A/N: Warning all, this contains spoilers for all of Halo Reach. If you have not played all the way through, do not cry to me, at least about the spoilers.
He'd always thought that it would look different. That somehow it would be pearly gates with an old bearded man standing right before him, with a large register propped up in front of him and a button he kept to one side to drop the unworthy away.
No, he thought, that opportunity had long since passed and faded. A man of his nature in heaven was less likely than a fat Gúta getting through the eye of a needle. He was among the kind that was damned forever, in the eyes of some fundamentalists. Here he chuckled without a trace of humour as he realised that in the eyes of a growing doomsday cult, he was now worth less than the pauper or the rich man.
After every life he'd taken, would anybody above really take him in? He reckoned even his own parents, were they still alive, would shun away from the older, paler and darker parody of himself he had become.
No, this is not heaven. So is this hell?
In this manner, he was still very much confused and disoriented. Everybody depicted hell as being blocked by corrugated red iron gates, though in his mind something lurked there, and had ever since his parents had died. What it was had changed every time the nightmare came out of the dark depths of his subconscious, to repeat the campaign of horror on a mind that it had watched growing up with utter contempt.
"You must draw your last to see me rise and know you have fallen…"
Even now, the terror of his childhood had failed to meet him after the last breath had been weakly forced out his failing body, and he definitely wasn't in heaven.
And instead of anything resembling the eternal inferno of the underworld, a ferryman of the long dead or a giant set of scales waiting for his heart to be measured, there was… a concrete wall. Also around him were three other walls, the floor he sat on and the ceiling, forming the small sized room he had been sitting in ever since the last blade pierced through his ribcage and caused his heart to fail.
So why was he here? He certainly wasn't alive, the amount of damage he'd taken had simply been too much. Had he gone lucid from the overwhelming pain and caused everything to mentally slow down as his body rapidly lost function? Some last trick from his childhood terror after all?
The answer had denied him for some time, and for some time he'd been searching everywhere in here, despite the fact that the room was almost completely bare, save for a mattress. Even lifting that and then violently shaking it around produced nothing worthwhile, except the elimination of another option. Finally exhausting every single option he had, he crashed onto the mattress, hoping he had a good amount of time. Surely the dead were the ones who had all the time in the world.
Why else would he be here?
Immediately after he "woke", he cursed himself for being right.
He sat up on the mattress and rubbed his eyes, though in reality he'd not really gone to sleep, more closed his eyes and just felt as if he'd faded from existence. He imagined his mind being switched off temporarily, as if on the control panel of some monitor deity who had decided to quit his duty. Everything was exactly the same.
So what was keeping him here?
In general depictions of near death experiences, the victim generally stayed in the state until whatever needed was found or mentioned. This wasn't the same… but maybe he wasn't searching for the right thing. Until now, he'd been looking for an item. Maybe now, his search needed to be directed to knowledge.
As if on cue, the bunker wall to his right soundlessly and effortlessly pried itself open, a faint blue light emitting from the long and narrow passage. He rolled his eyes in disbelief when he realised that the walls were also concrete. He sighed, and angrily yelled out for the first time in a while.
"Why is everything in this shitty place made of concrete? Doesn't the afterlife have any other building materials or architects?"
The already faint blue light dimmed even further for a few seconds, and the shadow rippled against one of the walls.
"If you wish for an answer to your question, you should follow me."
"The answer to what? Why everything is made out of concrete?"
A simple tut came his way. "No. To quote so many in the past, do you ever wonder why we're here?"
And with that, the shadow led him down the corridor.