DT 2022: Face in the Crowd

Roxanne-D107 managed to escape her life with the UNSC and as a Spartan but old ghosts from her past still seem to haunt her with prospects of death.
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:"Roxanne-D107: Face in the Crowd"
:Late 2558
:Delphi Tether Complex, SinoViet Ward
:Reach L1 Orbit, UEG Inner Colonies
Seven years ago, Roxanne called the scorched planet below her “home.”
From the L1 station’s observation deck, all she saw was a dirty ball of dust and glass. A dead world. In another time it was a lush, green paradise covered in crater oceans and fairytale mountains.
Roxanne never witnessed Reach in its full majestic glory; only the accounts of others told through imagery and memory of a place where humans touched down to the promise that the spaces beyond Earth’s sky belonged them—now and forever. A world of cliffs, soil, and endless rain. Vibrant but rugged, Reach was her birthplace and its dirt forever flowed through her veins. But her knowledge of this world came from its small details captured in slow moments and hazy recollection – a life and a lifetime ago. Like a far-off dream.
She was once a farmer’s daughter in a remote mountain community called Visegrád, living at the edge of civilization. A family of five with a loving mother and father, two competing older brothers, and Roxanne. A great circular estate and hover-ship overlooking many square kilometers of terraced farmland carved into the inhospitable cliffsides of the Highlands Mountains.
At one time, it was her dominion – a regal little girl with a wide imagination and spread-out arms hoping to catch wind and fly high into Reach’s turquoise sky. The last time Roxanne saw her remote homestead and her quaint village, her parents’ defiled corpses lay on the porch, the fields blazed with the smell of ozone, and her brothers disappeared altogether as alien Jackals scoured her home for survivors.
Roxanne hid in the fuel cellar hoping the monsters could not smell her and for two days she waited for a safe sign to come out. Instead, her brother Dicun’s promise of salvation never came. She almost suffocated on gasoline fumes and blanked out when Army Rangers rescued her from her unintended tomb. She never saw Reach burn with the brilliance of a second sun. Maybe that made her one of the lucky ones.
Time flew by her as in one moment a strange doctor promised a warrior future for Roxanne upon her recovery. In the next, she shipped out for SPARTAN-III training among the ranks of fellow Covenant War orphans. Roxanne never expected to return home. But now, here she was again.
But not on Reach. Instead, she watched the planet from an offworld habitat constructed atop the remains of one of Reach’s once famous multi-strand space elevators. Like many things about Reach, even its most enduring structures fell to the forces of war and time.
As luck would have it, however, with devastation passed came the hopeful chance to rebuild and start anew. The plasma bombardment eventually ceased and the Covenant navy moved onto their next target. The molten surface cooled to glass and rain once more descended from Reach’s smoke-choked sky. Even for the lethal radiation, poisoned water, and clouds of extinction – this was Reach. This was home.
At least it was there for Roxanne. Still there, something just out of reach but she could see it. And one of these days she would feel it once more beneath her feet and between her fingers.
From hundreds of kilometers above the planet’s surface, Roxanne caught a flash of lightning forking through turbulent storm clouds and imagined the sound of crashing thunder as Reach’s vaporized oceans refilled their banks. The planet was still alive, it’s future assured. It made for a far more peaceful eyesore than the problem emerging at the edge of Roxanne’s nearer periphery.
The Spartan’s eyes broke with her distant, former home to face the shadow of a receiving hangar as the crowd around her boomed with sudden exhilaration. Workers in SinoViet corporate jumpers jostled and squeezed forward into one another leaving Roxanne alone at the edge of the cheering congregation. Like the rest of the gathered, she wore the blue-and-green one piece of SinoViet Heavy Machinery even as her striking-blonde hair seemed to glow amongst her dim and soot-covered work uniform.
The sudden shift in presence set the Spartan-III on edge; months poured into her new employment with SinoViet as an unimpressive and unassuming deckhand were at risk as war giants emerged from a side hallway into the large facility atrium.
Spartans.
In their blue, green, and grey MJLONIR power armor, they stood head and shoulders above the crowd like superheroes. Born from a different crop and molded from the likes of rolled steel and enchanting marble. Gods amongst men, easily seven feet tall or more. Despite their veiled helmet visors and the lack of animated motions to dignify individualistic personality, Roxanne could pick them out by name. In fact, their stoicism helped narrow down their identities immediately.
She knew every single one of them, not personally, but by reputation. More so than any propaganda fed to the tired working souls of Reach and the orbital habitat they called home. It was a matter of career expertise, and survival. She knew their history, their skillsets, their successes, their failures. Memorized them like matters of life and death. Roxanne was once like these superheroes in their intricately-customized titanium exoskeletons, decked out with state-of-the-art weapons, and top-of-the-line tech gadgets.
But even with their spectacular presence, there was nothing ordinary about them compared to other Spartan supersoldiers. This was the Blue Team. The Master Chief and his childhood friends, legends on the battlefield and decisive saviors of Humanity. Demons to the old Covenant. Demonic and nightmarish forces of nature towards aliens and human rebels alike.
She knew what they sacrificed to become humanity’s heroes too. Each one of them a tragic case of crimes against humanity. Roxanne knew what they were because Roxanne herself suffered like them. The civilians around her would never know if ONI kept their secrets close. Only Roxanne in this crowd knew. Or maybe with exception to the ONI Security officers flanking Blue Team on both sides and keeping the crowd at more than an arm’s length.
ONI kidnapped the Spartan-IIs from their homes at age six. Put them through grueling and unethical training that would break most adults. Subjected them to dangerous augmentation and surgical procedures that killed or crippled more than half their number. Roxanne went through similar challenges, suffered as they had. It gave her innate sense of solidarity and comradery that made her stand a little straighter as Blue Team approached.
Roxanne could distinguish each supersoldier by their individual armor, weapons, quirks, and gimmicks. She went through Spartan training just like them; a major portion of her studies focused entirely on them. To become just like them.
John-117, the Master Chief, marched briskly at the head of Spartan fireteam. His legendary drab-green Mark VI armor glinted under the dull white lights in the hangar bay. His measured approach both awed and intimidated the crowd as he seemed to wade through the onlookers, casting a wide wake before his teammates.
Kelly-087, Fred-104, and Linda-058 didn’t pay the crowd much attention, passing their visors over the fans and onlookers. For the crowd, glances were enough as the cheers grew more enthusiastic. It was a moment of recognition from heroes who ensured that the stars glowed above and upon human life evermore.
All Roxanne could hope was they didn’t look her way. Their unfeeling visors kept strictly off her. She felt this deep-seated fear, one of the Spartans would turn to her and hold her stare across the crowd and hangar. She could see it. Kelly’s fishbowl helmet stopping on the rogue Spartan-III and holding there. Roxanne would see her own reflection. Kelly-087 would point and Linda-058, the team sniper, would raise a rifle and plug a round straight through Roxanne’s face in a split-second.
Roxanne would die right there. She could imagine it in perfect crystalized detail. Her vivid imagination shook her to the bone and her knees shivered down to her work boots against the station’s metal deck. It took the rogue Spartan’s full willpower to just stand there at the edge of the crowd and watch her former heroes walk slowly on through. Or maybe it was the other way around, Roxanne was shaking so much she couldn’t move towards the closest exit or into the crowd to hide.
Whatever the sensation, she froze – stricken to the core by fear. All Roxanne could do was watch.
Kelly-087’s bright shining visor and off-white armor with a leaping rabbit painted subtly and small against her chest plate. Only a Spartan’s augmented eyesight or someone in the know would’ve caught the small decal. The fastest Spartan alive and rumored to be John’s best friend in training. Roxanne used to admire her speed and reputation for no fear. Now Roxanne feared the giant of woman would run her down across the deck. Trampled under her armored boots or a bloody death with an M45 shotgun.
Or maybe Roxanne would go, spotted by the alert-and-always-watching ARGUS helmet of Linda-058. According to ARGUS armor specs, her helmet was cybernetically integrated into all command-and-control uplinks in the field to offer unparalleled information gathering capabilities.
It wasn’t the best in every aspect of integrated combat surveillance among second generation MJOLNIR suites but it lived up to its legend as an always watching guardsman like the Greek legend of Argus Panoptes, a giant with a hundred eyes – a being who could see all.
If Linda was on her game and Naval Intelligence made sure to keep their systems up to date, one glance could very possibly pick Roxanne out from the crowd. Roxanne could die in a second with a .51 caliber round through the chest. She would never witness the greatest Spartan sharpshooter in history raise her rifle. Roxanne would just be dead.
Or maybe an experienced CQB specialist and hunter of Fred-104’s caliber would put Roxanne down. She heard he had an unmatched capability for knife fighting, even among Spartans. Something maybe picked up in training or derived from time around Asian-originated special forces communities in the UNSC.
Would he just shoot her? Would Fred throw a knife across the hall and drill it into her forehead? Or would he take his time with her, torture her little by little as he cut Roxanne into little pieces? She couldn’t be sure.
Fred-104’s reputation was one also of leadership, charitability, and outgoingness. He was the highest ranked member of Blue Team as a NAVSPECWAR Lieutenant. But that friendliness and rank could easily be a crafted mask developed by someone capable of boundless sadism. The nice Spartans could be easily the most bloodthirsty. And Roxanne feared she could never tell the difference.
Maybe the Master Chief would end Roxanne himself. John-117, the undisputable leader of all Spartans through reputation to his name. Spartans of all generations looked up to him as the impossible doer, someone capable of anything and everything. Would he destroy Roxanne so thoroughly until she was a bloody maroon stain on the station floor, or was he capable of mercy? Could he simply drop her with a quick burst of his assault rifle and end the scared little girl quick?
It was all a special kind of fear. Roxanne heard of many as part of her Spartan-III indoctrination phase. The fear derived from experience. Fear derived from imagination. Fear propagated by communications and ideas. The fear of the truly unknown. And the fear of truly knowing.
Roxanne would put her shivering, hyperventilating self in the final category.
Her innate knowledge made her even more scared. Knowing your killers for who they were. How they might go about it. Would they feel anything for her? Would they care? Did they know her name? Did they know why she ran? Could they understand why she did it? Did they pity her, or feel only disappointment at another failed Spartan?
Roxanne flinched as Fred’s pale blue armored glove rose to the crowd. He waved. The rogue Spartan shivered once again.
A sinking feeling clenched Roxanne’s heart. She wasn’t a Spartan to them. She used to be a Spartan, but not anymore. That made sense, right? Not even the Marines would offer “Once a Marine, always a Marine” to a traitor.
Spartans would feel the same way. Roxanne saw it when the SPARTAN-III study regime rattled off names and target dossiers for rogue Spartans before their time. Taught the parameters of a STOLEN GAUNTLET target dossier. Roxanne’s ONI file probably included one these days. She almost wondered what her file said.
The fact was the same regardless. Roxanne was no longer a Spartan. Not to ONI. Not to her former friends and fellow Spartans. Not to Blue Team. Roxanne threw it all away out of fear. She chose to leave her Spartan life behind to follow her rogue team leader after he presented an enemy Smart AI and a cryptic warning that Earth would become the center of a great coming tragedy and shake the known galaxy to its core.
Roxanne ran because the end times were coming. She was a skeptic but the AI’s original owner was someone she somewhat respected. And the Smart AI’s warnings seemed reasonable, possible under further scrutiny. Especially when everyone else in the know of the conspiracy exhibited equal terror. Unseen forces were maneuvering in the background of Human space and politics. Therefore, Roxanne ran “home.” Reach was probably safe. Safer than whatever Earth would become.
It was the only place in the universe she felt comfortable. Safe.
But Reach wasn’t her home only. Roxanne stared at the Master Chief but recognized the rest of Blue Team in her distress. Reach was their home too. Unlike Roxanne, they were not born on Reach but Reach was where their formative years of training and augmentation took place. Reach was the cradle of the SPARTAN-II program and the spiritual home of Spartans. They all grew up here, trained through most of their childhoods. There was so much alike between Roxanne, Blue Team, and the other Spartans. But so much difference and distance between anyway. She was from Reach, but she gave up all that it meant to be a Spartan.
The Master Chief’s helmet twitched as he stopped mid-step through the crowd. Roxanne’s heart froze in dread as the menacing visor surveyed the crowd for something.
The crowd’s cheers and shouts grew more frantic and joyous as they assumed their savior paid them recognition like rabid fans to a rock star. Roxanne doubted the crowd’s hypothesis but she too wondered what ran through the legendary Spartan-II’s mind behind unseen eyes and the his ghostly-golden visor. The gold locked on in Roxanne’s direction.
Roxanne’s heart thumped loudly and suddenly fast. Her blue eyes dilated to the size of saucer pans. A thousand emotions sparked through her heart and mind. She witnessed her life flash by, the friends and the makeshift family she left behind on Earth. Time slowed to a crawl and all she felt was the cold embrace of freezing death. So cold that Roxanne burned.
Roxanne’s first instinct was to run. The second instinct was to death-charge Blue Team like a rabid, cornered animal. The third instinct was to shrink down and hide. She was a fugitive, a rogue Spartan. Classification: STOLEN GAUNTLET. Roxanne was certain they knew. She thought back to her armor and weapons buried on Reach’s inhospitable surface in a bombed-out building. Roxanne had no means to fight off Blue Team if it came down to it. Just a flimsy environmental onesie. If Kelly ran, Roxanne would never make it to a side door. It was all over.
All Roxanne could do was stare unblinkingly back into the Master Chief’s golden visor. Her mind raced through thoughts of shrinking herself into nothing. Or how John recognized her face instantly. How she already looked suspicious, and how her six-foot-three stature made her stick out like a sore thumb. No escape. No fight. No future.
Death.
The Master Chief took several steps in Roxanne’s direction. The rogue Spartan squeaked in terror but didn’t move a muscle. The crowd closed in around Roxanne as they tried to reach for the legendary Spartan’s green armor. Just to touch humanity’s savior. A whimper escaped Roxanne’s gapped lips beneath the roar of the crowd. Bile bubbled in her chest and throat.
John-117 stopped and kneeled at the level of the crowd to whisper some unheard, choice words to a woman in front of him. Eight meters just ahead of Roxanne. The rogue Spartan held her breath like the rest of the nearby crowd as they tried to listen to what the Master Chief said. Roxanne missed it for sure.
She didn’t sigh in relief as John turned away. Her childhood hero. Someone she expected to kill her, missed Roxanne entirely.
Roxanne was invisible to Blue Team. Probably. She could never be certain.
But Blue Team and ONI passed Roxanne by all the same. They disappeared soon after down a hallway opposite to the one they entered. Roxanne opened her mouth, wanting to say something to no one in particular. But she did want to say something. Anything.
The rogue Spartan power-walked to the nearest side passage and out of the crowded, wild hangar bay. A hoarse whimper gripped her tight throat. Fear. Terror. Shame.
Deep sadness and regretful nostalgia. Roxanne gave up that life. In all the many ways, she missed her Spartan life in all its forms. Being a legendary and unbeatable supersoldier. A hero for Humanity. A Spartan number recorded in the history books. Someone little kids once like her could look up to. The unique feeling of exuding cool confidence behind a helmet and to take on great, challenging enemies. A fighter among equal and true friends like the comradery that Blue Team had.
Roxanne missed all the good times and bad times of being a Spartan. She almost was ready to demand all her old life back in a fit of rage. Maybe turn around, run at Blue Team, and turn herself in a flurry of tears and apologies.
But that was an impossibility now. Blue Team was a family she could only watch. Roxanne threw her family away.
She was now just a bystander. Another face in the invisible and endless crowd of onlookers. No one special, a nobody without destiny or purpose. Roxanne was like smoke in wind. Unseen and gone very quickly. She was no Master Chief, and not like him or his team at all. They couldn’t see her and at least she got to keep her life, for however long that might be. Maybe that was for the best then. Just another face in the crowd.