The Beginning of the End
Chapter
Five: Don't Touch Forerunner Artifacts
Chapter Five-point-five:
Interlude
Thor 5
Forerunner Structure
Visual Confirmation of Objective
The group grumbled as Randall blasted his flip music through his body's speakers. Randall had become hooked on flip music when he first heard it in an antique shop in the mall. It was on something called an iPod, from some long dead computer company. Anyways he started listening to it, a song called "Shoot the Thrill". Randall listened to nothing but Flip since. The only problem was that almost everyone hated it.
"Human music sucks," one SpecOps elite groaned.
"You'll be sucking your food up a straw in a minute," Randall remarked.
"You'll all be dead if you don't focus on what we're doing," Master Chief said, ending the argument. They had been walking for hours down into the mountain that held the Holy Light. Randall started playing Tetris on his eyelids after about 3 hours, giving most control of his body to Durandul. There was much groaning from the SpecOps grunts, most of which was quickly silenced by the Arbiter.
"Durandul, how much longer?" Randall asked.
"Give it 3 seconds," he answered. The group nearly fell off the edge, the edge of a walkway that was about 3 km off the ground.
"Whoa," Randall said. Immediately Randall started scanning and analyzing things. The room was deep purple with a radius of about 3 km. In the center of the room was a large ball of spinning dust, probably drawn and accelerated by the Speed crystal. Randall issued 3 high pitched chirps and 3 Engineers started ransacking the place. Randall stepped closer to the edge, paused, and leaped. His free-fell lasted 8 seconds before he tucked himself into a ball and transformed into a large falling blob of silver material. He landed in a splash and his body spread out over the floor about 7 feet. He slowly came together again. It looked like a person rising out of a puddle. Once flesh and bone again he sprinted towards the crystal.
"Thisiscrazy," Randall said, well, mumbled when he reached it. The crystal was speeding up his speech, along with all his other actions. His hand plunged into the spinning vortex of dust and debris and silver globs joined the foray. The dust storm pulsed bright green, and then went dead. The vortex slowed and stopped, almost burying Randall in dust. Randall's face reflected the purple light given off by the crystal. He slowly reached for the crystal, and (AN: Suspense!) he grabbed it and retracted fast. The facility hummed, and then started to rumble.
"Whoops," Randall said, crouching and leaping 3 km in the air. He landed on the platform nearest to where the group had spread out. "We need to leave. Now." He issued 3 low pitched wails and the Engineers floated up to the platform. They ran out, while getting pummeled by rocks and dust. Randall turned back and looked at the crystal platform. It had turned from a work of art to a spinning hole, sucking in everything. They reached to surface a whole lot faster than it took them to enter the facility. Randall quickly jumped into the cockpit of the Ares and the Master Chief leaped in after him.
"Punch it," he said.
"Aye-Aye Captain," Randall responded sarcastically as he watched the Arbiter and his Elites fly up the grav lift. The Ares' engines warmed up and the team rocketed up from the planet towards the Marathon, the Ares going much faster than it usually did thanks to the crystal. Randall looked back as Durandul took over the Ares and saw Thor 5 crack in half in a blast of purple and red light…
Interlude: Finally!
Durandul waited patiently for Randall to fall into REM so he could move freely throughout the limited space available to him in Randall's head. His plan looked fine. So many weeks of waiting, and finally Durandul could do what he wanted to do. Durandul packed away his project in a secure directory of Randall's neural lace.