn't what she expected.
"Commander Palmer," Lasky addressed her, "how's the patient?"
"Dying." She replied.
"I understand," he told her, "they're sending someone to operate on him. He'll be fine."
"He didn't look 'fine' to me," She told him, "he looked like he was dying."
"He'll be fine." Lasky reassured her.
As their eyes met, she saw the grim look on his face; the look they had exchanged countless times in this very room. A look she'd come to recognize well, during their command under Del Rio, before Lasky was Captain.
She had entered the room where the man they enigmatically referred to as "Micky" and "The Rifleman" was being held, expecting him to be ready for duty, not delirious and covered in his own blood. He wore all black, but his face was stained and streaked with blood around his eyes. It was all over his shirt and pants too, not to mention his hands.
As he tossed and turned, she tried to comfort the dying man, like she had done countless time with other soldiers. An act of sympathy from one soldier to another, but it only seemed to make him afraid. Then again, as a veteran, he could probably tell that meant he wasn't doing well.
As the heart monitor displayed that he had flatlined, and let out the familiar ring she knew all too well, she reluctantly expected his body to go limp, dead.
Instead, to her surprise, he arched his back and screamed in pain.
What she heard, what he sounded like, didn't sound like a person. His screams were horrible, the worst she had ever heard, louder than any dying man she had every heard before, so loud it was the only thing anyone in the room could hear. He must have been a drill sergeant at some point.
His body went limp as the horrible screaming ended. Blood was leaking from his ears, and pooling in his eyes, not to mention trickling from the corner of his mouth. He bled profusely all over the floor.
But to her surprise, his heart began beating again. The heart monitor resumed its rhythmic beeping, as if nothing had even happened. She couldn't believe her eyes as he stirred, like he was waking up from a nightmare. He looked around, gathering his bearings, until his eyes met hers. They were so red and bloodshot, unbelievable.
She wiped the blood out of his eyes with her fingers, even though she wasn't wearing white gloves. It didn't bother her, she didn't care; she knew that, as a veteran, that's what you do for a dying soldier. It had been a long time since Private Sarah Palmer had learned that lesson. In all that time she'd become as the first Sergeant to teach her, God rest the old bastard's soul. Better at times.
She wiped the blood off on her cargos, and tried talking to Micky again. But every time he spoke he'd be cut off by his own blood in his mouth. He'd make a sick choking sound and more trickled from his mouth. She tried helping him – unlike the medical staff, who seemed more interested in buzzing around their machines than tending to the dying soldier on life support in the room with them, choking on his own blood.
She didn't get very far.
When she asked him if he knew what was going on, he screamed again. This time it was even louder, the most horrible scream she'd ever heard. He was deafening, she guessed he could yell louder than any officer she'd heard before, but there was something off-putting about his screams. Too guttural, too inhuman, she couldn't guess the kind of pain he was in.
He had one hell of a set of lungs, because the screaming went on for what felt like an eternity, it sure got everyone's attention.
Just when she thought it couldn't get any worse, his body shuddered and wretched violently from his arched posture, like a giant invisible hand had gripped him and snapped his spine. Blood spurted from his mouth, and some from his ears and nose. His body went limp as the heart monitor rang out, telling that his heart had stopped. That was when then medical staff took him out of the room, presumably to emergency surgery.
Captain Lasky stared at her as she told him. He looked concerned.
"We've got someone who can operate on him. Came this morning. ONI guy, knows what he's doing. They say he's gonna make it." He assured her.
"And if he doesn't?" She asked. Not exactly concerned, but Micky came with high recommendations, and if he didn't make it, they'd need a replacement.
Tom gave her his yeah-I-know look, and reassured her, "He'll be fine."
She thought about it for a while. That was something Tom seemed to say a lot, usually it was we'll be fine. She knew he had to be the one to reassure them both when things were bad, but she had to wonder how confident he was that they really would make it through this next assignment.
And even then, she didn't know if she wanted Micky around anyways. She already had a crew, a reliable network of people she knew, people she trusted. They'd been through it all- seen all the horrors the galaxy could throw at them, together, and come out the other side as weathered veterans. But now she was expected to get along with the new guy? In all her memory she'd never thought the FNG was a good addition. Micky was not her friend, just some new guy that got thrown in the same boat.
Sure, she had been a replacement once, but this was different. All people had a certain composition of traits and characteristics that made up their personality, like chemicals. Depending on what kind of a person you were, you could be compatible with some people, reasonably or instantly, or simply inherently unable to get along. You'd never know until you met them. The new guy could be volatile; mixing him with her people might not be a good idea. If he didn't get along with them, it would be like a chemical reaction…
Put the wrong people together, and jeez... Hit the deck.
As Sarah returned to her bunk, she found herself thinking about her time in one of her old outfits, and the time they got replacements. Except that time the FNG ended up being her platoon leader.
Well, it won't be that bad. She thought. He'll listen to me. He has to.
Did anyone read those Splinter Cell books written by Raymond Benson? If you have, then you'll know what I'm going for. If you haven't, then you totally should. And YES, in the future, Silent Hill with still be a thing!
Anyways, yes, the cast of Halo 4 is in this. I understand it might be cringe worthy if I try to write these characters, but I'm hoping I can do a good enough job to make it presentable, if not enjoyable.