Halo: Isolation
Epilogue

Twenty Nine Hours After Conflict

"Oh, what a mess they have made," Iniquitous Dominion mutters to himself. The Monitor of Installation 02 hovers through the scorched and smoky halls of the Control Room. Constructors dance among the ruined rooms, patching damage to the walls and gathering the burned, twisted remnants of the Crawlers, as well as cleaning away the cinders and ashes of the greater armigers and the Knights. Dominion continues his one sided conversation while occasionally scanning items of note. "One thousand, two hundred and forty one Prometheans in total. Seven hundred and eighty eight slain by my Sentinels. Twenty six by that Warrior Servant. And four hundred and fifty three dispatched by those two Reclaimers! And all without a class four combat skin or higher. Most interesting."

The Monitor rambles on as he enters the central Control Room. The Constructors have not made it this far. The remains of the four day old battlefield are untouched, and a thick haze of smoke hangs in the air. "Damage to the structure's filtration systems. I will repair later." Normally, every atom of the Monitor would be devoted to reparations. But the recent events have excited him to no end, and Dominion is eager to indulge his long-starved instinct for knowledge. He floats across the wreckage to the primary control panel. Superficial damage was administered when the blue Reclaimer struck the device, but nothing was harmed that would hamper his indulgence. As an added precaution, the Monitor places all Sentinels across the installation except those devoted to the nonstop of maintaining the rings more delicate systems into standby mode. Dominion does not know why he did this. No Sentinel even has the capacity to intrude, but not having to focus on thirty million drones simultaneously leaves the Monitor with all his processors open to his new treat.

Humming tunelessly, Dominion opens the data cache that he pillaged from the Seneschal's Cryptum three days earlier. A pleasant sensation flows over the ancilla like a stream of cool water. Thousands of terabytes of information rush before him, containing everything the Office of Naval Intelligence deemed safe to share with the Forerunner, Heritage of Broken World. Thousands of years of history, culture, art, politics, and colonies. Human, Sangheili, and a half dozen other races were detailed. In addition, the Seneschal's own private logs and detailed accounts of thousands of Forerunners installations and worlds hidden from the prying eye of ONI. All of this and more surged like an ocean before the Monitor.

So absorbed was Iniquitous Dominion that his sensors failed to notice the burst of radiation and change in air pressure signalling something very large teleporting into existence behind him.

An impossibly heavy blow catches the orb in his side, launching him across the room and smashing him against the far wall, leaving a dent in the metal. Iniquitous is snatched from his reverie in an instant, his confused and concussed sensors scrabbling for an explanation. The Monitor rises from the floor slowly and off kilter. An invisible vise grabs him and hammers him against the ceiling, the floor, the wall, the floor again, the far wall, the ceiling again. On and on the assault continues, battering the Monitor nonstop and squeezing him until he was certain he would collapse into himself. Then, Dominion is rocketed across the room, dragged back to the attacker.

Iniquitous' eye is confronted by a mass of red hot teeth. His attacker roars, belching reddish plasma and scorching the Monitor's eye. Dominion platters to the floor, and another blow warps his chassis and cracks the glass on his eye. Dominion's vision goes dark. The attacker had stomped on him. A savage kick sends the misshapen orb skittering across the floor, spinning wildly. Dominion comes to rest halfway across the room, lying on his side.

He does a systems check. He cannot move, cannot fire his primary weapon, and cannot manipulate objects. But worst of all, he cannot contact the Sentinels. They will not investigate, will not come to his aid without him telling them to. Dominion is utterly at the mercy of his foe. He tries desperately to repair anything in his systems, but is only successful in reactivating his eye. What he sees shocks him.

Harkens To Iron stands tall before him. A Promethean Watcher hovers closely above him. The Promethean's maw hangs open, flexing as though he were panting. Dominion notices almost immediately that something is wrong. Harkens speaks slowly, almost uncertain.

"Not the most elegant method," he says. Gone is the harsh growl full of arrogance and spite. "But I was scared, and I remembered that I hated you. Not sure why, you seem harmless enough." Harkens' voice is more organic. Sadder. Still tinny, betraying its artificial origin. But it is subtle, a rumbling basso, full of emotion and detached, like his thoughts were elsewhere.

Dominion finds his vocal scrubbers and responds, albeit in a glitchy and even slower manner. "You... were... scared?" Harkens focuses on the Monitor. His eyes are a duller glow than before, a brownish red. So it is across his whole body, a dim sanguine in sharp contrast to the violent crimson he once wore. "Scared. At least, I think I was. Remembering is painful. But I can't help but do it."

The more he speaks, the more confused Iniquitous is. "You... remember..."Harkens cuts him off. "I remember... noise. There was a terrible noise." Harkens stumbles forward, his feet catching and refusing to cooperate. He seems groggy, drunk even. "Noise, and... pain. More pain than I could endure. I was dragged into dark. Everything dark. No, not dark... dead? Oh, no." He scratches at his eyes, covering his face. "No, no, no, no..." He sinks to one knee. His color shifts to a bright scarlet.

"You... are... upset?" Dominion asks? After a moment, Harkens shifts and glances at him. "Yes. I was dead, I died. Then I was brought back." The Watcher floats in low, thrumming and staring at Harkens. Harkens' shade lowers back to sanguine, and his mandibles part in a grimace... No... a smile. A smiling ancilla? What is this thing? Iniquitous sputters, "But... the... Reclaimer... killed... you."

In a starting burst of speed, Harkens bounds forward, closing the distance in three loping strides. His four-fingered hand clamps down on the Monitor, almost taking him in completely. He stares into the cracked eye, his shade shifting to the color of embers. "The Reclaimer?"

A lance of hot emotion pierces through the Monitor's firewalls, cracking through them and embedding itself in the cache Dominion had stolen. Dominion frantically defends himself while Harkens pilfers the contents, finding his prize. "Reclaimer. Spartan... John." An austere image of a green armored, gold visored Spartan appears, kneeling and holding two submachine guns. Harkens dismisses it immediately. "Not that Human, no..." An image of a new Spartan, green armored, gold visored, wearing a Recon helmet and holding an assault rifle fills the minds of the two constructs. Harkens radiates smugness and cool anger. "This one..." He begins to rifle through attached files. He clearly sounds out the words. "Marc, Spartan, UNSC... Trost." Numbers replace the image. Coordinates to a faraway star system. Harkens tastes the prospect of revenge.

Suddenly, the lance snaps. Harkens retreats with his scant tidbits of data as a smooth, impenetrable wall forms behind him. Harkens growls and rails against it, finding no purchase, no weakness. Frustration fills him, and he squeezes the damaged Monitor. His left hand folds away, and a blade of hardlight appears. It is the same color as the rest of him, but radiates more light. And whereas his old blade was hooked and one sided as a Knight's blade, this one is in fact two blades. The crescent blades fan out before running parallel to each other, ending in fine tips. It looks identical to the blue plasma swords of the Sangheili, only red and far bigger.

Harkens arcs his blade forward, halting just before the twin tips plunge into the Monitor's eye. "You shut me out!" The Monitor utters, "Yes..." Regaining some power, the Monitor shifts in the Promethean's grip and responds. "You... are... pained... and... would... burn... the... galaxy... with... it." Harkens chuffs and presses the blades closer. "I will run you through, little orb! Let me back in!" The Promethean's actions, his voice, his eyes, his thoughts... they gall Dominion to the core. An ancilla such as he is an abomination. "What... are... you?"

The question trips Harkens. His grip lessens. The blade lowers to his side. Hearkens is silent for a time. His response is slow and deliberate. "Death is final. The Forerunners could twist life, create it, extend it far beyond its limits, but when life ended, it was gone. The Flood did not defeat death. They were dead things made by dead hands in the likeness of monsters. The Forerunners were finite, the Flood was finite. They and everything before or since are mortals."

His grip tightens, And his color takes on a royal crimson. "I have defeated death. By human hands I was torn into a billion pieces. And I have returned. Dead I was and dead no more, and so I cannot die. I am something new. I am beyond what I was. I am not Harkens To Iron." The new, monstrous thing raises the blade. "I am the Immortal."

This ancilla is quite insane, Dominion thinks quietly. As if sensing the Monitor's skepticism, the Immortal speaks. "You'll understand. When I show you, you'll understand. But understand this: if you deny me, I will obliterate you." Iniquitous stares down the Immortal defiantly. "Do... it... aberration." Anger flashes across the Promethean, then fades with his color, returning to the sanguine brown. "Your Halo will be mine, then. To do with as I please."

Fear spikes through the Monitor. "How... dare... you! You... cannot-" The Immortal cuts him off. "I can and I will. I will ride it to the UNSC and burn humanity from the galaxy. Or better yet, I will take it now, and make you watch while I pull it apart, filament by filament!"

This is what he wants, the Monitor thinks to himself. He seeks to use my Ring as leverage to reveal my knowledge. I was compartmentalized for a reason. I should delete the thrice-damned cache immediately! Another voice in his head retorted, then he will rip me apart, and take the Halo for himself! That mad thing in control of the most powerful weapon in history is a prospect more terrifying than the Flood! The first voice countered with, bah! The Immortal is bluffing! He cannot possibly control the Sentinels. And the Ring's failsafes would send it careening into the nearest rock, just like it did not four days ago.

Is this a certainty? Look at it. Whatever process that spawned the Immortal did things to it. It is not machine, and it is not biological, and it is not like the gibbering horrors that lie between. I cannot even fathom what it is, much less know what it is capable of. For all I know, its promise to destroy the Installation was no exaggeration!

More arguments spawn, each lasting both an eternity and less than a nanosecond. But for all the conflict that occur, an overriding fear began to rise and block out all opposition: my Halo is in danger. MY HALO IS IN DANGER. For a thousand centuries, there has been nothing but the Halo. Even during the long millennia of hibernation, Dominion felt its mass, its bulk, its comforting presence. The million million tiny operations that kept the Halo alive and running were his last ties to sanity, and it had been so since the earliest days of his isolation. Without it, there would be nothing. No duties to fulfill, no solutions to ponder, no reason to operate. Just silence. Idleness.

Entropy.

And this thing, this immortal thing, this un-thing, this god thing, it will rend my purpose apart. The Immortal broke me, I cannot fight. I cannot win. I must save my Halo. I must submit.

The echo of the Immortal's words have not yet dissipated across the room. The Monitor quietly says, "I... submit... to... you." The Immortal thrums deep in his throat. His color shifts, becoming the color of lava.

The sword fades from existence. The Immortal lets go of Iniquitous, and the orb floats between the Promethean's raised hands, suspended by his constraint fields. The Watcher fans its wings and hisses at the Monitor, a disgustingly biological action. The lance surges forward again, and the Monitor lays itself bare. Silence engulfs the room as future actions are forged.

(Written by Marc Bedragare. Edited and proofread by John-A222)