Captured

January 20, 2552 0003hrs
CCR-Class Research Vessel Mercy and Devotion. Slipspace
Staff Sergeant Nick Walker/ Science Major Naki 'Cimutee

A consistent buzzing sound pierced the haze in Nick's mind and stirred him to some semblance of awareness. The sound of servos and strange beeping sounds from his left joined the general buzz. There was another kind of deeper sound from somewhere in front of him, it was muffled and indecipherable with his current state of mind.

Pain lanced up his left arm, and suddenly he could feel it again. It hurt so badly he unconsciously grit his teeth together. There was movement on his skin there, something was working on his arm.

Slowly, Nick became aware that he was lying on his back. He had apparently regained the ability to open his eyes because he was able to blink the tears away. There was a whole cluster of small robotic arms tapping away inside the burned skin of his left arm. It did not resemble anything he had seen before.

It was purple.

xxx

Naki 'Cimutee quietly drummed her fingers across the table in her lab. The Major she had sent down with 'Tallaham had reported that the operation was a success, but had been very lacking with details on the Demon's status. It was somewhat unusual that the Major had been the one to report in, and not D`rok, but there had been no casualties beside a handful of Unggoy and a few Kig Yar.

The Phantom had returned from the surface almost an hour ago, but there was still no Demon on her operating table. Something had to have gone wrong.

She tapped the controls on the inside of her vambrace and opened a direct line to D`rok. It took him a bit longer than it should have to accept the connection.

"Miss 'Cimutee..." He began.

"SpecOps Officer Tallaham. Please explain what is taking so long to deliver my package?" Naki sighed.

"...there was an incident on the surface and the Demon was killed-" he said.

"What?!" She was immediately angry with the Major. His report had lied to her, they may not get a chance like this again.

"Doctor, please, let me continue." He paused ro see if she would interject again.

"Fine, explain." Naki sighed again and leaned further against the lab table.

"One of the Unggoy was too accurate and killed the Demon when the ambush was sprung. We did recover a Human, one of the shock troopers had been there as well. It was gravely injured, but Ultra 'Carunmee dismissed me and took over the operation."

Naki frowned at the mention of Zeik's name, and irritation burned across her forehead. She pointed at one of her assistants. "Find out where Ultra 'Carunmee is at once." She closed the call with D`rok and headed for the door.

She got directions to a medical bay near the primary gravity lift from one of her assistants and made her way there. Naki keyed open the door and put her hands on her hips. "What the hell is going on here?"

Zeik spun around and seemed to put himself between her and the laboratory's single active surgery suite. There was a Human body on one of the tables, but they were not wearing a military uniform. There was a set of Human gear, but it was not a full set; they could not have removed it from the Human. A blood cycler was attached to the body and it led to a capture bin, then there was another red splattered bin attached to the surgery suite.

"A little... Work needed to be done before we could bring it to you. It lost too much blood, so a transfusion was required." Zeik reasoned.

Naki strode up to Zeik and put a finger on his chest, between the plates of his cuirass. "Humans have different blood types just like we do, Zeik!"

She snatched the Human shoulder plate off the table and looked at it. They liked to provide medical information on white info squares, for quick treatment and such, but it had been a good twenty-eight years since she had learned what the bold AB meant. Naki rubbed her forehead and coerced the memory forward; AB was a universal recipient, the Human would be fine. She conveyed that to the others in the room.

"I apologize Naki," Zeik said. "I am not well studied in Human biology."

"Zeik," Naki gave him a playful smirk. "You're not well studied in biology in general." Their romantic relationship may have ended last year, but they were still good friends.

"Oh miss 'Cimutee, I am hurt," he laughed.

She glanced down at the shoulder pad again to see if there was any more relevant information. "So otherwise, how is the subject?"

Zeik's reply went unheard to Naki; two small words sent a chill down her spine. It had to be a coincidence. There was no way it was possible. Printed at the bottom of the information plate was the name: Walker, Nicholas, C.

"Let me see him." She said suddenly. The sound in her voice surprised her, she had given up on this decades ago, why did her chest feel so strange?

Ziek gave a confused look toward her but stepped to the side of the pod and activated the cover's transparency. The human was here, staring wide-eyed out at the Sangheili looking in. Beneath the blood and mud that coated the face, Naki saw familiar features. A little older and a little more weathered, but it was him.

There was no recognition in his eyes, she knew she looked nothing like the person he knew, she was not the person he knew. Not anymore.

"Ta-" Naki caught herself, and then took a breath. She put on a straight face for the others in her room; she was unsure of how much of what she felt had made it to her face, but it had to be something. "Make sure that he is well taken care of. I need the strongest subject I can get for this experiment." She turned and made for the door. "I'll be in my lab, awaiting your word."

xxx

Nick's mind ran in circles, the Covenant hardly ever took prisoners, let alone give them medical treatment. Maybe he had been picked up by Jackal pirates, it was very unlikely, but it seemed more plausible than the initial idea.

He tried to shuffle over, away from the mechanical arms, but his left shoulder was held in place by some sort of energy field.

The inside of the pod was only lit by a single screen just over his head; it was probably built for someone much larger than him. With his free arm, he reached up and tapped it. It flashed red and a soft buzzer sounded; he was locked out.

"Fuck," he muttered. The machine still continued to work on his arm, completely ignoring his movements. Probably it was for the best that his left arm was restrained, he did not want to cause more damage and it was putting him back together.

Suddenly the inside panel of the pod became transparent and he could see into the room beyond. Two Elites looked in at him, completely crushing his fledgling theory. One was in green armor, and his mind flashed back to the one he and Luzana had seen back on Siberia. It looked at him with as close to a shocked expression as he could read on an Elite, then it said some words he could not make out and left quickly. The other, wearing the silver armor of an Ultra, tapped the side of the pod and sent Nick back to the darkness.

He sat there for a few moments, just processing what he saw. Nick tried to search his mind for any incidents that he could recall where something like this had happened before, but nothing came to mind. Not at all.

The medical arms stopped working and then sprayed something that made his entire arm tingle and mildly stung. The pod door swung open and large hands reached inside. They were not gentle, and made no effort to avoid the wounds on his arms. Nick cried out in blinding pain as he was drug out and into what passed for a medical ward on a Covenant ship.

His escorts were two Elites in blue armor, Minors obviously. They were not gentle as they pulled him through the purple corridors. They even tossed him into a gravity-lift by himself; the weightless sensation gave some relief to his shoulder, but he was back to being pulled at the top of the shaft.

Nick was unceremoniously dumped into a cell in the ship's detention block. His was the only occupied cell. The energy field appeared in the doorway and the escorts left him alone. With a groan, he lifted himself into a sitting position on the floor and looked around the room.

It was nearly bare, aside from a bench or platform on either side of the cell. The lighting was dim and tinted slightly green. He moved up to the bench and found that it was just as hard as the floor, however in that position he could remove his boots easily enough.

The Covenant had stripped him of his weapons, and most of his ODST kit, but they had left the boots and greaves. "Fuucckk." He groaned again and pulled the boots free.

There was no mirror or any reflective surface he could use to get a good self inspection, but he did the best he could under the circumstances. There was a lot of bruising all over his body and cuts in places where his armor had gaps. Other than his left arm feeling like it had been ripped off and reattached, he was still in good shape.

Nick's attention was brought back to the shield door as it disappeared. One of the Elite Minor's was standing off to the side with its plasma rifle trained on him, and another walked in and picked him up. They did not drag him out of the cell, instead he had been picked up carefully, almost bridal style.

There was no point in resisting, not that he had the strength to, and he wanted to live; almost no matter what it took. Plus, he was curious.

His journey through the alien ship was much better than the first time. It was still very uncomfortable, but honestly fascinating. The deep purple and blue grey alloy, with the dim lighting, it was the first time he had been on an actual Covenant ship.

The corridors were empty, with no other Covenant loitering around, or passing by. He had no idea what kind of ship it was, nor how many crew it carried aboard, but the emptiness felt wrong.

They passed into a side passage that seemed to lead parallel to the main corridor. Doors were regularly spaced out, probably leading to cabins or other rooms. Humans used nautical terms to refer to areas on spacecraft; Nick absentmindedly wondered if the Covenant did something similar. One of the doors opened and he was taken into a plain room, with just two chairs and a desk inside.

He was gently let down into a chair built for a creature far larger than him. An old memory from the life he never actually lived rose to the surface; it was a road trip across North America, before his family moved to Hat Yai. They had stopped at a museum about old American folklore near the Great Lakes, Nick's father had placed him in Paul Bunyon's chair and taken a picture. He grabbed onto that pleasant memory as a lifeboat in the worrying situation he found himself in.

Keeping his mind preoccupied, he almost missed the entrance of the green armored Elite. They walked in and waved the two escorting Minors out of the room. Nick saw how the Minors hesitated, but a sharp rebuttal from the green Elite sent them away. The voice had been higher than any others he had heard before, was he dealing with a female Elite?

They walked up to the door and fiddled with the controls, the white lights that rimed the door shifted to red. Nick was suddenly far more concerned now. The Elite placed an object that he recognised as Forerunner in origin. The device blinked and a small pulse of energy surged across the table with a hiss and pop, but nothing happened.

He blinked and glanced briefly around the room. Nothing discernible had changed, except for the expression on the Elite's face. To the best of Nick's understanding, they looked downright nervous. The Elite sat across from him and spoke.

"Staff Sergeant Nicholas Cee Walker..." She started. They were definitely a woman, and her english was very good, almost immaculate. He only detected a hint of an accent. "I am Science Major Naki 'Cimutee."

What surprised him more than her perfect english was that the name was actually familiar to him. More memories played in his head, but they were different...older; long nights with controllers in hand, affectionand warmth, time spent crowded over sketchbooks and laptops. He knew, he felt who this was. The name was spoken barely louder than a whisper. "Michelle...?"

Naki smiled, both happy and relieved that he still remembered her, even if she herself had long ago pushed him off as a dream until he had shown up. She had planned a whole host of questions to be sure it was him before moving on, but he got it right from her name. "Yes," her voice matched the hushed tone of his. "It's me..."

Tears began to build up in Nick's eyes. It had been twenty-seven years since he had seen Michelle, and now here she was... But now an alien, the enemy. He felt conflicted with everything, that he should not be relieved that he had found her like this. It felt wrong and misconstrued.

But there was no way that this was a trick, he had never mentioned her to anyone except for the doctors back on Hat Yai just as long ago. He did his best to hold the tears back and took a glance around the room, the Covenant probably had recording devices all over. "Is it... Safe to talk?"

The Elite who was Michelle nodded her head once. "Yes, I had the surveillance systems disabled, and this device-" she tapped the Forerunner brick on the table. "-Has us silenced to any that I missed."

"Cameras?" He questioned with a shaky smile.

"Signals blocked." She gave another curt nod. He noticed some wetness around her eyes too.

With any sort of accidental observation blocked, Nick looked up at her. "So What happened to us?"

She wiped her eyes with her palm, just like she did in the past. "I don't actually know... To be completely honest, I thought it had all been a dream until I saw you... Nick." Naki smiled a bit when she said his name.

"Yeah... I thought the same, but then the news about the war went public." Nick frowned, reminding himself of the conflict that stood between them. "Those... uh... new memories really made life confusing."

The two spent the next hour catching up on their separate lives. They hugged tentatively, Naki's much larger frame dwarfing Nick's human self. He knew that this should all be terrifying to him, but he was doing his best to ignore everything his mind had learned the last thirty years.

It was not long after that Nick let out a sigh and looked at the table. "So what happens now? I don't think you captured me because of who I am."

A nervous look flashed across Naki's face. " Well funny thing about that..." She gave an awkward chuckle and pulled something out of the bag by her chair. "Fate sure has a twisted way of working things around."

She set a foil wrapped object onto the table between them, and then carefully unwrapped it. It was another piece of Forerunner technology, though it was very different from the silver metal that sat next to it. This one was an oval of blue crystal-like material with a dark metal backside; it was roughly thirty centimeters by ten centimeters and only maybe three centimeters thick. Forerunner glyphs blinked across the blue surface in a seemingly random pattern.

Naki strained her mind, trying to bring back an old memory that would help in this situation. "Tell me, Nick, do you remember the old Sangheili name you had chosen for yourself when we were children?"

"Uh... I'd have to think about it," Nick replied. "It's been a long while, but what does that have to do with this?" He tapped the device lightly.

"Well... This device supposedly has the power to change the user's very species. I had requested a Demon... Spartan?... To be the subject of the initial test. But the warriors brought you." She explained.

Nick let out a surprised whistle. "Holy shit... What?" He shook his head. "You're right, fate really is fucky."

"So... The initial experiment was to turn the subject into a Kig-Yar." Naki put both her hands together and pointed at Nick. "But as the lead researcher I do believe that I have the authority to change the final result to that of a Sangheili. And know that your only options are to go forward with the test, whether you want to or not."

She was blunt about it, Nick had to give her that. He frowned. "This is... a lot to process, uh, Naki. I think I'm getting overloaded here. I don't have much time to think, do I?"

"No Nick, you do not." She replied. "Remember, to the Covenant, Humans are vermin, a blight on the galaxy to be burned away. This experiment has been progressing long before you showed up. I've delayed it all I can."

Nick huffed. "So I was vermin too until you saw me in that pod, right?"

She placed her hand on her chest. "I fully admit that I will need to have a long a thoughtful soul searching session soon, but for now I need to keep up appearances." Naki let out a sigh. "I've done things I am not proud of now that I am aware of the truth. Just give it time."

Nick gave a sigh of his own. "You're right, we both know what happens, and we both have some self reflecting to do." He mentally reassured himself that things were going to be fine, and that his survival odds had vastly improved. All it would cost him was his Humanity, literally. Nick remembered that at one point in his past he had dreamt of being an Elite, but the prospect now made him nervous.

"I... I need to get going." Naki said. "It has been really great to find you after all this time. I just wish it were on better terms."

"Yeah." He replied, deep in thought about his future.

She looked down into her bag before standing and pulled out a covered bowl. "Oh, right. I uhm, brought you some food. This is called Zup`chau Nia. I think this used to be one of your favorites... clam chowder?"

Nick looked at the bowl with an inquisitive expression as she took the lid off. It certainly smelled...fishy. "Is it edible, for Humans?" He asked.

"It should be," she clicked her mandibles and shrugged. Then provided an oversized spoon for him to use "None of the mollusks in it create any known toxins... I ran a search in the archives referencing bioweapon research."

"How... Reassuring." He prodded the chowder with the spoon and revealed what looked like a sliced red potato. "Thanks." Nick gave her a genuine smile.

"You're welcome." And then she walked towards the door. "I'll have the guards give you a few more minutes to eat, but then they'll take you back to the holding cell. Please comply, it's what's best for you."

Nick took a spoonful to his mouth and poured it in. He had to force it down, the dish tasting more like squid and oats than the cream and clam taste he was used to. He had once had worse on human colonies, so he continued to begrudgingly eat the food until the bowl was empty.

His time in the furnished room expired and the two Minors barged in and drug him forcefully back to his cell. Once inside, he really only spent half a day alone with his thoughts before the lights dimmed. There was no water provided, something he wished that Naki had thought to give him with the soup. So he just sat there, thirsty and thinking in the blue glow of the energy barrier. There was no way out of this situation, but there was a way to survive it; and if he managed to remain in some lab until the end of the war, that would be just fine with him. He leaned himself up against the wall and tried to get some sleep.

The sound of the cell block door sliding open brought Nick back to alert, and he glanced over to the energy barrier as the lights brightened. Standing in front of the door was an Elite Ultra, it's armor was vaguely familiar from his time in the medical pod. The Ultra barked an order at the guards and the energy barrier faded away. Instead of entering, they turned and walked back toward the door.

Nick sat there for a moment, lips absolutely dry. He wondered how long he had been asleep for. One of the Minors said something in their language and motioned for Nick to get up and out. They did not seem to want to carry him this time. He slowly got to his feet, feeling every ache and pain in his body from the various injuries that still liked to make themselves known.

Outside his cell, Nick followed the Ultra through a few corridors. They were not heading to the room Naki had taken him to; it was on the same deck as the cell block. The Ultra stopped in what looked like a small mess hall that was completely deserted and gestured for Nick to take a seat in another oversized chair. Hesitantly he sat down and the Ultra sat across from him.

A Grunt walked out quickly and brought a familiar looking canteen and mess kit. They must have kept his gear somewhere else after they took him aboard. The kit was set on the table, but Nick was not able to identify the smell coming from the tray. The Grunt left, and the two Minor guards took station at the edges of the room.

"Human, you must be thirsty." The Ultra's english was much more accented than Naki's but it was understandable. He pushed the canteen towards Nick.

He took the canteen and eagerly drank from it. The water inside tasted a bit off, but Nick was not complaining. Once the canteen was empty, he set it carefully back on the table and looked at the paste on his tray. It looked a lot less appetizing than the soup he had earlier.

"It should be edible for you. I am sure of it," the Ultra said. He watched Nick slowly eat the paste with a grimace and continued to talk. "Major 'Cimutee has quickly taken an interest in you, far faster than one would have expected. She has ordered us to ensure that you are well taken care of."

Nick thought for a moment, and worked up the courage to speak. "Can I...ask a question?"

The Elite looked surprised for a moment, and then nodded. "Yes. I am Ultra Zeik 'Carunmee. We will be seeing a lot of one another if this experiment is a success, so I would assume so." He leaned down and spoke in a low tone, eyeing the two Minors on the other side of the room. "Cimutee is refactoring the project, and she has tasked me with some... questionable requests for you."

"Uh huh..." Nick thought about what that meant, likely something to do with what happens after the experiment. "How long has it been since I was brought up here?"

"It has been three days," the Ultra said. Nick figured that he was talking about Covenant days, but it did not really matter right now.

"When will the test begin?" Nick asked.

"I will be taking you to begin the pre-treatment as soon as we are finished here." He was quiet for a few moments while Nick continued to eat, but then he let out a long sigh. "The Hierarch has given Cimutee plenty of leeway in the scope of this project, but I fear that what she plans is well beyond even the most gracious allowances. Some may even call it blasphemous, however I trust her judgment. I just hope you are worth it."

Nick finished the paste and gently placed the spork beside the tray. He did not want to do anything that seemed insulting. "I hope I am too..." he replied. "I'm not anyone special really, just a person doing a job."

Zeik huffed and stood from the table. "Since you are done eating, let us leave." Since he did not have much of a choice, Nick rose and followed the Ultra back into the corridor. Another long walk down the hall led to another compartment.

Other Elites in green armor were standing around the edges at work stations. Nick did not see Naki among them, but he was not so good at identifying different Elites. There was a pod in the center of the room, which was open.

Words were exchanged in the Covenant language and he was brought right up to the pod hatch. One of the green armored Elites gestured inside.

She had a very rough grip on english pronunciation, but Nick got the gist of it. "Remove your clothes and get inside."

Without hesitation, Nick stripped off the remaining bits of his ODST gear and crawled into the pod. Cooperation was really his only choice in this situation, but he did find it a little upsetting that Naki did not even come back to ask if he had made his decision.

The inside of the pod was filled with liquid part way, so when he lied back it covered his ears and felt uncomfortable. One of the Elites closed the pod and the machine began to hum. The liquid inside was vibrating around him and the air became thick with vapor. He was having difficulties breathing but relief came quickly as a rush of cool air flowed inside. It tasted and smelled vaguely of fruit.

That was the last thing he recalled before he passed out.