Soren-066
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Male[1] |
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S-066 | |
- "I don't want to be left behind."
- — Soren-066
Soren-066 was a candidate in the UNSC Naval Special Warfare Command's SPARTAN-II program who was gravely disfigured by the augmentation procedures.[5]
Biography
Early childhood
Soren was born in early or mid-2511.[1][6] He was brought to the Outer Colony of Dwarka, a harsh world still in the process of being terraformed, at a very young age.[1] There he was raised by his mother and her husband (his stepfather), who grew illegal crops on a farm in the middle of a forest preserve around one hundred kilometers from any other settlements.[6]
When Soren was barely six years old his mother succumbed to a Dwarkan disease for which treatments were readily available.[1] She had not been taken into town to see a doctor, however, because Soren's stepfather had been too worried about going to jail for his illegal farm.[6] The law required that symptoms of the disease be reported to the planetary officials, after all.[1] By the time her husband became convinced he had no other choice but to seek medical attention for her after just a few days of observing her symptoms, she was already dead and he was sick.[1][6] According to official records, both Soren's mother and stepfather had initially dismissed what she was experiencing as nothing more than a cold and it was thought they may have been unaware of the treatments that existed due to their remote and isolated residence.[1] His stepfather seemingly refused to face the reality of his wife's loss, as he moved her body into their box room and locked the door, telling Soren that it was not possible to see her because she was too sick and needed to be alone to recover.[6] A few days later Soren stole the key to the room late at night after his stepfather had had too much to drink. After creeping slowly through the door he saw the rotting corpse of his mother and cried for a while before sneaking back out and locking the door behind him. He returned the key to his stepfather's bedside table and snuck back to the kitchen, where he sat and brooded. Eventually he came to the conclusion that his stepfather must be responsible for his mother's death and it was this, among other thoughts, which led him to get up from the chair he'd been seated in and grab the sharpest knife from the nearby counter. It was big and heavy from his point of view and he'd even had to stand on his tiptoes just to reach it. He then slowly made his way back to his stepfather's bedroom and pulled a chair closer to the bed so he could stand on it and overlook the sleeping man. He stayed that way for what seemed like hours until light began to seep into the room. He waited a little more after that, but as soon as his stepfather rolled over to expose his neck Soren struck, falling forward and jabbing the blade between the sleeping man's neck and shoulder a little above one of his clavicles. The boy immediately took off running at that moment and vanished into the surrounding forest. Well-hidden within a clump of bushes, he watched as his stepfather emerged from their home and called out for him and demanded to know what was wrong with him.[6] Template:Expand-Section
After this Soren lived off the wild and watched his stepfather. One day he saw that his stepfather was sick with the same illness his mother had died of. When his stepfather collapsed on the way to his field Soren finally revealed himself to his stepfather and instead of getting him medicine watched him die. He then buried his mother and stepfather and after staying in the house for a while he trekked 112 kilometers to the nearest human settlement where he was placed in the care of social services. He never told anyone exactly what had happened to him. Instead he simply said that both his parents had died shortly after each other, and after several months living alone he set off to find civilization.
SPARTAN-II
When Dr. Halsey came to Dwarka to observe Soren she openly gave him the choice of whether or not he wanted to join her "experiment" or stay on Dwarka in foster care. Soren chose the first option, and immediately left Dwarka with Halsey and Lieutenant Jacob Keyes.
On September 23, 2517, Soren and seventy-four other children were led into an amphitheater through four sets of double doors, each accompanied by a naval drill instructor.[7] There, at around 2300 hours, far below the ground within a FLEETCOM military complex, Halsey informed them that per Naval Code 45812, they were thereby conscripted into SPARTAN-II. She explained that they had been called upon to serve and that they would be the protectors of Earth and all its colonies. Halsey told them that from this moment on, the complex on Reach would be their home and their fellow trainees would be their family. And though the training that lay ahead of them would be difficult, she expressed her full confidence in their ability to overcome it. With that said, she told them to rest and that they would begin the next day. Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez had the children escorted to their barracks, fed, and put to bed.[7]
Soren and the other children were awoken by drill instructors at 0530 hours the next morning.[8] Chief Mendez addressed them all, saying they were to shower at the barracks aft and then return to their cots to dress. Soren stripped down and joined the other children on a conveyor to be washed in lukewarm soapy water and then rinsed in an icy cold spray. A trunk at the foot of his cot held underwear, thick socks, combat boots, and a matching set of gray sweats with "SOREN-066" stenciled on the chest. Once everyone was clothed, Mendez marched them outside and had them form five rows of fifteen children each. From there, they were ordered through a series of calisthenics which included one-hundred each of jumping jacks, sit-ups, deep squats, knee bends, and leg lifts. After the leg lifts the kids were finally given a respite in the form of water. Next, Mendez ordered them to join him on a run. They jogged through the military compound, past more barracks, along a river, and over a bridge, finally coming to a stop in the courtyard of a naval officers' academy. There Soren and the others met Déjà, a so-called "dumb" A.I. who had been given the job of continuing the trainees' formal education. Within the building, Soren and the others were served crackers and milk and treated to a history lesson concerning the Battle of Thermopylae. After the lesson the trainees were told they were heading for the playground, but this turned into a two-mile run to a forest of twenty-meter-tall wooden poles, rope cargo nets and bridges, knotted climbing ropes, pulleys, and baskets. Mendez had them form three lines and declared that each row of three would be a team. Chief Mendez explained that they would be playing a game called "Ring the Bell" in which the objective was for every member of each team to ring a brass bell that hung from a slide pole next to the tallest wooden pole and then make it back to the start. The last team to make it back would go hungry that evening. This punishment ultimately fell on Team Three, of which Soren was not a part.[8]
The second day of training began just like the first.[8] The trainees spent the morning doing calisthenics and in the afternoon reported to Déjà to learn. This day, she taught them about the hunting strategies of wolves and emphasized the importance of the pack over the individual in accomplishing a challenge, such as taking down a moose. When it came time for the "playground" again, Mendez declared that they were to keep the same teams they had the prior day. The teams had a brief moment to strategize, as the course had been made more complicated as compared to before.[8] Three days later, on September 28, all the trainees were given haircuts.[9] On May 24, 2518, the children were forced at 0920 hours to run through a course while being shot at with paint pellet guns.[10] Each trainee that was hit was made to do an exorbitant amount of push-ups.[10]
During Spartan training Soren tried his best to simply "fade in"; to neither excel nor fail, simply to remain in the anonymous middle. Soren also proved himself adept at blending into the forest during training exercises. Dr Halsey watched him closely, and on one occasion told him "Don't let yourself get left behind," words which would resonate deeply with him.
Augmentation
Prior to the augmentation procedures, Dr. Halsey once again asked Soren whether or not he would like to participate. Confused, Soren asked her why he was the one selected to make the choice, to which Halsey replied, it simply turned out that way. Knowing the risks, Soren chose to participate, stating that he "did not want to be left behind."[11]
During the augmentation process, Soren dreamed of a hulking, deformed creature pursuing him through a forest, occasionally giving out a cry of pain. The creature eventually caught up to him and smashed him. Soren awoke during the augmentation process but fell back asleep into another nightmare. This time, he dreamed of lying on his mother's bed, the same one she died on. His stepfather was in the same room, described as more shadow than man. During this dream another figure, his dead and rotting mother, was in the same bed, when a sudden wash of pain, like broken glass being worked into his veins, woke him up again.
When he awoke, he was restrained to the bed. Soren tore himself from his restraints and attempted to run. A doctor attempted to give Soren a hypodermic injection, but he broke the man's wrist, stabbed another doctor in the neck with the needle and punched a third as he fled, sending him flying into a wall. During his escape, he was stopped by Chief Petty Officer Franklin Mendez and a squad of UNSC marines armed with tranquilizer darts.
After awakening again, he was in a brig, now chained by titanium wrist-lets. He was visited by Dr. Halsey, who informed him that he had been in comatose for three months, and his body did not react as planned to the muscular enhancement injections and the thyroid implant, which had caused his muscles to grow in ways that were unpredictable. Only by using the carbide ceramic ossification process was he saved. One leg was more or less normal, if a little bowed and twisted, however the other was severely gnarled and about six inches shorter. His arms were incredibly muscular, painfully so, giving him the greatest upper body strength of any Spartan. The fingers of one hand were twisted and bowed, functioning more like a pincer or claw. To deal with the intense pain Soren was given massive amounts of painkillers, however he did not like the way they clouded his mind, so he gradually weaned himself off them.
Soren was incredibly disappointed when Mendez told him that he couldn't certify him for active service. Mendez told Soren that if he were to join a team of other Spartans, they would constantly be reminded of the Spartans which didn't make it through the augmentation procedures, and they would see it as their responsibility to keep him alive, thus hurting their focus and ability to perform. Additionally, there was no body armor which would fit his unique physique, and his deformed hand made it too difficult to fire a weapon. Against his will, Soren was relegated to a desk job, similar to Fhajad-084.
Insurrection and disappearance
Although his superiors assured him they would find a better fit for him, Soren remained a paper pusher until he was sixteen. As his "temporary" position began to feel more and more permanent, it became hard for Soren not to feel resentful. This made the young Spartan particularly vulnerable to the ideas of a technician named Partch, who began feeding him ideas sympathetic to the Insurrection. Instead of reporting Partch, Soren listened. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, his views changed until he found himself on the side of the rebels.
After several months of hinting, Partch told Soren that they were going to defect, but first they were going to obtain a "souvenir" for their cause. One night, the two broke into a geological research lab, forced open a locked cabinet and retrieved a small titanium case. However, they were interrupted by Randall-037, another Spartan. Randall was justifiably suspicious of their explanations, and escorted them out of the lab so that he could verify that they were supposed to be there. As they left the lab, Soren attacked Randall, and as the two struggled until Partch shot Randall with a tranquilizer dart. Soren and Partch then fled the facility and commandeered a Longsword fighter which Partch had pre-prepared and hacked, complete with a dumb AI named Captain Teach whom Partch had fast-grafted to convert him to their cause. Their plan to escape Reach failed, however, as they were pursued by other aircraft, which sufficiently damaged the Longsword to prevent it from breaking free of the planet's gravity. Captain Teach and the backup computer system were damaged or destroyed, forcing Soren to manually crash-land the craft himself, breaking Partch's neck in the process.
When Mendez and his Marines found the wreckage, relatively little was left, the only thing of note being Partch's burned body. Dr. Halsey told Mendez that she believed Soren had survived the crash, but due to his upbringing in the woods, Soren would not be found unless he wanted to be. Halsey had Mendez give up the search, arguing that Soren was no threat to them: he was not a traitor, just a lost soul. Without a body, Soren was officially declared missing in action.
At some point, he became a privateer, and late in the war, he came into conflict with his childhood friend John-117.[12]
Behind the scenes
Soren is reminiscent of Ephialtes of Trachis as he is portrayed in the graphic novel and film 300. Both are deformed and unfit for battle, and betray the Spartans after they refuse to let them serve. In Pariah, he is referred to as Soren-66; however, SPARTAN naming conventions would mean he was actually known as Soren-066.
On August 2, 2019 Showtime revealed that in the television series the network is airing Soren-066 will be played by Emmy nominee Bokeem Woodbine.[13] The announcement described Soren as a morally complex privateer at the fringes of human civilization whose fate will bring him into conflict with his former military masters and his old friend, the Master Chief.[13]
Gallery
- Soren.jpg
Bokeem Woodbine is best known for his portrayal of Mike Milligan on the show Fargo.
List of appearances
- Halo: Evolutions
- Pariah (First appearance)
- Halo: The Television Series
Sources
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Halo: Evolutions, Pariah, Prologue
- ^ Halo: Evolutions, Pariah, Chapter 2
- ^ Halo: The Fall of Reach, Chapter 5
- ^ Halo: Evolutions, Pariah, Chapter 5
- ^ Macmillian.com - Excerpt for Halo: Evolutions
- ^ a b c d e f Halo: Evolutions, Pariah, Chapter 1
- ^ a b Halo: The Fall of Reach, Chapter 3
- ^ a b c d Halo: The Fall of Reach, Chapter 4
- ^ Dr. Halsey's personal journal, September 28, 2517
- ^ a b Halo: Fall of Reach, Boot Camp
- ^ Halo: Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe, "Pariah", page 30
- ^ IGN - Halo TV Series Casts Natascha McElhone as Cortana and Dr. Halsey
- ^ a b Tumblr - Natascha McElhone, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Bentley Kalu, Natasha Culzac and Kate Kennedy join the cast of Halo!
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