CHAPTER 7: THE BLUE MONOLITH
My soldier began to regain consciousness and strength and so limping turned into sprinting. Taking as many turns as we could to shorten the distance between us and Red One whilst greatening the distance between us and the thing the radio suddenly drops into static and an extra terrestrial high pitched whistle sounded deafening us from everything else. The green living dots on my radar began to blink red indicating they are taking fire but began to fade with my radar as the screen turned into static my soldier and i ran faster as we could feel the cold catching up to us, the thing, whatever it is was catching up to us. My heart began to race with me as the fully functional double doors in front of us slammed shut and a radio signal came in.
"No, no, NO!" Red One had screamed into the microphone. I assume his life was over and ours was next on the line. Not being able to see anything not even our foe we slowed down our pace losing hope in our survival we turned back in into the weakening cold looking for another route around the door and back into vision with our radar and radio. Taking many lefts and rights we ran towards what seemed to be a beam of light flashing around a corner. Naturally thinking it was a way out or better yet the archive my soldier and i ran towards it aimlessly however when we slid around the corner our hearts stopped as a floating electric blue monolith floated in front of us. Before i could make a next move the monolith reformed into a small transparent fiend which looked at us grinning in evilness. One last scream was all it took blasting my soldier and i into the walls behind us collapsing the entire hallway falling into the corridor below us.
The fiend blinked and disappeared however i had fallen into a fully functional corridor which still had lighting. Upon landing harshly on my back awakening from daze i lean to my left to see my last troop skewered by splintered concrete foundations. My armour was heavily damaged and all functions didn't respond. It was just me, my gun and this blue fiend alone in a labyrinth. I walked down a ramp towards what a sign called 'recollection archives'. I passed through one last double door to end up in a completely lit cylindrical room stretching a hundred metres in diameter. I was on level twenty seven out of seventy four, looking up at the ceiling it was at least fifty or so metres up however below was a great two hundred metre drop. The levels operated by a central control panel, elevators alike you would select a level and it would take you it however these archives we labelled having oldest archives towards the bottom and more recent towards the top. According to this panel, the ninth age of reclamation was on the fifty second floor. I reach my arm over to select fifty two however i was startled by a loud echoing voice.
"Ah reclaimer how wonderful of you for joining me" the voice said sarcastically. The entire room began to glow red and blue which i didn't really know what it meant however it wasn't rocket science to know it wasn't good.
"Oh my, it seems i have triggered a self defensive mechanism by unauthorised access to the files in this rooms, i am unsure of its use however I'm sure you don't mind if i take it all for myself" the voice said sarcastically again.
I spammed the fifty-second-floor button and the level began to descend very slowly. Cogs and pistons swapping places and retracting to allow the mechanism to move i came to the conclusion this place is a very old system; at least thousands of years old. The blue monolith appeared on the very top level of the monolithic cylindrical archive draining away its knowledge level by level. It seemed it was draining information faster than the mechanism was lowering the platform i stood on. I prepared the extraction hard drive i planned to use if i could reach the fifty second level first to extract all of its data before the monolith however he had drained the information of level five and above before i could descend to level twenty eight. I began shooting at it to see if it could slow it down however the bullets proved helpless as they passed through the monolith. I came to the conclusion that it will catch up to me before i could reach the desired level so i began damaging to pistons and cogs in an attempt to put the platform in some sort of freefall.
My theory was a success and the platform fell, the monolith caught eye and aborted its extraction process and focused straight for the fifty second floor. In mid freefall i shoved myself closer to the archive holding out my right arm activating the extraction hard drive. The monolith began to extract seconds before i passed the floor however i managed to link the hard drive and the archive together and soaked up all the information. Level fifty two deactivated and darkened indicating it had no archive and so i succeed in extracting the data however the blue monolith was also nowhere to be seen meaning i may have extracted it with the archive. Using the butt of my weapon as a grapple hook, the platform plummeted into the ground disappearing into a cloud of dust and smoke.
With the blue monolith deactivated i was able to reactivate my radio and signal Truth of my success. Disappointed time wise Truth organise a drop ship to my location to pick me up. I explained to Truth why it took too long to access the archive and told him all about the troops and the blue monolith in which we now held captive. It turns out Blue Monolith was an AI called Offensive Bias in which Gravemind corrupted and turn against the humans. Offensive Bias was captured by the humans and placed in a darkened Labyrinth disguising the main tunnels to the archive. Over one hundred entrances to the labyrinth none of them leading to the archives; it was just a cover up to dispose of intruders. Truth being a follower of Gravemind created an alliance with Offensive Bias him being Gravemind's disciple and so we implied him with questions about the Ark and the humans plans he extracted from the first five levels in the archive. We were now finished with Reach and are preparing to retreat to the ark.
