A/N: Sorry for the delay everyone, classes have been kind of crazy as of late! Once again, thanks to everyone who's stuck with me so far. 60 Followers, 100 Favorites, and 8,000 views! I will say, my (failed) attempt at writing that challenge one-shot I mentioned at the end of the last chapter killed my enthusiasm for a bit, so I apologize for how late this chapter is.

But where is the lock?

Pender Commune, Massachusetts

Lieutenant Shane Walker

There was a storm coming, and a mean-looking one at that. They weren't uncommon up in the North-East United States, but this one had formed practically out of nowhere. Hell, even when he'd checked his phone, the weather forecasters either hadn't seen it coming either, or hadn't noticed that it was forming yet. Odd, but again, not unheard of, but even then, the storm wasn't the primary focus of his attention. Instead, that fell to the current operation he was taking part in with his team.

Sergeant Cross sidled up next to him, grimacing as they both stared upwards, rifles strapped across their chests as the others stood to watch around them. "Damn shame, this, Reck was a good kid."

Shane could only nod, shifting from foot to foot with a sigh. "Nothing we can do for him now, we need to keep moving and finish our perimeter sweep. Heard they brought in a specialist, you got any idea who it is?"

Cross shrugged, looking away from the floating body, "Not a clue, heard it was some Civilian Contractor, European with facial tattoos." He looked over to Shane, a look of confusion on his face as the other man facepalmed and muttered a quiet 'oh fuck me'. "What'd I say?"

Pender Commune, Massachusetts

Warlock Juno

The Pender Commune was a burgeoning Darkness Zone, Juno was sure of it. The intensity wasn't enough to prevent resurrection or delay her ability regeneration, but it was gathering and might attain that capability sooner than later. It wasn't the Dark Magics of the Hive, or the Overbearing hatred of the Cabal or Eliksni, nor the cold logic of the Vex, but something...different, she was hesitant to say older, given the ages of some of the species her Humanity had faced, but it felt almost primordial.

Juno wasn't afraid, in fact, she was more curious than anything else, but she decided that she'd have to lose the carefree attitude she'd been maintaining for the moment, and take this more seriously. "You guys have really stepped into some shit here, Vaz. There's Darkness here, still gathering, and not intense enough to affect my abilities or your people, but it might get there if this isn't dealt with."

The masked soldier gave her what she assumed was a curious look, "Darkness? What do you mean?" Right, they didn't know about the Darkness, the Collapse, or anything like that. "Think of it like this, my powers are fueled by The Light, a paracausal force that circumvents conventional physics to allow me to use my powers with little repercussions. The Darkness is the antithesis of that, it warps and twists reality, corrupting those who come into contact with it. It's an insidious thing, subtle and unnoticed to all but those touched by Light."

"It almost sounds like the Force…" Vaz muttered to himself, shaking his head at the idea of it. Juno would have to look into 'the force' later, whatever that was. No time for that now, though, there was business to attend to. "Where's the camera? I'd like to look at that first if you don't mind."

Vaz gestured over to a nearby camp set-up, a small group of tents and tables set up around a generator. Sure enough, there was a small video camera mounted on a much newer looking tripod, pointed towards the floating bodies in the distance. Stepping into the mess of tables and moving people, she followed a cable hooked into the camera over to a heavy-duty laptop on one of the tables, showing what appeared to be an infrared image of the treeline, dominated by what looked like massive tentacles or spires, though the movements and irregularity in size lent more towards the former than the latter.

Tilting her head slightly to the side, she called Surf over with but a thought, gesturing towards the camera for the Ghost to scan. When one of the engineers nearby looked like he was going to protest, she simply raised a hand and said, "My Ghost is simply going to scan the camera, he won't interfere with it in any way, shape, or form, and hopefully he can ascertain what causes it to see what it does."

The Engineer backed down, and the blue datastreams that emerged from the small embodiment of Light were watched with a mixture of wariness and curiosity. Surf hummed in thought as he went over the programming and components of the camera. "The Camera itself is quite normal, Juno, as is it's programming," he reports, "but there's a sort of energy field surrounding it. Nothing harmful, in fact it's quite similar to Light, weaved almost like a pure version of a Hive Spell…"

Surf cuts off the scanning and flits around to look at Juno, giving the equivalent to a nod. "I think I can recreate it, I'll need a little bit of Light, but it should be simple enough. I can put it on your helmet's visual filters no problem, and I can probably do the same for our friends here, though that'll take more time and more light. I'll do your helmet, then we should take a look at that mirror before anything else."

"Agreed." Juno nods in agreement, and Surf disappears in a cascade of light as he returns to his own pocket dimension. After a moment, she feels a small surge of light as her armor appears, and another surge centered around the helmet, and suddenly the optics swap over to an infrared mode, admittedly of much higher resolution than the camera that started this all. "I've got it, Surf. Can confirm that whatever it was that you did worked. Those spires are definitely organic…"

She turns around, her complete armor set cutting a much more intimidating figure than her rather casual clothes from before, and found Vaz staring at her with his rifle slack against his chest. She gave him a cheeky look, hidden behind her helmet, and asks, "What? It's easier than getting changed normally."

Stepping into the house, the temperature almost immediately dropped more than ten degrees, and her armor automatically compensated for the change in temperature. "Was it this cold in her before?"

Next to her, Vaz shook his head, "I wasn't on the entry team, but they didn't report any temperature variations in the building. This is new."

"Great. Temperature variances, weird symbols on the walls, invisible murder cultists, and giant organic tentacles. What the hell did you all drop me in the middle of?"

Vaz shrugs and steps closer to a set of downward stairs. "There's the basement. The mirror's in there, behind another door into what I'm pretty sure is a closet. Weird, ain't it? If this mirror is so important, why have it tucked away in a closet in your basement bunker?"

Juno merely steps down the stairs, leaving his questions unanswered as Lumina once more appears in her hands, pausing but for a moment at the landing before the vault door, before pulling it open and stepping inside. She looks up at Vaz and says, "Don't follow me in here. Whatever this mirror is, it's dangerous to normal humans, whether mentally or physically, we'll find out."

Vaz nods and steps away from the stairs, leaning against the wall and casting wary glances around the room. It was far too quiet inside the house for his liking, given the lack of any A/C or active appliances.

The room was dark, though that was no issue for Juno, with the new Infrared mode on her helmet. The dead MTF Operator was still where he'd been left, handgun held in a deathgrip, and a puddle of dried blood spread out from his head. Self-Inflicted gunshot wound, this had been the camera carrier when they'd been down here before. There was a second body, civilian, in the corner of the room, slumped over a desk. One of the cultists, presumably. The empty bottle of pills next to him on the desk told it's own story, he'd gone out on his own terms, at least.

Dusty boxes and old household objects were scattered around the room, marking the room as both storage and their final refuge, presuming whatever they expected to happen came to pass. Ah, there it was, a closed door in the back near the dead MTF Operator. "Anything on the invisible spectrums, Surf? I'm going to open the door otherwise."

"Nothing, Juno, not even radiowaves down here. MTFs could apparently communicate fine, so this is new." the Ghost reported, still hiding in his pocket dimension. She reached out for the door, grasped the handle, pulled the door open, and her vision went black.

?, ?

Warlock Juno

Juno stumbled through the doorway with a muttered curse, and her boots touched grass. Juno tore her helmet off and took a surprised look around. She was in a forest now, at least what was left of one. The doorway stood behind her, in the middle of a small clearing, the space where the door itself would normally be filled with pure blackness. "What the hell..?"

Surf appeared in a flash of light, approaching the door and scanning it. "Fascinating. Juno, this door is acting as a sort of gateway, I can't ascertain a power source or even what's causing it to act this way. I recommend having a look around, I'll alert you if it starts to destabilize."

"Fine, but you know the play if something happens around you. Find me ASAP." Juno warns the Ghost, somewhat redundantly given how long they'd been fighting together. Lumina in one hand, and The Long Goodbye on her back, she sets out into the ruined woods, taking in the shattered trunks, burned tree limbs, and torn up ground with grass already regrowing. Whatever had happened here did so a long time ago, yet the environment had yet to fully recover.

After nearly ten minutes of walking in one direction, she reached the end of the trees, and her eyes went wide as she slid her helmet back on. A massive series of structures, spreading for miles in either direction, greeted her. Squat and metallic buildings, surrounded by gates and high fences, laid before her, signs of their age only indicated by streaks of rust and torn gates. Vehicles lie abandoned on a narrow street, and a large wall dominates the background. This place felt dead, and almost reminded her of the early City in design.

The wall was her first objective, and she made it there in five minutes flat at a steady run. An entrance was easy to locate, more difficult to access though. Melting through the surprisingly thin metal with a burst of solar energy from her palm, she pried the door open and stepped into the dark room, thankful for the infrared vision provided by her helmet, given Surf's absence.

She'd entered into what appeared to be a maintenance corridor, long pipes running to either side of the hall and providing only a narrow path to walk. The pipes rattled and hissed with compressed air or steam, the only sign so far that there was any life at all in this place.

Passing through a multitude of these corridors, Juno found herself in a deep stairwell, steps going both up and down, and followed them upwards. Whatever was held back by this wall was likely more important than what lay at its foundation. Up and up she went, passing a dozen floors before she found herself again in open air. The wall was wide, at least ten meters deep and going as far as she could see into the distance. Her boots clinked jarringly against the metal floor, and she winced at the noise. Structures periodically stood over the rest of the wall, seemingly bulwarks or communications relays given the antennae mounted on them, some of which appeared to be active still, spinning dishes that she didn't know the function of.

Turning her gaze outwards, her heart stopped for a moment. Titanic creations of iron and steel, massive humanoid machines stood frozen in time in the wasteland that was the land beyond that wall, massive mechs wielding rusting blades and empty cannons. Locked in eternal conflict with them were the skeletons of massive creatures, each different from the next. Some possessed a multitude of legs, long and prehensile bodies forming winding skeletons along the ground, while almost solid beings of bone and chitin stood locked in bladed combat with the mechs. It was like something out of a dream or fantasy. What had happened here to cause this sort of destruction, this sort of war between beings that dwarfed even the biggest Hive Ogres, the greatest Cabal Valus', and rivaled the strongest of the Vex Gate Lords?

Stepping closer to the edge of the wall, she laid a hand on a mounted piece of machinery as she leaned over the side, only to stumble back in alarm as both the machine began to move and a deafening alarm sounded along the protective barrier, red lights flaring to light and automated searchlights lancing into the sky. Sparing a glance at the machine she had used to balance herself before, she realised it was no mere bulwark or structural reinforcement, but a twin barreled autocannon of a calibre she didn't even want to think about, and it was rapidly pivoting upwards. "Oh fuck…"

There was no time for any more words as the turret and many others like it spread across the wall roared to life, nearly deafening the Warlock even through the protection of her helmet. Yellow and red tracers disappeared into the clouds above amid distant shrieks and cries, and explosions bloomed where proximity fused rounds detonated. The guns moved with the mechanical precision of automated targeting as Juno stumbled away, sprinting for the stairwell that she came from.

Before she could arrive, though, a grate on the floor popped out of place and a hand grabbed her ankle, tripping her and dragging her towards the grate. A whispered yell of "Are you mad!?" made her realize it wasn't some eldritch horror grabbing her, but an actual person. Letting herself be dragged into the hole, she fell into a cramped room with another woman, their face obscured by a cloth mask and a hodgepodge of civilian clothing and military tactical rigging stretched across her body. A heavy calibre rifle lay against a wall nearby. "Who are you?"

"Oh, no!" The other woman laughs haughtily, "You don't get the start asking questions after I pull your ass out of a Reaver attack. You're either stupid or desperate to be topside during these hours, fancy armor or not. What were you doing up there?"

Juno, somewhat confused by the turn of events, simply asks, "Where am I? I was in a farm house in rural Massachusetts half an hour ago, and now I'm wherever the hell 'here' is."

The other woman's jaw audibly clicks shut. "You...You found a gate..?"

Juno shrugs and locks Lumina on her hip, "More of a door, really. I opened it up and instead of a supposedly cursed mirror I found a door to another continent/dimension/reality? Oh, shit, Surf!" Juno makes to stand, but the thud of something heavy landing on the wall above them, followed by a loud screech and more cannonfire gives her pause. The other woman smirks behind her mask, her eyes crinkling and she shakes her head, raising a finger to her lips to signal to be quiet. Juno quietly settled back down, a sigh echoing inside her helmet. She just prayed that Surf would be alright...

A/N: I'M BACK! Seriously, sorry for the delay. Like I said in the foreword, I've been bogged down IRL and lacking in motivation. On the other hand, I've been spending a lot more time talking with friends and spending time with family than before, so that's pretty good. Anyways, I'll be working on the next chapter soon, but before that I've got another surprise coming soon! Also, I've had a discord for a while now, and I've decided that for anyone who's interested I'll be posting a link here at the end of each chapter from now on, come say hi! (I go by Titan on the discord(BcDqH4XvU4))

Editing, as always, by Perseus.