7:08 AM
Hangar Bay - The Wraith
The first shot hit Marcus in the chest.
He didn't see it coming—his HUD screamed a warning half a second too late, threat vectors painting red across his vision like spilled paint.
The round caught him center mass with enough kinetic force to lift him off his feet and throw him backward six meters.
He hit the concrete hard enough to crack it. Pain exploded through his ribs—the armor had absorbed most of the impact, distributed it across his torso, but most wasn't all and his body had opinions about being used as a crash test dummy.
"MARCUS!" Jesse's voice, high with panic.
Marcus forced himself up. Looked down at his chest. The crimson plating had a fist-sized dent that was already smoothing out, the armor flowing like liquid to repair itself.
Biological regeneration. The integration manual had mentioned this. Hadn't mentioned it would feel like insects crawling under his skin.
"I'm fine," he said, and was surprised to find it mostly true. "Armor works. That's... good to know."
"They have railguns!" Silas's voice crackled through the comm. The azure armor's sensor suite was feeding tactical data to everyone's HUD. "Military grade. Armor-piercing rounds. Thirty hostiles, three fire teams, standard Covenant dispersal pattern—they've done this before."
"So have we," Mara said calmly. Too calmly.
Marcus saw her magenta form move with predatory grace toward cover, pulling a sidearm that looked like a toy in the armor's gauntleted hand.
"Difference is, they think they know what they're fighting."
She leaned out, fired three shots in rapid succession.
The magenta armor enhanced her already considerable marksmanship—each round found a gap in Covenant tactical gear. Three soldiers dropped.
The return fire was immediate and overwhelming.
Covenant Strike Team Alpha
Exterior Position
Commander Sable watched three of her soldiers fall and revised her tactical assessment.
"Target priority upgrade," she said into her comm. "Magenta hostile has enhanced accuracy. Suppressing fire, pattern Delta. Do not expose yourselves unnecessarily."
Her soldiers were good. Trained. Enhanced with SENTINEL's stolen biotech—faster reflexes, improved strength, combat stims that kept them fighting through injuries that would drop normal humans.
But the Spectrum armored targets were moving wrong. Too fast. Too fluid. The crimson one had taken a railgun shot that should have liquified his internal organs and gotten up like she'd thrown a rock at him.
"Obsidian-Six, flank left. Obsidian-Nine, high position, suppressing fire on the azure target—he's running tactical analysis."
Her team moved like a machine. Fifteen years of operations together. They'd toppled governments. Assassinated warlords.
Brought SENTINEL to its knees.
Five test subjects in experimental armor shouldn't be a problem.
Shouldn't.
Obsidian-Six moved to flank, using the hangar's support pillars for cover. Got within twenty meters of the green-armored target—the young one, inexperienced based on movement patterns—and stepped into his kill zone.
The viridian armor blurred.
Six didn't even scream. Just made a wet sound and collapsed in two pieces.
Sable felt something cold settle in her chest. Not fear. Recognition.
These weren't test subjects anymore.
Jesse's Position
Jesse stared at his hands.
They were covered in blood. So much blood. It steamed in the morning air, hot and red and real in a way that made his stomach try to escape through his throat.
He'd killed someone.
Not shot them from a distance. Not thrown a grenade and hoped. He'd moved—the viridian armor responded to his thoughts faster than conscious decision—and his hand had become a blade and he'd cut a human being in half.
The body was three feet away. Still twitching. Still—
"Jesse." Atlas's voice, rough and steady. "Look at me. Not the body. Me."
Jesse tore his eyes away. Found the amber-armored giant behind cover ten meters away.
Atlas's remaining eye was visible through his helmet's visor, locked on Jesse with intensity that cut through the panic.
"First kill is worst," Atlas said. "This is truth. But you do not have time for this now. Grief later. Survive now. Da?"
"I—" Jesse's voice cracked. "I didn't mean to—"
"Yes you did." Atlas's tone was matter-of-fact. "He was trying to kill you. You killed him first. This is war. This is why we have armor. Now: three more moving to your position. You want to join the dead man, or you want to live?"
Jesse looked at his HUD. Three red markers converging on his position. The viridian integration was feeding him data—heart rates, weapon types, tactical assessment. They were treating him like easy prey. The rookie. The weak link.
Something crystallized in Jesse's chest. Not courage. Not even anger. Just... clarity.
If he died here, his instructor—Lieutenant Kim, who'd pushed him to safety and gone back into the burning building—would have died for nothing.
"I want to live," Jesse said.
"Good. Then kill them before they kill you."
The viridian armor moved.
Mara's Position
Dr. Mara Sato had killed forty-seven people in her career with SENTINEL.
She knew the exact number because she kept a list. Names when she could get them.
Faces when she couldn't. It was the scientist in her—data needed recording.
Lives needed accounting.
She'd killed three more in the last thirty seconds. Would add them to the list later.
Assuming there was a later.
The magenta armor was extraordinary. Her marksmanship had always been excellent—biochem required steady hands, and steady hands translated to shooting sports, which translated to SENTINEL recruitment.
But the armor enhanced everything. Her aim was perfect. Her timing was flawless. She could track five targets simultaneously and prioritize threat vectors without conscious thought.
It was like being a very efficient killing machine.
She wondered if she should feel something about that. Decided not to waste the processing power.
"Silas," she said, voice calm despite the firefight. "Give me suppression positions. I can't advance without getting cut to pieces."
"Working on it," Silas replied. "Their command structure is distributed—no single point of failure. But their communications are encrypted with SENTINEL protocols. Which means—"
The Covenant soldiers' radios went dead simultaneously.
"—I can crack them," Silas finished. "You have thirty seconds before they switch to backup frequencies. Make them count."
Mara moved.
The magenta armor's camouflage system wasn't perfect—not true invisibility, just adaptive coloring that blurred her outline.
But in the chaos of combat, with their comms down, it was enough.
She covered fifteen meters in four seconds. Put three rounds through a soldier's throat before he registered her presence. Moved to the next target. And the next.
Clinical. Efficient. Empty.
She felt the magenta integration pulling at her emotions, dampening them, turning her into a precision instrument. Knew she should resist. Couldn't quite remember why it mattered.
Added five more names to her mental list and kept moving.
Silas's Position
Silas Chen was having a religious experience.
Not literally. He didn't believe in God. But the azure integration had connected him to every electronic system within a kilometer, and the sensation was transcendent in a way that made him understand why people invented religions in the first place.
He could feel the Covenant soldiers' encrypted communications like textures against his thoughts. Could sense their weapon targeting systems, their tactical displays, their combat stims sending biometric data to their command AI.
It was beautiful. Overwhelming. Terrifying.
It was also going to kill him if he couldn't learn to filter the input.
"Too much," he muttered, hands pressed against his helmet. "Too much data, too many signals, I can't—"
A bullet sparked off the crate next to him.
Right. Being shot at. Priorities.
Silas forced himself to focus. The azure armor wanted to show him everything—fine. He'd use everything.
He reached out with senses he didn't have thirty minutes ago and grabbed the Covenant's tactical network. Not hacking—that implied effort, keystrokes, time. This was direct neural interface. He thought the command and the system obeyed.
Covenant soldiers' HUDs went haywire. Friendly-fire warnings. False threat markers. Their own positions showing as hostile contacts.
Three of them shot each other in the confusion before their CO screamed for comms blackout.
Silas felt a moment of savage satisfaction, then immediately felt sick. He'd just tricked people into killing their own teammates.
That was... that was a war crime, probably. Definitely unethical.
"Good work, Azure," Marcus's voice crackled. "Keep them disrupted."
Orders. He was following orders. That made it okay, right?
Silas pushed the thought away and dove deeper into the network. If he was going to be a monster, he'd at least be an efficient one.