Steele's POV

Once again I woke up to darkness greeting me along with a dull nagging pain that was slowly increasing throughout my body. I almost wanted to just stay there in darkness but with some effort I opened my eyes to a blurry haze of a view. I blinked, my visor's newly rebooted screen coming online and into focus. I blinked a few more times, squinting in the bright light above me and was finally able to clear my view enough to see my surroundings.

I was laying on something hard and slanted, facing almost straight up at a bright white light. My visor's location tracker showed we had moved further away from Atrius, not too far but far enough to lose connection. The ceiling was purple despite the obviously human light and I looked down as far as I could without moving my head to see that I had plasma restraints on. My visor showed that my team was close by, but we were no longer close to Kyle's signal and had been moved quite far from where we had been incapacitated. I pinged my team, waiting for a response.

A minute passed and I sent another ping. After another long minute finally Scott's acknowledgement light winked, then Kade's, and then Sift's. Only Selina was still out. I looked around again, keeping my body still in case I was being watched, but I could only see the one-way glass in front of me and what might be the top of a door to my left. I lightly brushed the part of my leg where my knife would be. As I expected, it was missing, but I could use that to my advantage.

I waited a bit more. The pain wasn't too bad now, though it did seem that that gun had damaged pretty much all of the nerves in my body. I finally decided it would be better if they knew I was awake as they would likely send someone in once I was, so I stiffened and lifted my head up, struggling at the restraints for a second before relaxing and freely looking around. My teammates were in a circle around me on similar slanted hard platforms.

There was a door to my left, in front of Kade, that opened. It stood in stark contrast against the purple design of the rest of the room. I grimaced as Henderson walked out and strode in front of me. I remained silent. He sighed and spoke, "Hello Senior Chief, are you comfortable?"

I glared at him and said nothing. He continued, "Well I'd speak up now because you might not be able to later." and stared at me equally quiet. "What do you mean?" I asked. I had hoped to stay silent, but Henderson seemed like the kind of person to give more up if I talked. He tilted his head, "You must not know. Don't you realize why the Covenant want you so bad? Why You were targeted out of all of your team?"

Unsure of what he was getting at, I hesitantly replied, "Because I am the next hope for mankind, the one who will replace.."

"No." He cut in. I stopped, surprised and confused.

"Not because of that. It may be why they were originally, but now it's much, much more important than that."

He paced over to the door, looking out the window, "I went Rogue right around the time the Covenant found out about you and what you can do. Your true capabilities we could say. The Covenant and I came to an agreement, and my objective for them was to capture You specifically. It was never about Kyle. Sure he has something they want and some very valuable information, but he was just the bait and an added bonus. I used him to lure you here and you fell for it. I knew you were watching the drone, and I told you where to look for me." He paused and turned around. "From your reaction, it seems you yourself are even unaware of what makes you so special. Out of courtesy for you, an ONI tool just doing what he's told, I'll let you in on the secret. The reason you are so valuable is because you possess extraordinary physical and cellular attributes that is selective to you alone out of the several billion humans out there, a genetic goldmine even considering the abilities of all of the Covenant species. The most significant of these attributes is that your body can adapt and change according to the trauma it has already experienced. Now the human body does this as well, but yours does so at a phenomenal rate, ten, maybe even 20 times faster than normally possible."

He walked back. "That's why the electricity didn't affect you the second time. Since you had already experienced it before, your body strengthened itself to be more immune to it's effects and allow you to keep moving despite the electrical current being near lethal for normal civilians. If I electrocuted you now, you probably wouldn't feel a thing. Even better, your augmentations have increased the adaptation process and there are still other anomalies that have not been entirely identified as to how they affect you. Your reflexes could eventually surpass even the fastest of Spartans, and mortal wounds might be entirely healable with your body."

He walked up to the glass. "As I said before, I'm not telling you this because I want to, but because I think you deserve to know. I may not know your age but I know you are young, possibly as young as Kyle, and you don't deserve this."

"Then why are you doing it?!" I demanded. He sighed. "I need the money and I want revenge for my family. The UNSC needs to understand the value of every human life, no matter how seemingly small." Emotion suddenly flooded his voice, "They were the ones that allowed my house to be destroyed in front of me, ignoring my wife and only child on the front lawn! They said it was to save the city, that there was no time. What crap that was! It wouldn't have taken more than a second to save them. Instead they told the chopper to leave and let my entire life be melted down into molten slag." He paused, getting quieter, "I didn't even get to say goodbye... I was working too much and hadn't seen them in months." His voice cracked and he tightened his fist.

Turning around, he had a new edge to his voice. I slowly pressed the button to return my knife. "That's where you come in. As soon as they find out what makes you special, they can destroy the UNSC with the help of genetically modified rebels, courtesy of you and the Covenant. Then a fair government will be in charge, one that can and will save everyone."

He turned around and began to walk back towards the door, "However, since your body only reacts to changes, they'll need to do some very painful tests on you, without sedatives. I'm sorry you will have to go through that, but it is necessary to get what they need. Besides, I'm confident you can endure it enough to at least retain your sanity." He reached for the button to open the door.

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I understood his pain, but this was not the solution, "This is wrong and you know it. It's not too late to do the right thing. I will never let you forget it if you follow through on this." I said sternly.

He paused, hand outstretched, "At this point, all I want is retribution for my family. As for not letting me forget, you will be broken long before I will ever see you again."

I shouted at him, "You can hurt me but you can't break me, True soldiers are never broken! I'll never stop fighting!" The knife appeared in my hand and I expertly twisted it around, sawing through the restraint like butter. With my freed hand, I cut the others in Spartan Time, moving as quickly as possible to give myself the upper hand. Henderson had stood there, thinking about my words, but turned around at the sound of the whistling. I pushed off of the table, jumping at him, raising my knife hand and twisting my body sideways.

He raised his arm in surprise and an attempt to block my attack. I pushed his hand away from my arm and grabbed the armor lock device from his thigh. Everything seemed to crawl but speed up at the same time. I swung around his side and stabbed into a place between his spine plates, locking his back as it damaged and jammed the delicate internal connections that let them move together seamlessly. I knew it would only cause slight pain to him and no permanent damage or I wouldn't have done it, and only those who knew how the suits worked could even use this method of immobilization. Then I placed the device on him in lightning speed. Before he could raise a finger, he was frozen.

I stepped back, removing my knife from his spinal protector, and turned around, slicing my team's restraints. He called from behind me, "What good will that do? You'll never get out of here alive." I cut Scott's restraints and he pushed himself up from the table, hopping down. "Then you seriously underestimate Spartans, Henderson." I said, cutting a groggy Selina's restraints. He chuckled a deep, menacing laugh. A small sense of dread trembled through my body before I regained my composure. "No, I don't underestimate you in the least. In fact, this is the only time I have underestimated you. I have total confidence when I say that you will not leave this ship."

I helped Selina up and they gathered around me. "You're wrong. I'm stronger than even you realize, and so are they." I walked towards the door and pressed the button. It slid smoothly to one side, curtesy of Henderson unlocking it. "Not only will we escape, but I'm taking this ship down as well, curtesy of the UNSC." I gave a mock nod of gratitude before I stepped around him. I walked out, closing the door. Henderson managed to say, "Next time I won't be so kind to..." before it shut.

I looked around the hallway before turning to my team. "Okay, first we have to get our weapons back. I have my knife and we can pick up weapons along the way, but those can only take us so far." I said.

They nodded but Selina held up a finger and bent down, patting around the armor on the side of her calf. She found what she was looking for and pressed a hidden button. A secret compartment slid open and she pulled out what looked like a squished pistol. She slid a few things together and it clicked in place, leaving her with a small pistol the size of her hand. She repeated the same thing to the other side and produced an identical pistol. I was surprised, I didn't know you could do that. I guess it wasn't standard as it seemed like a pretty complicated mechanism to hide the pistol and retain armor functionality.

She handed them to Scott and Kade.They each slid a round into their pistols' respective chambers and did a quick inspection before nodding. "A little something I requested after I lost my weapon during a training match." She said. I nodded approvingly and gestured for everyone to follow me. I had marked the location of my knife before I teleported it in order to get the location of the confiscated weapons stash. Luckily enough it wasn't too far off from our route to Kyle.

We quickly but quietly moved through the ship, ducking in and out of maintenance hallways as shortcuts. Finally, before coming out of a maintenance hallway I paused, waiting just before the door.

I activated my camouflage and slowly looked out beyond the door to my left where the weapons cache was. I spotted a Sangheli guard right next to the weapons cache door. I held up two fingers to signal for a silent takedown. Kade crept up next to me. I let my camo recharge before swapping weapons with him. Kade activated his camouflage and slowly walked out. I followed, activating my newly-recharged camouflage as well. I scanned the hallway while he walked behind the Elite and stabbed him, simultaneously placing a hand over it's mouth to muffle it's cries.

I helped him drag it into the maintenance tunnel before the rest of the team came out, scanning both sides of the hallway. I knelt by the door and plugged a cable link into the lock. After a minute I broke through on my suit console and the door slid smoothly aside. I swiftly stood up and brought up my rifle to clear the room.

It was a large gray room, Covenant weaponry hanging neatly along the walls. The was a small pile in the back right corner that looked like human weaponry. I walked in and immediately spotted our weapons sitting in a rough pile. I internally winced, no doubt they were damaged or at least scratched. You never set a gun on top of another.

I carefully picked up the rifles as to not damage the scopes or any other parts further, especially Kade's. I handed Kade his sniper and gave Scott a gravity hammer and his SAW. Selina got her battle rifle and Sift got her shotgun, including all of their other gear. Finally I picked up my rifle, knives, and any of our smaller pieces of equipment that was left. The pile still had human equipment left, but it was likely just war trophies or from previous prisoners.

I slid my knives into their places, feeling special gratitude towards Commander Silas for the knife he gave me. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and picked up an extra Covenant rifle off of the wall, one of the orange ones from Henderson's collection. It had a rectangular barrel and when I loaded the glowing ammo into it, the pieces split apart and hovered in air. I examined this odd phenomenon for a moment before swapping it with my rifle again.

I turned around and was about to leave the corner when I saw Henderson's private stash, including the HAVOK Nuke I had spotted from the drone. I picked it up and placed it in the designated spot on my lower back.

Scott was keeping an eye on the hallway just inside the door while everyone equipped their gear. When we were ready I said, "Ok, when we approach his room there will most likely be guards. Use your camouflage in that hallway. The key is stealth, the later we trigger the alarm the better, and it would be best if we are already gone when that happens. When we reach him we have to take the quickest route out, conveniently placing us on a path through the core of the ship. I'll set the HAVOK nuke I picked up there and give us one minute. After that we are to report straight to command. Got it?"

They all nodded. I walked to the door and after a quick look I walked out, a few feet away when I looked around and was surprised to find myself alone. I looked back at my team still waiting in the room and said, "Well what are we waiting for? Let's get to it!"