"The candidates?"
"Unresponsive to the Chimera strain, for the most part. Only one positive so far."
"I see you recovered our abductee."
"Damien's place was here. Any longer and he'd be too old to begin the augmentation process."
"He tested negative."
"His genetics tested well enough to be a Spartan, even if he's useless to Arrowhead. There's still a war to win, Elias. The Covenant are almost at our doorstep. There's talk even Reach itself could be at risk if things keep going the way they are."
"Reach is not our concern. You're losing sight of the bigger picture, Idris. We're not here to create Spartans. Quite the opposite, in fact. You would do well to remember that."
- Recorded audio intercept, date unknown
Then.
Luke stood at the edge of the play area, nose pressed against the cold glass.
The adults walked by outside. The men in the suits, with the mirrored shades and the grim-set lips. The play area was a circular glass chamber in the centre of an observation hall; thirty feet across and ten up. There was a ball pool in the centre, a climbing frame to the side. Still, he would give anything to be free of its confines.
There were other children here, he knew that much. He'd seen one boy be walked through the other day, his fingers toying with a set of dog tags. The boy's stare was vacant, unblinking. He'd been here before, Luke was nearly sure, but that had been so long ago Luke could barely remember.
Then they'd brought in two more children, on stretchers this time; a boy and a girl. Their brown skin contrasted so brilliantly with his own. They were bandaged; heavily in the case of the boy. He followed across the play area them as they wheeled them by. Luke had to stop once he reached the glass separating him from the corridor beyond.
Soon he was alone again.
The doctors came again later that day. More tests, more swabs and painful jabs.
The next day he had a new play pal. It was the first boy, the one with the jangling tags. He still clutched them, and they glinted under the spotlights high above. He sat cross legged across the chamber. He too had the marks on his neck from where the men with the hypos had tagged him.
Luke approached him. There were few toys in the area; simple antiques for the most part. Building blocks, a rocking chair, and a monkey with cymbals and crazed eyes that unnerved Luke so much that he avoided it entirely. Luke didn't give the toys much time. They were primitive, a facsimile of what grownups thought would entertain him. They underestimated him.
The only thing he did take a shining to was the bear. They gave it to him on his first week. The tests had been hard that day. His back was still enflamed from where the machines had burrowed deep, and not even the numbing gels had stifled the pain.
The bear had been left for him. Its two shiny eyes, its button nose; it's happy up-turned mouth and outstretched arms. Other toys had come, but it was a familiar face in a silver-chrome world full of strangers. So he kept it.
The other boy sat on the floor, his back to the edge of the glass. He was older, though not by much. Like Luke he wore the backless medical gown and pyjama bottoms; blue with white stars on them. Like Luke, he had a barcode stencilled on his inner wrist. Whether the boy felt the chill-kiss of the glass or not wasn't apparent. If he did, he didn't seem to care. He just sat there, eyes staring at the floor. His fingers still clutched the silver tags. They were the kind the soldiers wore around their necks.
Luke sat down in front of him, legs crossed beneath him.
"Hullo." He said.
The boy didn't react. He moved the tags from finger to finger, rolling them through his knuckles over and over.
Luke tried again.
"Hello." Luke said, enunciating slowly and perhaps a little too loudly. Maybe the kid's hearing was bad. He reached out to give the boys arm a shake for a good measure.
The boy's hand clamped around Luke's wrist so fast he let out a startled cry. The boy stared at him, with those startlingly intense, feral eyes. Luke shook himself free, scrambling backwards on all fours. The bear fell to the floor, cast aside in his panic.
Luke avoided the boy after that. A territory of sorts formed on each side of the play area. Luke was too scared to go over and retrieve the bear. It lay there, lost deep in no man's land. Its shining eyes pleaded at him silently, begging for rescue.
Luke turned his back on it, cheeks burning in shame. He busied himself with a toy firetruck; one where the driver bobbed up and down as you pushed the tyres along the floor.
A shadow fell across him. Luke looked up.
The boy stood over him.
"You dropped your bear." The boy said at last. He handed the bear down to Luke.
Luke accepted it wordlessly, confused.
"I'm Damien."
The boy's accent was strange; different to Luke's; it had a lilt to it.
Luke stood up, extended his hand. He'd seen the men in the black coats do the same.
"Luke."
The two boys shook hands.
"Good to meet you Luke. There's others here. I saw them bring in a girl the other day."
"Ugh, girls are the worst."
To the side, scientists quietly took notes. On an observation platform set at the far back of the room, a man in a black coat stood back from it all and smiled.
Years passed. Luke forgot about the bear.
"Keep moving Rash, we're almost there."
"I'm tired!" Rashid complained.
"Well whining your way there isn't going to work!" Luke grunted, shifting the straps of his backpack.
"Are you guys coming?!" Damien called from further up ahead.
They were older now, though still scarcely more than boys.
Rashid had adjusted the slowest to the augmentations; being due another growth spurt, he was still shorter than the others, and it would be another month or two before he grew into his frame. He still moved awkwardly, as his brain struggled to adjust to his newfound dimensions. By contrast Luke was a far more brutish specimen. His arms were exposed, and were dotted with injector scars. None of the others carried so many marks, though Luke thought little of it.
Damien and the others were up ahead, struggling to keep up with Chidinma. Luke had intentionally taken his time. Slow as he was, he would not leave Rash behind.
The run was a sixteen mile run along a winding forest path. The sun was high, and dappled through the swaying leaves. The air was rich and dry, and smelled of fresh soil. Each candidate carried a weighted pack of supplies. Water jugs for the most part. The test was one of discipline Each candidate had to return the water jugs unopened – they would weighed at the end of the run, and punishments would be imposed on those whose packs were less than the prescribed weight.
Rash had drank too much. Luke could tell by the way he carried his pack. It was much too light. His legs were tired, but he had gulped water steadily whenever Damien had called a rest break. Luke knew why: he wanted to lessen his load, to increase his chances of keeping pace with Chidinma and Viktorya. For all his intelligence, Rashid resented being the slowest of them. Luke knew better than to try compete; he was the largest of them by a considerable margin. When it came to do the heavy lifting, himself and Damien would bear the heaviest burden.
"Your water level."
"It's okay." Rashid panted.
"It's not okay. I can tell just by looking at you. Here."
Luke slowed to a jog and shucked off his pack. He peeled back his pack and took out his water bottle. A red line at the halfway mark of the bottle showed the censure line. The lower beneath the line, the greater the punishment to the candidate. Luke had conserved carefully, and still the water was perilously close to the halfway mark. Any more risked punishment at the finish line.
"Here." Luke took Rashid's water bottle from him. It was a full quarter below the marked line. "Knew you'd over indulge."
He started
"You're only going to get in trouble for this." Rashid warned.
"Well better the two of us in a little bit of trouble than you getting in deep."
Sure enough, the next day Luke was called away from the others. He'd seen Rashid doing laps of the concourse, and had expected to be sent to join him shortly thereafter. Not so.
Instead they brought him back to the play room. The very sight of it brought a wave of nostalgia washing over him. They had been assigned straightforward bunks over two years ago. The playroom looked different to how Luke remembered. The ballpool was gone, as was the climbing frame and the scattered toys and beanbags that had once been strewn throughout the area had been cleared. It was eerily sparse now.
Only the bear remained. Beside it were a pair of clippers; a pliers, to be exact.
The bear had been abused. Its stomach had been torn out, and inserted into the bulging stuffing was a small wired device. One of its brown eyes hung loose in its socket.
The man in the black coat stood to the side.
"Candidate Grey."
Luke snapped to attention.
"Sir."
"Your selflessness does you much credit. So much so that you have been volunteered for additional ordnance disposal training."
The man's leather coat squeaked as he indicated the bear with a gloved hand.
"This device has been rigged with a time activated trigger mechanism. You have ten minutes to disable the device. Failure to do so will result in a considerable electro-static shock. Do not disappoint us."
The man in the coat left.
Luke watched the time tick down. Truth be told, he was rather upset by the way they had unceremoniously butchered his favourite bear. Then he realised the clock was still ticking. Nearly a full minute had elapsed. He picked up the pliers –-
Now.
- and closed its beak around another wire. Another snick of the pliers. Luke was larger now, full size; encased in his hulking battle plate beneath the city of New Cadiz; scarred, dented, bruised. And still he was here; him and the bear. The stakes were higher. He thought of the bomb rigging they had found throughout the Admin Tower; of the sheer volume of wires present here. The disembodied voice had not been lying. There were enough trigger-wires here to level half the city.
He worked calmly, humming to himself. He'd done this a thousand times, and failed it hundreds of times. The trick was knowing the feel of the wires; which ones to leave and which ones to isolate and prune. All too often he had miscalculated and felt the unceremonious slap of a concussion grenade at close range. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd awoken beneath the lights of the med bay, groggy from where a concussive slap had knocked him silly.
There was no such room for error now.
Kaizen howled, immobilised in her own skin; a prisoner of her own mind.
She screamed and roared and bared her teeth, spitting with rage. She thrashed at the walls and raked her finger nails across the floor. And yet nothing. Still she was frozen. Still her subroutines ran amok; as though her limbs had taken on a mind of their own and pulled levers she herself would never dare touch. Her fingers gouged out eyes and throttled helpless throats. Granica V burned, and her hands had been made to carry the torch.
It was the invasiveness of it. To be so manipulated. To be so used.
Her rage subsided. In her inner self, in her deepest mind, she closed her eyes and grew calm.
Her influence had been split over the entire planets orbital and suborbital network. From ChatterNet accounts to Waypoint lines further afield, she had been split and disseminated a million times over. She focused on one point at a time, splitting herself further; diluting their control further. The smallest micro-network, the most inconsequential household appliance. Those controlling her had taken a monopoly of the larger systems, so it was in these small unlikely redoubts – datapads, air processors, toaster ovens – where she made her stand.
She copied herself, impressing layer upon layer of newfound security pathways. Every fibre of her processing focused on her counter-intrusion response mechanisms. A counter virus was developed in microseconds, one designed to track and reclaim the code unleashed by the control phrase "undid iridium". She used the excess data bleed of the nets, the slush, channelling it as an engineer would a river. Gathering it, forcing its speed; increasing its velocity. Shaping it and directing it back at the enflamed networks encapsulating Granica V.
On and on her momentum surged, gaining a critical mass. Soon she was in every viable network in the planet; poised to strike in a billion places all at once.
She would burst this dam encasing her. And then she would drown her enemies in a single, terrifying wave.
Pershing was tracking the A.I's activity on the system.
"Sir, we're running out of time. I'm registering signal activity across the entire grid. The A.I. is regaining control."
Hedeker was watching the Spartan's progress on the monitors.
"Sir." Pershing repeated.
"I heard you, Pershing." Hedeker sighed, "Very well. Get me Petrovic."
"Patching you through now, Sir."
The Koslovic engineer's husky voice was tinny on the com.
"Time to wrap this up. Prep the secondary control trigger."
There was a pause.
"Triggers prepped. Awaiting your signal."
Hedeker heaved another sighed as he went back to watching the monitors. One finger hovered over the control button; a small red circle.
"A pity we couldn't stay longer. And to think I was having so much fun."
He stabbed the button.
The timer reached ten seconds. Seven. Luke worked the pliers methodically, expertly clipping wire after wire. A carpet of chopped and exposed wires lay at his feet.
Sweat drenched his brow, trickling down his temples in icy droplets. The bear's glassy eyes and button nose stared up at him, pleading.
With a final meaty chunk he snipped the last wire.
The timer froze at three seconds.
"I did it!" he grinned.
The bear stared up at him, its open mouth and red tongue seeming to beam up at him in joy. They had saved the city.
Then the world flashed in light and heat and in an instant he knew no more.