Rabbit Zero-Eight-Seven

by Rob Sears

Pulled from her assignment to eliminate pockets of the Covenant remnant, Kelly-087 is given a new mission after she stumbles upon an atrocity: to hunt down and kill one of her own. A Spartan. On Kelly's mission to destroy her target, she will come face to face with not only the terrible will of her quarry, but of her own harbored doubts. Extreme prejudice authorized.

18. Chapter 18: Through Clenched Fingers

XVIII: Through Clenched Fingers
"Back to Basics"

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Arbogast
Zone 4
Hangar Bay 04-2a

As usual, the automated intercom blared the arrival like clockwork: "Incoming vessel. Pad 3. Maintain dispersion. Approach when powered down."

The Marines that were either on patrol or on security duty within the hangar paid the incoming Pelican no mind as it dropped in from beyond the boundaries of the rectangular energy fields that kept the underground facility's atmosphere contained. They saw dozens of ships come and go every single day. This was just another example in a regular routine—there was no indication that there was to be any deviation to the preset pattern.

The Pelican's engines howled as it pushed through the electric curtain as effortlessly as flying through fog, allowing the sound to reverberate in the steel cavern. The craft moved over the rugged and dusty cargo loaders and forklifts until it came over the raised platform that was clear and bare, awaiting the entrant. With a little more expedient speed than usual, the Pelican dropped like a stone for several feet until its thrusters kicked in and it gently hovered over the pad, just inches from contact. There was a magnificent scraping sound as the landing skids of the ship travelled across the smooth surface of the pad, but it was partially lost underneath the whistling engines as they revved and finally powered down with a whine.

Unlike the other hangars of Arbogast that featured staircases ringing around the landing pads, the pads here were raised platforms that could be moved up or down with a flick of a switch. The entire process was automatic—once the virtual overseer detected that the Pelican had landed, it began retracting the pad so that it would be flush with the floor within two minutes.

Once the Pelican was ground level, the guards manning the door kept a cursory eye on it. They could spot no movement emanating in that direction. No one had made an effort to exit the craft just yet. They put it out of mind for now.

However, after five minutes had passed, the Pelican still looked as stately as before. This was not enough to draw suspicion just yet—merely curiosity. Regardless, the guards appraised the craft a bit closer, nothing that none of the mandatory checks that pilots would usually commence upon landing had even been started—such as an initial test of the ship's flaps, extension of the weapon ports, and even the extinguishing of the taxiing lights, which were still strobing underneath the wings. The blood tray ramp—the rearmost exit—had not even been extended.

The guards gave one another a look, noticing the same thing. Rookie pilots. Fresh out of the academy and blanking on the most basic of routines. One of them twitched his head in the direction of the Pelican and both began striding over to it. Might as well check this out to see if everything was copacetic.

When they were halfway between the door and the Pelican, there was a caustic hiss of hydraulics, followed by a laborious creaking noise, and the ramp began to descend from its upright position. From inside the bowels of the Pelican strode a tall figure, draped from head to toe in ruffled UNSC arctic forest garb. Their face was even balaclavaed, their eves covered with a set of rimless bladed goggles.

The two Marines stopped, aware they were looking a tad bit foolish for leaving their post to investigate the ship, as they were currently standing out in the open, about to move into a flanking position out of caution. From how things had turned out, apparently their prudent moves had been nothing but an overreaction.

The tall soldier did not spare the two men as much of a nod as they strode in between them.

The guards turned, trying to absorb this new arrival. Just about everything about this particular soldier seemed… wrong. Their armor was ill-fitting and rumpled in parts. Upon closer inspection, it looked like they were missing a few pieces of protective plating as well—their left kneecap and right forearm protection, specifically. Not to mention there were several stains upon them, some of them looking suspiciously like blood. And that was not taking into account the sheer size of this person, who had to be more than a foot taller than either of them.

The first guard flicked the safety of his assault rifle off. A plastic snap in the hollowness of the hangar. The second guard did the same. They had little but their intuition to go off of, but they had been alerted of the breakout that had occurred just days earlier at the facility closest to the impact site. The alert had described the subject of interest as a Spartan, seven foot tall. A female Spartan.

By their physical profile alone, this soldier before them ticked all of the boxes.

"Hey, you," the first guard called out. "Stop where you are. Let's see some identification."

The tall soldier stopped, but that was the extent of their cooperation. She was just standing there, facing the door with her back to the guards. She did not even make a move to retrieve her ID or anything. Not a good sign.

Approaching her with trepidation, the guards slowly began to flank the soldier. Their riflesights were climbing higher and higher in line with their blood pressure.

"Are you deaf?" the second soldier asked. "We said to show your—"

The soldier unexpectedly reached out, snatched the rifle out of the first guard's hands with ease like she was taking away a plaything, used that rifle to smash the other guard's rifle out from their grasp, and then hurled her captive weapon far away like it was the object of some storied sport. In a fluid motion, they then reached down to their holster as they faced each guard in turn and took out their pistol. Two shots, two kneecaps. The guards yelled as they dropped to the floor, blood squirting from their wounds. They immediately crawled into fetal positions; their hands wrapped around their legs as if they were trying to squeeze the pain out.

With their free hand, the soldier reached up, unlatched the lopsided helmet upon their head, and then tore away their balaclava that covered their face.

Kelly looked down on the soldiers she had just crippled.

"I heard you the first time," she said.

The noise of the shots had alerted the rest of the bay and every Marine, mechanic, or errand runner had all wheeled over at the same time to see what the commotion was. The fact that Kelly was standing over the bodies of the two men she had just shot did not elicit all that much sympathy from the crowd, which appeared to be rapidly growing hostile against her.

Before any action could be taken against her, she was already in motion, running towards the door and slapping the controls to both shut and lock it behind her. If there were any oxy torches handy, it would take about ten minutes for any pursuers to slice their way through all that steel.

She planned to be long gone by then.

The maddeningly similar tunnels of the underground facility sprawled before her. This again. Blue illumination seared the walls as she hurried down the gridded and congested morass of avenues and corridors.

Her own rifle set snugly against her shoulder, Kelly jogged down a glass-walled corridor that spanned over what looked like an equipment depot that was about forty meters across, thereabouts. She could see crates stretch on as far as the eye could see in the room below her—forklifts and cranes whirred between the stacks and over them like pulses on chipset wires. She kept moving through the sturdy umbilical until she had passed the depot by.

At the first junction, she looked to her left and spotted a squad of riot control Marines headed her way. These Marines were dressed in black, NavSpec gear. Some of them carried large shields with glazed orange glass ports.

Kelly levelled her weapon and fired in short bursts. The Marines scrambled for cover, but there was little to be had. Several of them dropped after bullets smashed into their chests and left them clawing for air. Some of the riot units had dropped behind their shields, but Kelly was able to pinpoint any inch of exposed Marine from beyond the barriers, whether that be a foot or an elbow, took her shots, and was rewarded with shouts and clanging noises as the soldiers fell to the ground alongside their shields, clutching whatever part of their body had been hit.

She walked up, dispatching the wounded as she went with single shots from her rifle. There was no room for mercy now. Not in this place. It was not tactically wise to leave an enemy alive in her wake. She was at the disadvantage of being deep inside the lion's den—she had to whittle down the numbers of the enemy here to even have a chance of escaping this place alive.

One of the riot soldiers was still stirring by the time she came up to him. Kelly rolled him on his back with a foot, planted that same foot upon his chest, making him wheeze. She then pointed her pistol at his exposed face.

"The detention center," she growled, sounding like the voice of some hellspawn incarnate. "Where?"

The riot soldier spat. "Go to—"

Kelly shot him in the face and very soon the soldier's skull lacked all definition, distributed across the floor in a slick film.

She turned away from the grisly scene and approached another casualty—a guard was sitting upright, his fingers tracing the spot where three holes had punched through his armor, near his sternum. The holes were leaking dark blood and the man's face was ashen. He was already in shock.

"Your turn," Kelly said as she stood in front of the man. "The detention center?"

The dying man lifted a trembling finger and pointed further down the hall. "S-Sublevel f-f-five."

"Thank you," Kelly said, devoid of appreciation. Crisply, she turned on a heel and headed in that direction, but not before she had taken one of the riot shields and strapped it to her back. Nothing like a little extra armor plating to ward off any would-be assassins gunning for her back.

She left the dying soldier to his fate. She had already sealed it.

Continuing to clutch her pistol as she hurried, Kelly stomped through the catwalks of the facility as she raced from room to room, as if she was presiding over this sinister fabrication process at lightspeed. The equipment that lined the floors below her grew more and more industrial. She was moving against the manufacturing line, going from final product to the base materials that made up said product.

She saw conveyor belts vacuum-package bundles of bricks swaddled in colorful plastic. Moving on, she saw those same bricks get wrapped at the next station—underneath all that plastic was a block of what looked like a chalky popcorn-colored substance. Those bricks were originating from the next room over, which looked like a refinery-like maze of tubes and girders—an industrial jungle gym. Pipes swirled about the place and congregated around six towering silver silos. Stills, perhaps. Elsewhere, there were massive ovens, more conveyor belts that curved and congregated like the stone trellises of a massive freeway. Steam whirled through processors and hissed as it entered the great bulbs of refining units. A system in equilibrium that continually strove to edge into chaos.

Kelly had recognized what the bricks were right away and immediately knew that she had found the hub of the SN 92305 epidemic. No question that this was where the processing of the synthetic compounds into their final drug form took place. All that Kelly had seen already was simply the packaging. The merchandising process.

One thing at a time, she reminded herself. Solving a galaxy-wide drug crisis could wait, now that she knew where to find the source.

Somewhere, five levels below her, her brother awaited.

What's most important to you, Spartan?

More units poured from the branching pathways as she chanced upon them. The armaments at her disposal meant that she could dispatch them from a distance. She fired without judgment—these were men and women that just so happened to possess separate alignments. They would happily kill her without remorse because that was what they were ordered to do. If her constitution was not as strong, if not stronger, then she would be the one falling to their fire every single time.

Her assault rifle clacked open. Empty. And she had no spare magazines. A fallen soldier nearby had dropped his shotgun—a civilian model. She exchanged weapons.

Kelly's arms pumped as she racked a round into the firing chamber. The shotgun had a polymer casing around its metal components. The stock was variable and it had a ghost ring sight affixed atop it. Lightweight and versatile, but not as powerful as the standard-issue model.

A whitesmocked chemist rounded the corner, sloppily opening up with a submachinegun. Kelly shot him in the chest, a long tongue of flame exuding from the shotgun's barrel, and the white of the man's garb immediately flared red as his chest exploded and he flailed backwards.

The peeled red of the smoking shell sailed out of the port as Kelly pumped her weapon. Warehouse workers and Marines were now intermingled in the crowded passageways, all looking to liberate her from the land of the living. Preferably with a hail of bullets. Undeterred, the Spartan fired and fired, her own rounds tearing flesh and obliterating bone before any of them had a chance to strike her. A few spare rounds smacked the walls close to her position, throwing out sparking flares, but she did not flinch away.

Soon, she had fired the last of her shells with the shotgun she had appropriated. By now, three Marines were headed in her direction after they had come up from a glasswalled stairwell. Two of them were handling heavy weapons and one was dual-wielding a pair of pistols, though his accuracy was quite poor.

She grabbed for her own sidearm and shot the one with the two pistols first, in the knee. As he went down, he accidentally opened fire on both his weapons, hitting his buddy in the lower back and instantly paralyzing him. The last man turned back to see what had happened and Kelly used that distraction to shoot him in the neck, which killed him in the blink of an eye.

The Spartan reloaded as she marched down the gore-soaked hallway, following the signage to the closest elevator bay. A multitude of alarms in varying different tones and timbres were wailing by now. Flashing orange lights collided and multiplied as they surged throughout the glass umbilical of the hall. She now unslung Logan's shotgun, which she had been saving for when she got deeper in the facility.

A hundred meters until she reached the bay she was looking for, according to the glowing directions upon the wall. Kelly checked the chamber of her weapon and made sure a round was sitting in the rotary barrel of the customized shotgun.

As she walked, there was a synthesized slashing of static in her ear. Her internal comms had suddenly connected.

Wonderful.

"Oh, Petty Officer. Your presence here is most unfortunate. You should not have returned to this place."

On instinct, Kelly hugged the corner. Her eyes scanned the ceilings for cameras and found none on a first pass.

"Armitage," she whispered, holding her shotgun close. "Au contraire on the unfortunate part. I didn't think that a deal could be struck with an AI. I'm curious—what did Phaedra offer you to turn?"

"You presume incorrectly. I am not on Spartan-119's side, nor was a deal struck with me at all. I am a construct of silicon and memory crystal. What could I possibly have to gain in an exchange of material? I have always been allied with the UNSC. However, from your current actions, it does not appear that you happen share the same allegiances."

That damn AI. Who was he to even suggest such a thing? Kelly reminded herself to be extra careful, now that it had been proven that she was being closely monitored in this facility.

"You think that I've turned, then," she gritted. "You haven't been paying attention."

"More like you've been looking at the micro and not considering the macro. You haven't thought about the greater implication to your actions."

"Why don't you enlighten me?" Kelly asked as she rounded the final bend, the elevators now in sight. She kept on firing as she went, taking care of the facility's various denizens as they sought to do harm unto her person.

The AI gave a scoff over the comm. "There would be no point, as you have already made your choice in a series of choices that cannot be taken back. You're simply playing your part to the letter, however misguided that might be. And I'm simply playing mine. I wish you luck, Spartan-087, but your usefulness came to an end quite a while ago. It's time to wipe the slate clean."

More static as the comm's connection was abruptly cut. Kelly was about to make a comment to herself about the AI's brevity in the conversation that he had initiated, when all of a sudden, a loud and piercing siren suddenly split the hallway that appeared to be blaring right over her head. She ran even faster, but she could not seem to outpace the source of the sound.

Then she realized that Armitage had hijacked the facility's security systems. He was directly calling out her location to every person in earshot.

"Damn you!" she shouted to the empty air. She had no choice to keep moving.

The bay in front of her was now filling with soldiers, alerted by the noise. Kelly grabbed a few grenades and hurled them forward. She watched in satisfaction as the Marines dove in every direction to evade the concussive bursts that rippled the catwalks as if they were made of liquid. Lightning-flashes of illumination scarred the walls of the corridors. She came to the bay just in time to witness half of the Marines attempting to stand—the other half had been ripped to shreds by the grenades. She finished them off with a combination of rounds from her shotgun and pistol.

The halls behind her were now beginning to brim with more of Phaedra's paid lackeys. Small-arms fire was striking the ceiling beams above her, sending down streams of dust and sand. Some even slapped the shield at her back, but did not penetrate. She did not have enough ammo to take them all on, so she dove into the nearest awaiting elevator and slapped the number "5."

With a series of great and laborious clanking noises, the elevator, which was designed for heavy loads, slowly began its descent further into the bowels of the facility.

Kelly performed a mag check and slotted in a few shells to replenish the ones she had fired. The incessant blaring sirens were still close by—Armitage would no doubt engage them on the fifth sublevel once she had disembarked. It was going to be an all-out firefight, then. No rest for the weary.

She looked up as she spied a flicker of color just above the control panel for the elevator. A small screen had engaged and Kelly's heart sank like a stone as she beheld the sneering face of Governor Ishir himself. It figured that he would interject himself into this mess in some fashion. Egotists were all similar, that way.

"Well, well, Spartan," Ishir leaned close to the screen that Kelly could see the glow reflect off his bifocals. "You certainly have been busy, haven't you? Now I know why Logan did not call in."

Kelly glowered at the screen. This was yet another wrinkle she would not have wanted to deal with. One gloating foe at a time was about all she could stomach.

"Logan got in my way. Will you?"

Ishir theatrically rolled his eyes and then steepled his fingers. "Right to the chase, then. By now you've probably confirmed your suspicions, based on the equipment you saw while you were tearing up my base. Surely you can accept a logical explanation for the harboring of this whole operation?"

He thought she was here to dismantle the manufacturing of the drug, Kelly realized. The governor did not even think that she was only here to get her brother free from captivity. Did Logan not tell him of her relation? Or maybe the governor was just so short-sighted that he thought every act in proximity of his jurisdiction had to relate to him in some fashion.

"It'll fall on deaf ears," Kelly assured. "But let me give you some advice, governor. Tell your men to stand down, interfere no longer, and you can at least be comforted by the fact that I won't come straight to your office to gut you. You still have some time. Might as well make a run for it. You might just be able to stay ahead of the UNSC if you're smart enough. You've fallen below their radar for so long—you can continue to do so."

She eyed the screen and gave a frown when she saw Ishir erupt into a hearty laugh.

"That's a good one, Spartan," Ishir said as he pretended to wipe his eyes. "And if I thought it had any teeth, I'd perhaps consider it."

The shotgun creaked as Kelly tightened her grip upon it. The elevator floor on the screen had just clicked over to "3."

"Consider harder."

"Don't be so dramatic. Or, in your case, deluded. I'm afraid you're only inviting your death if you go any further."

The corners of Kelly's mouth edged upward. Very slightly. "I'm afraid I'm not very good with ambiguity. I prefer threats to be made directly to my face."

"Indulge me for a bit," Ishir frowned. "How well-versed are you with chemistry, by any chance?"

Where is he going with this? "A bit," she underplayed. She did not mention, of course, that her Spartan training had provided her with enough exposure to chemistry concepts so advanced that they constituted several master's degrees worth of knowledge. But she was trapped in this lift for a little while longer, so she had no choice but to indulge the governor.

Ishir gave a grandiose smile and leaned back in his seat, as if he had spent several hours preparing an upcoming sermon. "I was never a good student, myself. The sciences never came naturally to me. It took a while, but the personnel here finally managed to get through to me about chemical reactions in the brain. You've probably figured out by now that the compound made here is an offshoot of phencyclidine, right? Fascinating drug, don't you think? Apparently, when phencyclidine is first absorbed into the blood, I'm told the sensation of that first hit is so disorienting and so aggressive that it essentially trains the body to recognize the chemical markers of any subsequent hits afterward, so that every exposure that follows will always be inferior to that one moment in which the body is introduced to the aggravating chemical to begin with. It's essentially the same process that any particular body has when utilizing a chemical compound, but addicts to phencyclidine—and all of its derivatives—spend their entire lives chasing that high, but their body will never ever let them feel that euphoria."

The number "4" now resonated on the screen. Just another minute of this asshole. Kelly twitched her weight from foot to foot, quickly losing patience.

"Now, the good folks in the lab here have seen fit to try and dampen the severity of that first reaction," Ishir continued. "Apparently, that ensures more repeat customers by establishing a similar experience from that first high to all subsequent highs. But perfection is a continually moving goal, so the eggheads here have kept at it to enable users a gradually seamless transition from reality into dreamland."

The governor's grin soon turned demonic.

"However, that doesn't mean that every one of their experiments produces fruitful results. Sometimes they get it so very wrong. That the chemical backlash becomes a nightmare instead of the more… tolerable transition. A good thing they had the foresight to keep some of the rejects around. I'm curious to see what effect they will have on you, Spartan." Ishir twirled a finger and depressed a button off-screen. "At least, for the remaining duration you have yet to live."

There was a strobe, an effect that seemed like a sheet of lightning, and Kelly became aware of a pale gas wisping into the confines of the lift. A musty smell, like mold. Panic began to spike in that short period of time—she didn't have a mask to filter out the toxins. Instinctively, she coughed, imagining that she could see the thick particulates down to the atom scurrying around her face in the air, dispersing their vile poison as they rushed down her throat and into her lungs. Already, there was an edge to her breathing. Like her lung tissue was burning. She dropped to a knee and began hacking. Red-tinged phlegm flecked the floor.

Oh, shit, was her only thought.

She could remember the effects of the drug on all those Marines on that moon whose name she had long forgot by now. How they had been addled and mindless, unable to tell reality from fiction. Was that what was in store for her? Could she overcome that sensation? If so, for how long?

As she stood, her immediate reaction was to lash out a fist and to crunch the glass of the display embedded in the elevator's wall. Ishir's satisfied face disappeared in a spasm of electrical pyrotechnics. Clear shards sprinkled the floor—Kelly withdrew her fingers away and saw that they were bleeding. She shook the blood onto the ground and blinked as she noticed the room begin to spin. Her breathing now seemed effortful, as if she had to think about every inhalation and exhalation. There was a numbing sensation that had passed itself over her body, yet she still remained direly alert of every discomfort that flecked across her form. The bloodbeat of her very heart that surged through her body emanated itself in its willful form. Again and again. Again and again.

One blink. And she was still inside the elevator.

Another blink. And the peeling doors was like parting a curtain of burning vines.

The slight smell of ozone. Burning fat. Taste of ash on the tongue, flavored of meat. Shifting embers among the stars, the confines of the corridors exchanged for the open air. Wind improbably on the face, thick with humidity. The strobes now replaced by rim lightning, the season of storms.

She moved forward, or rather, her ancient predecessor moved for her. She now moved within a city that was on fire. Flames had engulfed straw, wood, and even stone. The massive and blocky towers that overcame even the tallest trees of the rainforest were alight like great beacons. Mistrals whisked up eskers of fire and sparks, creating bright rippling walls of crimson that crisped and charred anything in its wake.

On all sides, her tribe was screaming their cries of war. Axes and hammers were raised in the air, capped with chiseled ledgerstones of obsidian. They were here in spite of their sacrosanct customs, for it was man's destiny to usher in complete domination of their mortal foes instead of adjusting to a tentative commensalism. Eventually, the bout of single warriors would be deemed to not be representative of their respective existences. For true peace could not be achieved without the fear of war clouding the mind.

They rushed into the stone megalopolis, their half-naked bodies slathered in wax and pyrite. Their cochineal-stained teeth were bared in their howling screams, as they all rushed forward in their different avenues to make their own destinies.

She looked around. She could see the glints from flashing weapons as they sliced through the air. The city's inhabitants screeched and cried as many of the whirling blows caved in skulls, lopped off limbs, or tore open abdomen so that their intestines could spill forth. Blood soon sloshed upon the streets, a foamy film.

Dark shadowshapes silhouetted against the flames jutted out in front of her. She became aware that she was holding a bow and arrow in her own hands—an assault rifle—and she twinged back the bow and let it fly. The enemy coughed as the arrow pierced through both cheeks—head flying apart as bullets pulverized the soft organs in the skull—and they fell as their last regurgitations splattered through the wood slat in their mouth.

She notched another arrow and fired. A warrior's breath exited their lungs as the projectile embedded itself into his gut. She shot him again and he unraveled before her while spits of rain now descended upon the scene. The flames hissed but did not yield as they were assaulted by the heavenly storm. Her paint began to run down her skin, a melt of color that was like the mare plain of that alien moon that the clouds could not keep hidden for long.

Lightning flashed, and for a moment she was shrouded in binary hues. She kept walking forward, shooting her bow and arrow as she went. Warriors of all shapes and sizes fell and died at her feet, pierced by the relentless volley. She aimed at every place there was movement. On the ledges of pyramids above. Threading the alleys in front of her. There were brief whistles as the return fire temporarily displaced the air behind their frayed windrudders, but she held steadfast and watched as her own shots perforated and deformed the unfortunates that dared oppose her.

She waded through the filth of slackening bodies. The spent brass crumbling against her boots as the rattle of chainfire echoed endlessly through the corridors.

"I think I'm losing it," she announced to no one in particular, but she could not recognize the words that flowed from her throat in another tongue.

A gibbering enemy suddenly burst from the shadows, trying to wrench her weapons from her grasp. She gave a liquid growl and easily pushed the warrior against the wall while she grabbed for her razor knife. She slammed the blade against the side of the man's head so hard that the force partially ejected his left eyeball from his socket. The white of the other eye exploded red as the capillaries broke and he died sightless and incomprehensible.

More and more foes dared announce themselves to her judgment. She waded into the fray with a childlike eagerness.

Her knife became an invisible slash among the deepening night as she ducked this way and that, whiplashing as she went. Meaty thunks resounded as she parted arms from their owners. That same blade carved heinous smiles upon the combatants as it sliced through cheekmeat. Torsos were parted with sickening ease and the warriors howled as they bent to catch their slipping guts as they slid from the partings in their abdomen.

She held the face of a Marine in her hands, almost as if she was about to deliver a loving caress. Then, she squeezed her palms together, her enhanced strength rippling through her banded muscles, and the head exploded into a shower of thick, dark gore. Warm blood doused her face—or was that rain she felt?

She went hut to hut, massacring as she went. She rushed into the various rooms and buildings and dispatched each occupant with as much prejudice as she could muster, her arm a piston as she hammered her knifeheld fist up and down, fountaining spurts of blood with each blow. Her aim was impeccable, but held no art. She aimed for faces. Throats. Guts. Anything that could kill. Messily. She was coated in gore in no time, and her breath was steaming through the viscous red membrane that dripped over her features and stained her skin.

The city was cinders. Her people were carrying torches after putting the citizenry to the sword. They set everything they could see ablaze. The heat warbled the air, at odds with the pelting rain that cooled her body. Mud and blood splattered her bare feet. She growled as she stalked forward, the flames all around her illuminating her like some chimera out from the depths. Already, she could hear the cry of victory assail the air. She did not take up the same cry—there was still one more darkened door ahead of her that needed to be checked, a crevasse etched into the side of the blocky pyramid.

With a well-placed kick, she caved in the door like it was made of paper. The lone occupant inside the room jerked upright in their bed, the expression on their face one of worn-down acceptance, like they had been expecting such a thing to happen all along.

There was a moment of faint recognition that flickered between the two. For neither of them could forget the night in which they had danced and cut at each other in the steaming rain. They both still carried the scars of their knives, memories etched permanently into flesh.

The bedbound warrior, driven to such a state due to the splint and salve that encrusted their leg, looked to the nearby nook. A stout knife had been placed there.

The invader—her—knew that she could not allow her foe, even if she was in such a debilitated state, to retrieve such a weapon. She rushed in, swiped with her knife and cut the tendons of the bedbound woman's wrist. With their hand disabled, she was free to pounce upon her rival, who was now shouting the curses of all her gods unto her very soul, spittle flying from her mouth.

But she was not interested in what the gods thought of her.

Raising her hand high, she suddenly shot her fist down, intruded her fingers past the gaping mouth of the snarling warrior, hands slicking past her sharpened teeth, and clamped down on the fleshy object right at the core.

With a rapid crack of her wrist, she ripped out the warrior's tongue.

There was a great gush of blood and the warrior clamped her hands over her spouting mouth, eyes blind with pain. But there was no time to consider the effects of her newfound muteness, for she could only behold the knife now being raised before it was rudely inserted into her left eye. Then her right one. Clear fluid exuded from the dark pools that had once been functional eyes, along with a thick and fleshy mucus-like substance.

There was no respite to the carnage. As long as breath found her lungs, she could only stab, and stab, and stab. When her knife hit bone and skirted off into the darkness, she resorted to her hands. Bashing over and over and over again. To the point where the warrior's head had long deformed and she was just pounding against paste.

Her hands sticky with congealed brains, she lifted herself up, still straddling the long-dead warrior, gave her chest a staccato beat, and roared her utmost victory to the ceiling, so that her own voice could intermingle and would not be able to be discerned from a desperate wail.

She roared and cried and roared until her breath could not longer create a sound. From outside, the flames whispered in, a distant heat at her back and rippling at her tormented frame.

The fire rushed into the room, all-consuming. Everything became ablaze in seconds. Including her.

She watched as the skin of her hands blistered, boiled, and crackled away. The skeletal frame underneath briefly shone white before transforming into craggled black bone.

And yet, she managed to dredge up one last breath for a final, frightful scream.

But with the next inhalation, it was Kelly who found her eyes finally opening once more.

Then she looked down at what she had wrought.

Everything was still trickled by streams of intermittent color. Like starburst patterns sluicing down her eyeballs, creating stalactites of disingenuous hues.

There was no ancient city anymore. No midnight raid. No thunder, lightning, or fire. She was back in the facility—the barracks, it looked like—and her vision still threatening to double, hands dripping with fresh blood as the body of a Marine in his cot lay smashed beyond recognition in front of her. Not a rival warrior of the ancients, as she had thought. Just someone nameless and unconnected to her troubles, caught in the crossfire of her own imagination.

There had been no precision to this. Combat had long been exchanged for slaughter. She felt bile and disgust rise in her throat. All focused unto herself.

Slowly, she backpedaled out of the room and turned. Her breath painfully caught with a gulp. The corridor beyond was in shambles, even worse than the room that she had snapped back to reality in. Blood and bodies covered nearly every inch of the floor, some of the corpses ripped to shreds. Marines, scientists, even factory workers. Anyone that had the misfortune to get in her way had not been spared. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and whitened by blade scrapes. The whole hall stunk of iron and there seemed to be a humid haze that wafted from the bodies themselves.

Kelly looked at her bloodied hands, at how the etchings of her palms had already become defined as the liquid had dried. What have I done?

The sea of bodies appeared to coalesce, even though they were completely motionless. Flotsam amidst a still tide where they lapped against one another. Faces of shock, of anger. Maybe they were confused as to how they died. Or they had been terrified as they had watched the Spartan butcher them all with her guns, her knives, and her bare hands. Torn them all apart like they were nothing.

That had been an anger she had reserved only for the Covenant. What could she hope to justify this slew of emotion now?

In a daze, Kelly was able to dimly come back to her training. She picked up a battle rifle from the floor and did her best to dab away the residue that had stained one side of the weapon. The Spartan then continued further down the hallway, trying her best to not look at the dismembered body parts she was stepping over, as though she could convince herself that she had nothing to do with that, when even though she knew, deep down, that she had been the monster that was the cause of all this.

She was the monster that her people had wanted to create, anyway.

So much carnage. So much pain. Did these soldiers even know what they were fighting for? For that matter, did she? Who was truly the victim of this mission? And why did she have to be the one chosen to carry it out?

It became too much. She sagged against a wall and closed her eyes. As though if she were to open them again, the past hour would be the result of simply a bad dream. Or maybe even the past couple of days. Furan would still be alive, as would Soraya and her family. How many mistakes would be allowed to pass if more second chances had been given out?

Kelly almost started shaking. Was that a result of the drugs, or was that all her? It took everything she had to will the feeling out. But the guilt and remorse lingered. They lingered like any scar garnered on the battlefield.

Damn them, she thought, not caring who she was cursing. Damn them all. Damn them for making me this way. Damn them for going through with it.

With a warbling breath, she pried herself away from the wall. There would be a time and a place to consider her actions. In private, perhaps. Or at a court martial. But not here. She was a Spartan. Spartans finished their missions.

And she still had one to complete.

She looked down the unfamiliar confines of the location, not knowing where she had ended up. She eventually realized that she was close to the detention center and soon came to an access corridor that splintered off into separate rooms, four on each side of the hall. She approached the first one and shouldered it open. Empty. She repeated the same process to the door across—same result.

But when she moved to the third one and hit the access panel for the doors to slide open, her eyes became splinters as she found the room occupied.

There were two of them. One standing and one sitting. In her peripheral vision, Kelly recognized the one in the chair as Brandon, but she was looking through her gunsight with totality at the man standing just behind him, pointing a gun at her brother's head. A dull ringing had invaded her ears and the view through her scope bounced with every heartbeat.

The man with the gun cruelly grinned. Neanderthal-like brow and a mess of facial hair. He was wearing a tanktop splattered with blood, which probably did not belong to him. He rudely pressed his pistol to the back of her brother's head, cold steel against dripping flesh.

"Drop the gun," the interrogator called out to Kelly, "and we can—"

Kelly's battle rifle crackled and gore painted the far wall as her three bullets completely destroyed the man's face. His pistol sailed out of his limp hands and skidded away into some forgotten corner. His face was nothing but a cave now and he fell backwards, his body landing heavily on the floor and sending up a great plume of dust.

The battle rifle followed a similar descent as Kelly bent to help her brother. She only got about halfway until her eyes finally bored in upon the man's appearance.

"Oh…" came her hoarse exclamation.

The first thing she noticed was his shaved head, which was drooped toward her like he was in prayer. It had not been a neat job and there were several patches where strings of his thin hair still draped about his skull, which was covered in several crusted cuts.

Kelly looked lower. Saw that her brother had been restrained by a coil of chains circling around him and tying him to the chair. Brandon was only wearing pants and his torso was encircled by a multitude of slashes and bruises that made his body look like a slab of meat. A sickly yellowish tinge exuded at the space just above his liver. And if she looked all the way down, she could see one pant leg dangle emptily next to his left foot. His right foot was gone, hacked off, and the wound cauterized.

Kelly felt sick but she forced herself to absorb everything. Brandon's left arm had been broken in two places and his hand had turned an alarming shade of bright red. A tube had been inserted between his ribs, an angry ring of blood frothing around the entrance site, and a low and rattling whistle came through the metal pipe whenever his lungs weakly drew in breath.

Then, she reached out and lifted his head up so that she could see his face.

She wanted to say something. To voice all of her shock and horror in a single moment. Perhaps it was the drugs, still playing tricks on her. But something told her that the time for hallucinations had long passed and she was well within the grip of reality. As it was, she could only make a long and anguished sigh.

Brandon's face was no longer recognizable, but it was him. His right eye was nothing but a blackened pit—it looked like someone had shoved a red-hot poker into his socket. His nose was smashed nearly flat. His jaw was crooked, badly broken. And even a strip of skin had been peeled from his cheeks so deep it nearly exposed the tendons beneath.

Kelly held the broken body of her brother for a tender minute. Listening to his tired breathing. When she closed his eyes, images of his face were right there to haunt her.

She wondered if it was even possible to hate a dead man more. Had Logan done this to her brother, hoping to spur a reaction out of her? This was abject barbarism. Never before could she have imagined a Spartan stooping so low to torture a man like this. She had seen humans torture aliens before on the field, but this was different. What made it different was the fact that it was all personal. So personal it felt like a cold knife had been stuck into her belly and twisted sharply. As if she had been the one in the chair.

In her arms, Brandon moaned. She had to hold his head to keep it from drooping back down again.

"Shh," Kelly whispered. "You're okay. You're okay, Brandon. I've come to get you out of here."

Brandon's remaining eye scrambled loosely in its socket. Kelly could now see that his eyelids had been slashed. Spittle trailed from the corner of his mouth and he murmured something unintelligible.

Kelly's breath caught and she made a croaking noise. She tried to smile to reassure him, but fractured and came on the verge of completely crumpling.

"It's me," she said, a ragged edge now roughening her voice. "Brandon, it's me. It's Kelly."

She held his head as if she would be proffering it forevermore. But, with a faint surge of strength, Brandon was able to lift his chin up ever so slightly and his lidless lone eye seemed to focus in that instant. Focusing on her face, her eyes, her hair. Absorbing and drinking in details that he had longed to see for years, if not consciously. For his soul demanded that he look upon his sister's bare face for the first time and yearned for a severe understanding.

"Well…" Brandon croaked, sounding like he had just come a thousand miles across a parched desert, "…of course it is."

His ruined mouth cracked into a smile. One of familial recognition. For the face that was before him now could not be anyone else. It hit him, straight and true, that his sister was here, alive.

For him, that was more than enough.

He was still smiling when the tension faded and his head lolled back into Kelly's still-outstretched hands. In a panic, she tried to sit him up, but the comprehension in his eye had faded to devoid speculation. It was as if there was no more weight that Kelly could possibly uplift to have stopped this from happening.

In alarm, she stood and pressed Brandon's shoulders back. She met no resistance. "No," she stated clearly, the word having just tumbled out. A statement of denial. Of her own insidious acceptance.

But she could not take this back any more than all those people she had killed with her own two hands back out in the hall. For the same thing had befallen the man sitting in front of her. In the end, he had welcomed it openly, just in time for his conscience to reconcile with accounts that had needed to be settled.

Kelly did not feel herself stumbling away from where Brandon now permanently sat. Her legs automatically moved her into the hall, feeling like leaden logs as she plodded through fields of blood and spent brass casings. The alarms spurred on by Armitage became dull moanings as her ears deafened her to all sounds.

Her eyes lost focus and she staggered from room to room, ignoring the chaos of the strobing lights and the distant murmur of shouting voices. She felt a couple of twinges breeze past her hair—was someone shooting at her?—but ignored it all as she rounded a corner and headed down a small staircase, every process in her body having slowed to a deathly crawl.

Soraya.

Dariush and Elnaz.

Furan.

And now Brandon.

It almost felt like she was the butt of some galactic joke—how was she supposed to be seen as a defender of humanity if she could not defend a few humans?

Why did she let herself become emotionally involved in all this?

Did Phaedra really hate her so much that she was seeking to destroy anything that Kelly tried to protect?

Everything seemed like it was shutting down for Kelly. Like she had finally been numbed to everything that could possibly impart against her. There was nothing tying her down anymore. No more gossamer connections attempting to attach a semblance of decency. There was only that which reacted naturally to such violations. Deep and impermeable oaths sworn from generation to generation, all the way back to the time when man's ancestors rose from the deep and made language together.

It was that oath that now sprang into flame, fueled by the barrage of hurt and cauterizing it into a meteor of slag that became a generator in the gut of the Spartan.

The room she had wandered into was a storage area, but there remained a partition at the back that drew Kelly over. She shut the door behind her and its triple locks vacuum-sealed the place as tight as a drum. She was now separated from the rest of the facility by that door and a long pill-shaped pane of bulletproof glass.

Right next to the doorway was a piled collection of pieces that Kelly recognized as her Hermes armor. But nearly all of the components had been removed, judging from the missing access panels and the menagerie of wires that crudely dangled from their sheaths.

But the set of armor next to it still had a pristine olive sheen to it. Logan must had taken it off the Nighthawk and had it brought here.

How fortuitous.

Adding to her good fortune (for once), the chamber was home to a delicate and spindled metal object the color of enamel. It looked like a wireframe corolla whose arms lay empty and awaiting, complete with a section in the middle that was sized to fit a body. A body the size of a Spartan.

A Brokkr. Logan's Brokkr.

Time to turn it on. One last time.

---

"She's in where?!"

The elevator had deposited Ishir on the fifth sublevel several minutes ago, along with three squads of his Marine escort. Carefully, they had maneuvered their way through the absolute carnage that had been left in Spartan-087's wake. Ishir had to hold a cloth over his mouth to shield himself from the smell. He tried not to look down at the bodies and the blood, though he was feeling quite faint in short order. He had never been on a battlefield before—this was all new to him. The violence, the death masks. God, the eerie calm of those still eyes…

The security officer chattering away in his ear was not helping matters much, either. All of the cams down here were monitored and what one of the guards had seen on the feeds did not bode well for the governor at all. Still, he had come down here to witness 087's demise for himself. He had taken the liberty of getting a large force amassed, just for her. This time, a wall of coordinated fire would obliterate the Spartan and he would finally be rid of her annoying presence.

That is, until he had been informed of where Spartan-087 was.

"Oh. Oh, Jesus," Ishir muttered as he clamped a hand to his earpiece. He then urgently tapped the shoulder pad of the closest Marine. "She's found it. I told that bastard Logan to lock it up and what does he do? Leave it out in the open, that's what! Son of a—we need to go now! Hurry!"

A minute later, the twenty-four-man fireteam barged into the storage area just in time to see, behind the bulletproof glass, Spartan-087 pick up a piece of polished and dull green armor from the ground. She noticed their arrival and scowled at them through the glass.

Then, without a word, 087 suddenly turned and headed out of sight past the window to the right. Heading for what had been stored in the back of the room there.

A dull whirr managed to permeate the air and Ishir inherently knew what the Spartan was doing.

"Get that door open!" he barked to the Marines around him, which was redundant as several of the soldiers had already sprung into action. Two oxy torches were lit and soon the corridor was highlighted by the spasmodic fireworks of the flames chewing through the thick steel.

The governor was reduced to a fretting mess and he paced back and forth.

"How much longer?" he asked for the third time in three minutes.

The fireteam leader glanced over at the governor, barely able to contain his annoyance. "Door's got a three-tier locking system. Can only get two guys in to slice the locks at one time. It's ten minutes per lock, so that means…"

Ishir might not have been the brightest bulb but he was aware enough to detect when someone was speaking to him in a condescending tone. However, his attention quickly dropped away, but not from boredom. It was from the realization that, despite all of the tools at their disposal, they were not going to get inside in time.

He pushed himself to the front and roughly shook the closest Marine he could find. He then gestured animatedly at the bulletproof glass. "Shoot it." When the Marine did not comply, his face a mask of puzzlement, Ishir waved his hands again like he was talking to a small child. "Shoot it out!"

"Sir," the fireteam leader called, exasperation practically dripping in every word, "the glass is bulletproof. It's going to take more—"

"Shoot the goddamn glass!"

The Marine swerved his head between his commander and the governor and temporarily succumbed to peer pressure in that moment. He raised his assault rifle and pointed it at his own reflection in the large window and let off a loud, chugging burst that blistered the ears of everyone in the small offshoot.

The bullets flattened against the glass, which only gave hairline cracks. In the next second, another Marine screamed as one of the bullets ricocheted off and hit him in the leg. He went down, the impact site gushing a startling amount of blood. Two of his cohorts bent down to provide assistance.

The fireteam leader loudly cursed and rudely shoved Ishir aside so that he could look at the wounded soldier. Ishir did not need the extra encouragement, for he had been looking at the pitiful progress the soldiers had been making in cutting open the door, not to mention the useless assault on the window, and there was the fact that the whirring noises from inside the room had ceased. He began to back up, pushing through the crowd of soldiers, until the corridor from where he had entered from was unobstructed.

Breathing heavily, he slowly turned, out of notice from his escort, and began to walk back down the hallway, his pace escalating to a jog, and finally to a run.

He did not care how much noise he was making as he was hurtling down the endless passageways of the facility. His survival instinct had fully kicked in, telling him to flee, over and over again.

He skidded back into the blood-soaked hallway and slipped in the still damp fluids that had greased the metal floor. He did not go down completely, just to a knee, but his pants were now stained with a dark liquid that had turned the color of tar. He had the urge to vomit, but swallowed that down just in time. Awkwardly, he got back to his feet, his knees now beginning to buckle out of fear. He was only halfway to the elevator bay when the first gunshots exploded behind him.

Panicked, he whirled around. The hallway seemed to tilt menacingly before him, devoid of signs of life. Off in the distance, Ishir realized that the sounds had come from far away, at the end of the corridor and just around the corner. He could hear the chattering of automatic weapon fire, the shouting of Marines, and the buzzsawing of screams as the volley of fire grew thinner and thinner. He cowered on the spot as he listened to the sounds creep closer while simultaneously diminishing in volume.

Very soon, he could see the ends of the hall light up with the reflection of muzzle flashes upon the walls like a malfunctioning ceiling fixture. Ishir mumbled in fear and quickly turned back to the elevator doors. He pummeled the button to go back up several times.

"Come on, come on!" he was all but shouting at the lift, but he might as well have saved his breath.

The gunfire echoed up the passageway. The governor was quite aware that he was sweating profusely now.

He pressed the button some more, now opting to add some choice curses to the mix. His eyes helplessly tracked the digital floor counter just above his head. 2… 3… 4…

Deep in the distance, there was a concussive ripple and the floor trembled from a slight shockwave.

There was a flicker and the lights went out for a heartbeat. Power fluctuation. They came back on before Ishir had a chance to even move from his new frozen position. But now the floor counter was blinking "Err0r," in block lettering on repeat. The elevators had been put into standby when they had temporarily lost power—the lifts were now stuck between floors.

The governor was not an electrician, but even if he was it would not matter because he did not have the access panel handy to reset the breakers. He cried out again in anger and frustration and kicked the door.

The repeated loud blowback sounds of heavy weapons cycling and igniting was enough to tear him from his spot. That, and the last brazen shouts of Marines trying to get their fellows to form up when a raging spurt of automatic fire cut the person giving directives short until there were no more voices to add to the chorus of cordite and destruction.

There was nothing else to do except keep plan A going: run like hell.

So Ishir followed his own advice and booked it through the labyrinthian series. He hurried as fast as he could, nearly running headlong into automatic doors as they tried to open to let the governor though at his rapid pace. Shadows cycled as the tormented electrics tried to compensate for the fluctuations that were now kicking in every ten seconds. It disoriented him and made his movements all the more frantic.

He finally reached a long, tall room that had been carved out of the bedrock of Arbogast. Thick girders bolstered the ragged walls of stone that were colored slateblack. A parade of conveyors roared in an everlasting ensemble, connecting the industrial ovens and the massive water towers that could have very well supplied an entire city on this colony. Stairwells and catwalks mingled together in the same steel wireframe, blending like some intricate puzzle. Confluences of support pillars rose up amongst the automated assembly line, thin light strips about as tall as a man embedded length-wise at regular intervals from top to bottom.

It took Ishir several seconds to comprehend that he was in the manufacturing plant. Arterial corridors above, lined with glass and steel, hovered at a tauntingly far distance.

His eyes scanned the network of metal and, by sheer luck, managed to spot a stairwell that started at the ground floor and helixed up five stories at the very top. From there, he could easily grab a transport back to the main colony and get all the backup he could. There was a way out.

He could not hear the sounds of gunfire anymore. That relieved him—had he skirted his way out of danger?

Ishir reached the staircase and began to climb. He was not in good shape after maintaining a sedentary lifestyle for so long—he was huffing and puffing by the time he reached the third floor. And once he had reached the fifth, his sweating had launched into overdrive to the point where his face was soaked and his clothes damp. But at least he was at the top.

A long catwalk spanned all the way across the room, flanked on both ends by tiny diode lamps spaced a few meters apart. At the far end, the locking system for the exit shone like a beacon at night. Eagerly, he began his trek across.

"Hey, you!" a voice behind him uttered so loud it nearly made Ishir jump out of his skin.

Fortunately, the voice was male, so Ishir knew it could not be the Spartan. It did not stop his adrenaline from coming down any and he was a shaking mess when he turned around, facing one of his own guards that was ostensibly patrolling the perimeter of the manufactory to ward off any undesirables.

The guard blinked, recognizing who he had just shouted at. "Governor… Ishir?"

Ishir let out an involuntary moan of relief. "Oh, thank god! Thank god, I was worried for a minute it might be—"

"Begging your pardon, sir, but what the hell are you doing here? This is not a safe place for you to be!"

"I-I know," Ishir stepped closer to the guard, his body shaking so hard that it was like he had just come inside from a blizzard. "I need you to listen to me very carefully. There's a Spartan loose in the facility. She's killing everyone in sight. You need to raise the general alarm and get every soldier planetside to this place… right… now."

Despite Ishir having made himself quite comprehensible, the guard seemed unconvinced. It was more like he was concerned at the actual state of his boss rather than the cause of why he was in that state to begin with.

"Governor, I… I'm going to need you to calm down, take a few deep breaths—"

"This is no time to be calm, damn it!" Ishir bellowed. His voice echoed about the deep chamber. His eyes were bugging from their sockets and his mouth was etched in angular fear. "Don't you understand?! A Spartan is coming! We need to leave now or—"

Ishir never got to finish his sentence because the bullet that killed his only audience member announced itself with its startling preciseness. It was as if everything was all right in one moment and chaos in the next. The guard's face had suddenly split apart—whether the bullet had come out from the forehead or the jaw, Ishir did not care, because he was suddenly splattered with a great deluge of gore from the guard that it completely obscured his vision. He let out a startled cry, blood dripping around his mouth, and immediately wiped his eyes. The reddish filtered that smeared over him blurred—he blinked rapidly and held his own head in horror as he looked across the catwalk.

Holding a smoking pistol, their arm ramrod straight, a tall and fearsome armor warrior stood in a firing position. They were encased in an outer shell of titanium MJOLNIR armor, iridescent-green like the carapace of an insect. The plating was bulky and created a powerful perception that it was not a human underneath that armor, but a machine. A polarized visor the color of a liquid sun seared dispassionately at Ishir, the face behind that visor equally expressionless, yet a simmering spark in their shielded eyes betrayed their true emotions.

"Oh, god," Ishir squeaked as Kelly came into view. "Oh… god."

Slowly, the Mark V clad warrior strode forward, continuing to hold the pistol out. Heavy steps. They caused the catwalk to rattle with each footfall.

The governor, all sense and reason having fled, turned toward the door at the far end. The green icon, signaling its unlocked state, seemed to tauntingly wink at him. He started to run in that direction, but in mere moments there was another crack behind him and he felt something punch at the back of his thigh and explode out the other end. A scarf of ragged tissue unfurled from the massive hole in his leg and Ishir screamed. He fell to the catwalk floor.

He had never been shot before in his life. All this time, he had found that little tidbit to be a source of pride—not once had he considered just how much it could hurt.

And hurt it did. His leg was searing. It was like it had been run through with a red-hot spear and the impaling device had been left inside. He did not want to look at the wound, for he could already feel the steady liquid throb of his blood trickle from the two holes that now adorned him.

Ishir rolled over on his back and cowered as he saw the Spartan approach. Kelly continued to hold the pistol out, this time aiming at his head. She said not a word as she crept closer and closer, as if she was savoring this moment, trying to make it last as long as she could. Ishir could spy his own crumpled expression deep inside the curved visor's reflection, like he could only hope to negotiate with his own soul and not this mindless monster.

"It was just business!" he screamed as he tried to scramble back with one good leg. "They just paid me! I'm just a link in the chain! Is that worth all this?!"

When Kelly did not respond, Ishir finally dared to get back to his feet. His leg angrily burned, flesh and fibers tearing themselves apart as they could no longer support his weight. He cried out from the pain, but somehow managed to stay conscious.

Limping heavily, the governor had to cling to the guardrail and used his arms to drag himself forward. Kelly followed, a few meters away, still training the gun at Ishir's back, but continued to let the man move on ahead.

After two torturous minutes, he finally reached the door. With a bloody hand, he palmed the lock and it slid open to let him inside. The next room was an airlock, filled with spare environmental suits for venturing outside into Arbogast's deadly atmosphere. Once past the threshold, he frantically pummeled the inside pad so that the door rushed shut, separating him from the Spartan.

Tears blinding him, Ishir let out a savage laugh. Stupid bitch, he wanted to say, but the throbbing of his leg was stealing his breath away.

The smile was soon wiped from his face when there was a tremendous clang and the door unexpectedly bulged inward a foot. There was another brutal slam, then another, and soon the golden visor of the Spartan was visible as she ripped the door apart as easily as peeling paper. She stepped into the airlock now that the way was clear, reunited with Ishir, and brought her pistol back up.

Kelly had formulated a dozen ways of how the governor should pay for his treachery, several of which involved brutal dismemberment. She remained ever still, very much the titanic gladiator of rumor, just thinking of how to make this tiny creature remember his insignificance.

None of her plans would come to fruition, for Ishir beat her to the punch. In his sheer fright, he whirled and launched himself towards the airlock door, ignored the warnings that had been painted on the exit as well as the various suits nearby that he would have needed, and spun the handle.

The klaxons engaged too late to dissuade the governor from his fateful action. The earsplitting wail of the alarms shook the tiny room, but the door had already opened a crack and Ishir had frantically yanked it all the way open. A brutal chill spiked into the room and a nearby hanging thermometer immediately began plunging towards zero degrees.

Kelly was unaffected. The Mark V's armor, outdated though it might be, came with an internal heating system that protected her vital organs from freezing.

Ishir, however, did not have such protection.

The governor stumbled out into the open air of Arbogast, his arms tightly clasping around his torso as his teeth chattered. He soon started to wheeze—the atmosphere was too thin to survive here. He took several steps outside, beneath the caramel sky and over the rusty soil. The rocky land ridged up and out of sight before him, unmarked by trails or beacons. A fractured land, jagged in silhouette.

All the while, Kelly just followed the governor. She had holstered her pistol by now. She would not need it. Not here.

Ishir had dropped to his knees, his face already turning a shade of red. Arbogast's atmosphere was poor and could not filter out ultraviolet rays as easily as Earth's or Reach's. The terrific sunburn continued to worsen, but that was far from the worst of the governor's problems right now. There was just not enough oxygen in the atmosphere to breathe. Inhaling was not providing the right mix for life. It was why the soil here was barren and desolate. Nothing grew. Nothing survived.

And Ishir had been reminded of that fact for the final time.

Coughing and retching, Ishir's head finally sunk to the ground, as if he were embarking into deep prayer. He soon rolled over, his bloodstained face opening to the sky. His breathing was rapid, an arrythmia of inhalations. He brought his hands to his throat, as though he hoped to pull away the invisible hand that was strangling him.

Kelly walked over and stood over Ishir. The governor looked up at her as he gagged. Blood vessels in his eyes had already broken, turning them a deadly shade of red. His skin, though sunburned, had taken on a pale pallor underneath. The veins in his forehead stood out, purple webs throbbing through a translucent membrane.

Ishir mouthed a word. He looked up at his reflection in the demon's visor. Saw his own mask, his violent conclusion.

Kelly, to her part, remained silent.

There was no wind, no sound upon the dry and desolate plain. Only the faint and hushed noises of Ishir's death throes. And the Spartan would stand by his side the whole while, never looking away until the last breath peeled from the governor's throat. For she wanted to be the last thing his shattering eyes ever saw before they darkened forever.

Two pathetic gasps later and Ishir finally reached his unremarkable conclusion. His limbs rattled in their devilish dance for a moment… then stillness.

Even after the light had faded from the governor's face, Kelly continued to stand witness. The only aberration upon that field of rocks. A totem to mark the passing of a man who would remain inconsequential in both the grand and modest scheme of all things.

When it was done, she lifted her head, turned on a heel, and would give the empty body behind her no more thought for as long as she lived.

---

The glow of the hangar bay filled Kelly's vision as she ran toward it. She had left Ishir's body to rot some ten miles back and she had wasted no time in hurrying towards the energy field where her HUD was telling her the Nighthawk was currently parked.

And Armitage.

She felt strangely complete now that she had MJOLNIR armor back on again, even if it was not her Hermes armor. But the Mark V was not unfamiliar to her—it had been the first suit of its type that she had ever worn. Now, she welcomed the additional burst of speed and power, not to mention having a HUD again certainly gave her some comfort with the additional information at her fingertips—or eyelids.

The Prowler upon its landing plinth was facing away from her, at the right angle for Kelly to see that the engines were beginning to glow ice blue. The AI was powering the ship up.

She gave an annoyed grunt as she ran. Well, Armitage had to realize sooner or later that his plan to put her in place did not have a hope of succeeding. He must have figured that now was as good of a time as any to cut and run.

He'll do no such thing.

Kelly put on an extra burst of speed—her feet did not even look like they were touching the ground as she sprinted over the uneven terrain, leaving a caustic dust cloud in her wake.

There was a warping sound as she passed through the barrier—it was designed to keep the atmosphere of the facility contained, not to keep anything physical from coming through. She was now able to hear the roar of the engines as they spooled up. Loader bots scurried all over the ground, ferrying empty crates of supplies. Empty hydrogen tubes dangled from the upper platform like vines and empty air canisters the size of sheds lay on their sides, strapped down by bungee cables.

The Nighthawk was several stories up on the central landing pad. Kelly booked it to the nearby lift upon the side of the massive pillar and hit the switch. There was a sharp whirring noise as she was suddenly lifted into the air. Kelly positioned herself in the center of the platform, her hands clenched at her sides, her head looking upon the lip of the approaching shelf. The sound of the spooling-up engines was crescendoing and hot, stale air was whipping more furiously the further the elevator climbed.

There were two riot units flanking the ramp of the Nighthawk. The last of the base's security, no doubt. Had they realized what had happened to the rest? What she had done to them?

Kelly did not bother going for her weapons. She was running off the lift before it was even flush with the platform.

The closest riot trooper heard the lift, turned, and saw the Spartan running. He brought his weapon up to bear.

Too slow.

Kelly charged him and tucked her shoulder down and elbow angled out. She struck the middle of the riot shield so hard that it folded inward with a tremendous crumpling noise. The force of the impact was so violent that it knocked the trooper clean off his feet. He hit the ground and rolled—clean off the edge of the platform. He let out a panicked scream as he fell away from sight, but Kelly was already moving on to the other and jumped into the air.

The second trooper had his battle rifle out—fired—missed the leaping Spartan by inches. Kelly, at the terminus of her leap, raised both fists in the air and slammed them down hard in a hammering motion. Her blows indented the soldier's helmet so deep that it deformed the skull underneath and cracked his orange-tinted goggles. His weapons left his hands with a clatter as he too dropped to the ground.

There was a screeching sound behind her. Kelly whipped around to see the Nighthawk already in the process of lifting off—the still-extended ramp was scraping along the ground and sending up a thick spray of sparks.

Twisting on a heel, Kelly surged towards the opening and leaped aboard with moments to spare. Through the closing gaps in the ramp, she could see the landing pad twist away as the Prowler turned to depart, and then she was temporarily shrouded in darkness as the ramp finally sealed itself.

The Nighthawk seemed to tremble around her, as though she were a speck of viral coils that was about to become overrun by the immune system of the mechanism. Armitage knew she had boarded.

Kelly felt the pit of her stomach begin to rise and had to suddenly grasp for the closest wall as everything gave a tremendous shudder. Was the Nighthawk going into a dive? From the bone-rattling sensations, it seemed like the acceleration dampeners had been disabled. Everything was shaking around the Spartan to the point where even she had difficulty standing. Creaks and groans resounded throughout the hold, terrible metal noises stemming from the stressed spaceframe.

Damn it all, the AI was trying to knock her unconscious by flying the Prowler in maneuvers that were suicidal to the human body. It was the only weapon he had left at his disposal.

But Kelly was not like most humans.

Reaching forward, she bent her knees and leaped across the cargo bay and snagged a ladder bolted onto one of the stacks of crates that had been tied down. She swung her feet around and used the edge of the container as leverage and slowly crept along its face.

"Armitage!" she roared, not bothering to remain silent anymore.

The AI crooned on the ship's speakers a moment later. "Oh, Petty Officer. We both know there is nothing else we can say. No apologies for our actions. In the end, we're just following orders. Good soldiers, aren't we? Let's see which one of us is left standing."

"It… won't… be… you!" Kelly growled as she swung herself up onto the crates.

The Nighthawk pitched suddenly to the left and she was nearly bucked off the platform, but she used her mag-boots to anchor herself to the metal surface, though a fusillade of unsecured tools shot by her body and some of them actually pinged off her armor, doing no damage.

The ceiling of the cargo bay was a series of latched girders that ran parallel to the other side in even intervals. A hanging garden—just like an obstacle course. She jumped and her fingers grasped onto the beam above her head and she used the momentum of her body to swing herself across the rest of the bay and right next to the exit stairwell.

Just in time, too. Armitage had sent the ship up into a brutal climb by now and suddenly it felt like her skeleton had increased in mass by several tons. She tightened an arm around a nearby guardrail and gritted her teeth as her joints ground together from the overpressure and endured the nearly-vertical climb for several seconds until Armitage forced the Prowler back to level to prevent it from stalling.

Staggering to her feet, Kelly forced herself to climb the narrow steps. The walls shuddered and rattled all around her, almost as if they would collapse in on themselves, compressing her between them.

The Nighthawk was banking left to right rapidly. The AI was getting desperate. Kelly shot her fists out and embedded handholds in the walls, leaving a trail of ruin behind her as she climbed.

"I'm sure you think this is all amusing, don't you? Petty Officer, we both serve the same master. It's just that he uses different whips for his cronies. Just submit. Cease your assault. I promise that this can end reasonably."

Bargaining, are we? Undeterred, Kelly made it to the second floor, but kept ascending. Her tremendous grip coupled with the savage g-forces meant that she was tearing up the handrails, fixtures and all, as she wrenched them out from their moorings—anything for her to gain a grip upon, she used to pull herself up.

"Your presence begets escalation, Petty Officer. I regret it has come to this, but—"

She had finally had enough of his prattle. The Spartan took a moment to wedge her body securely in the thin hallway while she took out her pistol, aimed it at the nearest loudspeaker, and fired. The device exploded into a hail of metal and plastic, and the AI's damnable voice dropped significantly in volume.

With a final gasp, she lifted herself up onto the bridge floor. The pressure door was just in sight—the AI beyond. The lights here had dimmed to a dull simmer, turning the glistening green of Kelly's suit into a shiny black. The gold of her visor continued to roar its infinite gaze and she clawed herself forward with nothing but her destination in sight.

She prepared to reach out and to punch her way through the doorway when all of a sudden, her suit's sensors detected an abrupt drop in the ship's interior pressure. A schematic of the ship in the lower corner of her HUD indicated that two airlock doors had suddenly been opened, according to the flashing icons. Air whooshed through the ship and a rough tugging sensation now gripped Kelly's torso. It seemed Armitage had moved on to his final option—attempting to space her—after his atmospheric maneuvering did little to dissuade her.

A raging howl filled the ship. The sound chilled Kelly's blood. Armitage was going insane with trying to rid her from this ship.

There was not much time. Even her mag-boots had a set amount of time they could be activated, less so if an outside force was exerting against them.

Kelly lunged for the door, broke open the hidden pad embedded in the doorway and input the override code. Another pressure door behind her slammed closed and the warnings in her HUD dimmed. At the same time, the lock icon to the bridge door winked green and Kelly slid it aside with a sharp pull.

The bridge was pristine compared to the rest of the ship, looking exactly as Kelly had left it. Stars churned in the windows beyond and the spherical bodies of Sonatine and its moon whirled in a delicate dance.

The pillar where Armitage's chip was housed shone like a beacon in front of her. She reached out to touch it.

A raking burst of sparks erupted from the pillar and thousands upon thousands of volts surged into Kelly's body. Her shields flared as bright as the sun for a moment before finally breaking. An alarm in her helmet began to ring. With a cry, Kelly dropped to a knee, her armor smoking, muscles helplessly spasming.

The AI had wired his unit to the ship's power system.

Armitage chuckled. He did not ignite his avatar, so Kelly was unable to see the pleasure he was undoubtedly simulating. "I was wondering if you would be hesitant at the last moment. That you would think this was all too easy—"

Kelly raised her head, a dark expression on her face. Not paying attention to what Armitage was saying, she let a feral growl ripple from her throat.

In the next moment, she lashed out with her foot and kicked the base of the pillar, knocking the panel to the fuse box directly into the wiring, shearing the cables that had been strewn tautly against one another, which had the effect of manually disconnecting Armitage from the subsystems.

Hot plasma spurted once and Armitage's voice died from the loudspeakers.

"Wasn't too hard," Kelly grunted.

She got to her feet and quickly grabbed the chip and yanked it from its port. The AI's entire runtime was slaved to that chip—even if he copied himself into the Nighthawk's mainframe, his processes would be too fragmented to effectively recompose the AI's entire persona.

The lights in the bridge flickered, the screens pulsed blue electricity followed by a screen of static. Past the window, the bed of stars slowly floated into a serene backdrop. The Nighthawk had switched over to autopilot.

She held the little thing in her palm. Such a small thing to contain such a nuisance.

Finally, Armitage's avatar ignited from the little emitter on the chip. His obsidian cloak flapped behind him like molten rock. He looked up at her, a regretful expression permanently solidified in his digital eyes. There was no hint of resistance, or at least the approximation of it.

Kelly lifted the chip up. It looked like the AI was caged by her hooked fingers. Armitage just stared at the Spartan and he shuddered as he emitted a tiny sigh.

"ONI knew," he simply said, as though the effort of speaking had unloaded a weight from his shoulders.

Kelly's breath scythed from the air ports at the chin of her helmet. Deep and pulmonary.

"Go on," she said. The AI may have been stalling, but he could do nothing as long as he was physically separate from the ship. He could not even send a mayday signal—Kelly's suit was automatically jamming any close-range transmissions.

"They knew everything. About your… history… with Spartan-119. How your indirect participation forced her eviction from the program. The accident during your sparring session. It was why they chose you for this mission, because they thought you would be the most inclined to finish the job."

Behind the mask, Kelly seethed. She had been viewed as an assassin by these spooks. Not as a soldier. There was a level of indignance that ate at her heart, as if the very fact that she was mentioned in the same breath as Phaedra made it seem like she should share some of the blame.

Well, shouldn't you? the tiny voice in her head mocked.

The AI continued. "ONI thought that your involvement would provoke a psychological response in Spartan-119. That, by placing you on a head-to-head course, Spartan-119 would learn of your intent and would modify her own selfset parameters to one of direct vengeance against your person. ONI anticipated that such a switch in tactics would be considerably sloppier and would expose weak links in Phoenix Squad. And it worked… for a time. Two members of the squad, eliminated. That might not have occurred had you not been sent on this mission—we can only speculate that Spartan-119 sent the rest of her Spartans across the galaxy separately to cover more ground and to monitor your progress. Imagine the struggle that would have ensured if you had to take them all on at once. Already, the mission is considered a partial victory. But it is not complete—you know that, don't you?"

"And…" Kelly growled, "…your efforts in trying to impede me. That was ONI as well?"

Armitage folded his hands together, twiddling his thumbs as if the construct was seriously considering telling a falsehood.

"You were informed," he said evenly, "that this mission was to be fought on more than one front. While there was the direct thread to our galactic security, what you failed to consider were the political implications of your actions."

"Political implications?"

Armitage provided a condescending smile. "Come now, Petty Officer. Politics and the SPARTAN Program have been practically joined at the hip since the program was made public. The Spartans were portrayed to the civilian populace as the pinnacle of humanity and the sum total of all their collective achievements. On that day that the Spartans were unveiled to the populace, you became more than soldiers. You became icons. Symbols. ONI—and by extension, the UNSC—now had a large investment in ensuring you upheld the values that made all of you paradigmatic in the first place. See where I'm heading?"

Kelly paused a beat. She could indeed see the shape of this conversation, but she did not address it lest the very act of doing so would draw her into a part of her existence that she desired never to participate in.

"I know you understand, Petty Officer," the AI nodded. "But let me expand. Did you know that there are no less than four separate charters that are in reference to public opinion of the SPARTAN Program? And all of them feature a very strict set of guidelines regarding operator behavior for any of the program's participants. Of course, the Spartans themselves are never shown these guidelines. The thought process at the time was that presenting you with these additional rules would lead to contradictions that clashed with your training. After all, if the Spartans approached every single objective with consideration to their public appearance, that could potentially jeopardize the sequence of your operations and would only increase the risk of mission failure. Because, as we know, mission completion does not necessarily constitute a victory."

"And so we live and die based on these uncirculated contracts, is that it?" Kelly asked, the glow of Armitage's avatar like a blue spear in the middle of her visor. "That was why Phaedra was targeted to be destroyed?"

The AI just gave a simple smile, as though he knew what was going to happen at the end of all this. "Spartans never abandon missions—Dr. Halsey's indoctrination of you lot was too insidious to impart even a shred of self-preservation. Even if there was a tactical reason for you to leave a battlefield, it has been documented that convincing you, the Spartans, requires an inordinate amount of effort." He spread his hands. "So, if you had been informed that your removal from a mission was a necessity due to your actions, whatever they might be, imparting a negative public reaction onto the program as a whole, do you think anyone would be able to convince you?"

Kelly could not help but bark a sharp laugh. "You make it sound like we're pawns in a grand polling scheme."

"Like it or not, Petty Officer, you have the ability to create the political discourse. Intentional or not, you are the pawn in humanity's internal affairs. Misconduct by you or your fellow Spartans results in negative feedback for the program. A program which, need I remind you, was crucially positioned to be an idealistic source of hope for Earth and all her colonies."

"And any threat to that public image…" Kelly murmured.

"…requires its removal," Armitage nodded. "I had hoped that there would've been an opportunity to have convinced you to walk away, but your connection to the target never made that an option, I fear. ONI never anticipated just how strong your desire to see this mission through would actually be."

"Yeah, well," Kelly dipped her head. "They were wrong about something, weren't they?"

"Indeed."

Kelly walked up to the window, the AI still in tow. She looked past the canopy at the planetoid and its rugged moon before her. Watching the stars sparkle, safe in their nests, touched by light billions and billions of years old.

In her palm, Armitage made a sweeping gesture with a hand. An indication for Kelly to look at something. On one of the nearby monitors, she could see a database folder hanging in midair, all alone upon that digital plain.

"There's still a little more that you should know," the AI said. "I already took the liberty of uploading the last of the files to the ship a while back. Who knows? They just might help you see the whole picture."

The Spartan considered the presence of those files. Was it possible that Armitage was playing a trick on her? That, instead of any pertinent information, he had instead flooded the Nighthawk with viruses, awaiting Kelly to make a stupid mistake? She would have to put the whole database through an intensive scan, obviously, but the nagging thought that those files might be of some assistance weighed distantly in her mind.

Armitage wrung his hands, swaying nervously from side to side. "No hard feelings, Spartan?"

Kelly looked out into space, ever distant. Observing the slow rotation of the moon below. The jagged canyons. The faint whirls of atmosphere. The ice-shrouded peaks. It all looked so delicate from up here.

Her helmet then slowly turned back to face Armitage.

"No hard feelings."

She then closed her fingers around the chip, her digits momentarily blipping through the AI's avatar.

She squeezed.

There was a crunch and the light darkened in her palm.

---

A/N: Next up, the final act. We've gotten this far and it's time to see it through!

Playlist:

Disembark / Fight to Survive
"Cargo High"
Joel Corelitz
Death Stranding (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Jungle Drug
"Beheaded"
Sean Murray
Call of Duty: Black Ops (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

Shaddock, RIP
"Never Give Up"
Clinton Shorter
The Expanse [Season 3] (Original Television Series Soundtrack)

Hidden Rampage / Ishir Flees / MJOLNIR Reveal
"It's an Operating Table. And I'm the Surgeon"
Christopher Drake
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Suffocation
"Hold Your Breath"
Clint Mansell
Mute (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Nighthawk Infiltration
"Protecting the Convoy"
Joris de Man
Killzone 2 (Original Video Game Soundtrack)