• The sun was beginning to set as Private Dominic Santiago and the rest of Delta Squad walked into an abandoned house on the outskirts of Jacinto. There was a long week ahead of them with the plan of sinking Jacinto and taking the survivors to a safe haven. To Dom, that part would almost be impossible, since almost nowhere was safe because of the Locust.
    “Alright, guys, try to clean up and get some sleep. We have to get all the energy we can for the next few days. I have a feeling we might not get much rest after tonight,” Sergeant Marcus Fenix says as he looks out of a hole in a wall that used to be a window at the red-orange skyline.
    Private Cole and Corporal Baird slowly drag themselves down a dark hallway until they find suitable bedrooms to sleep in. Predictably to the squad, the first thing Baird says is a complaint.
    “Why do I have to get the little kid’s room?!” Baird whines as he looks around the room in annoyance.
    “Maybe ‘cause you constantly act like one!” Cole answers with a big laugh. With a big frame, comes a big voice and laugh.
    “Hey, man, calm down. With your laugh, you could cause an earthquake as bad as an emergence hole,” Dom jokes as Marcus rolls his eyes.
    Baird shrugs his shoulders and turns around, “I think Dom should have this room. It’d bring back memories of his kids.”
    Dom’s eyes widen as he feels his face heat up in anger and he rushes up and pins Baird on the wall by his shoulders, “I don’t need your room to remember my children, you piece of-”
    “Dom!” Marcus pulls Dom back before he could punch Baird in the face then gives an icy glare with his sharp blue eyes to his shock comrade leaning against the wall. “You two don’t go near each other for the rest of the night.”
    “Fine by me,” Dom grumbles as he walks off into a guest bedroom near the end of the now cramped hallway due to the three large soldiers being in the same area. He had to be careful not to slam the door shut because of his strength. As he steps into the room, he starts removing the COG uniform. Once he eventually removes all of the pieces of the uniform, he tries to lie down on the queen sized bed in the middle of the bedroom. He looks around to see pieces of sky blue wallpaper peeling or ripped off due to the explosion from the Hammer of Dawn that was deployed fifteen years ago. Dom’s large body was not fully supported on the bed.
    ‘If I have to lay sideways for my whole body to be on the bed, I wonder how bad Baird has it; or even Cole,’ Dom thinks to himself, knowing that Cole wouldn’t care as long as he can relax. If he concentrated hard enough, he could hear his very large friend (compared to most of his fellow Gears) laughing at Baird’s groaning and complaining.
    “Hey, Damon baby, here’s some advice: be like the Cole Train and don’t complain!” The former Thrashball player teases his blonde buddy. Dom chuckles, decides not to bother with it, and tries to go to sleep.
    Dom’s dreams are his memories through his experiences. His first memory was when he was nine years old; the day his older brother Carlos introduced him to his new friend from the academy. The boy’s name was Marcus Fenix. For a tough looking boy, his bright blue eyes showed nervousness and he rarely smiled, but a few months later, Marcus was happy and spent a lot of time at the Santiago residence. The three boys became inseparable.
    The next memory was when he was sixteen. Dom was sitting with his father and told him that a girl he is in love with, Maria Flores, is pregnant. Surprisingly, his father was not upset. Instead he was proud of Dom for doing the right thing. A few months later, the two lovers got married, and Dom dropped out of school to follow the lead of Carlos and Marcus and joined the COG army to support his new family.
    Soon enough, Benedicto Santiago was born. Dom was able to take a month leave after becoming a Commando to see his family. When he got to his apartment to see Maria, she was pregnant again, and insisted on raising their son alone when Dom was out serving in the army. Their daughter, Sylvia Carly was born a year later.
    Then was the battle of Aspho Fields. During the battle, Carlos was wounded and Marcus, worried for him despite being in charge of his squad, ran out to help him. Carlos couldn’t let Marcus get killed, told him to promise to take care of Dom, and killed himself with a grenade. Carlos never lived to see his niece.
    On Emergence Day, Benedicto and Sylvia were killed at only four and three years old. Maria fell into a depression where she wouldn’t do anything but sit in the kids’ rooms and cry for hours then go into the bathroom to try and calm down. She was in denial of the childrens’ deaths and went on daily walks through Jacinto to look for them. Dom came home one day and she was gone. He searched for her for ten years, asking anyone and everyone he found for help.
    The final memory Dom had was when he and Marcus went down into the Locust Hollow. They found a slave camp terminal that listed every person the Locust captured in the slave camps or in the people they tortured. Dom found where Maria was located and he and Marcus went off to find her. They opened a metal capsule to find Maria, but she wasn’t that same beautiful woman Dom remembered. She was practically skin and bones, her clothes barely staying on her. Her eyes were dark and glazed with exhaustion, and her long black hair had mostly fallen out. Dom could hear himself calling for his wife, shocked and scared. Marcus put his hand on his best friend’s shoulder and shook his head sadly and walked away to let Dom be alone. He pulled out his pistol, his breathing labored and tears streaming down his cheeks like a torrent. Everything went black and the last thing he heard was a gunshot.
    “MARIA!!” Dom screamed as he sat up and opened his dark brown eyes wide. He was sweating and breathing hard, trying not to cry. A minute later he hears a soft knock on the door.
    “Dom? You ok?” Marcus whispers, trying not to wake Cole and Baird, if they hadn’t woken up from Dom’s scream. He opens the door slightly and all you can see is his bright eyes.
    “Hey, sorry about that man. You can come in if you want,” Dom apologizes and sighs as he makes room for Marcus as he walks into the room and sits on the other end of the bed. He has his COG uniform and his trademark black bandana off; it makes him look younger than he is
    “Same dream? The one with memories of Maria?”
    “Yeah, but it was a little different. It had memories from most of my life, starting with when Carlos brought you over to our house for the first time.”
    Marcus looks a bit surprised by that statement but smiles a little, “Yeah I still remember how much time I spent with you two as a kid.” He sighs sadly “God, I miss Carlos. He changed me. If it weren’t for him, I probably would’ve been some officer like my dad was.”
    “Yo, Marcus. What do you think would happen to you if Anya died tomorrow?” Dom asks, knowing what his friend’s answer would be.
    Marcus sighs and closes his eyes, his broad shoulders sinking slightly, almost looking relaxed, but Dom knew that wasn’t the case. “I don’t know,” he pauses for a minute, “We would’ve lost one hell of a helper.”
    “And a close friend as well,” Dom adds for his friend. “Marcus, I know you care about her. In a way, you two are kindred spirits.”
    “We both lived under the shadow of our parents. Nothing more,” Marcus grumbles in his I’m-too-serious-for-this-crap voice. Lieutenant Anya Stroud worked in Control to assist Delta Squad by filling them in on missions and solutions if they faced a problem, which they normally did. While Marcus had the shadow of his father, Professor Adam Fenix, to live under, Anya had her mother, Major Helena Stroud. As a child, Anya followed her mother on missions and learned how to be an officer. She would have joined the battle herself, but in this time, women served only two purposes: help restore the population or be an officer in Control and sit behind a desk. Marcus was aware of Anya’s feelings for him, but he never responded. And Dom was getting fed up with that.
    “I know you care for her. I know you need her,” Dom says after a three minute silence, “Face it, you would’ve done the same thing I did for Maria for Anya.”
    “Only because no one deserves to be in the state she was in.”
    “That’s a load of bull, and you know that just as well as I do, Marcus.”
    The room fell silent once more. Then Marcus stands up and walks toward the door. “You’re right, Dom. But don’t tell Baird; he wouldn’t let me live it down,” he turns back and smiles slightly at his childhood friend, his brother.
    “No prob, man. What was said in this room, stays in this room,” Dom smiles back as he raises his right hand as a token of the promise that was just made.
    “Try to get back to sleep. You need it. Don’t want you shooting like crap in the Hollow.”
    ‘Ah, Marcus Fenix’s sense of humor. May it never change,’ Dom thinks to himself, chuckling. “You too man. Don’t need you screaming out your orders like a moron.” As the door closes with a soft click, Dominic lays his head down on the bed and closes his eyes. He eventually falls into a calm, deep sleep as he configures a battle plan for the squad as they get ready for the biggest part of their fight for the survival of the human race.