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Inhuman?
Posted By: kr142616<kr142616@aim.com>
Date: 1 August 2007, 11:15 pm
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You run through the snowy forest, barely making a sound. Your feet touch the ground, and your boots leave deep impressions, but you don't really feel the ground, not in the sense a normal human would.
Nor do you feel much at all. Your hands grip your assault rifle, but you don't know how it feels. It's been so long since you've held one with your bare hands, and, briefly, you wonder if you can shoot as you once could, not enhanced by your armor.
The freezing cold does not bother you. You are perfectly warm inside your armor. It feels like a second skin, the inner layer's temperature matching yours. There is no mist of breath before your eyes, and you realize normal humans might find being in your armor disconcerting.
You've lived with it for the past eight years.
You've lived with the Spartans longer.
To your right, in your peripheral vision, you see Jason, Spartan-094. He moves as silently as you, covering the right flank with his scoped rifle. You're covering the left.
You remember when Jason would bring you and other Spartans to the marine mess halls on Reach. He would tell you how marines talked, how they acted, and how you could blend in. He was always good at blending in, you recall.
The two of you reach a hill, and begin to climb.
You are on a search and destroy mission, to find and neutralize any camps of Covenant forces in the hills nearby the city. This next one is to be your third.
You think of the alien bastards, and all the things they've done to you, to the Spartans, to humanity.
They killed Sam. They glassed Harvest and an untold number of other worlds. They've shot at you, wounded you, in every way you ever imagined, but you always got back up.
They fear you.
That's good. They should.
You were created to bring peace to humanity, but now your mission is to keep it going one day more. Every day counted.
You think of your tattoo on your bicep, the number etched into your skin. You don't have a name, not really. Only the Spartans, your family, knows your name. And Doctor Halsey.
She's the closest thing you've all ever had to a mother. She created the Spartans. She made you what you are.
You're proud of the life you live. You know you are the ultimate soldier. You've trained all your life to reach were you are. At twenty-two, you have surpassed the greatest soldiers and officers, and have more battlefield experience than any soldier should. You've seen countless die, many by your hand: both human and alien alike.
You wouldn't have it any other way. You couldn't imagine it any other way.
You and Jason reach the top of the hill, and see a camp below you. There are about a dozen aliens below, tired and inattentive, several clustered around a campfire.
They killed them, you think. And they had. Two days before, a platoon of marines was ambushed and slaughtered, and another five days ago.
You can feel your blood boil.
You think of how normal humans look at you, and see a machine, a faceless soldier, or an alien, and wonder how they could see you as even comparable to the beasts below you. You are human.
You think of how you've killed, and been wounded in turn. Any normal human would have died or gone insane. You've had plasma burns encase your entire left arm, and kept fighting, as the blackened armor peeled from your body, exposing the bare skin beneath. You've gone through a straight day of nothing other than a massacre of the enemy. You could take it, and would continue to take it. You were a Spartan.
Jason raises three fingers, and lowers one. You and Jason take aim at the aliens below.
As Jason lowers his last finger, you still think. Are they right to question your humanity? You have been a soldier all your life, sworn to protect them. You were created to protect them. Every inhuman act you have committed has been to keep them alive one more day.
How could they question whether you are truly human? How dare they?
I am human.
Your finger tightens on the trigger.
Aren't I?
This is just a short piece I wrote in my spare time, experimenting with a story in the 2nd person.
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