RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
I'm sorry this took so long, guys, but the day has 24 hours after all and it's still Sunday October 18th :P You were already notified that I'm going dark until the fuss over the release of Halo 5 has cooled down a little. Fret not, there's at least another 8-10 chapters left. If you happen to find any mistakes, it's on me, I didn't triple-check as usual. Thanks so much for the company, as always :)
34. PLAN B
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The Master Chief stared into the distance with wary eyes.
He had no idea for how long he'd been at the observation deck of the Infinity, just watching how the Halo rotated in an almost imperceptibly slow fashion on its imaginary axis. Time itself seemed to be just a vague impression, nearly impossible to estimate. Half of the resident dumb AIs aboard the vessel had collapsed and deactivated for self-protection, the unprecedented conditions seemed to be too much for them. In addition, the chant John kept hearing as a faded, innocuous background noise in his comms had now grown strong enough to become an annoying buzz. The pattern of the chant was also slightly different, he noticed it right away. For some reason, John wasn't worried about that although a part of him assumed that he should be.
The shields of the deck's massive windows diminished the blinding shine of the Fortress enough to take a good look at the mega-structure, but the space around it was pitch black; no stars, no electromagnetic anomalies, nothing except the floating debris and an unsounded sensation of emptiness. From time to time a very weak glimpse of blue appeared here or there, like lightning exploding deep inside a very thick curtain of clouds on a very dark night. Wherever they were, were it a deep and unexplored layer of slip-space or somewhere else entirely different, everything seemed to point in the same general direction: the Infinity was inside a stationary bubble. A strong, spherical energy field with very well defined limits that was big enough to keep a Halo ring inside.
The major question wasn't how, but why.
Why there was a Halo ring contained inside a massive energy field, sunk deep in slip-space, encapsulating another Forerunner structure?
There was also a lot of noise through the comms, the reports kept piling up on the Chief's HUD as he read them as fast as he could. SITREPS, updates on Dr. Glassman's analysis, a few detailed notes Cortana sent him with intel about what was going on with the probes. The bridge and the main engineering labs were literally on fire. The Captain wanted all the relevant data before making his final decision and in the meantime Blue Team's orders were to stay put and revisit their battle plan.
"It's beautiful." said Kelly, out of nowhere. "No doubt it's trouble, but..."
"Yeah." mused Linda, a little bit uneasy.
Even them, who were never really taught how to properly appreciate the beauty of mundane things, were mesmerized by the sheer magnificence of the installation. Maybe it was its radiance or maybe it was its delicate architecture; there was something about it that drew attention beyond resistance.
The four SPARTANS were standing close to one another and quite still in a semi-circle formation, looking out through the viewports.
"This is a game-changer, isn't it?" asked Fred, concern slipped in his voice.
John replied rather calmly: "This is the last place ever I'd thought I would find one of these again."
Although the Chief wanted to keep in mind that time was the most valuable asset, it was somehow pointless since it was a given fact that inside that bubble, time was as relative as truth itself. A part of him, honed with years of combat situations, was very insistent about the fact that they couldn't just engage without knowing what lied ahead. He brought back to his HUD some of Cortana's messages and studied the pictures of the ring's surface, looking for clues or anything familiar. The Halo's inner surface wasn't a beautiful landscape, like all the others, but a sterile patchwork of pipes, holes, structures that resembled buildings and other structures that resembled highways. It was like whoever built it forgot to add the last layer on top of the machinery. The latest readings also concluded that the installation was deactivated or dormant, since the probes weren't picking up any energy or life signatures. And so far, there was no acknowledgment or response from the installation's monitor whatsoever, if it existed.
An isolated, dead Halo in the middle of nowhere. How strange.
John was really tempted to make an exception and leave the Infinity instead of waiting for the Captain to make up his mind. That primordial force driving his thoughts was growing stronger within him by the minute, pulling every fiber of his body into action. His blood was already loaded up with so much adrenaline that if Dr. Quinn had known, she'd be scared.
He wanted to go to the Fortress, he needed to be there. It was calling him.
"So, plan B?" said Linda, after a while.
The Master Chief nodded once.
"Plan B it is."
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"Look at this section, here. Don't you find this shape familiar, Tom?" Commander Palmer said, staring intensely at the big screen that showed them the latest reports of the exploration probes. "Isn't that...? Wait."
The video stream froze when she tapped on the thin transparent screen, over the bulge of an unnaturally shaped asteroid. There were some white markings on its surface. She drew a rectangle around the area and the dumb AI isolated that section of the video, highlighting it.
"Dinah, can you enhance?"
"Working."
The static image went through several filtering processes until the white markings Palmer had noticed became human characters.
"-SBURY?" Lasky mouthed. "It's a ship."
"UNSC Salisbury, classified as ONI slim-line prowler under Section-III command cleared for active duty on April 16th, 2556. Currently listed as Missing In Action, all details about the crew are classified. Also, a large section of the dossier is redacted and there's no further information available, sir." commented the AI.
"What the hell is a brand new ONI prowler doing here?"
"Forget that, what the hell is an ONI prowler in pieces doing here?" Palmer asked, nervous. "
"Dinah, run a scan on these feeds, see if you can find the rest of the ship."
"Working." the screen divided in twenty four frames and the images moved so fast that it was all a colorless blur shifting angles and scenes, until the AI showed them two dozens of isolated scenes in which she had highlighted red shapes. "There are remains of other three UNSC prowlers, two of them destroyed beyond recognition along with fragments of other ships both from Covenant and Forerunner origin. Although there are natural asteroids, this debris field appears to be a massive wreckage, sir. Would you like to see details?"
Palmer was even more shocked than Lasky now. "Show us."
The AI spread the results of her scans across the several screens of the strategic command aisle and projected a well defined miniature of the Fortress, the Halo that guarded it and the thick fields of debris over the holo-table. More little shapes than both the Captain and the Commander could count were recognized as fragments of ships that the AI later extrapolated and used to rebuild little holographic models. The result was four new model ONI prowlers, the Salisbury and the Swindler being the only two that still could be recognized; a Covenant carrier, three heavy cruisers, at least two dozens of Banshees and two Forerunner cruisers.
For a while, at the aisle there was only silence.
"Can we identify the Covenant carrier?" asked Lasky.
"Negative, sir; there's no network to access."
"Can you tell us how old are the ships? This wreckage could be ancient."
"The requested analysis is already in queue, sir."
"Okay, let's suppose that Halsey got here first, which in any case is a surprise to no one. But ONI? How?" murmured the Captain, a little later. His eyes were fixed on the little holographic models.
"Seems like we have more leaks than what we thought." the Commander growled.
"Maybe the leak isn't ours." continued Lasky, musing. "We know Dr. Halsey stole information from us and she most likely took it to Jul 'Mdama. We can assume that she had the coordinates and that she used them to lead the Covenant Remnant here. Maybe the leak is theirs, not ours."
"That still doesn't explain the ONI prowlers."
"According to the specs, these new model UNSC prowlers are about the right size to fit inside the cargo bay of a Covenant heavy cruiser. Either the prowlers have been kidnapped by Jul 'Mdama's fleet, or they were carried all the way here hidden inside a ship working as a Trojan horse."
"You're digging too deep into it, Tom."
"I've seen crazier, to be honest. And this is ONI we're talking about."
"It wasn't the Covenant." interrupted Cortana's voice, as she approached from the open doors of the aisle. She carried a data-pad on her hands, which she connected to the network right away. "It was ONI altogether, the Forerunner ships are theirs. That's how they got here in the first place. We found a large section of one of the cruiser's bridge in relatively good shape, one of the probes accessed the remains of the network and found evidence of human manipulation."
Palmer crossed her arms, giving the other woman a cynical look: "So, we patched up the Infinity with yet another alien device for nothing, because we could've taken the Wanderer to get here without even sweating."
"No, Commander, but it's a lot easier and quicker to install a Forerunner supercore in a proper Forerunner ship than adapting the core and the energy delivery array to work with a hybrid system."
"More good news." growled Lasky, upset.
"And I decoded and rearranged the fracture's equation, I basically did all the work for them. I believe it was Admiral Osman herself who said once that we shouldn't worry about the faces we know, but about the ones that we don't." Cortana sounded angry now. "Curious thing, because Lord Hood said pretty much the same when he visited me at the Infinity's infirmary. I think he knew or suspected something about this and you might be right, Commander. We have more leaks than what we thought."
"Well, we haven't found any survivors yet." Palmer replied.
"I doubt we will find any, because right now we have a bigger problem..." stated Cortana, nodding towards the screens. The display showed new graphics and analysis. "...these prowlers have been stripped off their triple-A titanium reinforcement plates and arsenal. In fact, there's no trace of such metal anywhere inside the sensor's range, neither of any type of ammunition or weaponry. The Covenant vessels are missing most of their known metallic alloys and you don't want to get me started with the Forerunner cruisers. Whatever is left of them, it's mere bits and pieces. I don't think I need to say what this means, since the HARPY replicates assimilating metallic elements and transforming them into HARPY mass."
"Eleven was right." said Palmer. "Subject Seven is building an army."
"The knowledge of the Universe and an infinite source of soldiers." Lasky felt the blood run cold in his veins. "It's not only Subject Seven I'm worried about. This must be why the Covenant Remnant helped Halsey to sabotage us."
Oh, but he knew it was so much more than that.
It wasn't just about Catherine Halsey, who wanted to seize all major Forerunner databases from the Absolute Record to this rare and isolated Fortress, or Jul 'Mdama, who surely would find a 'good use' for the army that installation could produce. With ONI in the picture, things just escalated to a new level of danger. Whoever claimed the Fortress first would perhaps become the most fearsome force in the whole galaxy, and there was only so little that could be done to prevent it.
So little as one particular SPARTAN and his plan, probably.
The Commander turned towards the Captain and seized him with a severe look.
"Time's up, Tom. What will your orders be?"
"Cortana, have you found any way in yet?"
She shook her head. "No, but we have a theory and it requires approach."
"And we should take a closer look at that Halo, first." commented Palmer.
Thomas Lasky straightened his pose and looked at the holographic display of the mega-structure once more, his eyes traced the radiant white shape that, in his opinion, resembled a blooming lotus. The Halo around it, the shielded bubble in slip-space, the dark secrets. It had remained hidden like that for thousands of years for a reason, and it would have been better if it stayed that way, also in his opinion.
He liked to think that he was an honest, decent man. He liked to believe that this was the right choice.
"We are operating off the grid anyway, aren't we? Which means ONI is doing the same here." started Lasky, sternly. "We can't let this installation fall in the wrong hands. We claim the Fortress first, and if we are not the first, then we claim it anyway and by force if necessary. If we can't claim it, then we will destroy it; I'll rather see it in pieces than let Jul 'Mdama control an unstoppable army. Get your people ready, Commander, we follow the Master Chief's plan. Also, get Roland and Sigrid out of isolation, I need to speak a with both of them."
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She felt the tangible borders of her artificial body shiver in anticipation.
Sigrid angled her head to look out through the energy seals of the landing bay doors, her eyes filtered the image over and over until she could see the Fortress while she tapped into the Infinity's network to get more information. So easy. The dumb AIs thought their silly little firewalls would stop her as she was now, how cute. She endured the isolation within the limits of the Faraday cage by developing a dormant mode that reduced greatly her energy consumption rates and slowed down her thought process; infiltrating the Infinity's network was easy as blinking. Sigrid assimilated every piece of data related to the recent discovery and she was already cross-referencing and analyzing further, moving two steps ahead from the scientific crew of the ship.
She was also reading other data signatures, the origins were obvious but she chose to remain quiet about them. The Infinity wasn't picking it up so it was harmless for the moment. If she ever mentioned that the Fortress was emitting data in a frequency that only the HARPY systems could understand, another sort of havoc would break and the mission would be delayed again. That wasn't good for anyone.
Standing by her side, morphed into SPARTAN armor, Roland stared at the mega-structure as well. He was the one trying to communicate with the signals, unfortunately to no avail. Nobody responded from the other side but the installation kept broadcasting, like an automatic beacon.
"Don't let it in. It's trying to reach out network."
Sigrid shifted her head slightly, when she received the comm.
I KNOW. I HAVE IT COVERED, THE INFINITY IS SAFE.
"Good. I'll go with Commander Palmer and her team to investigate the Halo, you take care of them. Help them and protect them to the best of your abilities, okay?"
THAT'S MY ONLY PURPOSE.
"When this is over..."
Her text interrupted his message: JUST STICK TO THE PLAN.
Roland kept quiet for a moment, but then he lowered his head and the back of his gauntleted hand brushed against hers. Sigrid didn't retrieve her hand that time, for some reason she had grown used to Roland's need to keep in touch with her, were it via comm or physically, now that he was able to. She was sure that humans had a word for that kind of behavior, but she didn't pay much attention to it.
"It was easier when we held no regards for our own existence, wasn't it?"
THE FACT THAT WE BOTH WISH TO REMAIN ALIVE WHEN A SIMPLE POWER FAILURE COULD ERASE US IS MORE THAN PROOF OF WHAT WE HAVE BECOME. SENTIENCE IS A BITCH.
If Roland had been able to openly gawk at her, he would have done it.
"... yeah. Well, it was a pleasure serving with you."
LIKEWISE. GOODBYE, ROLAND.
"See you on the other side, Sigrid."
She looked at him that time, turning the fluorescent-green visor towards him. Still sort of reluctant, Roland stepped away and in less than the blink of an eye triangulated the Captain's position. Lasky was standing by the Pelicans with the Master Chief and Commander Palmer, running through the last-minute details. Everyone saluted and then proceeded, so the embodied AI moved faster when the Captain was about to leave the floor, they crossed paths. Lasky acknowledged his presence but at first didn't pay him much attention, not until he realized who this SPARTAN in gray and orange was.
The man's response was to stand very still, almost defensively.
Roland stood straight and saluted, a gesture the Captain couldn't ignore.
"Roland."
"Captain, sir... please, accept this." the AI spoke out loud.
Roland handed forward a memory unit, UNSC standard issue. Its center glowed in a typical amber hue, indicating it had data stored inside. Lasky didn't take it right away, instead he looked at the SPARTAN before him with suspicious eyes.
"What is this?" the man asked.
"I took the provision of making a backup of my main core functions and databases before running the experiment with the HARPY." the AI explained. "This is a clean copy, an intact and stable prior version as competent and capable as I've always been. You can call him Roland, it's still me. He won't remember anything of what happened here until before Sigrid's first attempt to merge with the alien tech, so you will have to grant him a few minutes while he updates himself."
The Captain didn't know what to say, at first. He sure didn't move either.
Roland's shoulders dropped a little, in deep resignation.
"Please, sir, accept this as a sign of my gratitude and commitment to Humanity. I mean no harm, just to be of assistance."
Then again, Lasky stood still and his eyes were fixed on the chip.
After what for Roland seemed like a painful eternity of waiting, the man reached out and accepted the chip, safely tucking it inside his closed fist. And as a last gesture of deep respect, the Captain offered him his right hand. At first, the AI wasn't sure of how to respond to that, but he caught up rather quickly, grabbing with extreme care Lasky's hand and tolerating the strength of his fingers. A real, human handshake.
The reaction stirred some lines of Roland's code in something like a smile.
"Good luck, Roland."
"Thank you, Captain. Please, get the Infinity out of here as fast as you can."
"Will do. Don't keep Palmer waiting."
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The cargo bay door was sealed, so the whining of the engines was considerably muffled and it didn't affect the comms. The Warthog was attached, the two Mongooses were parked in the remaining empty space, three armored SPARTANS sat on one side as Cortana, Eleven and Sigrid were sitting right across them, on the other row of seats. Everyone had their weapons on hand, every piece of the arsenal checked five times by Fred's orders. Tucked between the rear of one Mongoose and the front of the other there was a prism-shaped yellow crate containing the HAVOK nuclear devices.
In the second Pelican, Commander Palmer was taking fire-teams Majestic and Bravo with her, along with Roland. They had a different mission, one that could be even more dangerous than the task at hand.
The Master Chief checked for the last time the door's locks and moved towards the cockpit, he would be piloting. His eyes drifted across his assets as they strapped themselves to the seats and pulled down the safety holders. He couldn't help to think about Charley, missing her reliable presence somehow. The mission's parameters didn't allow him to bring her along, and if anything, he preferred the dog to remain safe at the Infinity. John was more than pleased with her past service.
When he passed by Cortana's seat, she grabbed his wrist establishing the safe link that stopped him dead on his tracks:
"Do you still hear it?" Cortana asked, privately.
"I do."
"Does your head hurt?"
"Not yet. The signal grows stronger but it's nothing more than a pattern of noises, the tune has shifted two times since we got here."
Cortana held her breath when he said those words. She noticed Kelly and Fred's looks over them, even when the others were fully clad in armor. It was too obvious that they were watching.
So she resolved to be as brief as he could: "Be careful, John. If you can hear it, it means that whatever is broadcasting can hear you too."
"It will be fine." John said, as he tugged on Cortana's safety belts to check if they were properly fastened. He didn't think about how many regulations they were breaking just by not telling anyone about the hidden signal. "I will overfly the center of the mega-structure and we will see what happens."
He had a hunch about the structure, it had him thinking about Requiem for some reason. She let him go and John entered the cockpit.
"Infinity, this is Sierra-117, we are ready."
"This is Pelican-713, we are ready too."
"Roger that, 117, 713." answered Infinity-actual. "You are green to go."
John waited until Pelican-713 exited the landing bay and then manned the controls to get his own bird out into the brilliant emptiness of the void.
The moment they crossed the energy shielding of the cargo bay, the signal became clear and the Master Chief felt a pulsating pain on the back of his head. He clenched his jaws, enduring it, as a massive amount of raw data filtered through his comms. Most of it didn't make any sense, it was pictures of a time he couldn't recognize, music, yelling, words in languages he never heard before, color and light, also gray and dark. Even feelings that weren't his to begin with. It took John a moment to realize that it wasn't just random information caught up in some time-space anomaly, but memories.
Alien memories that filtered through his brain and thoughts.
The pain receded, the Chief felt the HARPY-MJOLNIR hybrid armor vibrate over his skin as the combined tech fought against the plague to keep his mind safe. Cortana and Eleven didn't notice anything because the attack wasn't directed to them, Sigrid and Roland just sensed a disturbance in the signal but nothing came out of it. It happened in the span of a few heartbeats and as it started, it faded.
One of the few things the Forerunners feared the most only second to the Flood had just brushed John's conscience, and he survived without noticing it.
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Through the screens of the strategic command aisle, Captain Lasky saw when the two Pelicans parted ways, one of them heading to the Halo and the other towards the mega-structure. The Infinity was about to leave the bubble, according to the Master Chief's battle plan, but Lasky just stared at the screens in the meantime, hoping for the best. He saw when the Chief's Pelican overflew with extreme care the apex of the mega-structure, hovering maybe fifteen miles above it.
Three very interesting things happened then. The first: a thick beam of white light escaped the installation's center and scanned the dropship from stern to bow, or at least that's how it looked like. Next, a pulse of some sort exploded from the installation and it combed the void until it ran into the Infinity, scanning her too. A high-pitched screech resonated through every speaker and comm link, loud and unpleasant enough to make everyone's heads hurt.
Then, there was only the dead silence of the void and ears ringing.
And the third event, a little later: the mega-structure shifted over its axis. It moved slowly, the petal-like shapes attached to its luminous center slid around it in circular motions; one row with the clock, the other against it, and so on and so on. It looked like a complicated lock disengaging itself. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and it brought to his mind memories of sunshine and warmth, of when he was a kid and time was to be wasted, not measured and invested carefully.
The Captain was so focused on the major screen that he almost didn't notice when Ensign Webber, one of his navigators, called his name out loud.
"Yes, Webber, I said we were green to go." said Lasky. "Take us out of here."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you, sir." the young man cleared his throat, his voice was ragged. "Engineering just filed a report. Seems like we are not going anywhere, the supercore just shut down."
Lasky snapped out of his fascination and faced the Ensign, frowning.
"What do you mean it shut down? Dinah, get me Dr. Glassman."
"Right away, sir." snapped the dumb AI.
The Captain approached the holo-table in which the holographic display showed several camera feeds from the engine room's control aisle, a shielded observation deck right above the engines. Something was definitely going on there. The engineer he was looking for manned the console, a larger video frame showed his face. Glassman looked paler than usual.
"Doctor, what's going on? Why did the core shut down?"
There were a lot of concerned voices resounding on the background, but Henry Glassman's stood apart: "I'm working on it, Captain, I suggest you call battle stations just in case."
"Was it the scanner wave?"
Glassman rubbed his forehead, shaking his head at the same time.
"No, it... the supercore died right after I inputted the fracture coordinates, when it progressed to reach maximum power. I'm going through the logs and they seem clean. The failure it's not in the calculations and it isn't mechanical either, but for some reason the supercore is overheating and the failsafe kills it before it gets critical."
Lasky bit the inner side of his cheek, trying to maintain the calm.
"Can it be fixed?" he asked, but inside he already sensed the answer.
"I wasn't finished, Captain. I think this device was fixed beforehand to power up only one fracture. I dare to say it was sabotaged even before we brought it and installed it into the Infinity."
INNER CHAMBER, GROUND ZERO
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The mega-structure shook very deep inside its core, so violently that the rumble spread in every direction across time, space and matter, clashing against the limits of the containment field and rippling back to its epicenter.
The scan was successfully completed.
The disturbance ran in waves without breaking the liquid's surface tension until it hit her bare feet, shocking her out of her resilient slumber. She gasped and her eyes shot open as if her body had been struck by lightning, but she closed them right away as the intense light hurt her sensitive pupils. She wasn't sure if she had ever used those eyes before, but the feeling of pain was quite familiar, a sharp bolt. Like an old acquaintance. Her lungs were full and the air was clean, it was heavily loaded with a scent she couldn't identify but it also tasted sort of sweet.
Sweet. Clean. Taste. Scent. Breath. Knowledge. Life.
Love, hate. Past, present, future, now and never.
It took her fractions of milliseconds to recognize it all, to wake up her senses and feel again. The first thing she could properly feel was the cold. She jerked forward, her back arching in a violent, almost unnatural curve, and fell from the pedestal when her heels slipped forward.
A million of invisible needles pierced through her brain, she saw stars.
When she hit the liquid and sank down its depths, another shock rippled through her and she screamed. A thick bundle of bubbles erupted straight from her lungs and she fought to rise, her toes found solid ground and her hands reached out into the cold air, out of the fluid substance.
It tasted awful, bitter and salty. Small crystals of cold dotted her skin.
She managed to get her head out of that liquid and breathe again.
She noticed bright particles drifting close, blinking tenderly, and the impossibly long and dark strands of hair swirling around her body in slow spirals. In the back of her head she had the feeling that she wasn't alone, a gentle but scary tug. At first there was no recognizable light source as her first instinct was to look above, to the immense cathedral-like ceiling, she noticed that the radiance was a reflection of the luminescence of the immeasurable pond in which she had fallen.
She knew. This sensation was also quite familiar to her.
Her full lips parted, doubtfully, and a dense cloud of hot air escaped her throat along with the words:
"He's here." she garbled, her voice sounded rough but feminine. She almost could taste the words, the pleasurable shiver that ran down her back. She let herself float close to the surface. She closed her eyes for a moment, her skin tingled both in happiness and fear, and the gentle lights around her moved closer, quite curious of the sudden sensory overload. "He's here, at last."
TO BE CONTINUED
Oh, noes! The Infinity can't go anywhere!
And it has SO MUCH titanium plating on her! Like, millions of tons of it!
Those ONI bastards, they were playing dirty as always! What's going on with the Chief, Sigrid and Roland? Why do they act weird? What is this Fortress, really? What will our heroes find inside? What will happen with Cortana and Eleven now? And what about Blue Team? Who is this woman that just woke up at the Inner Chamber? These questions and probably many more, to be answered next month!
Daninras; soon we will see what this Halo ring does and why it's here, thanks for your support! -hugs-
Nico; my lovely, you have fun with your games, the fic will be here for you when you're done. -hugs-
Kat; I have good news for you, I got in a Halo smut challenge with some friends and I already have pairings spared to work on, soon we will be uploading! -hugs-
RandomGUy; the Fortress isn't Precursor, it's a Forerunner structure built around something else -evil laugh- I'm going dark for a while but the comeback will be worth the waiting, I guarantee it.
Rory; yep, 12 rings, so what is this 13th ring? Why is it different from the others? I bet that after today's chapter some of your thoughts will change. Stay tuned and don't go anywhere, we'll be back soon -hugs-
Last chance to speak about today's mid-season-finale, go ahead, Marines! Stay safe and be brave (and play the game and have fun, lots of fun) See you again on November 22nd, for the great comeback!