Dust and Echoes

23 June, 2616

UNSC Controlled World: Emerald Cove

Captain 096 stood before the hazy horizon scanning the land before him with unblinking eyes. This place sure has seen better days. His blue and silver armor gleamed, capturing the pale, sickly light of the sun shining through clouds of smoke and dust. The orders had been clear enough; there was nothing to do now but see what was left to save in this desolate city.

Marching through the rubble he idly listened to the echo of his own footfalls reverberate throughout the silent ruin. Buildings, offices, and skyscrapers of all types crumbled from the outside, some standing before severed parts of other structures as if they were fallen soldiers. Not even the wind seemed to stir. Ninety-six looked down into the palm of his hand; in it laid four pairs of dog tags. On them were engraved the simple numbers: S-022, S-034, S-057, and S-123. But that wasn't what he read; names scratched on each, crudely done with a knife on their backsides. Something only known to him.

Mikaela, Summer, Giovanni, Jay...

He made his grip tighter on the tags and marched forward solemnly, pausing every now and then to watch the motion tracker in the lower left corner of his helmet's visor. Still, nothing. Bloodied corpses littered the street like road kill on a highway; slaughtered like animals. The Spartan knelt down next to a fallen soldier, barely twenty years old by the looks of him.

"Rest well, marine," he whispered to the body, sliding his thumb and forefinger over his eyelids.

Beep.

The sound of the motion tracker startled him and made him jump to his feet.

Beep.

It was louder, stronger now. Life. He sprinted towards the direction where the dot was on his tracker, hoping he wouldn't be too late.

Selena Ackerson woke in a daze, the dust filled air of her workplace distorting her vision. She breathed in sharply as she slowly sat herself up against her overturned desk, taking in the room. It was the picture of pure chaos; small fires raged all over the room, rubble littered the floor and blocked off entire sections of the building's interior. The only light came from the fires that blazed feebly in the dark.

"Jenny? Michael? Is anyone there?" Selena called out. No answer came. She started to push herself from her sitting position on the floor.

"Is anyone- AGH!"

A pipe dangling above her broke apart and fell on her, impaling her through her lower back and out through her stomach. Selena fell back to the ground, pain blossoming from her left hip and spread across her body. She looked down at her stomach and saw a large piece of jagged, twisted metal had been run straight through her. Blood seeped around the sides of the wound, gushing out down her leg and forming a puddle underneath her.

"No! Oh God, oh Hell, somebody, he- DAMMIT!" She screamed again, louder, feeling the life steadily leaving her battered frame. If she closed her eyes again, there was a good chance she would never open them again.

Selena dug her nails into the floor and tried to drag herself forward towards the doorway. It felt as if crushed glass had seeped into her veins and was steadily moving through her body, making every inch of her insides burn and feel as if they were being ripped apart. She fought the urge to scream again and pulled herself one last time with all her strength. The corners of her vision were fading and ghostly forms began to fill the dimly lit space. She stared at them for a moment and finally realized who it was.

"Jennifer!" She breathed weakly. "Thank god you're okay. Help me up, I'm bleeding badly." Jennifer didn't move, standing with her back to her.

"Jennifer," Selena coughed, "please, I need your help." Still no response, not even a slight movement. Then she began to fade away, only to be replaced by all her other co workers. Tears swelled in her eyes as the reality dawned on her. I'm losing it, I'm completely losing it. I...there's no one coming. Her right hand curled up in front of her face, blood still soaking the palm and undersides of her fingers.

Blinking her eyes, the surreal images of her friends were gone. Instead, something she hadn't seen in years stood in their place. A little boy, about six years old, smiling, stood over her innocently. She thought she recognized him, but couldn't place him. Who are you? Selena stretched her hand out to touch him, but the boy backed away, walking towards the door.

"I'm not ready to die. I can't...I..." As her eyes began to close one last time, the boy grew larger, more defined, and far taller than he had been. Through her darkening view, she saw a man, clad in dark blue armor, his features fuzzy and indiscernible. Selena raised her hand up an inch from the ground in a final attempt to plead for help, whispering one last word, and then there was nothing but the comforting embrace of complete darkness...

Spartan 096 looked down at the woman desperately clinging to what little life her mangled body still held. Her right hand stretched out to reach for him and the faintest whisper escaped her lips:

"Please."

Then she collapsed. Quickly he knelt down next to her and pressed his right middle and index fingers against the side of her neck to double check his suit's vitals scans. She was unconscious, for now at least. Without proper treatment, she would die within an hour. Luckily for the dying woman, the Captain was a veteran field medic for almost fifteen years of his life.

First came the removal of the foreign object lodged into the civilian's lower abdomen. As he expected, the wound immediately gushed dark crimson. He pressed his left hand hard against the opening, reaching into one of his belt pouches to grab two HemCon patches, along with a small packet. Roughly measuring the diameter of the entry and exit wounds on the woman's abdomen, his two-by-two inch patches would be more than sufficient in sealing the wound and saving what little blood might be left in his patient's body. The Spartan ripped off the tattered end of her shirt and quickly tore open the packet to produce a small alcohol wipe, rubbing it the entry and exit wounds roughly before pressing the patches to her bloodied skin. He discarded the scarlet-stained wipe, letting it settle against the dirty floor.

That'll hold you for now he thought. But you're still going to need stitches.

The only reason he would use the HemCons was for instances where he didn't have the necessary equipment to stop a person from bleeding out. Unfortunately, this was one of those circumstances. On the bright side, most of the negatives of the thermodynamic nature of the patches had been worked out centuries ago, meaning that Sierra 096 didn't have to worry about more harm coming to his patient from the patches' application. He finished by wrapping one thick, white bandage around her abdomen tightly, then checked her vitals again to insure she was still breathing. She was, faintly.

Something caught his eye as he reexamined his unconscious patient; a trace of brown in the pool of blood that the woman laid on top of. The improvised doctor reached back into his suit's integrated belt again, this time for a small pH analyzer and dipped it into the puddle. When he brought it back up to read, the acidity level read eleven.

No!

Cleaning off the analyzer with a cloth the Spartan replaced the device and brought out a syringe gun. He wiped off the woman's arm with more rubbing alcohol and pressed it against it, squeezing its trigger to take another sample. The readout read:

Blood acidity level: 12

Abnormal amount of Fe present in bloodstream

Shrapnel. He had less time than he had originally thought.

Sodium Phosphate, where the Hell is my Sodium Phosphate...Aha!

He quickly stabbed a needle into the arm he had just probed and pumped a large amount of the acid neutralizer into her bloodstream, already knowing that it wouldn't be enough. The shrapnel was still in her, and she would need daily doses of painkillers and Sodium Phosphate to keep her blood levels at seven point thirty-five pH, seven point forty-five at the most. He needed more equipment; the proper equipment. What he was given was good and his training had been extensive during his childhood years on Reach, but he had to admit that even he couldn't save this young woman's life without the right tools. And there was only one place to find those tools: the city's hospital, if it still had enough functioning equipment to even be worth a damn.

Sierra 096 finally allowed himself to have a few moments of respite as he checked the comm channels on his helmet's HUD. They were all still filled with loud crackling static. He frowned, thinking. Two objectives at opposite ends of this rubble pile of a city. The hospital was twenty-five miles west of his current location, while the radio antennae he saw while making his way down towards the heart of the ruin itself, was fifty miles east. To save this woman, he was going to have to backtrack a longer distance than he would have liked to. Sprinting wasn't the problem; he could clear twenty-five miles and still have enough energy for a dozen more sprints at the same length. No, it was the fact that he was going to have to keep a civilian safe while he did that, with those abominations that had killed the squad of marines he had tried to save still running rampant throughout the streets. He wasn't even sure she would be able to tell him anything about the outbreak, or about the initial carpet bombing that ensued shortly after.

Sighing, the dark blue Spartan swept a long, grime covered lock of blonde hair from his newest responsibility's face. Blonde hair. He remembered his friend Summer, her death fresh in his mind. Like this woman, she had had blonde hair, but it was much shorter of course. Wiping away the soot and grime with the back of his gauntlet, an attractive face was revealed.

There was something different about this one. But he couldn't quite place what it was.He shook his head then carefully slid his arms underneath the unconscious woman and lifted her up steadily, cradling her against his chest piece as if she were a doll and carrying her out silently.

When Kyle stepped out of the office building night was already descending on the ruined landscape. He considered sprinting the twenty five miles he needed to go to get to the district's hospital; going at his full speed of forty-five miles per hour, he would reach it in less than half an hour. With a sleeping patient that was akin to a time bomb and a city full of parasitic abominations however, he would have to find a shelter for now.

He looked around himself quickly and decided on a largely intact hotel. Intact he laughed to himself. The only thing intact about the building was its first floor. Everything else had been blasted to Hell. The Captain gingerly hefted the unconscious woman over his left shoulder and walked toward the front doors, placing his palm against the closest of the two. It creaked open easily enough.

Not my first choice for a secure shelter, but it'll do for one night.

The Captain picked his way through the debris littered hallways, scanning each room with his eyes. Once he found a suitable bed for his "luggage", he stepped inside and closed the door behind him. There were two leather armchairs inside with one king-sized bed. Surprisingly, it was untouched by the havoc that had consumed everything outside its confines. He laid her down on the bed then sat back in one of the armchairs. It was too comfortable for his liking however, and he opted to sit on the floor and lean his back against the wall instead.

Civilians and their wasteful luxuries.

As he began to drift off to sleep for the first time in a week, he double checked that his suit's neural shock alarm was set. It wasn't as painful as it sounded; it was only meant to jolt him out of sleep in case of hostile movement within a one-hundred yard radius of his position. The neural alarm feature was still relatively new, so he hoped it was worth the millions of credits he was sure ONI had wasted on its development.

Satisfied that the room was temporarily secure and that his patient was still blissfully unconscious, he finally closed his eyes and drifted off to somewhere as black and empty as space itself.

24 June, 2616

City of Adros, UNSC world: Emerald Cove

0600 hours

Selena groggily awoke, her head buzzing as if she had had a bad hangover. She had never drank in her life but she imagined this is what it must have felt like. Wiping her eyes with the back of her left hand, she looked at her surroundings. She was in a hotel room, though she didn't remember ever checking in to one before she had...Wait, was that all a dream?

She looked again, eyes darting from corner to corner of the room. It looked normal enough.

"Well, that's a relief," she said to herself. She rose to get up but felt a slight pain rise up from her stomach. When she looked down, she saw a long blood covered bandage wrapped around her whole lower abdomen. Her emerald eyes grew wide with disbelief.

"Oh no, oh Christ please don't be real, please don't be real..." She stumbled forward in panic, rushing to the room's bathroom and looked in the room's mirror. The woman that stared back at he was covered in soot, bits of rubble, and what looked like dark red paint. She knew better than to think that though. The only thing that looked normal was her face, which was clean for the most part except for a few black marks that looked like fingers on her left temple.

"Okay, alright," she was almost on the verge of screaming, "it was real, but I'm okay. I'm alive, but how did I get..." That's when she saw the abnormally large, armored individual slumped behind her. Here she finished in her mind. For a long time she didn't move and just stood, transfixed on the reflection of what appeared to be a man completely encased in navy blue and silver colored armor.

A large knife sheath jutted outwards on his right shoulder, bent slightly at an angle so that it looked similar to a boomerang. There was a second smaller knife sheathed on his left collarbone, close to his neck. Two large leather and alloy mesh pouches covered the front of his chest plate: a blue stripe on the left pouch, a red stripe on the right.

Selena worked up enough courage to turn around to face the sleeping pile of armor. Curiosity had gotten the better of her fear. Slowly she stepped forward until her face was mere inches away from the man's helmet. The first thing she noticed was the iconic eagle insignia on the top of his helmet's sun visor. Underneath it was the all too familiar acronym: UNSC. She let out a breath of relief and studied the rest of the suit.

The armor looked beautiful to her, elegant in a strange, warlike way. It was chipped away and riddled with dents and long, wicked cuts, revealing the bare metal underneath. His entire form was covered in dirt and grime, with splashes of scarlet scattered all over. His forearms and hands were completely painted in crimson. It looked fresher than the other blood stains.

She furrowed her brow at that while she continued to control her urge to vomit at the site of it. The rest of the armor, the silvery steel parts, were covered in more dents and dried mud, along with a sickly green color that did indeed look like vomit, but smelled far worse. The last thing that caught her eye was a small symbol painted above the man's right collarbone: a bright red shield with a matte black spade shape inside it. Selena stared at it, contemplating what it meant or what it stood for.

"It's impolite to stare, ma'am," a hard, cold voice said. Selena froze and slowly tilted her head back up. The man's helmet was inches away from her, it's gold visor reflecting her wide eyed face back at her. She trembled, forgetting how to move or even speak. He nodded his head at her, gesturing for her to move back. Nervously she did so, standing up and walking backwards a few paces. The figure stood up steadily, and Selena's knees shook even more. The man towered over her; he must have been at least eight feet tall and looked extremely muscular, even with the armor covering the person inside.

"I um...I'm sorry," Selena stammered out. She must have looked so pathetic to him at that moment, but it was impossible to tell. He stood straight and tall, exuding strength and confidence, but showed no sign of emotion in his body language. It would have helped if she could see his face.

"Did you...did you do this?" she pointed to the bandage wrapped firmly around her waist. He nodded silently in response.

"And...okay, well you brought me here, and well...thank-" He held up his right hand before she could finish her sentence, shaking his head. Okay, so he doesn't like thank you's, alright.

"Well, um, sir, my name's Selena Ackerson and-" the man held up his hand again, cutting her off.

"No time," he said in that same cold, unfeeling voice.

"Hey, could you at least let me just thank you and- what the Hell are you doing!?" she yelled as he stepped forward and scooped her up in his arms. He had done it so quickly she hadn't even had time to react until she was already over his left shoulder. The soldier walked briskly down the hall like someone who was late to a meeting but wanted to look like there was nothing wrong.

"The Hell's going on here!?" she yelled. He didn't answer and just kept walking at that same rushed pace.

"Say something!" she shrieked.

"Miss Ackerson, with all due respect, shut up," he said flatly.

"Well maybe you could put me down and let me wal-"

"You're in no condition to walk."

"What? I can walk just fine," she said angrily. Her savior wasn't making a good first impression on her from as far as she could tell. He stopped right in front of the exit and put her down on her feet, holding her in place by her arms.

"Are you going to explain what's going on or am I going to have to keep screaming like a mad woman to get you to say anything?" she asked impatiently. His gold visor stared blankly at her.

"The more you move, the faster your condition deteriorates. It's more efficient to carry you."

Before she could question him anymore, the soldier picked her up with his left hand again and tossed her over his shoulder in one fluid motion. With that he kicked open the door, knocking it off it's hinges and reached with his right hand to draw a large steel pistol from his right thigh. It looked far too large to ever be used by a normal human being, making her eyes widen a bit.

"Where are we?-" the wind was suddenly knocked out of her as the armor clad man took off in a dead sprint, her face suddenly flattening against the suit's smooth navy blue back. Everything passed by in a blur as the man ran impossibly fast, vaulting and jumping over debris and rubble like hurdles.

"We're getting you to the hospital," he answered her unfinished question, "and refrain from speaking anymore until we get there."

Kyle knew he would have problems with the civilian, but the lack of professional silence irritated him. He missed the company of his Spartans, or any serviceman for that matter, that knew what was expected and kept their mouths shut until spoken to by their CO. This Selena Ackerson wasn't as bad as he had thought she would be, granted, but the little formalities that she was accustomed too would slow him down.

He had been tempted to tell her about the iron flowing through her bloodstream like venom, or the fact that shrapnel was still lodged in various parts of her abdomen, but he decided against it. Miss Ackerson had already talked enough for his taste within the first five minutes of her regaining consciousness. Apparently he hadn't used enough sedatives to keep her under long enough. Stop he scolded himself. Anymore and she would have died anyway- be professional.

Kyle looked at his motion tracker every few seconds as he darted down the ruined asphalt, while simultaneously scanning ahead for obstacles and checking the distance to the waypoint he had placed on the hospital. Estimated five miles, almost there. He pushed himself a bit further until finally the building loomed overhead. Kyle skidded to a halt, allowing himself two seconds to breathe before stepping inside.

"Will you please put me down now," Selena breathed.

"Not yet," Kyle replied. She made a loud angry sigh from behind his head as he forced the hospital's doors open. Ruined inside, just as he expected it would be. Hopefully though the emergency rooms further along the building's length would be intact, along with the equipment he- and Selena- needed. She didn't know it, but she was only about two hours away from death. The things he had done to ease her pain and stop the bleeding were only a band-aid solution. It would take something far more invasive to permanently resolve the situation.

As he continued to hastily walk down the dimly lit hallways and corridors of the medical center, he thought back to the day before and the ghost- or whatever it was that had looked like Kaela. Take care of her, she had said. Well, obviously he would, but what made her more important than just for the objectives he was told in his briefing?

A bright white light flickered from within a room about ten yards down the grime covered white hall way. Spartan 096 walked through its doorway to find exactly what he needed: an operating table surrounded by every instrument he could have hoped to have. The room was lined with cabinets which spanned from wall to wall, ceiling to floor with various drawers reading: WARNING: HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, CAUTION: EXPERIMENTAL CHEMICAL TREATMENTS, etc.

As the armor clad man sat Selena down on the operating table, she looked around nervously.

"Um...alright, um, mister?" He looked up at her while he was crouching down, inspecting the cupboards and raiding them for supplies.

"What, um...okay, what exactly is wrong with me?" Selena stammered out.

So far this day had been by far the strangest and most surreal of any day she had ever had. She never imagined that her home would be destroyed, or that some very strange, overly muscled man would whisk her away and actually give a damn about whether she lived or died. Considering how he talked to her, and how he didn't talk, she was debating on whether or not her life did in fact matter.

His dark blue head tilted to the side, regarding her like she were a small child asking where babies came from. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking because of that damned gold plating covering his face. Finally he decided to indulge her curiosity.

"You had severe blood acidity from an abnormal amount of iron leaching into your body," he said in a monotone voice. He gestured with his gauntleted hand at her abdomen.

"The pipe that had impaled you when I found you had been deteriorating and rusting inside you. There's still trace amounts of it lodged in you, poisoning your blood. You'll be dead in less than an hour and a half if I don't operate now."

Presently he went back to rummaging through more cabinets, pulling out vials and spools of stitches. She sat and stared at him for a moment, trying to suppress a scream. HOW CAN YOU BE SO FUCKING CALM ABOUT THIS!?

"So," she gulped, fighting back the anger and overwhelming fear, "how many times have you operated on people for something like this?"

Her would be doctor walked up to the side of the operating table, placing everything he had gathered on a smaller table next to her. Then he walked over to the sink and started scrubbing his arms and hands furiously with what looked like alcohol and soap. It smelled like a mixed drink gone very, very wrong. When he came back his armor covering his forearms and hands was completely clean, which looked very out of place with the rest of the filth he was covered in.

"Forty-six," he answered, picking up a small syringe. It looked like a child's toy in his hands.

"How many-?"

"None of them died, ma'am," he cut her off. He pulled up her right arm's sleeve and wiped a small part of it with a cloth soaked in alcohol. Without warning her he slid the needle quickly into her skin, pumping her full of translucent liquid.

"You're going to live ma'am," she heard him say as she began to lose consciousness.

"Wha..what did you...?" she groggily asked. His outline began to blur until he was nothing but a blue fog.

"I'm going to get you out of here."

Was it just the drugs, or did he sound more sympathetic now? As she fell back into a familiar dark space, she thought she heard him say one more thing as the anesthetic worked its way to her heart.