by Matt Forbeck
Molly hadn’t signed up for any of his classes. She had no interest in learning Sangheili or being taught by a giant monster. He was tall with deep indigo skin, and he very much fit the mold of the Elite warrior.
The Sangheili instructor approached with a powerful confidence and disciplined movements, towering over all of the children in the fight. Even the Sangheili youth—who turned out to have been the person who had caught Molly—was taken aback in Dinok’s shadow. Despite not being dressed for war, the appearance of the massive Sangheili instructor had proven enough to subdue the entire crowd. Molly found herself legitimately scared for her life.
Then she realized the young Sangheili was still next to her. She jerked away, glaring at him through her swelling eye. She couldn’t help but recoil sharply at the realization that he had touched her. She didn’t need any help in this fight, certainly not from a Sangheili.
Dinok glowered down at each of the seven children in turn and shook his head in dismay. “You are all in a world of trouble.”
For Molly, this was now officially her worst first day of school ever.
CHAPTER 10
* * *
* * *
Molly’s Newparents weren’t impressed by her getting into a fight on her first day at Onyx’s school. They grounded her for the week. Since she had no social life, the punishment didn’t mean all that much to Molly, but she decided not to point that out. She didn’t need to give them a reason to come up with something worse.
In actuality, they weren’t that upset by what had happened. Asha even congratulated Molly on standing up to a bully, while Yong got her a stim-adhesive to bring down the swelling on her eye and lip. She explained to him that she’d already used two in the school infirmary, but he insisted.
Asha and Yong cared less about Molly’s getting in trouble at school than they did about her putting herself in danger, especially given the nature of the altercation and the clear tension between the species at Pax Institute. This was not the picture of tranquility Director Mendez had painted for them, but school scuffles probably didn’t rank high on his list of security concerns.
Molly’s official punishment at the Pax Institute was a one-day suspension, which Kareem got too. Karl, Zeb, and Andres were each sent home for a week. The two aliens involved weren’t punished at all. That rankled Molly a bit because they were both at the center of the conflict, but since neither of them had thrown a punch, she couldn’t argue with it.
The bullies all accused Molly of attacking them out of the blue, but the three weren’t the most clever kids. They must have known the school’s security cameras would vindicate her. However, the fact she had attacked Karl before he hit her had forced Kasha to punish her as well.
“You’re getting off easy because you have only been at school a few hours and this is, of course, all new for you,” Kasha told Molly in her office, a strange hybrid of human and Sangheili design that somehow felt both open and claustrophobic. “Because of this, however, your record is no longer clean. So do your best to stay out of trouble from here on out. Understood?”
Molly didn’t feel that she deserved any scolding at all. She’d been trying to stop three bullies from beating the life out of two aliens—at least one of whom she should have left out to dry. But in the end, Molly understood. The headmaster had to deter fighting somehow.
It probably was just a rumor, but she heard Karl and Zeb’s and Andres’s parents took them out to dinner that night for “standing up to aliens.” She found it hard to believe: Who are these parents? How do people like that get picked to be part of this project? Aren’t there intensive screenings to root those kinds of people out?
Molly could rationalize her own fears. She had good reason to be nervous about the aliens, but she still wasn’t about to start picking a fight with them. On top of that, she wasn’t one of the adults hired to do research here. If this baffling rumor about the bullies’ parents was true, it told a far bleaker story about Paxopolis than the city’s name implied.
When Molly had a chance to unpack all that had happened that day with her Newparents, she found herself somewhat embarrassed by the whole thing. She hadn’t intended to wind up on the side of aliens, even ones as harmless as Gudam. She’d been doing everything she could to avoid them until just minutes before the fight. But what made her even more uncomfortable was that the Sangheili fledgling had helped her.
Molly hadn’t needed his help, and she certainly hadn’t been looking for it. The last thing she wanted was for people to think she was incapable of fighting her own battles and so had to enlist the help of a Sangheili instead. She could take care of herself, especially with a bunch of jerks like those three. If she could have done it over again, she would have just ignored the whole incident and walked away.
“So why’d you do it then?” Asha asked. Asha had this annoying way of cutting through all the emotional clutter around any issue and getting right to the heart of it.
“Are you saying I did the wrong thing?” Molly asked, confused. Asha had seemed pretty supportive up till that point.
“Not at all. I’m asking why you stepped in to protect that Unggoy.”
“I already told you about that.”
Asha gave Molly a weird, soft smile. It told her that Asha knew the answer to her own question already. She was just waiting for Molly to catch up. “I didn’t ask what you did. I asked why. Just give it some thought.”
“You’ll have plenty of time for that during your suspension,” Yong said. He seemed to think the idea of Molly being punished was hilarious. Yong knew what Molly was capable of in academics, and how she’d spent the last few years as a hermit within her old school, never being involved in anything controversial. She’d finally done something of note in a social context—a fistfight—and he found it too comical to consider it anything more than an extended joke.
Unfortunately for her, Molly was the butt of that joke.
“I’m not going back to that school,” she told them flat out. “You can’t make me.”
“You’re just upset,” Yong said. “Give it some time.”
“We’re sorry if we pushed you too fast,” Asha said. “It’s just that you have to take this first step at some point. You staying home isn’t going to make this any better. And our work is ramping up.”
“How can that be?” Molly asked. “Everything the Forerunners made has been lying around for more than a hundred thousand years. What’s the sudden rush now? Is it that GOLIATH thing that you were talking about with Director Mendez and the Spartans?”
Yong frowned and exchanged a serious look with Asha. Molly had made a momentary lapse in the heat of the moment. She’d completely forgotten that she had been eavesdropping on that part of the conversation and wasn’t supposed to know what they’d been chatting about. Yet another knee-jerk reaction of hers had gotten her into trouble.
“You shouldn’t have been listening to that, Molly,” Yong said, his eyes intensely serious.
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have,” Molly said plaintively.
But Yong didn’t scold her. After Asha nodded, Yong spoke to Molly in a hushed tone with a stern look on his face. “Can you keep a secret?”
“What do you mean?” Molly asked.
“Look, you’ve been through a lot today. We know this move wasn’t exactly what you wanted. I feel bad; Asha feels bad. This transition was tougher on you than either of us, and we’re only days in. We want to level with you about why we’re here.”
“At least,” Asha said, “to help you understand why this is so important. But you’ve got to keep this under your hat, Molly. If you don’t, we can get in a lot of trouble.”
“Not the kind of trouble you want us in either,” Yong said, with a cold stare. “The kind that lasts forever.”
“Okay, okay,” Molly said. “What’s the big deal?”
“Project: GOLIATH was focused on a large Forerunner machine Asha and I explored extensively years ago, hidden belowgroun
d on a colony world. Apparently it’s not the only one. They’ve discovered more of them recently, these enormous and ancient machines. They’re actually cropping up all over the galaxy. On inhabited worlds even.”
“And this time it’s different,” Asha added. “They’re not all just lying unresponsive below the ground anymore, which is how we found that one in the past. Something’s happening to them, something potentially bad. The reason we’re here is that ONI needs our help to figure out what that thing is.”
Molly understood the facts logically, but she didn’t see how any of it was relevant. “What does this have to do with me coming to Onyx and going to a school where I get beat up for defending aliens who I don’t even like? If I don’t want to go to the school again and I can learn from the networked tutor system at home—what does that have to do with your work?”
“We need you in school, Molly,” Yong said, not beating around the bush. “You need to be around others your age, and you need to learn in a context like Pax Institute. You’re not leaving the school. If it gets too difficult, we’ll talk to the headmaster.”
“We love you, Molly,” Asha said with a concerned but sincere look on her face. “We’re here for you. But we can’t have you at home all day looking after yourself. We need to know that you’re safe and someone’s keeping an eye on you. And we want to impress upon you the importance of this project. Our work here on Onyx—it’s not a game. It’s really that serious. These machines, if they awaken . . . it’s a matter of life or death for the people on those worlds.”
“Fine,” Molly said flatly, realizing that their tip of the hand was to show her she wouldn’t get her way. “Just leave me alone.”
She stormed upstairs and locked herself in her room. Perhaps she should have been happy that her slip of the tongue hadn’t resulted in a more severe punishment, but she was done. Molly didn’t want any excuses from them, or to have to relive the fight or her motivations, or any of that. She just wanted the day to end.
For the next few days, Molly’s Newparents actually left her alone.
Molly didn’t know if they thought that a kind of benign neglect was the best way to deal with her at the moment or if they were just too busy with their own work. Or maybe they realized how angry she was about having to go back to that school, that they didn’t want to engage her on that topic again unless they had to. Sometimes Molly questioned their parental abilities, but taking her in had been a bit of a surprise for them. As she grew older, though, her questioning became more frequent. At the age of sixteen, it happened most of the time.
But if what they were saying about these incidents on other worlds was actually true? That this was a life-or-death situation? That certainly put a different spin on things.
As Molly came down from the frustrations she’d felt immediately after the fight at school, she recognized that her squabble with those kids was insignificant against the backdrop of what was taking place on Onyx. The things that Yong and Asha were dealing with were far more critical, and it was irrational for Molly to think otherwise.
She decided that she’d cut her Newparents some slack next time they had a conversation, but she still wasn’t sure when she’d be ready to go back to school. Without the Newparents at home to make her return, she’d been able to get away with hunkering down at home—at least for now.
Molly took advantage of her free time by soaking up as much as she could from the newsfeeds. What she saw confirmed her suspicions. Asha and Yong hadn’t been joking about things heating up around human-occupied space. A litany of crazy rumors were coursing through the feeds, mostly about entire colonies going dark and the military being deployed in response.
Was another war brewing? Or was this connected to the machines Yong and Asha had mentioned? Seeing glimmers of the things her Newparents had mentioned being reported on Waypoint was both eerie and sobering.
Whatever’s going on is real and scary. Real scary, even.
Molly suddenly realized that living inside a gigantic Forerunner shell surrounded by military personnel did make her feel a bit safer.
It didn’t surprise her when Asha and Yong sent a comm message on Friday night saying they had to work through the weekend on-site. Molly wondered what that meant: Where exactly is “on-site”? Exactly how connected is what they’re working on here in Onyx to all those events out there? Maybe they weren’t as safe as they had told her they would be.
Molly figured that at least they wouldn’t bother her about school during the weekend, but Monday still rocketed toward her like a maglev train. They clearly didn’t want her to miss another day, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to go back.
“We’ll talk about this tonight,” Asha told her when leaving the house on Sunday morning. From that, Molly knew that her self-enforced suspension from school was about to come to an end, so she began steeling herself for what lay ahead. Seeing those same kids: the ones she’d fought against, the ones who’d just gawked as it all went down, and even the ones she’d fought alongside . . . she just wanted to forget it all happened and never talk to any of them again.
That afternoon an unexpected visitor stopped by.
Molly went to answer the doorbell and found Spartan Lucy standing on her doorstep, dressed in her UNSC fatigues. “Permission to come inside?”
“Of course.” Molly stepped aside and let her in, genuinely surprised. She hadn’t seen Lucy—or Tom or Director Mendez—since the day she and her family had arrived. It was a big shield world, after all.
Lucy glanced around and then strode straight into the living room and sat in Asha’s beat-up chair, which the family had brought with them from Aranuka. Molly offered Lucy something to drink, but she declined.
Molly found herself strangely calm, despite having a real-life Spartan sitting in her living room. A few weeks ago, she would have fainted.
“I’m here on unofficial business.”
“Asha and Yong won’t be back until tonight,” Molly said. “They’ve been working around the clock on something.”
Lucy nodded. “They have an important mission. But I said unofficial. I’m not here for them, I’m here for you. I’m here to encourage you to go back to school.”
Molly sat down in Yong’s chair and folded her arms across her chest, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to.”
“We all have things we don’t want to do, Molly, but we do them anyway. Your mission while you’re here in Onyx is to get an education.”
“I can do that at home.”
“At the Pax Institute.”
“Why?”
“You already know why, Molly. Part of Paxopolis’s purpose is to show that humans and other intelligent species can actually live and work together—in a real and authentic way. That’s one of the main reasons for this whole thing.”
Molly gently rubbed her eye, which still ached. “And what if we can’t?”
“That was a human who gave you that shiner, not an Elite.”
“Because I was dumb enough to step between him and an alien.”
“That alien’s name is Bakar. And it happened because you were brave enough to step in and help.”
“For all the good it did me.”
“I said you were brave. Not smart.”
Lucy came across as so serious that it took Molly a moment to realize she was joking. Spartans had an extremely dry sense of humor, apparently. At least this one did.
Molly wondered if that had something to do with their training. Some rumors alleged that the Spartans had been raised from childhood to be soldiers. It had always seemed far-fetched to Molly, but not so much now that she’d met a couple of them.
“Well, how could I help that?” Molly said, growing more offended as she thought about what had been said. “There were three of them, and they were all bigger and stronger than me.”
Lucy smiled at her. “You’re about the same height as me, Molly.”
“Yeah, but I’m no Spartan. You probably could have taken tho
se boys down blindfolded.”
“Yeah, well, they were boys. But honestly, it’s not because I’m stronger than them.”
“Well, that doesn’t hurt. They were—”
“It’s because of my training and my experience. I’ve taken on plenty of opponents much larger and even stronger than me, and I laid them out when I needed to.”
“With a weapon, yeah.”
“Not always. Working as a Spartan often isn’t about charging in with guns blazing. For most of our operations out in the field, it’s much more efficient to get the job done quietly. And trust me, I’ve done that many times.”
Molly shrugged at her. “I don’t see what good that does me—unless you’re going to sign me up to become a Spartan.”
“That’s not what I had in mind. But maybe I can help you out with some training.”
“Are you kidding?” Molly was genuinely shocked. “You’re going to teach me to fight? What about the headmaster? Wouldn’t she have a problem with this?”
Lucy pursed her lips for a moment. “It was Kasha’s idea, actually. And it’s not teaching you how to fight. If you’re up for it, I can teach you self-defense—how to protect yourself and others. This isn’t something you would use against the kids at school, but a way for you to help hone some of that fierceness you’ve got coiled up inside. It’s pretty obvious you’re not cut from the researcher cloth, like your parents. You’ve got a warrior in you.”
Molly’s breath caught in her chest. A Spartan was offering to give her combat lessons? She couldn’t believe it. It was almost too good to be true. She tried to compose herself before responding.
“I’d love that, actually.”
Lucy smiled. “Excellent. Tom and I have actually been talking about this with Director Mendez for a little while. You’ll technically be our first student.”