Confinement

“Do you remember your birthday, Spartan?”	a voice said, from somewhere behind Spartan Kennedy. She paused, lifting her upper half out of the half-dismantled cryogenics tube, to look behind her at who had spoken..

Chilled air wafted down from ventilation ducts in misty white streams, settling on the ground and branching out like frosted branches. Hollow tubes and crates lined the unmarked, clean walls of the UNSC Triumphs cryo bay.

A man stood with one hand in his pocket, staring at her from behind a cigar that he puffed on with a curious look on his face.

Kennedy turned around and kept working. “Official records indicate that my date of birth and age are considered state secrets, to be omitted from every report filed on me, or by me,” she said, reaching into the spare tube and pulling the bio-monitor out. She checked it for any problems, before putting it in the pile next to her.

The tendrils of icy white reached out for them, wrapping themselves around the cables and bolts anchoring the tubes down, swirling around her legs as she knelt beside the freezer. The whole place had a quietness about it, punctuated only by the thrumming of machinery, and the flickering of the overhead lights.

“That’s not what I asked, is it?” the voice from the man broke the silence.

Kennedy stopped, paused to think, then kept working. “I suppose not.” She grabbed everything up off of the ground and turned around, brushing past him.

The Spartan strode across the catwalk from one end of the bay to another, carrying armfulls of equipment. Sensors, monitors, and biochips stripped from a working spare tube, going into the one she had the auspicious task of repairing. No one would tell her why she drew the short straw, but she knew. Captain Stiles had a short temper; one that she often enjoyed provoking. The punishment details were always worth it.

The man said nothing, but followed closely behind her. She heard the sizzling from the tip of the cigar, and could smell the peaty smoke coming from it.

“So? Do you remember?” he asked again.

The Spartan looked over her shoulder to say something. Her mouth opened, before she closed it once again and shook her head. “No. I don’t,” she said. “It’s like a wall. Everything behind it is foggy. Like it wasn’t really there to begin with.”

The man took a contemplative mouthful of smoke and let it out. “What about your age?”

“Forty..” Spartan Kennedy went back to work, installing a new sensor with a quick flash of her soldering-iron.

“You’re forty years old?” the man asked. Without looking, Kennedy could tell his brows were up in incredulity.

She paused, and held up a hand. “No, wait,” she did some math. “Thirty seven. Technically.” She looked back at him with a wry grin. “Does time spent in cryo subtract years?”

“Depends on who you ask,” he replied with a jovial arc of his brow.

Her smile diminished, and she furrowed her own brow. “Why are you here?”

“I was handed something interesting,” the Major stepped forward, rifling around in the inside breast pocket of his suit lapel. “I thought you might want to have a look at it.” He handed over a datapad. Small, made for carrying specific messages.

Her mouth went dry as she took it, and turned the screen on. She was expecting orders, new missions. Not what she got. The UNSC seal appeared, followed by the ONI one, and the message addressed to her in blue-white type.

“Notice of disciplinary action?” she asked, skimming the message and handing the pad back.

Her handler took it away with a sad nod. “You’re a problem child. Brass finally found enough prior unpunished incidents to lodge a formal complaint.”

“They can kiss my ass,” she snapped.

“They handed me a verdict,” he kept talking.

“So, what?” She stood up to her full height, putting away her tools and switching the power supply to the tube back on. The lights on the inside turned back on, bathing the area around them both with an ethereal blue glow. She turned back around towards her handler and stepped a bit closer, folding her arms. “They made you the executioner?”

“In a way,” the man nodded.

Kennedy tilted her head to one side and studied him with squinted eyes. “Don’t tell me ONI are dumb enough to black bag one of their spartans.”

He gestured his arms out by his sides, keeping his expression flat save for a quick upturned brow and a wrinkling of his lips. “Do you see me with a black bag?”

“I see you.” Kennedy jabbed. “That’s bad enough. Whenever I see you I’m being handed marching orders, targets, or objectives. Now, I’m being handed the equivalent of a time out slip.” The lights “You’d think ONI would know I’m not a child anymore.”

“Multiple incidents of dereliction of duty,,” he said, “multiple incidents of insubordination, multiple incidents of acting counter to established operational procedures. They know full well what you are. ”

“I don’t need this.” The Spartan turned back around and slammed the tool-box shut with a thud and a rattling of its contents.

“I’m just doing my job,” her handler said.

Kennedy wheeled back around. “So was I!” she yelled, eyes wide and full of anger.

There passed a moment of silence between them. The machines kept thrumming, the mist around their feet agitated and swirling around them both.

Kennedy looked around the cryo bay for any eavesdroppers. When she found none, she straightened her back and sighed. “It’s alright for you,” she said. “in your pressed suit and slick hair. I had to wear this armour, I had to go to war. I had to watch people die that shouldn’t have, I had to abandon people who could’ve easily been saved. I am sorry if I never quite forgot my humanity, despite the Office’s best efforts to purge it from my brain!”

She pressed a finger into his chest. “All you had to do was hand me the datapad with my orders on it. All you had to do was point me at the target, and the higher ups would pull the trigger. Twenty seven years as my handler,” she looked him up and down, studying him. “While I spent twenty seven years as a soldier.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, without a trace of sincerity.

She laughed, itself with not a trace of mirth. “You’re not. That’s the worst part.” She smiled. “If you were then you wouldn’t be my handler. They chose you well. Not a shred of sympathy. I’d be proud, if I wasn’t so angry right now.”

“Their sentence was a minimum of five years solitary confinement, and a temporary discharge,” he said.

“A five year long slap on the wrist, huh? What happens if I refuse?” she asked.

He shrugged in reply. “Then I will be forced to remand you into state custody for a period of five years.”

Kennedy clicked her tongue. “A black bag, then.”

“I did bring something to soften the blow a little.” He went back into his suit/

“Yeah? What is it?” she asked.

He said nothing, handing over a plain manilla envelope. Something physical, that ruffled and crinkled around his fingers.

“Actual paper?” she took it, genuinely surprised. Opening the top, she fished around for the forms inside and pulled them out. “I haven’t seen this since I was a—.”

She paused at the smiling face at the front of the report, attached by a glinting metal paperclip.

“Since you were a little girl,” her Handler finished. “These are the forms they made you sign when they found you begging on the streets of Zvolíč.”

The report felt like it would fall apart around her clutching, shaking fingers. She was staring at herself from nearly three decades before. Her eyes were full of sparkling innocence, and she had a gap between her two front teeth. “This is...” she looked down at the words on the page, and couldn’t find her own.

“Uncensored,” he said. “Everything about you, that you can’t remember—that they tried so hard to remove—is right there.”

Kennedy turned her back to him. “It’s today’s date,” she said.

“What is?” He took a step towards her.

“My birthday.” She looked at the numbers that made up the date. The fourteenth of March, 2512. “It’s today.”

“So it is,” he said.

She felt a prick at the base of her neck, and something cool slid into her veins. In the few moments she was distracted, she had allowed him to get close. She wheeled around, smacking the syringe away from his hand. The gun-like administration device clattered away, shattering on the ground, but it was too late. Enough of the sedative had already reached her nerves, and she stumbled away from the man. “What did you…” she blinked, her eyelids heavy. Movements sluggish, and mind fogging up. “What did you do?”

“I’m sorry,” her Handler grabbed her waist, steadied her, and took her weight when her legs failed her. “I knew I could never get you to agree to your sentencing willingly.” He lowered her backwards into the cryo pod and tapped the screen next to it.

“You… bastard,” Kennedy smiled, laughing at him. “You always were lousy at giving gifts.”

“Happy birthday, Spartan Kennedy,” he said to her. “Your last for a good long while.”

The door to the cryo pod slid shut with a hiss of finality, and then everything faded out for good as the ice took her.