Chapter 6 – Semper Vigilans

July, 2525 - (Military Calendar)

Pytheas System, Andesia

Capital city of Noctus

(27 Years Ago)

:********:

City-life was an amalgamation of organized hazards. Everything was made to connect in a way that made sense. Cars drove up and down streets, stopped at traffic lights and carried on after they were finished. People used sidewalks, stopped at restaurants or shops then left for home. So did the kids who went to school with her every day. Coming from it, they went to ice-cream shops or playgrounds, anything to keep from having to go home, or more accurately, to carry school to home. She did the same, always promising her mother that she would do better at her homework if she just had a bit of free-time. Whenever she got it, it was a memory. A trip down the slide and the cookie-doe flavor; her own taste of a world that still made sense.

That was city-life. Half of it.

Then there was the half that didn't make sense. Sometimes a car would drive down a traffic-filled street when it would suddenly stop for no apparent reason. She could never see the driver's face since the windows were usually tinted. But she could tell when she needed to run, because they normally stopped in front of the 'big buildings'. Buildings where plenty of people were and especially where there were plenty of soldiers. They loved stopping for soldiers. Sometimes she even knew where to go to see it thanks to her mother who would stop her before she left for school and tell her where not to be at a certain time. If she ever asked why, the answer was always: "Because your dad's working there."

So she watched from a distance. It usually played out the same way each time. Traffic would build around the car. People would blow their horns and get no response. Police would show up minutes later and so would the soldiers standing nearby. First a knock on the window followed by a demand for the person inside to come out. No response. Second, a knock on the door and the same demand that would receive the same silence.

She waited to see who would do the obvious first, who would pull the door handle. The moment she saw someone reach for it, she would immediately back-up behind the corner she was hiding behind, sit down on the curb and cover her ears like her mother taught her to.

Then the explosion. It was fast. A burst of light, a wash of heat and a gust of air. When she opened her eyes again, she would see a brightness emanating from around the corner. People would run in the opposite direction, many of them bloodied, some looking around in a daze, others carrying blackened things that looked like charcoal. Sometimes those blackened things would gasp for air and scream.

Crying, there was always crying.

She cried too. She cried because she couldn't tell them. Her mother told her never to tell anyone, only to stay away from wherever her father happened to be working.

She feared him, and at the same time there was no one else she wanted to meet more. She wanted to fill the hole in her memory with the face of the man she never knew. The most she got was hearsay. Her mother was the main contributor, telling her bedtime stories in their old apartment of how the two of them met, about how they fell in love, were still in love, and yet could never be together. He was still living in the same city. However, her mother told her she could never meet him. If she asked why, the reply was as simple as it was forceful:

"Because if you do, he or his friends might kill you. They won't mean to. He loves you, but you can't go anywhere near him."

She tried anyway. Every time her mother told her not to go somewhere because of her father, she would purposefully go there to find him. She never would. What she would find however was a pattern.

On this street, at this time, a taxi would appear and blow-up, killing soldiers.

In front of this building, at a different time, a group of men would appear and shoot at a checkpoint. More dead soldiers.

At another place, she would see adults at a playground late in the evening. They dug into the sandpit, constantly looking around to make sure no one was watching, not that they ever saw her. Then they would take out the strange bags buried there and disappear into an alleyway. The next day, a truck would crash into an ice-cream shop, its hood aflame and the soldiers inside of it riddled with bullets.

At night she watched starships turn into shooting stars. They would shoot straight down into the ground. Police, ambulances and firemen echoed their sirens through the city on their way to crash sites, keeping her up for long hours and leaving her tired when she had to get up for school.

In the morning, she would be sitting in class when her keen eye would notice the time. She would look out the window to a certain skyscraper. Seconds later she could see a flash of light within its windows and a loud boom that made everyone jump. A moment of silence, a groan then a rumbling stampede as the building came crashing down, sending up a cloud of smoke and debris. Thankfully, she would be aware of the best routes to take when she walked back home. It kept her clear of the smoke as well as the dirtied faces that came limping out of it. Sometimes she recognized them. If she did, she pretended not to.

All of it was because of her father.

As she got older, she realized it was more than that.

All of it was because of people like her father.

Going back to school, there would occasionally be a kid in her class who stopped showing up. Her teachers called out their names at attendance and got no reply. It was never long before they stopped calling them altogether. Like her, they were used to it. Soon they stopped calling her name too. She was sure they did because one day her own mother told her she could no longer go to school. That she could go anywhere but to school.

Again, the question: "Why?"

That night her mother merely pointed at the projection screen in the living room. The news was on. The anchorman was talking. She could barely understand a word of what he was saying but she could read just fine. The scrolling headline popped out to her: 'UNSC Reinforcements To Invade Andesia, Counter-Terrorism Operations Soon To Be Underway'.

While everything else went right over her head, she picked up on 'UNSC'. So too the word 'Invade'. Her old schoolmates told her that the 'UNSC' were the same soldiers that were always getting hurt. 'Invade' meant more of them were coming. It made sense. They were getting tired of being hurt so much so they were coming to fight back. She would do the same thing if she were them. She said nothing else and went to bed. There was no sleeping though, only quiet thoughts about what was going to happen.

The news did the exact opposite of worry her. It excited her. More soldiers meant her father would be out more often. It improved her chances of meeting him now that he would be so busy.

Soon more soldiers came.

First their huge ships appeared in the skies. Smaller ones came out of them and landed. Hundreds of the soldiers came marching out of them and onto the streets. They would stand on street corners and patrol along sidewalks. They randomly stopped adults and would pull them aside to check their faces against a picture on a datapad or to randomly search them. She noticed they were much sterner than the ones who were always on Andesia, at least the ones that were in Noctus. They tended not to smile like the other ones did or respond when she waved at them. Their numbers turned to thousands when their vehicles drove down the streets. She gawked at the big turrets on some of the ones named after a kind of pig. The biggest were the tanks they called Scorpions. They rolled by in their giant treads. Whenever a group of them would pass, she would stop to hail the soldiers sitting on the seats. One day, one of them actually hailed back from the lead-tank. It was the turret gunner. He even tossed her a candy bar, much to the scorn of the guys sitting around him. She liked him. She was so happy with the treat that she wanted to help him out, so she ran along and shouted over the rumble of the treads:

"Hey, don't go that way! There's a pothole there where you'll all die! Don't go!"

Then she turned tail and ran away, though not before she saw the gunner's satisfied smile turn to horror along with the rest of the crew. She heard him shout at the driver and was happy to see them stop and turn off course. However, the tank behind them kept going, ignoring the shouts from the others to stop. It reached the pothole and vanished in a burst of smoke. The soldiers that were on it reappeared like candles, flickering and dancing as they burned. The others got off their tanks and ran over to help. A few stopped to turn her way but she made sure to get far enough that they couldn't give chase. After all, she had told them about the pothole, not about the ambush. Her mother hadn't told her about it either, leaving her surprised at the drumbeat of shooting that ensued. She ran for home with the candy bar and ate it before her mother could find out.

It wasn't long after that before she went out on another day. She wanted to see her school, to see her friends again. It was evening. They would be leaving to go home. She was nearly there, walking along the street leading to the school gates, when she heard what sounded like a roar or a whistle. Maybe both. It took a while before she saw what was causing it.

The sky was cloudy when a meteor shot through the haze. One meteor was quickly followed by several others, then a dozen, then dozens and finally hundreds. The balls of flame rained down on Noctus like fiery hail. Suddenly they slowed down and the fires around them ceased, revealing what they really were. They were pods, all of them. To her, they looked like giant, metal acorns that had been shaken out of a big tree somewhere in space.

They vanished into the skyline. A few dozen came crashing down around her. One landed so close that it spewed dust into her face as it crushed the empty street.

She was left dazed on the sidewalk. The school was right there. She wanted to get up and run to it, but the moment's shock was too much.

There was a hissing noise. After a series of muffled explosions, the doors on the pods blew off. Figures hopped out onto the street the likes of which she had never seen before. Their armor was black as night, their faces hidden behind the blue glass of their helmets. The only indication that they were looking somewhere was when they raised their weapons to scan their surroundings. One of them saw her. He looked like the leader. He shouted something to another and pointed to her. The other soldier ran her way and started checking her over, asking if she was okay. She tried to get up but he held her in place on the sidewalk.

She could do nothing more than watch the rest of the group run towards the school gates. More of them came striding down the adjoining roads. They quickly gathered outside the entrance, clipped their way through the metal fencing and stormed inside. There was shooting. Children screamed. Normal things, city-life. Only it wasn't, because she knew too well those who were screaming. She strained against the one holding her down but he refused to let her up.

"Just stay still, kid." He insisted. "They'll be fine. Your friends will be fine, you hear? Just stay put."

Those words calmed her somewhat. They sounded genuine, as though he actually cared. That was the strangest thing to her. It wasn't the shooting or shouting she heard, but the care in his voice. The worry too. She glimpsed the writing on the collar of his armor: 'Property of CPL. P. Hayes'. The soldier she figured was named 'Hayes' seemed unused to seeing children around, at least for whatever reason that brought him to Andesia. And how could he be, being an outsider. Then her thoughts hit her as hard as a rock to the skull.

Was Andesia the only place like this? Why? Was it because of her fa-

A commotion turned her back to the school. A bunch of the dark-armored soldiers were running back outside. They were chasing, shouting, aiming at a woman that was dashing across the schoolyard. She almost didn't recognize her because of the fright contorting her face. It was her art teacher. She was used to seeing the older lady calm and relaxed, smiling as she taught them how to paint. To see the fear in her eyes now was confusing. The woman was carrying a bag in one hand, something that looked like a pen in the other and locked in the crux of her arm was the head of one of her students. A friend. He were crying, trying to escape the headlock. But the teacher wouldn't let them go. The soldiers kept shouting after her even as she broke through the gate, only to be stopped by the soldiers standing guard outside.

There was a standoff. More shouting. More crying from her friend. Her teacher refused to yield. She held up the pen-like device, the one thing that seemed to keep them at bay.

The soldiers, shouting.

The teacher, threatening.

The friend, screaming.

CRACK.

The pen went flying out of her fingers in a spray of blood. The teacher reeled at the hand that was nearly blown off. She staggered and looked frantically to the rooftops, long enough for her hostage to break free and run. The soldiers fired, the teacher collapsed and the bag went off.

She watched her teacher disappear in a flash of thunder.

Seconds after the explosion, she looked again. Her friend was crying within the arms of the leader of the soldiers. She looked for her teacher and found nothing more than a smoking crater.

Looking into the smoke, the mist in her mind began to clear.

This was her father's work.

This was her father's world.

She knew her art teacher better than she knew him, and he had somehow convinced her to work for him. To do this.

The soldier named Hayes turned to check on her. "Hey, you alright?"

She nodded.

"Good. What's your name, kid?"

"...Carisa."

"Alright Carisa, you come with me. We'll get you somewhere safe."

He moved to pick her up but she held him back.

"What's wrong? You hurt?"

She shook her head.

"Well then come on, spill it."

Carisa looked straight into the spot where she thought his eyes would be. "I need to find my dad."

"Okay, no problem. We'll get you to him in a sec-"

"No." She eyed the crater. Water was beginning to pool into it from several broken pipes. "He's the one that did this. Take me home."

Hayes stood stunned for a moment. "W-, what?"

"Take me home." She insisted. "I need to stop him."

:********:

She hadn't truly cared what was happening around her, cared enough to stop it at least, until it came to people she cared about. Carisa realized it that night after she went back home. Selfishness was never anything to worry about when it kept her alive. What was the harm if it wasn't her own?

Seeing what she had that day changed her mind. About her life at home, about her life in Noctus, about the life she always wanted with the man she never knew. Now she questioned whether she even cared about someone whose face was always left up to her imagination. She tried thinking up kind faces, caring ones, but when she did that, all she remembered were images of smoke. Of bloodied foreheads and faces more barbecue than skin staring back at her. They visited her in her nightmares, choking her with flaking hands, asking her with whispering voices why she never told them about that door handle, about that gunman in the backseat, about the surprise waiting inside the basement of that skyscraper or in the cargo hold on that starship.

They wouldn't be visiting her this time. Not now with her mind clear. A few of her own friends would have been among those faces were they not still alive and she herself not wide awake.

Carisa walked along Noctus's sidewalks, retracing her steps back home as she always did. However, what she was going to do reminded her that she was doing more than her usual return trip. It wasn't hard. She only needed to look over her shoulder and see them.

A short distance further down the street, there was a group of dark vans. They were staying a few cars apart from each other, keeping away so as not to attract too much attention while they slugged through traffic. Wherever she went, they were never far behind. Still, she made certain to watch how fast she was walking. It was important she stayed well within their sights.

Before long, she reached her apartment building. She signaled it by stopping next to the front doors for a full minute. The move gave them the time they needed. Looking around, she saw only two of the vans now. The pair turned down a corner right next to her building. The pitch-black tint of their windows stopped her from seeing those inside. She stayed put.

Less than a minute later, a dozen of the same black-armored, glass-faced soldiers came racing from around the corner. Since the incident at her school, she had learned what they were called: Orbital Drop Shock Troopers. ODSTs was easier.

They checked the rooftops and windows of the surrounding buildings with their rifles. Half a dozen of them stayed outside. One of them, the leader, turned to the trooper called Hayes and told him to keep an eye on her while the others went in. Hayes did just that, staying by her side the whole time.

Carisa watched a team of them push into the front lobby. There were screams, shouts, demands to "get down". The screams slowly faded. Several minutes passed. Then shooting. One shot then two. Her eyes flitted to the source. Flashes of light were going off on a floor of the building, her floor. The handful of shots were quickly followed up with bursts of return fire. Then an awfully long silence.

Finally, the doors to the ground floor lobby slid open. The troopers strode out. One of them carried an injured comrade over his shoulder. Two others were dragging someone between them.

It was her mother.

She was fully dressed and fully alert, as if they had caught her right as she was about to leave. Her right shoulder bled as did her left leg, but she didn't seem to care. She shouted at the top of her lungs as they dragged her out onto the sidewalk.

"WE WILL WIN! ONE DAY, WE WILL BE FREE! AND YOU DOGS WILL BE NOTHING MORE THAN-"

She stopped once she spotted Carisa. Her expression softened. Without warning, she suddenly held back the two that were carrying her and pried her arms away before they could react. She bolted towards Carisa.

Hayes stepped into her path and barely managed to grab her. Still, she reached out for Carisa, her panicked eyes watering.

"Caris, it's okay!" She shouted desperately. "Mommy will be okay! We'll be okay! Just-"

The troopers slid a gag around her mouth and a bag over her head. They dragged her off again. The last thing Carisa saw was her mother being dragged with muffled voice and struggling spasms around the corner. Her cries shrunk away.

Carisa's didn't. It took Hayes kneeling down to comfort her for her breathing to settle again. As she cried into his shoulder, the leader came back.

"She knew we were coming." He said, disgruntled. "She was already walking out her door when we got there, got off a few shots too. Someone must've tipped her off."

Carisa stopped crying. Her tears dried up on their own because she understood, perhaps more than she should have. She immediately turned to him, snotty nose and all.

"It's my dad." She said. "He might've told her. He knows you're coming."

The two troopers as well as those nearby rounded on her at the news. There was an air of worry.

The leader nodded. "Then we'll need to extract that intel quick. We'll need some back-up too. Come on, kid. Your job here is done."

Hayes did something she hadn't expected. The glassy, featureless glass of his helmet changed. She saw his real face, the blonde hair, the hazel eyes and the caring demeanor of a human being, not a featureless machine pretending to be what it wasn't.

"Hey, you alright? Hanging in there?"

She was too choked up to say much so she nodded.

He smiled and patted her head.

"Good work, kiddo." He said as though he meant every word. "Now let's get you somewhere safe."

:********:

Carisa didn't feel safe. She actually felt more at risk than she ever had. She couldn't blame Hayes for saying what he did. He couldn't have known what would really happen to her in the end and neither could she.

She spent a few weeks at an orphanage within a large UNSC base on the outskirts of Noctus. At first, she was surprised at how quiet things were. There were no bombings at the checkpoints, no gunshots in the food places or people crying out in the streets. It was her first experience with culture shock. The kids at the orphanage were those taken off the streets or whose parents were taken by the streets. They talked very little. She made no friends there. That was probably why it was no issue for her when the two men in white came to visit.

Their approach was plain. They had her brought to a room where it was only them, a steel table and two chairs. The questions were simple. So simple that a six-year-old like herself had no problem answering them. But there was one that stumped her.

"Your name is Carisa Falton, correct?"

The first name meant something to her. The second did not. It was someone else's, not hers. She was her mother's child, and still she had to carry his name.

"Yes." She squeaked.

"Do you know what happened to your parents?"

Her mind became no better than a blank piece of paper. The last she saw of her mother was her being dragged off. She couldn't speak for the other person. She shook her head.

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you this but your mother's been arrested. She'll be staying with the UNSC for a long, long time. You probably won't be seeing her again."

Her lip quivered at the thought. "N-, never?"

"Yes. I'm sorry."

"...And my dad?"

The questioner glanced uncertainly at his partner and received a nod of approval.

"Your father has been...we've-" He sighed. "He's dead, Carisa."

She sat straighter. "H-, how?"

"The group of ODSTs you went with, do you remember them?"

"Yes."

"Okay, good. Your mother she...helped us get the information we needed."

Carisa felt a twinge of fear in her gut at the way he said 'helped'.

"That same night, we sent those ODSTs to find your father and his gang. There was some shooting at his hideout. They ended up killing him as he tried to get away from us. Do you understand, Carisa?"

Unlike her mother's case, the second story left her more relieved than sorry. "Did Hayes do it?"

"Ugh, no, but it was the same team."

"I get it...thank you."

She saw a look of shock flicker through their expressions.

"Do you know why we're here?" The questioner asked.

"No. Not really."

He smiled at her, yet in a way that seemed sympathetic.

"We're here to bring you with us. You're going to a special place for kids like you with special talents and circumstances."

Special place? Special talents? She wasn't sure what to make of that. No one, not her art teacher or her own mother ever noticed anything particularly special about her. Neither did her report cards. She wasn't exactly sure what 'circumstances' meant either.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been chosen to do something extremely important for many people. You and a few others here will be coming with us. Do you have anyone else here that you care about that you might want to bring along?"

Her mother's fearful face crossed her mind.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I'm sure."

Again, the questioner and his partner shared a knowing glance.

"Alright then. Where you're going, you'll be meeting a lot of new friends. You'll find a new family with us, new people to care about and who care about you. What do you say?"

She shuffled nervously in her seat. The thought of leaving Andesia was terrifying but so was the idea of staying. She made up her mind and made her choice.

:********:

Now that she thought back on it, there was never a real choice for her in the matter. The questioner did a good job making her think there was. In truth, they would have taken her regardless. The children she met on the starship told her as much. Most of them never even got a visit from the men in white. They merely woke up and found themselves on the same ship as her. She was in the minority of the dozens of kids onboard who knew why they were actually there. Of the little she could explain to them, that they were going to a special place for people with talents, it did nothing besides scare them. She quickly found out that leaving home was a universally troubling thing no matter who she told.

There were at least 60 of them on the ship at first. They were mostly her age, one or two years younger or older. The people who brought them aboard kept them in a large, three-floored room with tables, broadcasting projectors and a few toys that were at the heart of many fights. The younger ones like her spent much of their time either crying on their own or gathering to play. The older ones tended to either stay off on their lonesome and brood while others clustered around the wall-mounted displays to watch movies. The old film 'Chasing David' was never far from the screens.

They were given new clothes, showers and food but no real attention from the adults. The white-shirted men and women that took care of them seemed to keep their distance, coming in only to do a job then leaving right after, always sealing the exits shut behind them.

There were days when more kids would be brought in by the dozens. They hailed from other worlds as Carisa would learn from talking to a few. Over the weeks and months that followed she gained a decent idea of the places the ship was going by who they picked up: Andesia, Madrigal, Charybdis IX, Venezia, Eridanus II. What she couldn't pin down was where they were going to stop for good. None of the crew told them about a final destination. There had to be one though and she attempted to riddle it out from the places they were going, from the outer colonies to the inner ones.

Within months, the number of kids onboard reached over 500. It was around the same time they picked up the batch from Eridanus II that she noticed another important pattern.

Everyone they picked up, every boy and girl without exception, was a son or daughter of what the UNSC-people called 'Insurrectionists'. Everyone, herself included.

Before then, she believed what was happening on Andesia was unique to the planet, an Andesian thing, not a problem for other worlds. But it was. She was shocked to learn that many of the kids had stories similar to hers. Some had parents who were bombmakers, others whose were part of hit squads, executioners of neighborhood spies, crew members of weapon-smuggling ships and even spies inside the UNSC. She was also shocked to learn the last similarity that made the gathering unique from all other groups of children:

They were brought onboard this ship only after the deaths of those Insurrectionist parents.

Some were certain the UNSC killed them. Some had their suspicions. Most were unsure. Across the board, however, there was a direct connection between the mysterious deaths of their parents and the later welcoming and or kidnapping of everyone onboard.

Carisa wasn't sure what to make of any of it. What would the UNSC want with the children of 'Insurrectionists'? So much so that they would kidnap them?

While she tried to make sense of it in secret, others were far more open about their displeasure. Too open. They shouted at the adults whenever they entered the room, demanding to know exactly where they were going and why. A few got violent.

There were a handful taken away from the group that were particularly unruly. They were never seen again. She sometimes wondered what happened to them. Her imagination was usually close behind. They had no parents, no one who would miss them, and no matter what the ship never went back to their home worlds. Rumors abounded, none of them good.

A new fear quickly took hold over the children. No one wanted to get 'thrown out'. So they stayed quiet for the most part. Even so, despite her quietness, her reservedness, her refusal to stick around anyone else, Carisa couldn't help noticing her.

She was a girl two or three years older, a slightly darker olive tone and darker hair than herself but with enough features to get her attention. For Carisa, it was like looking in a mirror at her older, taller self, at a twin. She discovered the letters of her name thanks to the tags on the suits that the adults gave them to wear: 'JC4 - #151 - G.F'

GF.

The girl tended to stay off by herself, not bothering to interact with anyone in their growing group unless it was time to eat. Carisa knew that because GF was among those that she kept close tabs on since Andesia. They were both from the same planet so there was some common ground. How to work it out into a conversation was another thing entirely.

Her first attempt at an approach landed them both at the same table with a very one-sided conversation. Carisa learned the hard way that GF did not like to talk, her attention firmly set on refining her fingernails with a small file. They were unusually sharp. Still, Carisa tried again and again and again. All of her attempts likewise fell flat. GF would simply walk away or ignore her presence altogether. Carisa persisted nonetheless. She wanted to get to know this familiar stranger.

And she did one night in a way she never expected to.

As everyone was sleeping in their bunks on the upper floors, Carisa had stayed awake. After having watched GF for so long, she became aware that the girl liked to hang around the ground floor late at night. She would always be the last to leave when it was lights out. The night prior, Carisa spotted her fiddling with a control panel for one of the doors, trying to slip her fingernails into the seams.

That night, Carisa heard it: a grunting noise. It was muted, as if the person making it was staying quiet. She listened.

A few more grunts then a pop followed by creaking metal. Carisa stealthed her way over from her bed to the railing on her floor of the room.

Sure enough, amidst the empty tables, there was none to be found but GF. She was slouching over an open control panel. Now she was reaching in for the wires. There was a spark.

Carisa tiptoed towards the stairs. She reached the ground floor at the same time that the far door slid open. She watched GF slink outside. However, the door stayed open.

Carisa passed through the tables, hesitated at the threshold and forced herself to keep going. She emerged into a long hallway that stretched to her left and right before joining a set of perpendicular passages. GF was moving down the right side and she followed.

GF looked around, probably getting her bearings. She never thought to peek back over her shoulder until she reached the intersection at the end of the hallway. When she did, she spotted Carisa right behind her and almost keeled over.

"Who-, who're you?" She whispered harshly. "How did you-, what're you-"

Carisa put a finger to her lips. GF took the hint and lowered her voice.

"What are you doing here? Go back."

She shook her head. "No."

If she was angry before, GF was fuming now. "Why are you here?"

"You're getting out of here, right? Take me with you."

"What? Listen, you don't even know me and I don't know you. So go back before you get us both caught out here, okay?"

"No."

"Stop saying 'no'. Go away."

"No."

GF was going to tell her off were it not for the sound of footsteps. Two pairs of them were coming up one of the passageways. The two girls ducked back and listened in. There was a voice, then another voice. A patrol.

GF proved the faster of the two. She grabbed Carisa up by the waist and carried her off like a log of wood into a nearby maintenance closet. She shut the door behind them. They listened as the patrol strode past.

GF breathed easier once the sounds were gone. Carisa almost thought they were in the clear. Then there was a shocked grunt. The footsteps returned. They sped up and stopped at what she guessed had to be the door they had left open. She heard their worried voices loud and clear.

"Hey, who left this unlocked? Was it Team 2?"

"Nah, I just checked. Team 2 reported all clear."

"Then who-"

There was a loud bang as GF suddenly kicked the door open. She dashed out into the hallway, pivoted away from the patrol and sprinted...with Carisa still on her shoulder. She must have forgotten she was holding her. Hearing her increasingly ragged breaths, Carisa could tell she was panicking. She also saw the surprised faces of the two armed soldiers standing at the door. Then they were running after them.

"Hey, you two, stop!"

"Get back here!"

GF wasn't listening. She zoomed down the passage with her newly acquired breakout partner in tow. Carisa considered jumping out of her grasp so that they could run faster, but her grip was so strong that she could hardly do anything other than hold on.

Somehow, GF proved even faster than the soldiers. Before long, they were losing them down the labyrinth of corridors and hallways. They stopped for her to catch her breath. No sooner did she stop that the soldiers reappeared and got them running again.

They got as far as a passage riding past the ship's med-bay. By then, Carisa realized their biggest problem. "Hey, where're we going!?"

"What!?"

"Where are we going!?"

GF didn't answer. Carisa suspected she had none. The soldiers kept shouting after them. One of them tapped his headset and called for backup.

Finally, at the end of one passage, a trio of soldiers ran in to block the exit. The other two came in behind them.

"Stay right there!" One ordered as they closed in. GF backed up, looking for a way out. Carisa found none. Not that it stopped her friend from rushing at the three new pursuers. She kicked at the nearest. He side-stepped the blow, leaving her open to run. She didn't get very far. Another held out a foot and tripped her. The soldiers descended on them the second they were down. Both of them found themselves being pulled away and restrained.

Carisa struggled against the hands that held her down. She felt a prick in her shoulder. Her strength ebbed and failed. She blacked out.

Consciousness came all at once. Carisa shot awake, breathing hard, feeling her heart knocking on her ribs with every beat. She looked around.

She was in a featureless room. She was clearly still on the ship, much to her chagrin. There were two beds in a corner of the room, one of which she was lying on.

She found GF sitting on a chair in the opposite corner. She was awake but not alert, holding her head in her hands.

Carisa spotted a large door on the far side of the room. She shot to her feet and ran for it. At her grasp, the handle refused to budge.

"It's useless." GF said.

Carisa tried again with the same result.

"I told you, it's useless. This is the brig, their jail. They locked us in. There's no point."

Carisa tried again, earning an annoyed scowl from GF.

"I just said its-"

"No."

"Why are you so stubborn, huh? What's wrong with you?"

Carisa glared at her. "We were trying to get out of here, weren't we?"

"I was. I don't know about you."

"Wha-, but you helped me. You carried me with you."

"Yeah, well, I was worried, alright? I didn't want to leave some kid back there. And look where it got me."

"Oh. Then, thanks for trying."

"What, you want me to say you're welcome?"

Carisa shook her head. "No, but you could say your name."

GF stared incredulously.

"Okay, I'll start first." Carisa walked up to her and held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Carisa. I'm from Andesia just like you. Nice to meet you."

GF eyed the hand like it was the last thing she wanted to touch. "And I didn't ask you that. We're from the same planet? So what? Does that mean we have to be friends?"

"No. Talking to you now, I don't think I like you very much."

GF's scowl deepened.

"But, I think I could if I got to know you better."

The scowl wavered and faded, usurped by suspicion. Carisa gave her a toothy grin, making sure to expose her handful of missing teeth. She always got a laugh out of her friends back at school when she did it. Maybe it could work here. "What do you say?"

Suspicion gave way to mild amusement and then to real interest. GF sighed and laughed to herself. With a shake of her head, she took Carisa's hand and shook.

"I'm Giana." She replied. "Nice to meet you too-... what was it?"

"Carisa."

"Yeah, nice to meet you, Carisa."

:********:

As it turned out, Giana wasn't all that bad.

They spent a few days in the brig before they were released with a warning not to try anything screwy again. During that time, they got to know each other better. Not only were they from the same planet but what were the odds that they were also from the same city? Giana had called Noctus home all her life, except she lived in a different district of the city, so far away that Carisa wasn't surprised they had never met.

Giana lived a relatively simple life with her parents before the fighting became more intense. What landed her on the ship was a night she could never forget. She was looking out the window of her bedroom when she saw her father walk out the front door in a hurry. She never even got to ask him where he was going. He was in too much of a rush. He slipped into his car and sped off.

Her mother, wide-awake, took them both to hide inside the attic. UNSC soldiers came to her house around dawn. It didn't take them long to find the attic. After that, there was a rush of movement, a struggle, screams, hands that grabbed her while others pried her mother's hands away from her own. She wound up at the same base as Carisa. She was approached by the same people and told the same thing: that her father was dead. There was no why or how, just that he was.

One thing led to another and here she was.

Carisa couldn't make much out of the story. It sounded sad, albeit familiar to many of those she heard before. In fact, it sounded a bit too familiar because of that, confirming her suspicions on what their holders were after.

They hung around together more often. They made smart moves, saving food and small pieces of material that they could trade in what quickly became a black market for the children of the ship. In no time they acquired what they needed for another escape attempt; a couple of nails, a pocket knife and even a keycard one of the soldiers had unwittingly misplaced.

They were brainstorming a plan of escape, asking kids questions on what they remembered when they came aboard. To Carisa's surprise, next to no one knew anything other than that they went to sleep in a bed somewhere then awoke on a bed onboard. Thinking on it for herself, Carisa realized that she had no memories of coming aboard either. Long months spent on the ship left her with the stark reality of living on Andesia versus being in the large room with the other kids. There was no in between, no point of transition where she came up a ramp or down an umbilical. Giana was the same.

Drugs.

The word was unfamiliar to her at the time. However, some of the older kids brought it up at their table-side chats whenever the adults were out of the room. Some of their own parents had been part of the trade, using it to sponsor their activities, so their kids held a solid grasp on the topic. They knew that some drugs could be used to keep a person asleep for longer than usual. Long enough perhaps to take them up into a ship like the one they were on. Then everyone started noticing old rashes on their upper arms and shoulders. Old injection sites. Everyone had at least one. Carisa and Giana had two. They suspected the second was from their breakout attempt which much of their newfound acquaintances were eager to ask them about. They wanted to learn how they could escape too. Sadly, the soldiers had doubled their patrols since then. No one was eager to get put to sleep twice so the sentiment subsided.

Well into the trip, a new question circulated that had been bubbling up from the very beginning: where were they going?

No soldiers answered them, no kids had any solid clues and the minority who did get to speak with the men in white were given details too vague to understand. That was probably on purpose too.

They were slowly giving up on figuring out the puzzle when the next batch of children arrived. They were the largest group. Looking no less hollow-eyed than those that came before, the other kids paid little attention to them besides giving them the normal prison welcome. As they assimilated into different circles, it became clear that the newest batch was all from the same planet: Reach.

Carisa honed in on that detail like it was her lifeline. They were still travelling further and further into the inner colonies. She would have thought a place like Reach would be it. After what she heard, how the UNSC used it as their main hub, she was certain that would be the end point. It wasn't, so where were they going?

Then he appeared.

He was a boy with no name. There was none to be found on his nametag because he didn't have one. There was a small number of kids brought aboard with no tags as well, so small Carisa could count them on one hand and still have fingers to spare. The adults treated those ones a bit differently. They routinely took them aside for hours on end before bringing them back. No matter what, they never told anyone what happened to them outside the room. This newest one she watched closely.

He looked closer to Giana's age. Dark hair shorn low like everyone else', it was his silvery-gray eyes that set him apart. They were full of life and intrigue and curiosity. He seemed awfully friendly. The very same day he got on the ship, he went about making himself known to the whole room. There was no elaborate stunt or prank like some of the attention seekers did. Instead, he simply sat down and talked to them. He went around from table to table, striking up conversations as easily as if they were friends that he had known all his life, as though he were always part of the group. By the end of that first day, there was barely any left of the 600 strong gathering who didn't know his name.

Carisa was one of them and that was also on purpose. He seemed strange to her. Yes, he was friendly, but he was weird to look at. His face wasn't the issue as much as it was the mark around his neck. It was a faint red line of skin that wrapped from one side to the next, as if something had been wound tight there.

Moreover, it was his eyes that seemed so normal and yet they worried her the most. There was something there, something behind them about which all she knew was that she didn't want to know what it was. The only way she could think to describe it was like seeing a kid's blanket wrapped around a kitchen knife. As if the innocence was only skin-deep, a skinsuit of normality. Those gray irises felt like they were imitating life, not alive in and of themselves.

Two days in, he finally caught her at a table with Giana. He laid down his lunch tray opposite theirs. He casually took his tuna sandwich in hand. He stopped short of his mouth at noticing that the two girls had also noticed him. They were watching him, Giana mildly annoyed, Carisa worried.

His cracked lips drew up like a curtain into a meek smile.

"Oh, I'm sorry." He apologized. "Are you guys saving this seat for someone?"

"Yeah." Giana replied. "Us."

The boy chuckled and shrugged it off. "Sorry, I didn't know. So this is your table, right?"

"I just said that."

"Y-, yeah, I heard you. I want to make sure I remember. So this table is..." He gestured at her, seeking an answer.

"Giana's." She firmly declared. "It's Giana's."

Carisa saw his smile widen. There was a flare in his eyes. It went by so fast she could have barely noticed it if she weren't staring.

"Giana?" He considered it and nodded like he was agreeing to a deal. "Giana what?"

"Falton. Giana Falton."

For a split-second, Carisa's attention darted to her friend and her eyes went wide.

Falton.

She had the name too, the same as hers. What were the odds?

"Giana Falton." The boy parroted. "That's you, right?"

"Yeah, that's me. Can you go now?"

"Hmm, can I call you GF instead?"

Giana flinched. "What?"

"Hey, it's easier. That's all. Nothing crazy."

"It's not, GF, it's Giana." She hissed. "Get it right, okay friend?"

He froze. "...Friend?"

"Yes." Giana growled.

"Am...I your friend?"

"It's just a way of speaking. Don't think about it too hard."

"Oh." He laughed. "Okay then." With a calculated turn of his head, he looked to Carisa. The way his eyes locked with hers made her inwardly shiver.

"How about you? What's your name?"

She swallowed. "Ca-, Caris-, Carisa."

He cocked his head quizzically. "Ca-Caris-Carisa. Hmph, weird name, but nice to meet you." He held up a hand for a high-five. She didn't move.

"That's not my name." She corrected. "It's Carisa. Just Carisa."

He put his hand away. "Is it really though? Don't you have a last name too or is all that stuttering part of it?"

Carisa bit her lip, unsure what to really say. Out the corner of her eye she saw Giana turn to her as well, looking mildly curious.

She relented. "Falton. Carisa Falton. That's my full name."

She saw the moment Giana stopped eating. The look of mild curiosity was blinked away, replaced with a wincing narrowness of the eyes that left Carisa feeling cornered.

"Carisa Falton." The boy cupped his chin and pondered it. He glanced between the two of them. The earlier smile shortened to a grin. "Hey." He leaned in. "Hey now, you two wouldn't happen to be related, would you?"

Giana stared hard at him and shook her head. "I don't think so."

"Maybe cousins? First cousins? Second cousins? Zero cousins?"

Giana's stare hardened into a glare. He shrugged that off too. "Or maybe sisters?"

Now both of them were staring at him, then at each other. Neither spoke.

At length, the boy's grin became a toothy palisade that stretched as long as the scar on his neck. "Well, this is awkward, huh?"

They rounded on him. He cut them off. "Okay-okay, I guess I stayed too long. I'll get going." He got up with his tray. "No worries, you'll have plenty of time to think about stuff like that when we get to Earth. Trust me."

With that he started walking away.

The mention of 'Earth' startled both of them back into action.

"Wait." Giana called after him. "What're you saying? We're going to Earth?"

He stopped without turning back. "Yup." He started again.

"Hold on, how would you even know that?"

"I just do."

"What, and you expect me to just believe that?"

He stopped again. "Yeah, actually."

"...Why?"

"Because where we're going, you'll need to learn to trust me a whole lot more than you are right now. So here's some practice for you-"

"Wait a sec." Carisa called. "Wha-, who-"

"Come on, Carisa Falton, get it out."

She blushed red, embarrassed at hearing the name aloud. "You never told us what your name was."

He peered over his shoulder at her. The same meek smile from before had returned.

"Dimitri."

She frowned. "Dimitri what?"

As though seeing right through her, the meekness drained from Dimitri's face. All that remained was that knowing grin. "Di-Dimi-Dimitri". He turned and walked on. "It was nice to meet you Carisa Falton, Giana Falton. Be seeing you."

:********:

More questions.

These were aimed at two targets, Carisa and Giana, by the two targets.

After the conversation with the boy named Dimitri, both of them wanted to know a bit more about each other. Surnames were a dime a dozen. Anyone could have them. Their situation was different. What were the chances that a complete stranger would look like them and have the same last name?

Carisa thought they were low. They talked it over half-heartedly, never fully believing it but, despite their best efforts, never fully dismissing it either. They compared notes, talked about their lives before what happened to them. There was no strong connection with their mothers. Giana's was a banker. Carisa's was a grocer until it turned out she was an Insurrectionist.

That only left their fathers.

Giana's own was a senior technician at a local business who, outside of his work, often took the time to teach his daughter what he knew. She thought of him as an innocent, hardworking man. Until he wasn't. In truth, according to the men in white, he was the leader of several Insurrectionist cells working in the cities of Noctus and Promesa. His name was Ruiz Falton and he was a married man.

For Carisa, she could say no more than that hers was a blank-face with no name besides the meaningless one: dad. Her mother never told her much else beyond where she should not go at certain times because of him. Obviously, the two were still in contact for those years even though they 'could never be together'.

They would have settled on the idea of being victims of coincidence were it not for a single detail that made Carisa's blood freeze. The night that Giana lost her father was the same night that Carisa led the ODSTs to her mother. She didn't say the last part of course. That was still a sore spot. All the same, what linked those two events together were both the timing and cause of Ruiz's death.

The men in white told Carisa her father died late that night because there was a shootout and he tried to run from them.

Giana heard something similar about hers as well.

Same time.

Same circumstances.

The topic came up infrequently thereafter, but Carisa sensed the change in their relationship for the rest of their trip, however quiet it was.

That trip would come to an end at an unexpected hour. The children were broken out of their sleep by a familiar whine of the propulsion units. The ship was descending. Minutes passed then finally an hour, at the end of which came a jolt of movement seconded with more silence. They waited.

Hundreds of eyes turned towards the doors on the ground floor as they slid open. Dozens of the soldiers stormed inside and headed to the upper floors. They shouted, barked, ordered the children to wake up and led them down to the ground floor. There they herded them into long lines and brought them out through the doors. Scared and confused, they filed through the halls and corridors.

Carisa was among them. She clung to Giana's hand to keep from getting separated. It was comforting enough to stop her from fearing as much as those around her. She had someone there to rely on, or at least to hold her hand. She just so happened to look ahead and saw more soldiers guarding the passages while those guiding them took the lead. However, she also saw the unexpected.

At the front of their line was the boy she met a few days earlier. Unlike those behind him, Dimitri looked steadfast. Eyes forward, hands buried casually in his pockets, he strode forward with an enthusiasm that isolated him from the rest of the children.

They reemerged inside of a hanger bay that none of them remembered. The wide-open space was dominated by a squadron of the large UNSC dropships. Carisa wondered if they were going to use those to leave. However, that was not to be. The soldiers reorganized them into their lines again, forming them up between the dropships where they were forced to endure another lengthy wait.

Perhaps half an hour went by before the whine of the engines dulled. A new sound came to ear, machinery rurring and clanking. The cacophony culminated in a loud thud.

The hanger doors hissed and began to part along a central seam. They pulled away, casting onto the crowd of kids the first glimpses of sunlight. Fresh air rushed into the space. It was hot. Extremely hot.

The air-conditioning seemed to disappear completely, leaving them in a humid world.

Where were they?

Carisa's question got an answer the moment the doors were sufficiently open. The soldiers called on each line and had one group go out at a time. Hesitant steps and uncertain glances took each child through the doors and down a ramp into a world that was still too bright to discern. When it was their line's turn, Dimitri was all too ready to move. He strode out through the doors and led the others forward. Carisa got the feeling that outside was the last place she wanted to go. She briefly held Giana back, shaking her head. But Giana only gave her a reassuring hand against her back and pressed her forward.

A wave of hot air rushed over them. Carisa quickly realized what she felt in the hanger was nothing compared to this.

The sunlight stung her eyes. Her new surroundings came to her in flitting glimpses whose afterimages remained glued to her mind.

Yellow. Waves of yellow grass. Green. Tufts of green shrubs. Orange. Orange-brown dirt, cracked and dried. She felt thirsty but could hardly focus on it because of the growing dampness in her pits. Her eyes slowly adjusted. She blinked at the hazy image of the sun high overhead. There was only one star in the sky. A blue sky. The grass, shrubs and dirt stretched on ahead of them for what looked like forever before they reached tall, rocky formations scattered about the horizon.

"Pay attention recruit!" Someone shouted, startling her.

It was a soldier standing right next to her, rifle in hand. Her head swiveled left then right. The other children were moving down along either side of what she saw to be the massive ship that flew them here. Giana was off to her left, having stopped just to beckon her over. Carisa hadn't realized she had let go of her hand.

"Move up!" The soldier ordered.

Carisa scampered off. She retook Giana's hand and they sped after their line.

"Try not to get noticed like that again, okay?" Giana whispered.

"...Okay."

They rounded the front of the ship which Carisa thought looked an awful lot like a giant bat with its wings out. It scared her to think they were cooped up inside of it for months. What scared her more, however, was what lay on the other side of it.

There was a dirt road carved through the grass. It ran straight to a massive wall of light that shone brighter than the sun. It reached from one end of the plain to the next, well out of sight to either side. Beyond the wall lay large buildings, structures that immediately stuck out from the rest of the environment thanks to their machine-gray hue and great height. To Carisa, it looked like a small city.

The different lineups were shepherded together into one continuous line that marched down the road. On the way, dropships flew in and out, constantly buzzing through the air above them. Soon they were close enough for her to see that the wall of light wasn't light at all. It was a black, steely metal that reflected much of the sunlight striking its surface.

The gathering of hundreds stopped at a checkpoint. The squad of soldiers there raised the entry bar and let them through but never bothered to look at them.

They entered a world of impressive structures, fenced fields, obstacle courses that looked like fun playgrounds and huge swimming pools. Streets divided them and sidewalks girded them. The kids marveled at the sights while they marched along the walkways. Crews of soldiers drove by in Warthogs, never giving the group of kids a single glance. Their faces cold, their eyes darting away whenever they saw them, Carisa wondered if the soldiers hated them. Or maybe they were scared. Of what, a bunch of kids?

Sidewalk after sidewalk, street after street and then they arrived at one of the buildings. It was one of the larger ones. She remembered seeing buildings like it back at her school with the auditorium. By its looks, that had to be what it was.

The doors were opened and the children flowed into a titanic space within. Rows upon rows of cushioned seats broke them up into smaller numbers and they filtered down the chairs at the behest of the soldiers. Once the kids were seated, their guides moved to the back of the auditorium to stand and watch them.

Murmurs broke out. A sea of worried and curious faces rose and fell around Carisa. Their attention settled on the stage near the bottom of the sloping space. It was empty except for some lights that shone down from the ceiling to a single point on the stage.

Carisa spotted Giana sitting beside her, looking just as worried and curious.

"W-, what do you think we're here for?" Carisa stammered.

"I don't know. I guess we're going to find-"

Carisa saw Giana's eyes widen and she twitched back to the stage.

A door at the back slid open. A man stepped inside. He was dressed in a blackish gray uniform. He was tanned, Arabic, with a well-trimmed beard. Everything about him seemed dignified. He marched up to the focal point of the lights and stood tall and imposing before the hundreds of watchful eyes.

"On your feet, recruits."

His voice boomed from all around the room. The man looked around. No one moved.

He scowled. "I said, ON YOUR FEET, RECRUITS!"

This time the entire room shot to their feet.

"Good! Arms to your sides, mouths shut and eyes on me!"

They did so.

"Good! What you're doing now is called standing at attention. You will do that whenever you are in the presence of a superior officer. And guess what, you'll be doing it a lot from here on out. Why you ask? Well, I'll tell you."

A projection screen emitted from the wall behind the stage. Two large holo-projections appeared. One was of a black and white pyramid. The other was of an eagle with outstretched wings, clutching a pair of crossed swords in its talons. Above its head floated four silver stars.

"Because my name is Senior Drill Instructor Mahmud, and starting today, I will be training all of you as candidates of the fourth class of the Janissary Program. I am enacting Directive 37176-A of the Naval Security Initiative. Under its stipulations, you are now security assets and agents in training for the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence. For the next few years, you will learn to call this place home." He started pacing about the stage. "You will learn to take orders. You will eat when and where we tell you to eat, sleep when and where we tell you to sleep and train when and where we tell you to train. Here, I've made it my duty to make sure you learn these things." He stopped, his eyes falling on Carisa. "And you will learn."

Carisa felt a shiver crawl up her spine. She wanted to leave right then but the piercing gaze of the man named Mahmud pinned her in place.

"I don't plan on taking up too much time for today's orientation. You've got this next week to adjust to your new home. The drill instructors in charge of you will give you the rundown on how we do things here. They'll get you acquainted real quick with what will be expected of you during your stay."

Carisa was confused as to who he was talking about. A couple of gasps from a few of the kids turned her and everyone else to the ends of their rows. Against the far walls of the auditorium stood men and women dressed in the same uniform as Mahmud. No one had seen them come in. By the time they noticed them, they already appeared to have been there for a good while. Each of them stood at attention, equipped with datapads as well as the sternest faces she had ever seen.

"At the end of this, you will become loyal operatives of the Office, capable of playing an important role as part of its intelligence gathering apparatus as well as fulfilling your duties to the UNSC at large." Mahmud continued. "By your graduation year, you will have honed your skills, prepared your minds and learned the meaning of our creed; Semper Vigilans. Instructors, take over from here."

Mahmud turned to leave. "Oh, and one more thing." He turned back to smirk at the gathering. "Welcome to Topkapi."

Mahmud walked out. The instructors stepped forward. A frenzy of orders shook the auditorium from one end to the next. The instructors forced the recruits to turn and face them. They made them respond to their numbers, not their names, when called off their registers then to walk out the chosen exit designated by their pointing fingers.

Carisa barely heard them. Her mind was still fixed on the stage. She understood so little and still sensed that so much had changed in a moment.

A hand grasped her shoulder and shook her out of her stupor.

"Come on." Giana said. "We've got t-"

"Recruit-151, up front!" Someone shouted.

Carisa watched Giana immediately turn and walk speedily down the right side of the row. She was surprised to see almost everyone in their row was already gone. Giana halted and stood ramrod straight in front of an instructor, a man with dark hair and sharp jaw locked into a menacing scowl. He looked her over, checked his pad, nodded and pointed to an exit. Giana took the hint and the instructor's attention shifted to Carisa.

"Recruit-108, step up!"

She bolted over to him. Stopping, she stood waveringly at attention. As the instructor checked his pad, she checked him.

Though his hair was dark, there were a few stray strands of white peeking out from his hairline. It was odd to see. Normally, she expected to find it on older people. He didn't look old enough for them, yet there they were. Her eyes wondered down to the tag on his shirt:

'Instr: H. White'.

She found the name funny. The hair only made it worse. But then a giggle escaped her lips. His steely eyes shot to hers and shot down any humor in them.

"Get moving recruit." He snarled with an unstated warning of 'or else' and pointed his finger. His tone was sharp enough to get her to do just that. She followed his lead and dashed for the exit, her mind still amiss as to how in the world she had gotten herself onto a world like this.

Semper Vigilans – Always Watchful