The Good, the Bad, and the Didact

Trapped

I sat in the UNSC Infinity's lab watching my mother pour one test tube into another. Well, the truth was, she wasn't really my mother; she was my foster mother. They had dragged me with them to Requiem, because they didn't want me to be on the Shadow of Intent alone. The Arbiter and Shipmaster were my friends; they liked me very much, and it seemed I was the only human they did not argue with on war-related topics. But my foster parents believed the truce would be over as soon as the Elites left Earth, at the end of the war. I didn't want to believe it. A truce was only over between two sides, if one side shot the other.

Infinity had crash-landed on Requiem, and my foster parents were researching ways to leave. The military would then initiate plans, based on what the scientists learned. I had come to Requiem to learn where the creatures called the Prometheans had come from, and where the Forerunners had gone. The Prometheans apparently had something to do with a human colony, which vanished on the Halo Installation 02 years ago.

Just then, my thoughts were interrupted when my "mother" called to me.

"Emily could you hand me the beaker please?" She asked, and I got up in silence and got her one from a nearby shelf.

She rolled up the sleeves on her lab coat and began stirring the mixture she poured into the beaker from the test tube. Her hair was blond, and tied into a bun; she appeared to be hyper-focused. I didn't even want to ask what she was mixing, and I doubt it had anything interesting to do with Requiem.

What interested me on Requiem, was what the Master Chief had just done, that triggered an alliance with the Covenant and the Prometheans. But this wasn't the same Covenant that we had a truce with. This army was a rogue army.

They had formed an alliance with these Prometheans. I thought that the Prometheans were the inhabitants of Requiem, but then I found out they weren't native, they were made by someone. I learned that the Master Chief was being called a Reclaimer, and another story went out which was really interesting. That story was that the alliance between the Covenant and Prometheans formed when Chief released a Forerunner, known as the Didact from his Cryptum in the depths of Requiem. Ever since that event, I was wondering, where the rest of the Forerunners were, especially this Didact. The Master Chief had not reported in almost a month, and I was wondering if he had gone MIA again.

I got up and left the lab as soon as my foster father came in and began wandering Infinity like a lost puppy. It was no fun being the tag-along-daughter. But I was here because it wasn't safe to stay home at Earth. If another invasion started, I would have been the first target, so that was why my foster parents took me with them.

I wasn't even allowed to leave the ship alone, but I longed to explore Requiem. I wanted to run away; I wanted to be free. I loved my family but only my real family, which were both in the military, and died during the war with the Covenant. My foster parents were only focused on their boring science experiments, and other boring news, that was way too boring to stay inside my brain. The result of that was, I never got any attention from them, but whenever I tried to escape them to do what I wanted to do with my own life, they wouldn't let me, and they treated me like a child. I wandered into the bathroom and stared at myself in the mirror.

I was 5 feet tall, slightly below the average weight for someone my age. I had peach skin, and my hair was straight and shoulder-length, dark blood orange, with swept side-bangs. Back on Earth, all the girls had longer hair than me but I didn't care. My eyes were emerald, and yes I thought of myself as beautiful but at times I was gullible. I had read a lot of books where being alone felt great, but as soon as I was alone, I got in trouble all the time, and it was no fun. No one seemed to accept that; it was just who I was.

I walked out of the bathroom, and as I walked I was making my escape plan, as I did every day. I would rather be alone on Requiem, than be surrounded by boring people.

Tom Lasky wasn't exactly the conversational person about what I liked to talk about; I liked to talk about the Forerunners, while he wanted to talk about the military. Andrew Del Rio was a complete arsehole. Sarah Palmer was nice, but too firm to stick around. She and the Marines were the only ones that would probably keep me from leaving, due to the fact that she was a Spartan, and I knew Spartans well enough that they were not to be messed with.

Last time I tried the direct route, and that didn't work. Palmer found me and caught me before I could even put one foot out into Requiem's jungle, which was the one place they could never find me. They were too focused on finding me. Then I thought of a distraction, big enough that they wouldn't even notice I was missing.

I wanted to leave more than ever, since the run-away of last month; that one was my first escape attempt. I wandered in the jungle and got lost for a whole week. I ate raspberries and fruit to survive, and then some Marines found me. My foster parents grounded me, which was ridiculous. I was an adult; Too old to be grounded. I lived in such a strict environment, but what made it tempting to run away was I felt trapped. I wanted freedom, and had spoken to my foster parents millions of times about it but they never granted it to me. I had enough, and tonight was the night I would pull it off.