Ghosts of Us - Noble-5 & Fhajad-084
The shaking was what he hated the most.
Oh, he had a long list of what he hated about every inch of this place. The minimalist white-gray color that dominated everything from the ceiling to the walls to the sheets that failed to protect him from the chill of the air conditioning ā he hated how dull, how drab, how utterly boring it was. He hated the smell of antiseptic and the noises that tortured his delicate senses, footsteps of passerbys and voices blending to create a despicable drone. He really hated the food.
But the thing that he despised beyond all else was that his own body, the body that had endured hellish training and augmentation and served as a living weapon ā the body that the UNSC had invested incredible amounts of money to bring to the peak of human performance ā it wasnāt right, and likely never would be again. His ability as a soldier, as a Spartan-II, was one of the UNSCās greatest assets. Without that ability, all he had was his mind, the IQ his genes afforded him and the education the Spartan Program had equipped him with.
And at this point, the tactical value of his mind was something he didnāt even want to consider. There were things he couldnāt remember, things he didnāt want to remember, and things he kept getting confused no matter how much anyone reminded him. He-
-just wanted his hands to stay still, dammit.
Jorge drew in a breath in an effort to keep his temper under control. The last thing he needed was another outburst. People, even those employed by the ONI, tended to react badly when a Spartan lost their customary cool and started screaming. His episode, still fresh in his mind despite five weeks having past, hadnāt even been in English if he recalled correctly. Thankfully, no one had been hurt ā he hadnāt even gotten up this time, just remained where he was and yelled.
Since then, heād had another surgery, and the shaking started soon after. The doctors claimed it was due to the fact theyād had to work around his neural implants getting at the thing that shouldnāt have been in his brain; it was a minor inconvenience compared to the seizures he had suffered thanks to what they removed, but for someone confined to a bed for days at a time, it was nerve-wracking.
It reminded him of the trembling that had gripped him when he saw it for the first time. His world, his beloved Reach, reduced to a charred ember of a planet, murdered by the Covenant. That had been the start of the episodes ā he hadnāt screamed that way in years, and he didnāt remember what had happened after he started screaming. Feeling the sensation now was terribly unpleasant, and it made him nervous. Loss of control was something intolerable to a Spartan, and it seemed he was doomed to lose every semblance of control he had over himself. His body was sick, and his mind had cracked from the blow that had been Operation UPPER CUTās colossal failure. His colossal failure.
If Iām crazy, can I at least feed myself? Is that too much to ask?
The ONI had put him here, in this medical facility, because the radiation he had been exposed to when he fired the Slipspace ābombā was making his body kill itself. Without constant medical attention over the past seven months, he would have been dead long ago. It had only taken a couple of months for him to return to civilization after being teleported to the ass-end of space, but during that time he had developed at least four different types of cancer and a plethora of other conditions that would have killed a lesser man in mere weeks. Spartans endured to the bitter end ā and so he endured, and was now forced to exist in this manner if he wanted to survive at all.
Surgery after surgery after surgery. Treatments that made him wish he were comatose. Isolation, no interaction with comrades, just doctors and nurses and spooks andā¦ it was unbearable and he wondered why he had even survived, because he had no purpose like this. He was expensive, so the ONI would waste no resource to repair him, butā¦
Is this how they felt, the ones we left behind all those years ago?
Jorge sighed. There was no point in tensing up; the shaking only got worse when he was upset. Better to let go of his frustrations for the moment and at least try to relax, to go someplace better inside his own head. He didnāt have access to his books, the ānet, not even a damn radio, so his imagination was as good as it got. The pillow, at least, was comfortable and didnāt aggravate the still-healing site of the surgery. He noticed that his hands were still now, and tried not to think too hard about the multiple IV lines that fed painkillers and other medicines into his bloodstream.
The massive Spartan couldnāt help the humiliated feeling that welled up inside him every time someone came to see him, to take care of him. But as much as he wanted to get up and do for himself, as much as he wanted to break out and run until he simply collapsed of exhaustion far away from this place, he knew he could not. He was perpetually tired without having done anything but breathe and think. The combined illness and treatment was wearing him down; it would take months, a year maybe, to build even an augmented body back to full strength from this stateā¦
Two hundred and ninety pounds. I think I weighed that much when I was fourteen, before the change. He didnāt feel smaller, but he did feelā¦ stretched, like he was fading away and would eventually just become a ghost. I donāt think Iād mind just disappearing right nowā¦
He wished the steady drip-drip of whatever was going into him would do more than cancel out his pain and take his thoughts away from this room, because at the moment, he wanted nothing more than to have a different reality. Jorge closed his eyes and hoped nobody came to take any samples or observations; the last thing he needed was to be bothered at this point.
