Alright, that was a bit rough. But obviously I lived. Right? Otherwise, I wouldn't be here now telling you all this.

Yeah, right.

Have you ever seen those medical studies on what our brains do when we're dying?

People who come back from clinical death saying they saw heaven or angels, or something like that. Scientists just discount it as the last firing of neurons in the brain as the cells die from lack of oxygen. Still, it does give some small comfort in the face of death. Hope that there really is something after all of this. That we don't just fade away into oblivion.

Yeah, I saw the white light and there was no more pain, like I was just floating. Granted, I really was floating in zero g. The light went away at some point and any revelation about the existence of an afterlife or a higher power went with it because I came back down to earth hard.

What I saw didn't make any sense. It was like a dream, when you're asleep and your brain takes all your memories and imagination and mixes them together into a big mess. I was back at the FLEETCOM military complex on Reach where I had spent eight years of my life becoming a Spartan II.

It was like I was six years old again, on the first day of training. The night before, Dr. Halsey had made this speech to us about how we were special, how we had been called to serve and if need be, to give up our lives in defense of humanity.

I was more preoccupied during her speech with wondering how I had gotten there and where my family was, and when I would see them again.

I was woken up out of bed by a drill instructor screaming in my face, who promptly tipped me out of my rack and onto the floor.

"I said wake up, trainee!" He shouted. "Get a move on!"

In his hand was a stun baton, a tool usually used for suppressing rowdy prison inmates. At the max setting, it could leave a grown man spasming on the floor in pain. On the lowest, it was still plenty to get a bunch of children moving in the morning.

"Move trainee! Fall in!" He jabbed me with the baton and I stood upright like a board.

I'm thinking to myself this isn't right. I'd survived this training before. If this were real, I could have taken that baton easily, or snapped the DI's back over my knee like it was a twig. But instead, I was just a scared kid again and I did as I was told. I saw another DI pull a girl with long blue hair out of the bunk above mine.

She tried to wiggle out of his grip but he jabbed her with his baton and she stopped struggling. I knew that girl, but her hair hadn't been like that for a long time. Not since she put up a hell of a fight when the master sergeant barber shaved her head.

Eventually the DI's got us all to attention and a man I had seen the night before started speaking. He'd been wearing a black dress uniform then, now he was clad in the fatigues of a marine just like the rest of the DI's.

"I am Chief Petty Officer Mendez!" He shouted. "The rest of these men are your drill instructors! You will do exactly as we tell you at all times!"

I hadn't seen the CPO in almost a decade. I quickly thought that if my afterlife was going to be reliving the man's training exercises, then I was most assuredly in hell.

He barked out orders and I got a set of gray training clothes shoved into my hands by one of the DI's with my name and number, Ulysses-086, printed on them in black lettering. They pushed us out of the barracks and onto the field outside and made us exercise until we dropped.

Squats and pushups. Leg lifts and planks. Mendez was right there doing it alongside us.

It must have looked funny. This hardened marine doing sit ups with seventy-five children. But the man was a like a machine and I wasn't. At some point my six-year-old body couldn't take it anymore and I threw up onto the green. I wanted to roll over and die but one of the DI's jabbed me with his baton again and shouted "Did I give you permission to stop, trainee?"

So, I kept going, and the exercise continued. Mendez pushed us into a two mile run around the perimeter of the camp. Any thoughts I had had about my family, or how I had gotten to Reach were pushed out by the need to just keep going.

Finally, when Mendez was done putting us through the ringer, we got dumped off at a pavilion and taken into an amphitheater big enough for all seventy-five of us.

I saw another face that I hadn't seen in almost a decade, but this one was a transparent blue. The holographic figure of Deja, the artificial intelligence who had been responsible for our education stood ready for our first lesson.

She showed us the battle at Thermopylae between the Persians and the Spartans of antiquity. How they had used the bottleneck at the Hot Gates to hold back the much larger Persian army.

I looked around the room and saw a face I'd never thought I'd see again. Samuel-034. The tall blonde boy was watching Deja's lecture with rapt attention.

Only Sam was dead, and now I was dead too. Before I had time to think more about it, the lesson was over and Deja released us to 'the playground'.

The playground was our final exercise for the day. Chief Mendez had devised a ropes course with bridges, cargo nets, slide polls, pits filled with water, and pulleys with baskets big enough to hoist us.

"Trainees! Form three lines!" He barked.

After a moment we were ordered and Mendez continued, dividing us by threes into teams. To my left was a girl taller than me with platinum blonde hair, to my right was a boy with dark skin and even darker eyes.

"Today's game is called 'ring the bell'!" Mendez yelled.

Centered in the ropes course, at the top of the tallest pylon was a polished brass bell. It gleamed bright in the light of the afternoon sun. "There are many ways to reach the bell," he continued, "I leave it up to each team to find their own way! When every member of your team has rung the bell, you are to get groundside double time and run back here across this finish line!" He said as he scratched a line in the dirt with his baton.

A boy a few rows in front of me raised his hand. He had short brown hair. I could only see the back of his head but I knew who it was. I saw Mendez eye him up. Raising your hand is something children do, but in the military, you ask for permission to speak. I guess Mendez decided to humor him since it was only the first day. "A question, 117?"

"What do we win?"

"You win dinner 117. Tonight, dinner is roast turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, brownies, and vanilla ice cream."

Just the thought of food made my stomach growl, let alone food like that.

I grew up in a poor family. My dad was never around, and my older brother washed dishes. Whenever my mom was sober enough, she and my brother barely scraped enough together to care for my older sister and I. Food like that was something I never got to have.

"But," Mendez continued, "for there to be winners there must be a loser. The last team to finish goes without food."

You better believe I wasn't going to be the last across that finish line.

Then it hit me. Mendez said team.

He gave us sixty seconds to break into our groups and think up a plan.

The girl looked me up and down. She was at least a head taller than me, and better built. I guess childhood malnutrition hadn't done me any favors. "I'm Cal," She said.

It was apparent enough from the name on her uniform. Cal-141.

The other boy introduced himself. "I'm Fhajad."

"I'm Ody. Nice to meet you," I said softly. I guess I had forgotten how timid I was before the training.

"Look there," Fhajad said as he gestured to one of the pulley baskets, "that one connects closest to the bell."

"Can we lift that?" I asked.

"We can if we work together." Fhajad eyed me up and down. "You're the smallest. You should go up in the basket first. We'll have to pull together."

He turned to Cal. "Once we're both up, Ody and I can pull you up."

She looked at him intensely with pale eyes. "And what am I supposed to do?"

I could see where Fhajad was going with this. "You're the biggest," I said, "We need you to keep the other kids away from the basket." As a six-year-old girl, Cal was still one of the largest Spartans. Even after the augmentations, only Sam and Jorge were taller.

I didn't have time to hear her response. I heard somebody blow a whistle and we were off to the races.

The girl with the blue hair was the first across the pitch. She reached the basket Fhajad had pointed out before anyone else but she couldn't hold it. Another boy got there before us and pushed her aside into one of the pools of water.

Cal, Fhajad, and I ran together. The boy was about to climb into the basket but Cal reached him before he could start to pull himself up.

"Hey!" She yelled.

The boy turned towards her only to be met with a punch to the nose. From the look of shock on his face I'm guessing it was the first time anyone had ever hit him as he stood there dumbstruck. Cal promptly grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into the same pool he had pushed the blue-haired girl into.

I climbed into the bucket and grabbed one part of the rope while Fhajad planted his feet on the ground and grabbed another. Even with my skinny arms, together we wrenched enough rope to pull me up to the top.

I climbed out and set my feet on a platform suspended between two pylons. I could see other kids taking different routes to try and reach the bell. There was another team of three working together, already ahead of us, and another boy trying to grab a rope to swing himself across to my platform.

I looked down and realized just how high I was. I guess Chief Mendez didn't believe in safety rails.

Oh, yeah.

I ever tell you that I'm afraid of heights?

Well, that's only partially true. I'm really afraid of falling. Some childhood traumas never leave, I guess. The point was I looked over the edge of the platform and my empty stomach felt like it had flipped over. An unbidden image came to mind of me falling off the platform and bursting open like a water balloon when I hit the ground.

I've learned to deal with it a bit. I'm parachute and drop pod certified and I've made turbulent jumps before, but you better believe I'm white-knuckling any safety bar or rail I can during it.

Fhajad's yelling brought me back to the moment at hand. I looked down and saw Cal fighting off a boy and a girl who were both shorter than her to keep them away from Fhajad while he tried to get my attention. "Ody! Ody, pull me up!"

I guess my desire for ice cream and brownies won out over my fear because it worked. I stepped back from the edge of the platform and my racing heartbeat steadied a little. I grabbed the rope again and started pulling. When Fhajad reached the top, I could tell we were both sore. Chief Mendez's morning PT hadn't helped.

Fhajad leaned over the edge. "Cal, come on!" He yelled as I lowered the basket back down to the ground. She jumped in and together the three of us tugged as hard as we could but I was interrupted by another boy. The boy trying to swing to the platform on the rope from earlier had finally made it across. I could see on his uniform that his name was Joseph-122.

"Out of my way!" He yelled. Joseph shoved me aside hard and I went stumbling over the edge of the platform. I was still holding the rope though. I came to a sudden stop but I hadn't hit the ground. Instead, I was hanging on for dear life.

The upside was that me falling had acted as a counter weight and propelled Cal up to the platform.

Not that I noticed though, I was frozen in fear.

"Hang on, Ody!" I heard her yell. Together she and Fhajad pulled the rope up and me with it.

I heard the bell ring as they pulled me onto the platform. 117 had the been the first to make it to the bell, but the rest of his team was nowhere to be found. We ran, having to cross a rope bridge to reach the pylon with the bell. The other team of three I saw earlier made it there next, each ringing the bell.

We caught up with Joseph. Cal grabbed the boy and pushed him aside. He lost his footing and was left hanging up side down, suspended from the rope bridge.

We were gonna make it.

I could already taste the dessert.

We had to climb up the last pylon to reach the bell. Cal gave me a boost up and I was the first of our team to ring it. I slid down the poll and Fhajad was next up after me. Then both Fhajad and I helped Cal up.

From there we made it back down the obstacle course and ran across the finish line, panting and out of breath.

Chief Mendez appraised us, his eyebrow raised, but said nothing. He wrote something on his clipboard but didn't say a word.

I looked around, hands on my knees as I caught my breath. We weren't the first but we definitely weren't the last. I saw 117 standing there, alone. I saw his name on his uniform for the first time. John.

Fhajad, Cal, and I huddled together. He had a smile on his face. Cal's cheeks were red and it looked like she had a bruise forming on her face where someone had hit her, but she sported a grin as well.

More kids crossed the finish line, and Mendez made notes on his clipboard for each one. The last two across the line were Samuel, and the girl with the long blue hair. They glared daggers at John.

"Good work, trainees!" Yelled Mendez. "Let's get back to barracks and chow down! All except team three!"

"But I won!" John said indignantly. "I was first!"

Mendez fixed John with a disapproving look. "Yes, you were first, but your team came in last." Mendez shifted his attention to all of us. "Remember this; you don't win unless your team wins. One person winning at the expense of the group means that you lose."

I sat together with Cal and Fhajad when we got back to the dining hall. Like sixty-nine other kids, we gorged ourselves. After a long day of intense exercise, we needed it. I tried corn for the first time there. It wasn't farmed on the colony I was born on, so I had never had any before. I remember it getting stuck in my teeth and Cal and Fhajad making good-natured jokes at my expense as I tried to pick it out.

But man, those brownies and ice cream. I didn't care that the brownies weren't baked fresh and that they had been processed and packaged in some factory, and then reheated in some industrial oven. To me it was wonderful. I pocketed one of the brownies when nobody was looking, determined to take as many as I could.

Looking around the dining hall, we were all in high spirits. All of us except team three. The DI's made John, Sam, and the girl with the blue hair sit there and watch while the rest of us ate.

Eventually Chief Mendez called out for us to finish up, and the DI's marched us back to our bunks. I slipped in beneath my sheets, while the girl climbed up into the bunk on top of mine, looking miserable all the while. The DI's called for lights out, and the room went dark as they left.

Between the exhausting exercise and the massive amounts of turkey they had eaten, most of the other children were out in a wink. Not me, I still had my stolen prize from dinner. I was waiting until I was sure everyone else was asleep before I ate it, like I was afraid someone would rat me out.

I kept hearing the girl on the bunk above tossing and turning though, her stomach growling.

I guess I felt a little guilty. My brother had always told me to share what I had, just as he did for me and my sister. We were poor, so we had too.

When I was sure everyone else was asleep, I slipped out of bed and poked my head up and whispered.

"Psst, hey."

The blue-haired girl looked at me with stern but tired blue eyes. "What do you want?" She asked softly.

"Uh, I stole this from dinner," I said, offering the brownie to her, "I mean, if you want it. It's a little smashed."

Her look softened and she took it from me gingerly, as if she was afraid it would disintegrate into nothing. "Thank you." She whispered.

I must have stood there like an idiot, not knowing what to say. I was never exactly a social butterfly growing up.

"So… what's your name?" I asked as she bit into the dessert.

She put her hand up to her mouth and swallowed the bite down before answering. "I'm Kelly."

The dream ended, or rather it changed.

Now I was somewhere I had definitely never been before. I was in a battle, a rifle in my hands. I was taller than I remembered, my body was slimmer. I saw others around me shooting at some unseen foe, the battlefield was obscured by a putrid fog. Spores floated through the air. The ground I stood on wasn't ground at all, but instead some fleshy mass. It oozed a disgusting puss like substance as I moved.

Out of the thick miasma came a nightmare. It looked like something that had once been human, but it had been corrupted and deformed. Fleshy growths bulged around its torso. Its left arm had been elongated and a sharp blade of bone sprouted out of the remains of what use to be its hand. In its right hand it held some type of weapon.

Nothing like I had ever wielded before, but its appearance was similar in design to the rifle I was holding in the dream. Its head had been twisted around a hundred and eighty degrees and hung off at a sickening angle, the mouth agape in a silent scream. From the once-human creature's neck sprouted a mass of feelers that ended in dark cilia.

They moved back in forth in a motion that reminded of the way a snake's tongue licks at the air.

It let out a roar, and it wasn't alone. From the fog, came hundreds. Thousands.

I fired the rifle in my hands, the others around me doing the same.

It didn't matter though. We were overrun. I heard a voice rumble. I didn't know the language but somehow, I understood what it said. The voice didn't have a single source. Instead, it came from every one of the deformed monsters.

"Ah, the armored caskets."

To my left I saw a man fall, and a moment later his corpse began twitching and convulsing. His body twisted and his form erupted with growths, just like the other monstrosities. It rose from the ground and turned towards me.

"Do not be afraid. I am peace, I am salvation. I am a timeless chorus. Join your voice to mine and sing victory everlasting."

I gunned the monster down.

It didn't matter though. For each one we killed, a hundred more came. They swarmed over me, drowning me. The parasites tore open my armor and I felt them inside me. I felt my body scream out.

Now the voice was in my head.

"Are you cramped inside your casket? Give yourself to me. Become one with me."

"Become."

"Become."

"Become."

"Become."

It wasn't real. Or rather it was real, but I hadn't lived it. I was reliving someone else's death.

I was experiencing synaptic bleedthrough. Part of the process of my brain connecting to its new best friend was an exchange of memories. It saw mine, and I saw its.

The nightmare ended and my eyes snapped open.

For a moment I thought I was definitely dead. That I was looking down at my corpse as I floated above it. I cringed slightly at the ruin of it. It looked like my green MJOLNIR armor hadn't faired well after I'd been spaced. I guess something about the pressure change must have made the suit and my corpse come apart, because the armor had been torn to pieces.

Only that didn't make any sense. If it had been then the pieces would have been scattered across millions of kilometers of empty space, instead they were all here in front of me.

My second realization was that I wasn't floating through the vacuum anymore. I was propped up against a wall. I looked at the armor again. It had been cut open with precision, well beyond anything that should have been manageable in the field. The suit's internal systems had all been gutted, like they had been stolen to be jury rigged onto something else.

But most importantly, the armor was empty and did not contain my grisly remains.

I felt my toes curl. A movement that shouldn't have been possible with my severed spinal cord.

I brought my hands up and examined them.

They had been covered in some slate-gray colored material; the ends of my fingers were tipped with metallic caps. I looked down at myself. My entire body had been sheathed in what looked like a suit of slate-gray corded muscle, with a metallic skeleton holding it together and giving it form. I touched my face and instead of flesh I felt a fully sealed helmet.

My body felt good. The pain from my chest, back, shoulder, and thigh was gone. I had been put on polypsuedomorphine before. The painkiller had helped alleviate the worst of the agony from my augmentation surgeries during the post-op recovery, but it had also left me feeling sluggish and slow.

This was better. I felt amazing, but I was still sharp. There was no sedative effect like there had been with the painkillers.

I stood. Somebody, or something had cut me out of my MJOLNIR armor and put me into this suit. Not only that, if I could move, it meant that my severed spinal cord had been completely mended. Something which should have been impossible without extensive surgery and physical therapy.

I was alive.

A voice came to life. It sounded like a woman. High and clear, but beneath it there was a deep synthetic mechanical growl. The two sounds came together and spoke.

I didn't hear it so much as I felt it vibrating in my skull.

"Suit system online. New operator accepted."