Military Calendar September 22, 2525, 0430 Hours
UNSC Carrier *Hercules*, Lambda Serpentis System, Gymnasium
Ethan stood before the lever of the strength trainer.
His fingers rested on the cold metal bar, taking in the results of six months of post-augmentation adaptation.
Muscle fibers squirmed beneath his skin like soldiers awaiting orders.
His modified body had not yet fully adjusted—the strength had come too fast, too surging, like a river forcibly widened, ready to breach its dikes at any moment.
He took a deep breath.
Then, he curled the barbell.
One hundred eighty kilograms.
Easy as a toy.
He set the bar down and turned toward the heavy bag.
His fist struck it like a sledgehammer, the leather emitting a muffled thud.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
Every strike made his knuckles thud with a faint ache—not because he couldn’t withstand it, but because he had to suppress forty percent of his power.
If he used his full force, the heavy bag would burst outright.
He stopped, his breathing steady to the point of showing almost no fluctuation.
The fluorescent lights humming overhead cast a cold white glow across the entire space.
At four in the morning, this lower-midship gymnasium aboard the *Hercules* was virtually empty.
There was only him and his shadow.
Ethan flexed his wrists.
His augmented body allowed him to clearly perceive the tension in every muscle, the elasticity in every tendon.
His synaptic response speed was more than three times that of a normal human, his bone density had increased by three hundred percent, and his muscular strength was twice that of an average soldier.
He had long known these numbers by heart.
Yet what truly made him feel out of place wasn’t the physical transformation.
It was time.
He glanced at the digital clock on the wall.
0432.
Less than an hour left.
He closed his eyes.
In canon, John-117 had encountered four Helljumpers at this exact time.
Those ODSTs—Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, the UNSC’s most elite light infantry.
Dropping from orbit, they plunged like a spearhead into enemy lines, never surrendering, never retreating.
They were the reapers of the battlefield, the pride of the Marine Corps.
And now, they were being sent to test a group of fourteen-year-old kids.
Ethan knew all of this was going to happen.
He knew Mendez had orchestrated this farce.
He knew those four ODSTs would walk in with provocative postures, arrogant words, and the intention to humiliate the Spartans.
He even knew each of their callsigns—Executioner, Broken Finger, Butcher, and the one holding the iron rod, Spike.
That game, that story, those battles he had once viewed as mere data—at this moment, they had all turned into real flesh and blood.
And he was powerless to change it.
No, perhaps he could change it.
John had beaten two men to death in canon.
He could be more restrained.
He could merely injure them without taking lives.
But so what?
Ethan looked down at his own fist.
This hand, remade by augmentation surgery, could easily snap steel pipes and punch through walls.
And those ODSTs—they were just ordinary humans.
They had no bone enhancements, no muscle augmentations, no superhuman abilities whatsoever.
They were merely soldiers clad in armor, wielding weapons, trained to be killing machines.
When the force of a Spartan landed upon them, what would happen?
Ethan had tried calculating it.
Every time he tried to calculate it, the result made him sick to his stomach.
Even if he used only half his strength, a single punch delivered enough impact to break a normal person’s bones.
Even using a mere ten percent of his strength could snap an opponent’s ribs.
Yet he had to act.
If he didn’t act, Mendez would suspect 007 was abnormal.
A Spartan backing down when provoked—that would be the biggest red flag of all.
So he had to fight.
And he had to make it clean and decisive, letting Mendez witness a textbook Spartan defensive response.
And then, watch those men be carried off to the medical bay.
Ethan opened his eyes again.
He walked over to the leg press machine and began adjusting the parameters.
Sixty percent.
No more than that.
Any less would look deliberate.
He stepped onto the pedals and began the test.
Everything was too light.
Everything was too slow.
Just as John had felt in canon.
0447 Hours.
Footsteps.
Ethan was doing pull-ups, his hands gripping the overhead bar, his body suspended in midair.
His hearing was ten times sharper than before his augmentation, capable of picking up a heartbeat thirty meters away.
The footsteps of these four men—heavy, steady, laced with military cadence—were locked in by his senses the instant he heard them.
Four men.
Entering from the east entrance of the gym.
Each wore the black uniform of the ODSTs, their chest insignia gleaming silver beneath the fluorescent lights.
Their shoulder patches bore the emblem of a skull and parachute—shipborne drop troops, grim reapers deployed straight from orbit to the battlefield.
Ethan didn’t turn his head.
He continued his pull-ups as though completely oblivious to their presence.
Yet he saw them clearly.
Four men.
Burly.
Scarred.
Walking with an arrogant stride.
The man in the lead bore a scar running from his left brow down to his jawline, his gaze as cold as a winter night’s lake.
A chunk was missing from his right ear, as if bitten off by something.
Executioner.
The second man had only three fingers remaining on his left hand; his ring and pinky fingers were gone from the knuckle down.
On the back of his right hand was a tattoo of a hand gripping a dagger.
Broken Finger.
The third man had a band of burn scars around his neck, looking as if he had been strangled by something red-hot.
His shoulders were broad as a wall, the muscles on his arms bulging beneath his uniform.
Butcher.
The fourth man carried an iron rod in his hand, its metallic surface reflecting cold light.
His expression was the calmest—a calmness like an executioner waiting to perform his duty.
Spike.
Ethan recited these names in his mind.
He knew where every single one of them came from, every story behind them, and why each of them had appeared here today.
But he couldn’t say a word.
He could only pretend to be a fourteen-year-old child who knew nothing of these veterans’ backgrounds.
He completed his last pull-up and landed lightly on the floor.
Then, he turned around.
Four pairs of eyes locked onto him simultaneously.
Executioner spoke first, his voice deep as though emerging from subterranean depths.
“Spartan?”
Ethan looked at him.
He knew what would happen next.
Executioner would ask him a question about a heavy iron disk.
John had refused to answer in canon, and then these men had begun mocking him as a kid fresh out of kindergarten.
The conflict had started right there.
But this time, Executioner phrased it differently.
“Yes,” Ethan answered.
His voice was calm, without the slightest ripple.
This caused Executioner to frown slightly.
“Whose iron disk is that?” Broken Finger asked, gesturing casually toward the side.
“You know?”
The iron disk.
Ethan recalled it.
In canon, John had said he didn’t know, and then they had started mocking him.
“I don’t know,” Ethan replied.
His answer was identical to John’s.
But his tone was different.
When John said he didn’t know, it was with confusion—he truly didn’t understand what these men were provoking him for.
But Ethan—he knew clearly the meaning behind every single word, the trap in every question, and every step that led toward violence.
He saw a cold glint flash through Broken Finger’s eyes.
“Don’t know?” Broken Finger repeated, his lip curling into a mocking sneer.
Ethan did not speak.
He merely watched them.
This silence angered the ODSTs far more than any response could have.
Butcher stepped forward, his shoulder joints cracking.
“What do you kids think you are? Spartans? Bullshit. You’re nothing but freaks pumped out of a lab—”
“I apologize,” Ethan interrupted him, “if that iron disk caused any inconvenience.”
He was trying to apologize.
In canon, John hadn’t apologized.
He had merely remained silent, then grown angered, and then engaged.
But Ethan was offering a concession.
He didn’t want to fight.
He knew what would happen if they fought—those men would be severely injured by his hands, rushed to the medical bay, and then—their military careers would be over.
Yet the apology proved useless.
Butcher froze for a second, then burst out laughing.
The sound was like gravel scraping against metal, gratingly harsh.
“Apologize? Ha! Did you hear that, boys? This little bastard is apologizing!”
Broken Finger laughed as well.
“Maybe they also taught you how to act like a dog.”
Ethan lowered his eyes, looking down at the floor.
There was a shallow scratch on the gym floor, left behind when a barbell had been dropped.
He knew this conflict was unavoidable.
He knew these men would not let him go.
He knew Mendez was watching from somewhere, observing everything through the surveillance monitors.
He knew.
And yet he still did not want to raise his hands.
“What do you actually want?” he asked, his voice remaining level.
Executioner took a step forward.
He towered over Ethan by a full head, his shoulders as wide as a wall, his body covered in battle-forged scars.
He was a true warrior, a soldier who had walked off real battlefields.
“I want to see,” Executioner leaned down, looking directly into Ethan’s eyes, “just how much these hyped-up Spartans are actually worth.”
His hand came down onto Ethan’s shoulder.
That hand was heavy.
Heavy enough to press an ant into the dirt.
If Ethan were a normal human, he would have felt pain, humiliation, and fear.
But he was a Spartan.
His shoulders were shielded by carbide ceramic bones, and his muscle density was twice that of an average man.
Executioner’s hand felt like nothing more than a feather landing on solid steel.
Yet Ethan felt something else entirely.
What was transmitted through that hand was not malice.
It was fear.
These ODSTs, these veterans who had survived actual warfare—they were afraid.
Afraid of being replaced by a group of children, afraid their own worth was being negated, afraid that they would wake up one day to find themselves completely irrelevant.
This was the anxiety of soldiers, the terror of warriors amidst changing times.
They were pawns.
Ethan suddenly realized this.
Mendez hadn’t sent them here to test the Spartans’ combat capability—that kind of test could be conducted at any time using drills, simulations, or countless methods that harmed no one.
Mendez had sent them here for one purpose:
To force these children to learn obedience to orders.
Or, to learn how to make the right choice under extreme pressure.
He didn’t know which answer Mendez wanted.
Perhaps both.
Perhaps he simply wanted to see what Spartans would do when faced with provocation: whether they would strike back in rage, retreat calmly, or, as Ethan was doing now, wait in silence.
Executioner’s hand trembled slightly.
He felt Ethan’s composure.
That composure wasn’t an act, wasn’t bravado, wasn’t an attempt to tough it out.
It was a genuine, bone-deep tranquility—as if Ethan had known all along this would happen, and had prepared his response long ago.
“Let go,” Ethan said.
Two words.
No threat in his tone, no trace of anger.
Just a statement of fact.
Executioner did not let go.
Instead, his grip tightened.
“And if I don’t?” he asked.
Ethan looked at him.
Then, he moved.