Tucker didn’t charge the instructors head-on.
He slid silently from the shadows like a cat darting out of tall grass.
His footsteps were practically soundless as he stayed low, skirting the edge of the platform to maneuver behind an outer guard.
The instructor had his back turned.
Tucker brought down a knife-hand strike.
It was a simple chop to the back of the neck, but the execution was clean and crisp, wasting not a fraction of energy.
The instructor went rigid, then slumped to the floor.
The suit’s protection was useless here; the back of the neck was a universal blind spot for armor.
Tucker dragged the instructor into the dark.
The entire process took less than three seconds.
Another instructor noticed his comrade’s sudden disappearance.
“Number Six is down!” he shouted, snapping his rifle toward where Tucker had vanished.
“Where is he—”
Tucker was already gone.
Just then, the lights on the platform began to flicker.
Not a blackout, but a strobe, flashing at an irregular frequency.
Halsey frowned and looked at Mendez.
“Power fluctuation,” Mendez said, a hint of surprise in his voice.
“Could be—” He didn’t finish, because he saw it too.
In the gaps between the flickering light, Halsey caught sight of another figure.
Cohen.
But his movements were entirely different from John’s.
John would charge head-on, crushing everything with sheer force; Cohen emerged from the dark, his actions violent yet completely soundless.
He clapped one hand over the instructor’s visor while his other hand seized the neck joint of the suit.
No chop, no punch—he simply lifted the entire armored soldier off his feet and dragged him into the darkness.
Not a single sound was made throughout.
The instructor didn’t even have time to struggle.
The remaining instructors formed a back-to-back ring on the platform.
They knew they were being hunted, but they couldn’t see the enemy.
Motion trackers beeped continuously, but the pings always pointed to empty air.
Fear began to spread among them.
“Tighten up!” the lead instructor ordered, his voice trembling slightly.
“Don’t break formation! They’re hiding in the dark—”
But it was already too late.
The lights flickered again.
This time, Halsey saw an object fly out from a corner—a flashbang grenade.
Riley.
Riley must have tampered with something from a dark corner, hacking the platform’s lighting system.
The flashbang detonated in the center of the instructors.
Blinding white light instantly swallowed the entire platform.
The instructors instinctively raised their arms to shield their eyes.
In that exact instant, Halsey saw him.
Ethan.
He stood at the center of the platform, right beside the red flag.
The floodlights outlined his silhouette clearly against the white glare.
He wore a black skin-tight combat suit, his face surprisingly young, yet his eyes were as cold as dead water.
It was the look of someone who had already lived through too much.
He reached out and snatched the flag. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
An instructor fired at him.
Thirty-millimeter stun rounds whistled through the air, leaving visible vapor trails.
Ethan slipped aside to dodge.
The movement was impossibly fast—so fast Halsey’s heart skipped a beat.
He didn’t counterattack or block; he simply flowed past the trajectory of the bullets like water, retreating into the darkness with the flag in hand.
He moved like a ghost, weaving through the hail of gunfire without taking a single scratch.
His movements lacked John’s brutal force and were unlike Tucker’s pure agility.
It was a different style altogether—like a scalpel precisely slicing into the enemy’s most vulnerable spot, leaving no extraneous trace.
He didn’t kill; he merely took what he needed and vanished.
The red flag vanished into the gloom.
The lights cut out entirely.
The cavern was plunged into pitch blackness.
“Damn it,” Mendez muttered under his breath, his tone a complex mix of surprise, awe, and worry.
“Switch to backup lights.”
The red emergency lights clicked on.
The platform was empty.
All nine instructors lay prone on the ground, their armor free of bullet holes or blade marks.
They simply lay there like drained puppets.
Some faced down, some lay on their sides, and a few even held combat stances, but none were moving.
The flag was gone.
The Spartans were gone.
The entire engagement had lasted under four minutes.
Halsey turned to Mendez.
“Play it back for me.”
Mendez walked to the console and hit replay.
The footage began playing on the monitor.
But from the start, the screen showed only static and distortion bands.
“Camera malfunctioned again,” Mendez grunted, frowning in frustration.
“It’s like this every time.”
“Can you restore it?”
“Yes, but it’ll take time.” Mendez tapped a few keys.
“Though I have their telemetry data right here.”
He pulled up a set of data tables and projected them onto the holographic screen.
The figures floated in the air, casting a blue glow across both their faces.
“Peak sprint speed,” Mendez pointed to the first column.
“Fifty-five kilometers per hour.”
Halsey’s eyebrows shot up.
A Warthog’s top speed was only a hundred and twenty-five kilometers per hour.
Yet these Spartans, unarmored, could sprint at nearly half that speed.
That meant at a full sprint, they could easily outrun most ground vehicles.
“Lifting capacity,” Mendez continued.
“Three times body weight.”
Three times their body weight.
An average Spartan weighed around seventy kilograms, meaning they could lift over two hundred kilograms.
Outfitted in full gear, a Spartan could lift over half a ton—enough to effortlessly hurl an adult male ten meters away.
“Visual capability,” Mendez’s voice took on a strange tone.
“Night vision.”
“Total darkness,” Mendez nodded.
“Their pupil response time is three times faster than an average human’s, and the rod cell density on their retinas is significantly higher. They can see clearly even under starlight.”
“Reaction time?”
“Twenty microseconds.”
Twenty microseconds.
The average human reaction time was two hundred milliseconds—ten thousand times slower than twenty microseconds.
The Spartans’ reaction speed was terrifyingly fast.
It meant they could react the instant they saw a threat without needing conscious thought.
Pure instinct—an automatic physiological response to danger.
“They shouldn’t be performing this well,” Halsey said with a frown, her tone laced with doubt.
“This was their first live-fire test after the augmentation surgery. According to the original plan, they needed at least another year to adapt.”
“They have a kind of telepathy between them,” Mendez said.
“Not literally—their comm channels are encrypted, so it’s not actual mind-reading. But their coordination is so seamless it’s like they can read each other’s minds. Every time I think I’ve caught a flaw, they resolve it in ways I never could have anticipated.”
He looked at the data on the screen, his voice turning somber.
“Today’s performance was even better than the last. They’re improving—every single day. They’re growing faster than I expected.”
“Do you know where they got those black suits and equipment?” Halsey asked.
“Those items aren’t on our inventory manifests.”
“No idea,” Mendez shook his head.
“After every exercise, those items vanish. They’re like ghosts, coming and going without a trace. I’ve asked them, but they just smile and refuse to say.”
“You’re covering for them.”
“I’m giving them room to grow, Doctor,” Mendez said calmly.
“They aren’t ordinary soldiers. They’re Spartans. Give them a challenge, and they’ll only grow stronger.”
Halsey fell silent for a moment.
Mendez was right, but she disliked the feeling—these children were developing at a rate she couldn’t predict, and she didn’t even know where their upper limits lay.
“What was their score for this exercise?”
“A+,” Mendez said.
“The higher the difficulty, the higher their morale. They seem to enjoy the challenge. Ethan even asked me if we could increase the number of instructors to twelve next time.”
“Twelve?”
“His exact words were, ‘Nine is too few.'”
Halsey’s lip twitched slightly.
It wasn’t a smile, but a far more complex expression—a mixture of fear, awe, and ambition.
“If those men hadn’t been wearing armor, they’d be dead right now,” Halsey murmured.
“But can the Spartans truly kill, Chief? Kill with intent? Are they ready for real combat?”
Mendez looked away, waiting a long moment before answering: “Yes. If we give the order, they will execute the mission with ruthless efficiency.” His posture stiffened.
“May I ask what you mean by ‘real combat,’ ma’am?”
Halsey clasped her hands tightly, shifting uncomfortably.
“Something has happened, Chief. Something neither ONI nor the High Command anticipated. The brass wants to deploy the Spartans on an actual combat mission to test the results of the project.”
“The level they’ve achieved has already surpassed my ability to train them. Further training won’t improve their skills,” Mendez said, his brow furrowing.
“But sending them into action now is far ahead of schedule. What happened? I’ve heard rumors of fierce fighting against the Covenant at the Harvest colony. Is it true?”
“Your rumors are outdated, Chief,” Halsey said, her voice turning cold as ice.
“There is no more fighting on Harvest. Harvest no longer exists.”
Halsey pressed the descend button, and the observation room glided slowly toward the floor.
“Get them ready,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument.
“I want them assembled at 0400 hours. Tomorrow at 0600 hours, we will hold a mission briefing aboard the *Pioneer*. They are being deployed on an ONI mission meant for the right place and the right people. That is all.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tomorrow we will see whether everything they’ve suffered was worth it.”