[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/448671181611169814/]I arrived outside the commander's office. I was about to knock on his metal door when it opened and an automated voice said, " Welcome Cadet Steele 118."

The commander looked up from a rectangle holographic map on a table at the sound and turned it off. I walked into the command room and looked around. The table was in the middle, he had a huge triple-monitor at the front of the room and a bunch of smaller computer screens off to the sides with a bunch of people working at them. The commander stood at parade rest, a position with his hands clasped behind his back and feet slightly apart. He had light brown hair, dark blue eyes, and a scar stretched across his right cheek from the bottom of his nose almost to his ear. I saluted, "Sir."

"At ease Cadet. I am Commander Silas, the overseer of this facility. Unfortunately, Dr. Halsey could not be here. She is currently... occupied." He said, adding emphasis on the word. "I am here to inform you that you have completed your four years yesterday... Of course, you already knew that, didn't you."

"Yes, Sir." I replied.

"Well then you know that your pre-training is up. Everything will get exponentially harder from here on out. Not just training but academics. I expect you to be up to the task."

I nodded. That was previously explained to me.

"But from what I've gathered, you haven't been informed that you will also be preparing for your augmentations soon. This will not be as easy as your training, but I expect you to perform admirably."

I tilted my head slightly, I expected it to come sometime, but this was new. He continued. "This process will take place when you are 14, which I understand is quite a bit earlier than the others. They will get them if they want to after the age of 18."

"Excuse me, Sir, but might I ask, why am I going earlier?" I interrupted respectfully.

"You were especially here to become a specific kind of spartan, almost identical to the late Spartan IIs. You are a special project Dr. Halsey was informed to proceed with on order from my superior officers. Your classmates have not received the same special training you have and do not meet the necessary requirements." He said simply. "Sir, but why was I taken... why am I the only one? What is my purpose?" I asked. I had a feeling about what the answer might be, but I wanted to hear it from them. Otherwise why would he bother telling me all of this himself?

He sighed, "We knew you would ask eventually, Dr. Halsey should be the one here answering you here, but you might as well know now."

"Your purpose in all of this... your mission, is to follow in the Master Chief's footsteps. He is no longer the Spartan he once was, especially with his age. Halsey knew this and realized no other Spartan now enlisted could ever be up to the challenge of saving mankind. She picked you, out of many, many planets in known space. No one else had your potential, your creativity, or your... Special qualities. Once Master Chief dies or retires, and he would have done one or the other soon, you will step up to become his successor, a replacement you might say. He recently was unofficially MIA, so we have been pressured for results ahead of schedule as well." He finished, allowing me time to contemplate what he just said.

There was a moment of silence. I thought for a moment. I was supposed to become the next Master Chief? To accomplish tasks on his scale? How was that possible, I was just a normal kid. On the other hand, I was taller, faster, smarter, and had faster reflexes than other kids, I always had. I thought back to my second day at the academy when Dr. Halsey visited me in the hall. It was a test, I knew that much now, but what for?

Her question had a 50% chance of getting it right, so my answer was one of chance. There was no skill or intelligence required. Why? I remembered that in class the teacher said Master Chief was lucky, and not just your average kind of luck, he was consistently lucky, especially considering his survival despite the loss of almost all of the other Spartans. Commander Silas also just said that I share many of the same qualities as Chief had. It would only make sense that Halsey was testing my own luck. That was also why I was the only one, it was a once in a life-time chance to find someone like Chief, and even more so to find someone like me to replace him. I was the only one capable of carrying on his legacy. All of the pieces clicked in place except... what were the specicial qualities he talked about earlier. I would have to figure that one out on my own. It was clear he was not keen on elaborating, but, I knew now that I had to do this. I was the only one who could. I sighed, that's a lot to expect of one person, much more of someone my age.

Commander Silas broke the silence saying, "Dr. Halsey selected you, out of all of the planets in known space, and that says a lot. It may be a big responsibility but you have plenty of time to train. You have a duty to do so regardless." He stopped, put his hand to his ear, and listened to something. "...Ok, Sir, Silas out." he straightened and said, "It seems I have other matters to attend to. For now, report back to your quarters. Once a week you will go to an extra class to prepare you for your augmentations. Dismissed."

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I saluted and walked out, the door closing behind me. I walked back to my quarters and sat at my desk. Powering on my Holo-computer, I looked at my schedule. Sure enough, the Aug-prep classes were already added, one day of every week at the same time, at 1400 hours. For the rest of today's schedule, I had classes in 10 minutes, at 1830, then Dinner at 1930 and lights out at 2000 hours. I closed out of my schedule and pulled up the troop index. I searched for Master Chief's file and pulled it up. Might as well find out some more about him if I was supposed to replace him. Besides, he seems like an interesting enough guy.

When I opened up his semi-classified file though, which was for lower ranked officers, I was dismayed to see a lot of it blacked out. Oh well, I could fix that I thought. I cracked my knuckles and pressed a key, which brought up a page of code. I altered a few lines of the code that had digitally hidden the text that existed there and cleared off the censored bars. I then exited from the page's code. I'm not a programming genius or anything, and pretty much anyone could do this if they looked it up.

Now, time to see what they had to hide. His classification was a Spartan II and was 42 years old, 6 foot 10 before he went missing after destroying another halo ring and something called the Ark, which controls all of the Halo rings. They never told us that. I was astonished. He was even more than his stories led me to believe. His file was almost like reading an action movie script. I wouldn't have even thought some of this stuff was possible if I wasn't reading it at that moment. I shook my head and continued. It also mentioned that his group of Spartans received augmentations at age 14, the same time I would receive them.

He also has an AI named Cortana, the only AI created out of living tissue. She was given to him by Dr. Halsey about a year before the discovery of the first Halo ring. He also battled the Flood, a parasite that feeds off of the essence of life itself and can bring back the dead if they are infected. They managed to fend off and successfully eradicate the flood after destroying the Ark though.

I'm glad I never have to face that!

I was about to read about his augmentations and missions when my screen reminded me it was time for class. I closed out of the page and shut my computer off. I walked out and headed towards class through a different route this time, my boots clomping against the metal floor. I was halfway there when I heard a small, almost inaudible sound, like someone shifting their weight, from the closet to my left.

I walked past, my pace not changing, turned around after a few doors, and treaded back silently. I could hear something breathing, a slight wheezing. There was a small grunt as it struggled with something. I stepped closer, bringing my arms up to a defensive position. I slowly reached for the open button. Then I quickly pressed it to open the door and stepped back. Right in front of me was a Grunt, an orange alien that breathed methane through a pyramid-like methane tank on it's back. It had been struggling to open what looked like a control panel to some alien bomb the size of a toaster and the shape of a pinto-bean.

We both froze for a split second. Then, he grabbed the panel and started to open it, frantically trying to set it off. I reacted faster though. Before he could even start to lift the panel up, I moved in and meleed what I think was it's face with my elbow, pushing it backwards and away from the bomb. I held it down and grabbed it's mask, crushing it, making it squeal in pain. I quickly grabbed a spare gun lying in the closet and after a brief struggle managed to put a few bullets in it's head. The Grunt stopped struggling and lay still. I backed off of it, certain of it's death, and set the gun down.

I heard the sound of heavy boots as Marines ran my way, they had heard the gun shots. I set my gun down as the first soldier arrived a tall guy with dark brown hair and brown eyes, currently raised in surprise. "What happened?" He questioned, looking at the body of the grunt. "I found him trying to set off a bomb sir."

"Sergeant Case, send marines to check the closets in the other halls stat, he can't have been alone." He ordered to one of his officers. Then he grabbed the bomb from the corpse and un-primed it. "Marines, clean-up this mess. Cadet, report to your quarters and relay this message to the others that they have orders to stay in theirs no matter what. I need to go to the Sergeant Major with your Commander." he said, pointing and setting off at a fast-pace with the Commander he assumed was mine who had also reported to the scene.

I took of in the direction of my quarters, leaving the rifle and walking away from them, but not before the ground shook and the alarms went off. "Dammit!" He cursed. "The marines didn't make it in time. Come-on." They quickened their pace, heading towards the Sergeant Major. I headed towards the barracks, dreading the impending sound of another explosion.

I quickly made my way there and went into every room and told the other cadets to stay in their rooms, ignoring their questions. After, I sat down at my desk after locking my door and logged in. I wanted to watch what was happening and the soldier had a helmet with him which he, without doubt, put on after leaving for the Sergeant Major. I logged into the main site for the facility with my commander's credentials, that I might have seen him type in one time, and searched for the soldier's feed.

I found it, and it allowed me to watch and hear everything he was hearing. I adjusted the volume until I could hear the sound of the soldier and the Commander's boots. I sent a message to my friends, asking them to come to my room quietly. I also made sure to trick the network into thinking that I was the Commander's computer and not mine.

After about two minutes, Scott, Kade, and Selina came in. "What's that?" Scott asked, pointing to the feed.

"Turns out that the covenant broke into the main floor. I logged into the base network with our commander's credentials and now we can watch the battle live." I replied.

Selina gasped, "Isn't that illegal? Using his password?"

"Well yeah, but don't you want to see? I mean it's not like we've ever had the chance to watch a battle unfold in real-time before. And no one will know." I said.

"I guess it couldn't hurt to watch." Kade said. "Ok, I'll watch." Selina said. "Me too!" Scott chimed in.

"Ok, have a seat on the floor, this is going to be awesome!" I said with an eager tone.

We all got comfortable and watched the scene unfold.