Linda Pravdin, also known as Linda-058 according to the SPARTAN roster, sat smugly in the passenger seat of the passenger yacht as it travelled the distance towards the colony world of Verant. But while she was smug that her intelligence network which she had set up following her abduction as a child, to help her find a way out and back home had worked, Linda struggled with the habits ingrained into her very being by the years of endless training, and augmentations.

All to become invincible super soldiers. Linda had never considered becoming a soldier. The whole reality of the training on Reach had been shoved brutally into her brain. She had been a mere six years old when she was kidnapped, and over the years she had quickly discerned why she had been kidnapped in the first place. The SPARTAN recruits were 'signed up' for their intellect, and their aggression, and in her case, her intelligence had won out because she had set up a

For a moment, Linda scowled as she remembered the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping; like the others, Linda was barely able to adjust to the sudden brutality of their new situation.

The SPARTAN training was brutal. When she and several others were kidnapped, they were shipped off in cryo-sleep to Reach. Once they were there, they were met by Dr Catherine Halsey, who told them in no uncertain terms to forget their old lives. Instantly they were forced into training. They performed jumping jacks, sit-ups, deep squats, and knee bends. They were forced into the 'Playground,' a maze in mid-air, with a bell in the centre. They had divided into teams and had to reach the bell first. At first, the game was quite mundane, although the threat of failure would result in no supper worked…after the first time it happened.

The training became both easier and harder later on. The Playground became increasingly complicated as time passed, and shortly after their arrival, the children had to learn how to shoot a rifle, tend to injuries, and cope with traps. The training went on and on from there, but the point was the brutal training seemed to do the job far too well.

Linda had formed her second intelligence network a few months into her own time. Setting up an intelligence network required time, she had needed to find the right people, who would be weak-willed enough to help her. She had chosen doctors, nurses, and corporals who were assisting the trainers at the boot camp who were less sure about their jobs. But it had still taken her months and months to find the right triggers to make them tell her stuff without them running off and letting Halsey and Mendez know what she was up to. Linda was quite proud of her accomplishment; the teacher's network had been something she had been proud of doing, after being inspired by the spy rings of the Cold War in the 20th century.

But what she had accomplished on Reach, Linda hated to admit it, but she had to say without the hard training and the more militaristic slant on her mind the training had, she would never have even contemplated being able to accomplish her escape. She had found a way off of Reach, learning all the passwords and codes needed to make her escape possible, and she had even found a way out of the boot camp and to the spaceport. But what worried her the most was the chance Halsey knew what she had planned and would come after her eventually, but she could handle it.

All she wanted to do was go home.

She had thought of little else when her mind wasn't on her training and on the augmentations she and all of the others had endured. Linda closed her eyes, remembering the painful operations of the carbide ceramic ossification to make the skeleton stronger and virtually indestructible; Halsey and the others considered those who died in the operations, or became blind, or came to suffer from Parkinson's disease when their dendrites were remodelled in the superconducting fabrication of neural dendrites operation took place collateral damage.

Linda and the others didn't since the operations were terrifying games of Russian roulette; you never knew if you were going to make it out alive.

Xxxx

Verant had changed and yet it hadn't. For several years now, Linda had held on to the image she'd had of it, and while she was glad the colony's essence hadn't changed she found it almost unrecognisable. The ship had arrived late at night, and Linda was pleased by that since she had the chance to get home quicker without anybody raising any alarms.

But when she got to her home, she was stunned when she saw through an open window a young girl reading a book while her mother sat nearby.

Linda's heart leapt in her chest at the sight of her mother, but her eyes were focused right and straight on the girl.

The girl was her. She looked just like her, in every single way.

The augmentations to Linda's body and senses had made her ears very sensitive and she instinctively went into a fighting stance when she heard twigs snapping.

She ground her teeth in a snarl when she heard a family voice.

"You kids, you are all so predictable. The moment you get free, you instantly want to go home. Didn't I tell you to forget your past lives?" Dr Catherine Halsey asked in her usual cool manner.

Linda licked her lips. "What have you done?" She asked to get some clear answers.

Halsey flicked her gaze towards the house and then back. "That girl is you, Linda. She's your clone."

"A clone?" Linda repeated in a whisper.

"Stealing children was always risky. During the abduction, the child would either be replaced with a living clone or would be replaced with a dead clone everyone would assume had died in a careless accident," Halsey might as well have been hewn straight out of the rock for all the emotion she was showing, but Linda caught sight of a glimmer in her eyes, but it was quickly gone in a flash, "to your mother, that clone is you and nothing happened."

"No…," Linda shook her head in denial, but she knew the scientist was right. "That is my life. Mine!"

"Not anymore. This is not your home anymore," the response was so brusque and so brutal it took Linda aback. "Use your brain, girl. If you walk into that house, what do you think your mother will do? She won't believe you're her daughter. She will assume you're some kind of robot, or a clone yourself."

While she had been speaking, Linda heard a low hiss and she gasped in shock when she felt a sharp sting in her neck. Quickly she realised she'd been drugged, but it was too late; her vision was growing darker and darker. Summoning her remaining strength, Linda turned around and she focused on the house, on her mother and on her clone. As she fell unconscious, Linda came to terms with the evil of the SPARTAN project, and that it was too late now.

In that moment, her hopes of reuniting with the only family she had left, died.

And she fell asleep.