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Carris sometimes wondered about the life she had once had, the one before she’d been spirited away, leaving a doppelganger doomed to a painful death in her wake. The one before she had become a weapon to be wielded in battle by Generals and Admirals, who knew nothing of the price paid for and by her and her comrades to be on the chessboard of war.
On occasion these thoughts dislodged a memory, more akin to a dream now, of something sometimes as exciting as going for ice cream at some parlour, or as mundane as helping with chores at home. A life filled with places now probably piles of rubble on some husk of a world that had the misfortune to fall under the gaze of the Covenant. Maybe she might have even fought there at some point, perhaps not. But other times, when she was feeling sentimental, questions would form in her mind, questions such as, where had she come from? Who was my family? Were they alive or dead? And, what life might she have had if Doctor Halsey chose another of her candidates in her place.
All these thoughts, these memories, questions and hypotheticals had always been at the back of her mind, a notion she suspected that she shared with several of her compatriots. And now here she was, older, wiser, and battle hardened with the scars to prove it. The model of composure under fire. But she wasn’t that right now. Right now she was the same, shit-scared little girl who’d woken up in a strange place with a bunch of other terrified children almost 27-years earlier. And it was all was over one file.
Carris stared at the display in front of her, half-wishing the file would fade into nothingness, half-trying to rally her courage to open the damn thing. Zoe had given it to her that morning, three files for the three members of Green Team who lived most of their lives in the bliss and safety of ignorance. It seemed that with Admiral Parangosky on her way out, she had decreed that any surviving Spartan-II should get access to the files Doctor Halsey had on them. The great secret keeper of ONI, was finally letting something slip in the twilight of her career. Poetically ironic, Zoe had noted at the time.
Joseph, unsurprisingly, hadn't needed any incentive to look at his. After all, he knew more than most, even more than Carris suspected from what he’d told her during that miserable evening after Daisy died. The last of the escapees, the only one who retained a sense of individuality from the start, despite the indoctrination from Day One. Not even a horde of Brutes could have kept him from the contents of his file. But Joseph was unique, he had always been willing to find answers to his questions. Granted sometimes he needed coaching to find said questions, but the answers always followed one way or another.
Her and James on the other hand, they lacked that drive. Like many other Spartan’s, they adhered to the mantra of not questioning orders, just to carry them out like the good soldiers they were. So to be faced with a decision for themselves, regarding themselves, was an unknown proposition. Most, Carris suspected, were like herself, scared out of their fucking minds, wondering what was going to happen if they read the truth behind the lies. All the wondering, the hypotheticals, the unknowable answers. Once an idle thought now staring her in the face. What if her family was dead? What if they were alive? Was home a distant memory or something waiting for her on some untouched haven somewhere? Could she even go home?
It had taken a considerable effort by Zoe to cox either of them even take the tablets from her. Helped somewhat by her having read hers some years prior, a courtesy given to her by Parangosky to turn her against the good doctor. And now here Carris was, sitting on her own with a file that could tell her anything, weighing whether to read it or not. Part of her wanted to bury her head in the sand, to ignore the issue. Another part told her to get someone else to read it on her behalf and tell her its contents. A tantalizing alternative, but a doomed one. Of her present company, whilst she came to know many of them, most she still barely knew enough to offload such a personal issue. Even her old friend Zoe was out, the intervening years having destroyed their once seemingly unbreakable friendship. And of the two she hypothetically could ask, James was stuck in the same boat as her and it seemed ill-fitting to bother him. That just left Joseph, the one person she had always trusted to have her back, and someone who fittingly owed her for taking some of the baggage he carried years earlier. But Carris knew it had to be her, it was her life after all.
And so Carris, torn between truth and ignorance, did the only thing she could. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and went with whichever voice in her head shouted loudest.
Category:The Weekly
Category:Short stories