(A/N) Hey guys, time for an update, introducing another of the new Freelancers for Phase Two, Agent New Jersey! Expect another chapter later tonight, again, trying to make up for the delays that we're currently suffering across the board, and hopefully, now that I'm off for my "holidays" (will be spending them studying), I'll have a little more time to get our organisation back in gear. Anyway, introducing one of our new writers, SpoonyAzul, and I'm sure you're going to love her work!
Again, a quick reminder that we're still looking for writers for this fic, so if you're interested either PM me or head on over to our forum and fill out the relevant application forms. Apps close on the 1st of January, so it'd be smart to get to work on it now, so you'll definitely have it in in time.
Enjoy!
Chapter Fourteen - A Better Offer
Agent New Jersey
Written by SpoonyAzul
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't." -Eleanor Roosevelt
Pain. She felt it everywhere. Darkness surrounded her vision and she found herself smothered in smoke, fire and twisted metal. Using her remaining arm, she slowly dragged her blood-slicked body out of the burning wreckage, only find the remains of her mother, her squad members and blood splattered on the landing pad. Up in the sky, a giant Covenant cruiser burned New Canton, her childhood home with an orbital glass strike.
The soldier wailed in despair when a tall black figure stood over her.
Ready to defend herself, she reached for a Magnum, but was horrified that she couldn't lift it. Her now tiny fingers couldn't wrap around the handle and her arm skinny as a twig. Then it dawns on her that she has reverted to her seven-year-old self, unable to stop the menacing figure from igniting its energy blade.
All she could do let out an angry, almost primal roar at her own weakness as the blade came down on her...
Her eyes snapped open as the nightmare ripped Ramona from her deep sleep. It wasn't as bad as the fever dreams during the shoulder socket installation, but it was felt real enough to get her heart racing.
For a few horrible seconds, she thought she was back on Newton III. While the events on her home world were over a year ago, the psychological scars still burned in her mind. She took several deep breaths with tears streaming down her cheeks while trying to convince herself she was in a hospital and far from the battlefield. She slowly sat up on her cot, surrounded by nothing but sterile white walls and the faint smell of antiseptic.
Then she glanced at her right arm, now a cybernetic implant, and just stared at it. The arm twitched in miniscule movements as it responded to her nerves. Twelve months ago, it was just dead weight, a useless piece of metal attached to her already battle-scarred body gave her lucid fever dreams and chronic nerve pain. When they subsided after a few months, she had drastically improved, going through the basic movements like flexing her arm and picking up something to more complex, such as tying her shoes, writing with a pen and typing on a keyboard. It had taken some adjusting to, but eventually it became a part of her body and no longer just a chunk of metal.
Her legs moved to the side of the bed before she stood on her feet, headed into the bathroom and slumped over the sink. She splashed cold water on her face and dried off her eyes with a towel when she caught her reflection in the mirror.
Years of endless battles and bloodshed had taken its toll. Her skin had gone very pale from spending so much time in her uniform. Faint dark circles formed under her green eyes from lack of sleep, which had some of the spark had gone. Her almost ghostly pallor made her deep red hair even darker, as if drenched in blood. Lifting the sleeve of her hospital raiment, she saw the scarring around the steel socket implanted in her right shoulder before her eyes shifted to the violet and sea green butterfly on her left arm.
She let out a long, drawn out sigh and stood up straight, using her fingers of her cybernetic hand to sweep a few stands behind her ear before walking across her hospital room. She proceeded to the window, stopping to take in the black inky depths of space with shimmering stars twinkling light-years away.
A light knock rapped the door before it opened, "You're up early, Ramona. Worried about your trial?"
Her mother, Dr Nora Cassidy, a rock star among cybernetic experts and infamous for her flaring temper, stood in threshold of the doorway. She had the same hair colour as Ramona, but with a few strands of grey mixed in. The older woman wore a simple blouse and dark skirt underneath a white doctor's coat with black heels.
"Not really, no," the soldier said, stepping away from door to face her mother, "It's...something else. I didn't get a good night's rest."
"There's more to it, isn't there?" Her mother walked over to her daughter and placed a hand on her shoulder, "I can tell, Ramona. You know you can't hide anything from me."
She hesitated a bit, not sure if it would be okay to let her know. She let out another sigh and finally spoke, clenching her prosthetic, "I woke up from a nightmare, Mom, a fucked-up flashback of home. Even smelled real. Makes me think I should be dead alread-"
WHAPT!
Ramona groaned in pain as Nora's hand smacked the back of her head, "There will be none of that! You should be grateful that you're still alive, you idiot!"
"You didn't have to hit me, hag!"
"What was that, you flat chested bitch!" her mother screeched like a banshee after being thrown off-balance at being called old.
"Who are you calling a billboard, you crusty relic?!"The younger woman followed in suit.
"Table tits!"
"Senile old bat!"
"Flat as a pancake!"
"Ancient as a fossil!"
A southern drawl spoke up, "Are you two quite finished?"
"What the hell do you want, you four-eyed freak?!" Both women screamed in unison at their bespectacled visitor standing in the doorway.
The man simply propped his thick rimmed glasses and sighed in exasperation, "Good lord, it's like idiots in stereo."
The young woman blinked a few times at the old man, remembering that he would sometimes visit her mother. He was in his fifties with a few grey strands in his dark hair wearing glasses around his eyes and a small beard on his chin. He wore a black suit with matching dress shoes. Every once in a while, her mother spoke to him either in person or on the phone to keep him updated on Ramona's progress.
The man strode into the room and glanced at Ramona's steel prosthetic, as if he was admiring it, before he looked the soldier in the eyes and turned to Nora, "Hmm, your work is superb as always, Dr Cassidy. Hard to believe this is the same person that I saw almost a year ago."
"Thank you," she replied, "but I doubt you came here to compliment me on my work, Doctor Church."
"No, I did not," the man said turning to Nora, "I'm here to seeking recruits for Project Freelancer, namely your daughter."
Confusion skirted around her face. She was about to go to court next week with her remaining squad and he was talking of recruiting her? How? Why?
Nora raised an eyebrow before worry took over her aging features, "Leonard, you do know that she is to..."
He interrupted with a raise of his hand, "I am well aware of her situation, Nora. I have talked to D'Atombe about this and has agreed to offer her leniency..."
"...in exchange for becoming one of your pawns." Ramona finished the sentence for him with venom drenched in her voice. She couldn't shake the fact that something was off, she was sure of it.
The man called the Director looked the young soldier in question, his face hinting at bewilderment, "You do not approve?"
"Of course I don't," the soldier said, blunt as a brick to a stained glass window, "I'm about to go to trial for disobeying orders and you just happened to show up to offer me a way out with no strings attached? Go sell your point to someone else because I ain't buying it."
After a silent moment, the older man adjusted his glasses again, increasing their glare. "Alright then, may I speak with your daughter alone?"
Nora stared at the both of them, like the room would suddenly explode, until her pager went off with a digital ringtone, "I don't see why not, I have to see about another patient." She excused herself as the doctor walked across the room and closed the door behind her.
After she left, the Director retrieved a small data-pad from his inside his suit, "That's quite an observation, marine. Now let me ask you a question: Do you know why I'm here?"
"Recruitment from what it looks like, but there's something else. Otherwise, you wouldn't just be interested in a marine court martialled for insubordination." She leaned against the bed with her arms still crossed with a hint of disdain on her face, "other than the steel arm, naturally."
"Alright then, allow me to enlighten you," The Director tapped away at his data-pad as he spoke, "Do you remember what you were supposed take off-world? What your remaining squad is being sent to prison over?" He punched one last button, and the image of a small, geometric device appeared on the screen.
Ramona immediately recognized it, but kept herself tight-lipped on a few things, "I didn't know much about it, except it was an artifact. Some eggheads dug it up and were studying it," Her lower lip curled a bit, "but it went missing after we evacuated the city."
"Yes, an unfortunate loss," the man nodded, "It just so happens my program has a similar artifact. I'm in need of someone with experience with this sort of technology. And at the moment," He pulled up a video file, probably a helmet cam, showing a wounded and bleeding soldier clutching something, before a large blue sheet of light takes shape and deflects several plasma bursts upon impact. He pauses in the middle of the last blast and looks up at her, "The most experienced person I'm aware of is standing right in front of me."
Her eyes went wide in shock upon realizing that it was her in the data-pad. The inside of her mind raced about where someone like him got that video. The UNSC made it classified!
"Are you fucking kidding me," she snarled angrily, pointing to the video, "I'm no expert on shit like that. It was pure dumb luck that thing activated when it did. You're gonna recruit me over a fluke?"
"Of course not," The footage changed to several other videos and photographs all displaying a red-headed marine in mid-combat, "To be honest I've considered your involvement for a long time. However, my resources were limited and you still laid on a hospital bed, trapped in a fever dream." He stowed the data-pad away, "However, some of those restrictions have been recently... cleared. I find myself in a position to train more operatives, and that artifact is merely a bonus, I assure you. But, if you're still so wary about us, perhaps you'd prefer to simply continue on your current path?"
The red-headed soldier tried to say something but just growled and slumped onto the bed, conflicted between two options before her. Become a prison bitch or a bitch of the military. Decisions, decisions. She didn't say anything for a few moments before he opened her mouth, "Say I go along with this, old man. Am I gonna fight aliens?"
A small smile curled edges of the Director's mouth. "Of course, there's no doubt in my mind."
She stood up from the cot and looked out the window, "and Insurgents?"
"When called upon, yes."
Ramona let out another drawn out sigh and ran her hand through her hair. Her mind had been made up, "Looks like you got yourself another Freelancer."
The Director nodded, "Very well. I'd enjoy what time you have left with your mother. We'll be in touch with you in due time about your deployment."
With that, the man turned on his heels and left the room before adding, "Another thing, soldier. Do NOT call me 'old man', ever. It is either 'sir' or 'Director.' You would do well to remember that in the future.
He had left the room completely when she was left to her own thoughts. She put her arm on the window and stared out to the sea of stars again.
A gun-metal grey dropship waited for her out in the hangar bay, landing for just a few moments. Ramona, no, New Jersey now- get it right, stupid - stood up from her seat, slinging over her shoulder her duffel bag packed with necessities and what little possessions she had left. She had read her orders the day before and learned her codename.
Agent New Jersey? Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Hmm, Jersey sounds better. I can picture people already calling me that.
She was alone when the pelican landed. Her mother had already said her goodbyes. And, by goodbyes, she did it in the form of the usual mother-daughter screaming, swearing, insults and name calling. Then she had burst into tears and embraced her daughter, the only family she had left.
She took a deep breath and stepped inside the Pelican, not once looking back as the rear bay doors closed behind her. She sat in her seat and put on her safety harness.
She noticed the dark-haired young man sitting across from her, a manic grin plastered on his face and an excited glint in his sky blue eyes. He didn't seem to notice her walking in and sitting down, but he was daydreaming possibly about being a hero or a badass in the Project. Kinda cute, she thought with a small smile.
After a few minutes, she sighed in relief. The Director had kept his word. She was granted leniency and kept from going to prison. He had given her another chance to fight the bastards that burned her homeworld to the ground. She'd give them fifty shit-tons of payback for it, like everyone who had ever lost a loved one to the Covenant. Then she thought of the Insurgents, defectors from the UNSC and her father, pulling out her butterfly knife in contemplation. She unfolded it, made of steel with a butterfly engraved in the blade.
It was the last thing he gave her before her last deployment, before he went MIA while spying on Insurgents.
Jersey glanced down at her blade before tucking it away. Maybe she could find answers with the Innies, as to what happened on Newton III and why her commanding officer betrayed her and her squad. If not, she would settle on taking vengeance with the Covenant instead.