Simon Riley

:"I need you to be strong - strong enough to do what you've never done in your life. Can you be strong enough to allow yourself to be... can you just be human?"
:— A dying Marine under Ghost's command
Sergeant Simon Riley, commonly referred to by by his callsign Ghost, was a Marine in the Hades Corps of the UNSC Corps of Engineers. He was known for being cold, and somewhat sadistic, showing little to no emotion towards anything especially in battle until the death of a fellow Marine who asked him to be human once for a while.
== Biography ==
Riley had a poor reputation among his unit after an extended firefight with Imperial forces during the Battle of New Llanelli that left his entire platoon decimated. During that incident, a dying Marine asked him to be human for once, as he came across as a cold-hearted, soulless, sadistic individual. The Marine died in his arms, and Riley "died inside", crying out into the sky and vowing to avenge his fallen platoon. 
=== Battle of Algolis ===
:"And for one last instant, I'm human again."
:— Ghost's last words
In 2549, Riley was deployed with the Hades Corps to destroy navigation material and prototype weapons during the Battle of Algolis, as per the Cole Protocol. At first it appeared that he had disobeyed orders to destroy a set of prototype powered armor by joining the battle in it. However, he insisted that he was performing his duty by using the time left on the suit until self-destruct initiation to provide cover for the Marines' and civilians' extraction from Algolis.
Riley held off the enemy forces long enough for a group of evacuation shuttles to escape, and was overwhelmed shortly thereafter. Seeing that the evacuation shuttles had escaped safely, Riley commented on his newfound humanity after uttering the code to activate the armor's nuclear self-destruct feature: "Be human". The resulting blast annihilated Riley and the surrounding Imperial infantry in the process.
A Marine commanding officer in orbit above Algolis edited a log of the events, redacting prior requests for Riley to be court-martialed, marking him as Missing In Action, and stating that he had demonstrated great conduct as a Marine and as a human being.
Category:Daisy-023
Category:Humans
Category:Parallels
Category:Imperial Entanglements