Halo: Operation X

Installation 03

OoO October 31st, 2560. 1 Month After 'Halo Ring' Incident OoO

I slowly breathed air out of my mouth as I released the pressure in my leg, the rubber band around my ankle was pulled towards the pole it was attached to as I put my foot on the ground. I took a breath as I moved my knee back again, working out my muscles to regain strength in my previously dislocated leg.

I had a mishap last week where I popped my knee again, making me have to start my physical therapy over, right when I was close to being done. I looked to my right across the room and saw David sitting on a bench, lifting his right arm with a 2 pound weight. I shook my head as I began to have flashbacks to the night, the feeling of flying through the air before slamming into the ground. 

My hands began to shake on the railing I was holding, my thoughts no matter how hard I tried continued to drift back to that night. The sounds, the smells, the coolness of the air, the feeling, anything that reminded me of those things made me freeze. Filled me with fear and dread that it would happen again.

I let my leg down as I finished my last set of that particular workout, I bent down and unhooked my rubber band and stepped away from the area. I walked over to David, with a slight limp as my right leg hadn't gotten its full motion yet, and sat next to him. 

"You ok? I saw your hands shaking." David asked as I grabbed a ankle weight, I strapped it to my right leg and began to lift my leg and lay it down on the count of 5.

"I'm fine."

"You know it's normal for people to have PTSD, especially off world."

"I'm fine."

He returned to his workout as he took a small break, he lifted his arm up and held it there shakily before slowly letting it down. "It's ok to show emotion."

I sighed and put my leg down, I covered my face with my hands and wiped the sweat off of it. I looked to him, "It's my fault."

"What?" He asked as he put the weight down, I looked down at the ground.

"If I hadn't of told them that we should set up camp, we could've kept going. We wouldn't have been ambushed at the lake."

"It's not your fault, none of us had anyway of knowing that Covenant were there. And if we had kept driving who knows what would've happened."

I sighed and nodded slightly, "I guess you're right." I slowly stood up and stretched my back a bit. I was about to walk over to the water fountain before people I had never seen before walked into the room, they were wearing all black uniforms and their eyes were covered by dark glasses. But I did recognize Dr. Catherine Halsey.

I figured they were there to talk to one of the spartans in the gym, or perhaps the other marines, and maybe there was an ODST or two. But as I began to walk Halsey held her hand up, motioning for me to stop. They walked up to me as David stood next to me.

"Dr. Can I help you?" I asked.

"Yes, and we can help you."

I gave her an odd look as I looked to David. "I don't understand." He said, the two men in black moved their uniforms over and we saw an all too familiar pin on their undersuits. I triangle with a circle in the middle, with the white and black letters of UNSC on top, and the eerie lettering of Office of Naval Intelligence near the bottom of the triangle.

My eyes widened a bit, "ONI?" I whispered. They all nodded, "What would you need us for?"

One of the men pulled a couple of folders out, "Let's talk in private."

OoO

We were now in a room with no windows, only a square table with a single light shining on the roof. David and I sat on one side, while the two men sat on the opposite, Halsey behind them. They took out the two folders and opened them, "J take 115's I'll take 126."

"Got you K."

They swapped their folders and flipped through them a bit before the one referred to as 'K' looked at me, "Sierra Romeo Mike, Skylon Rayne Moss, designation 115. Correct?" I nodded. "Good. Your skills on the battlefield are very good, Delta too. So we're going to go over some things, you'll tell us some things. And then you'll come with us."

"What if we don't want to?" David asked defensively.

J looked at him and smiled, "You'll want to."

K cleared his throat, "Ok, Skylon your battles have been on...Earth, Sanghelios, and...You used to live on Reach." Everyone looked at me in surprise except for David.

"Yeah."

"It says here that Reach was glassed in 2552, you signed up for the UNSC the same year, a month after the glassing, and completed your basic in 2554. Then you moved into the air force in 2555, before being redesignated to the navy in 2556, and then finally put into ODST training up until 2558 before becoming a marine the same year."

"Holy shit." Halsey whispered.

"Do you understand how impressive that is?"

"Yes."

"And that you should be a higher rank than you are? Sergeant?"

David looked to me in surprise as I never told him, I nodded.

K motioned to J and the man nodded. "Delta Charlie Bravo, David Christian Bales, designation 126. Correct?" He nodded. "You fought on Reach, and says here that you signed up for UNSC training in 2550. You trained on Reach, and even lived there after moving away from Earth. You had never been offworld until 2552 when the planet was glassed. You then spent 2 years on this ship training and going on small ground strike missions on Requiem, in 2555 you worked in correlation to the ODST's as a marine and didn't do much until you went to Sanghelios."

He took a small second to flip his page and he nodded, "You served alongside of the Arbiter, that's cool. And says here you even met the Master Chief, after the planet was being attacked and it got too hot for marines you left, or got pulled out. You then moved on with more training before joining MT6, where you went to hundreds of missions on tens of planets before Skylon joined your team."

K and J closed the folders and placed them back into their black suits, "Now that we have all of that out of the way. We can get down to business. Tell us...What happened on the ring?"

"We...We landed." David began slowly, K pulled out a recorder and began to tape. "We landed, and set up our gear. The place was just like Earth, the air, the surroundings. It was all so familiar. We decided to go north, towards the upwards curve. We saw nothing, no buildings, no structures, no sign of intelligent life."

"Until we decided to sleep." I started, they looked to me as I spoke. "We went west a little ways, to a lake I found. We used it for water, and we found a deer. I killed it and we ate it, it was fine, no abnormal things about it. But around midnight there was an explosion, I looked and saw a camp on fire, another marine team. I went back to camp and saw Covenant storming the place, we fought off as many as we could but soon a Wraith showed up. Andrew was killed saving me from a plasma grenade, and Kevin was killed saving David. We both fell to the bottom of a steep hill in the forest and called for backup."

"Then you came back to the Infinity with a dislocated leg and broken arm." We nodded. K stood up along with J and Halsey looked at us.

"Thank you for your help...now let us help you."

"What do we get out of it? And what do you get out of information we already gave Laskey?" David asked.

"We get info. And you get into a top secret program."

"What kind of program?" I sneered, Halsey smirked.

"Spartan."