Two of a Kind

Identical motes of light cut a line through the sky on their way down to the ground. They swayed and danced against the backdrop of starlight, searing the night sky in half as they went. Anyone looking would marvel at the coordination; the intricacies of their delicate waltz. Anyone looking would wonder how it was two shooting stars could be so synchronised.

The lights themselves knew better. Encased in Mjolnir armour, and pushing their thrusters to the red, two Spartans dropped from the sky like meteors, rushing towards the ground.

Spartan Harper hollered with barely-restrained joy as the wind rushed by her helmet, garbling her comms, filling them with wind and her yells.

Beside her, Spartan Kennedy laughed in delight, pinning her hands to her sides and drawing her legs in tight to rocket towards the ground faster than her companion.

“Hey!” Harper yelled over the Comms. “Get back here!”

“Come get me, then!” Kennedy yelled back, casting an eye over her shoulder at her teammate.

Harper scoffed and followed her lead, both of them going over terminal velocity, and still accelerating thanks to their thrusters.

“How about we make this interesting?” Harper said, pulling up beside Kennedy and angling her helmet.

Kennedy arched an eyebrow underneath her visor. “How so?”

“Last one to pull up wins!” Harper’s barely-restrained smile shone in her words, and even beneath the golden visor, Kennedy thought she could picture the mischievous smirk on her squadmate's face.

“You’re on!” Kennedy replied.

The pair of them laughed together. Laughed like nothing else in the world mattered. Not the wind, or the sky, or the ground rushing up to meet them. Nothing but each other.

The ground grew, and grew. The curve of the planet disappeared, replaced by flat horizons. The trees became more defined, swaying in the wind. Kennedy and Harper both zipped through low-hanging clouds and broke them apart.

“You look a bit peaky,” Harper chided. “You should pull up.”

“You first,” Kennedy shot back. Altitude warnings blared in her helmet. Ten thousand feet, eight thousand, six, four—Kennedy looked towards Harper and smiled beneath her helmet, deciding now of all times she should get a win under her belt. She pitched up, extended her arms and legs, and pulsed her thrusters to decelerate to an easier landing speed.

Harper laughed in victory, hollering as she kept heading towards the ground. Three thousand feet. Two. One. Five hundred.

Kennedy’s heart leapt into her chest.

“Pull up!” she yelled.

Harper tried to pull back, but the resistance offered by the air was too great. She barely managed to get parallel to the ground—and that wasn’t enough.

She tumbled into a roll, had a split second to lock her armour before she slammed into the ground much faster than expected, cutting a line through the dirt and coming to a rest at the base of a giant black tree.

Kennedy landed much softer, but still had to pitch forward and roll to take some of the pressure off her legs. Before she had her bearings, she was running towards Harper’s crash site.

“Harper!” She pinged her comms. “Harper, answer me!”

There was a cough, and a figure stood up on shaky feet, dusting mud off of her armour. Harper turned towards Kennedy and held a thumb up in the air. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Kennedy sighed in relief and stepped over to her, checking her armour. “Anything feel off? You could be in shock.”

Harper batted her hands away. “I’m fine mother hen, stop clucking.”

Kennedy reached up and twisted Harper’s helmet off, revealing a glistening face and blue eyes. She held up her index finger and began moving it from side to side.

“Follow my finger, alright?”

Harper did so with a roll of her eyes. It went up, down, side to side, and back to front. Harper pushed it away.

“Come on, I’m fine,” she said.

Kennedy sighed and looked her team member up and down. “I’m still getting you checked out when we get to base.”

“Come on,” Harper smiled at her ruefully, and sat herself down on the grass. “You and I both know there wouldn’t be a point.”

Pain lanced through Kennedy’s chest, and she sat down beside Harper, a hand on her fellow Spartan’s knee. “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”

The two of them stared out at the scenery; the rolling hills and canopy of trees. Kennedy took a breath and checked her mission timer. “Time’s up,” she said.

Kennedy came to with a deep breath. She pushed the headset off of her eyes and disconnected the wires from the neural implant in the base of her skull. A cold sensation washed over her scalp, and she shivered. A hand came up to massage her eyes, and she put the headset beside her on the hospital gurney.

A figure in a pressed white suit stared at her, with folded arms and a disdainful expression.

“These simulations aren’t for recreation, Spartan,” she said. “They are for photorealistic training, to keep Spartan Harper’s skills sharp until we can treat her.”

Kennedy looked over towards the other bed in the room. Her heart panged with pain once more. Spartan Harper lay, immobile, beneath white sheets. Connected to so many wires and tubes that she didn’t appear human anymore. A similar headset to the one Kennedy was using to tap into the simulation was over her head. Wires extended from her neural implant to a miniature server farm they had wheeled in next to her, to support the simulation they’d plugged her mind into.

Kennedy looked back up at the Suit and snarled. “Yeah? You want her to do nothing but train in there until she wakes up?”

“That would be best for her,” the Suit said with a nod.

Kennedy’s eyebrows arched. “Would be best, huh?” She stood up and marched over to the Suit, towering above the ONI agent by half a head. “Waking up in the morning in a fake world, with a fake body, and you don't even let her have any sort of distractions? To make her forget that it’s a fake world, and a fake body?”

“ONI is concerned about—” the Suit began.

Kennedy cut her off. “I don’t give a shit what ONI is concerned about!” Harper twitched, and Kennedy looked over at her to make sure she wasn’t disturbed, before continuing in a whisper that was no less harsh. “I’m concerned about my friend!”

“I understand,” the Suit said, with entirely fake empathy and a neutral expression. “But we must think about atrophy, of body and mind in a situation like this.” She motioned to the server farm and the headset. “This is to avoid the latter. The medics can handle the former.”

“Tell you what,” Kennedy pinched her thumb and index finger together, pushing it into the other woman’s breast bone. “You try and tell me what my team member can and can’t do when she’s paralysed again,” she said with a smile, “and I’ll put you in the bed next to her, yeah?” She blinked, her smile straining her cheeks. “And I’ll make you train nonstop while the medics work to save your goddamn life. How about that?”

“These are prototype full-consciousness simulations. ONI expects reports on their effectiveness. How am I meant to explain this one?” the Suit asked.

Kennedy looked at Harper again, and shrugged. “I don’t really care about ONI. I only care about her.” She leaned down and picked up Harper’s hand, stroking her thumb along the back. The skin was pale, and flaking. She tried not to think about how cold she was, too. The medics said she was responding to treatment, and everything would be fine.

Kennedy just had to trust in her. They’d made it through worse together. She took a seat on a metal chair beside the bed—the same one she’d vowed not to leave when Harper was put in the bed.

They were too close for her to even think about leaving her.

So she didn’t.