The live ship drifted around the dark side of earth, its asymmetrical arms rotating slowly around the cylindrical center.
In one of the multiple arm of the station, there was a dim room lit only by the eyes of a Tall Exo and the glowing green stone held by Eris Morn. Leaning on frame for the massive bulkhead door was a young Awoken, Dusk Von, one of the last of his kind. His dark eyes scanned the spacely furnished quietly, listening to the ongoing argument. To his right, in a low chair was a well built Human, Thomas, with his ever present shotgun lying across his lap. On Thomas' other side sat Kira, a girl with hair a violent shade of red and eyes shockingly blue. She sat upside down in her chair, her cloak, gloves, the right arm of her body armor and boots were in a pile next to her, and she made slow, nervous circles in the air with one foot.
"I do not understand why we're not allowed to join in," Dusk said after a while, "We have been out in the ruin just as much as they have."
"Yeah, we have," Kira responded sullenly, "And not only did we screw everything up today, but we-"
"What do you mean we screwed it up?" Dusk interrupted angrily. "We rescued the civilians, you have not been infected and we were able to a shelled ogre."
"And in the process," Thomas commented grimly, "we may have lost the only chance we have at unity among us."
They all looked across the room to the long table which held the only real leadership the city had left.
Lord Shaxx sat on the far left end, pouring over a map of vex structures on Venus. Even now in a place of safety he kept is full armor on, which in the light of Eris' stone it seemed to glow with its own light. To the right of him sat Eris Morn, who muttered softly as she looked searchingly into her stone.
On the left of Shaxx there was an empty chair, usually occupied by Ikora Ray, whose fate remained a mystery. Next to Eris sat Rachel Castaway, with her long hair unbraided and its usual dyed blonde and black color was turned grey in the dim light. She was arguing animatedly with the awoken standing next to her, eyes alight with rage.
Sarna Ta'sov, sitting next to Rachel, was the model Awoken with a slender figure, piercing blue eyes and short-cropped blue-black hair. The only thing that marred this picture was the long, paper thin scar that ran from her right temple to her left jaw line, grazing her eye, noticeable only when she was angry or happy, and today it radiated.
Sitting in front of Sarna and beside Ikora's empty chair was Leviathan-0, his red Exo eye flitting between the two women as if he was watching an amusing tennis match.
At the head of the table was an empty chair. Connor's empty chair.
"He's not dead." Kira said simply, turning herself to sit upright, "He can't be dead."
"If he is," Thomas responded, his usual humor gone, "It's my fault."
Dusk stared at the floor and said nothing. Kira tried to put a reassuring hand on Thomas' shoulder, but he shook her off.
Kira hated seeing her best friend like this. He was usually the one who kept everyone else's spirits up in combat, but now his own spirit seemed to be broken. She felt nearly the same as him now, this ordeal reminding her of how she lost her family years before. Now it seemed that she would lose her brother as well.
Thomas felt like he had failed them when he had let Kira give up her seat on Thomas' Jumpship, leaving her to fend for herself and prompting Connor to send his own rescue ship to save her, leaving himself open to a hoard of shells.
And now Connor was missing, Hideo was planning to make a move for power and the mission had been a failure. All because of him.
Thomas stared out the window behind the table at the night side of earth, wondering, not for the first time, if he had died.
Because this seemed pretty close to hell.
The fall of the world had started two years prior.
With the threat or Oryx gone, the last city had nearly a month of quiet before the next threat put them down. For a week after the last substantial group of taken were destroyed the city broke into celebration. For days, even in the early hours of the morning, the sounds of revelry were present. This, in the end, turned out to be the thing that brought the city to its knees.
Along with a team of twelve guardians, Zavala traveled into the bowls of the dreadnaught, looking to empty the prisons of the greatest threats. As it turned out, most of the job had been done for them as they found only the remains of monstrous creatures, beasts with no name and evils without shape.
The few things they faced were feebly weak from centuries of imprisonment and were put down with little fuss. It was when they were in the deepest dark that they found the worst threat.
Two doors were there. One held the corpse of some beast that seemed to be made of tentacles, eyes and teeth. But the eyes were glossy, the teeth chipped and the tentacles rotting. The other door was a single Thrall. It moved slowly and unsurely, tracking them slowly.
While they had killed the thrall with relative ease, it had bitten one of the warlocks before it died. They rushed the Warlocks out of the pits and back to the tower, as he became sick and weak. Within a day, the warlock was dead, but a few hours he rose again, undead.
The healers were overjoyed, thinking some miracle had taken place. As they tried to help them, he bit them and they turned within minutes, and began a chain reaction that ran throughout the tower, Civilians, unarmed as they were, fell by the dozens. Guardians who stayed to try and evacuate were overwhelmed by masses. Those who escaped rallied elsewhere to formulate a plan to rescue survivors.
The mindless infected were drawn to the noises of the city, which turned from revelrous singing and shouting to fearful cries and screaming. The civilians and small militia was overwhelmed within a day, and those who escaped to the tallest buildings starved during the next weeks or ended their own lives to escape the nightmare their world has become.
Zavala was killed in a last stand in the speaker's chamber, making sure that Cayde-6 and Ikora could escape with the speaker. The infected spread outside the city in ships meant to evacuate civilians. Within a month the world, no matter how broken, fell. The fallen and hive were infected as well, the shells finding them when they investigated the crashed evac ships. The hive spread it to the moon, the fallen to Venus.
When questioned later about how she felt putting down what was once her sister, on guardian said, "That wasn't my sister, it was a monster in the shell of her body. I'm fine."
Three months in and the only safe placed became Mars, The dreadnaught and Dead orbit's fleet.
Most of humanity lived in cobbled together space stations built by dead orbit and any other sentient life form willing to pitch in. No more than a thousand guardians were left, most of them being Exos, who were immune to the plague.
What was left of sentient life banded together to try and survive. The remaining fallen and awoken used their Ketches to supplement the fleet. They reclaimed several of the derelict ships from the cosmodrome and re-purpose them as space stations and cleared out farmland of Shells.
Humanity now lived in space more than on the ground. No hope, no way to go home and no way to move on, they lived in the twilight between worlds.
And with the fall of Ikora and the failure of her mission, hope is all but gone.
"Why are we even still discussing this?" Rachel fumed, "Connor's out there and we need to find him."
"But if we leave now," Sarna replied, cool edge creeping to her voice, "Hideo could take control of the fleet as little as an hour. We need to stay here and fight him on the political front."
"If we lose Connor there may not be a point to fighting Hideo at all," Shaxx commented, "We would lose the support of most of the civilians."
"But if we take that risk and do not find him, we may as well dig our own graves!" Sarna shouted, jumping up suddenly, "You have seen how he is! He is insane!"
The room became quiet as Sarna began to rant, "It has been hours since we heard from Connor, and Hideo is fully prepared to take control of the entire fleet and every person in it! If he gets his way he will try and take over the Vex mind, or try and experiment with the shells or something equally as ridiculous! If we do not stop him here we are all dead."
"What is your problem!?" Rachel shouted, standing up to face the awoken, "Connor would have come to help any of us if we needed it, why are you so opposed to doing the same for him?"
"I want to!" Sarna bellowed, her eyes turning the color of the sun as she let some of the solar energy she had pent up from days of doing nothing. "I want with every bone in my body to rescue him! He is the only reason I am not a disgraced no-name rotting somewhere on Venus! He is the reason any of us are alive right now! He is my friend, too!"
Save for the muttering of Eris Morn, who was unmoved by the shouting, there was silence
Sarna calmed herself after a moment with a deep sigh, and the glow faded from her eyes as she sat down. "Yes, he would come for us. He would not rest until he knew we were safe. But we cannot afford to be him right now. He is a brilliant leader and an excellent choice for a hunter, but he has no political sense. If we go looking for him and do not return, who would lead the city in our stead? Cayde is hardly involved in anything, Zavala is long since dead and we have to assume Ikora and the Speaker are gone as well. They need us here."
Rachel was quiet for a moment. She and Sarna both had been on leave for the past week due to the fact they had suffered burns escaping a supply post on Venus overrun with Shells and Vex. So when the mission came up, Connor made both of them stay behind to fully heal.
"I'm…I'm sorry," Rachel muttered softly, "It's just…I can't afford to lose another friend. Benjamin and Anita went missing first night. We've lost so many people these two years and…I couldn't live with myself if I knew he died on a mission I could easily have gone on."
She started to quietly cry. Rachel wasn't one for tears, but these past few months had weakened all of them emotionally. More often did they succumb to sorrow, anger and fear. Most of them hadn't truly laughed in a year.
"I understand." Sarna said. "Truly I do, but right now the best thing we can do is wait until after the meeting Hideo called. We can formulate a plan to find him after that."
"Hang on a minute!" Kira interrupted suddenly from behind them. She stormed over and stood behind Ikora's chair, placing both hands on its back and glaring at them all in turn. "You're not seriously leaving him behind, are you?"
No one answered her, so she pressed on, "You had better not. He's not dead, he's hurt and we will find him."
"Kira," Rachel said gently, "I think we should too but…Sarna really is right. We should at least be here in case Hideo tries to stage a coup."
"Then you guys stay. Thomas and I can go out and find him." Kira snapped her eyes defiant. "The darkness took my first family away from me, I won't let them take my big brother now." She strode across the room to get her armor on, but as she bent over to reach for her boots she stumbled backwards, clutching at her right arm. The crisscross of cuts she earned from slamming into a chain link fence glistening slightly red.
Strangely, it was Leviathan-0 who stood to help her. He usually let the others sort themselves out, and had not spoken since he suggested they hold this very meeting, but he helped her up into the chair without hesitation. "That is why you cannot go," he said, his voice more rough and Synthesized than the other Exos.
He had never had a memory wipe before, so his manners and speech pattern were slow and deliberate. He had refused to be repainted as well, sticking with the faded silver, black and grey camouflage. "Connor will survive. He has been through worse experiences. We need to stay here and make sure that he has a home to come back to."
He stood and looked over to the door as it opened for a cluster of ghosts. Every shape and size, they returned to their respective owners: A bright green one floated calmly over to Sarna, a Dark red one with spikes to Levi, a Pink-and-black one to Rachel, A silver one to Shaxx, A pure white one to Dusk, a Yellow one to Thomas and an Orange-and-blue one to Kira.
Leviathan-0's Ghost spoke quietly to him for a moment, then Leviathan turned and announced, "Hideo has just sent a red-alert to the fleet and locked down the ship."
"And how did he manage to get that past us?" Shaxx demanded, slamming his fist on the table.
"He put the request through the medical staff. They believe that Kira is infected and we are monitoring her."
"I can run and settle that," Dusk said, looking hopeful for something to do.
"Doubtful. The order to lift the lockdown will take hours to go through. And we have but an hour before the meeting."
He looked to Kira again, "The best thing we can do now is make sure Hideo doesn't get his way. We sit through the meeting and play our part."
Then an edge came into his voice and his eyes seemed to glow brighter, "But you can be sure, no matter which way this meeting goes, I will look for him. And Heaven help anyone who stands in my way."
The room was shocked into silence for a moment. Then Kira smiled brightly and said, "I'll come with you. I know the area of the cosmodrome well."
Levi nodded slowly, as if she had impressed him with an answer to a hard question, and said to the others, "And I will expect the rest of you to come with me."
There was a murmur of consent among the group. But before they could continue, Eris Morn spoke for the first time since it was announced Connor was missing.
"We may not need to," she announced, her green eyes looking to each person, "I have searched the darkness and heard the screams of many dead, but his voice is not among them."
No one spoke. Few people breathed.
"He is alive," She continued, "and he is angry."
Shaxx, after a moment of shocked awe, stood up and began to issue orders, "Leviathan, Dusk, get Cayde awake before the meeting. We need him now."
The group began to busy themselves with their preparations. If all had gone well, Connor held the one thing that could save them all.
"God speed, my friend," she heard Sarna say.
She smiled a little bit. Maybe there was hope after all.
