Absolutely hated the chapter . . . Not very good at all. Next one shall be

better, hopefully . . .

In the face of hundreds of Flood, I turned and ran. The first thing that caught my eye was the pod-thing, floating above a small crevice that was lit just a few minutes ago. I jumped down there.

For a few seconds, all was still, until Alicia and then Sortan squeezed into my space. I was rather offended when Alicia huddled next to the Elite – I could see the message 'HELP ME' in his eyes.

"Uh . . ." I began. "Alicia! You're smothering the frickin' alien! Get off him!"

"What?" She exclaimed.

"I said, you're frickin' smothering him!"

"No I'm not!"

"He hates you, then. Get off him."

"There's no where else to go down here!"

"We-ell . . . There's me . . ."

I came to a few seconds later, my face burning. "Ouch . . ." But I quieted down as a the door that we came out of opened. The Flood were entering the mausoleum.

"Where are they going?" I hissed to Sortan.

"To their leader, probably."

"Flood have a leader?"

"I do not know."

Again, we lapsed into silence. The only light in the room was from the six cylindrical table things – like the ones that Cortana's hologram appeared from. I listened to the slow stampings of the Flood as they marched through the mausoleum.

It took a half-hour for all of them to get out. They seemed to be matching speeds at a slow stumble – I didn't wonder about this, but immediately stood the moment I knew they were all gone. Alicia was still fuming – I took her wrist and helped her up. Sortan rose.

Without a word, we trotted back to the door and stepped out onto the bridge once again. The green blood of dripping Flood left a long streak across the alien flooring. Other than that, the bridge was completely empty, a major difference from the first one we crossed.

Sortan continued forward, but I glanced out onto the city. Lights had gone out. The Pelicans had finally stopped coming. The structure in the center of the city was gone, and you could see explosions mushroom from the lower districts now and again.

It was still obvious this was a losing battle. The Flood was altering the atmosphere – spores could be seen everywhere. A huge, bulbous shape was growing along the ceiling of High Charity – like a pimple, or something, but brownish-green. Smaller versions covered the city, and even tinier could be seen growing on the bridge.

"The In Amber Clad's tower is on the other side of this one?" I asked Sortan, trudging on.

"Yes. We must move quickly. I don't think many surviving Brutes or Elites should be in the next tower . . . but I don't know about Flood. I doubt what we just passed was all of them, or even a small fraction, of all that must be coming from the human vessel."

Oh, great. More good news.

We crossed the bridge and entered the tower. The first thing I noticed was: it's dark. The first room just connected the bridge and the first real chamber; four doors surrounded us on every side. Sortan continued forward, activating his energy sword.

The next room once had a grav lift, but no longer. The power for this had failed, too – we couldn't go up or down in the tower. This room was mostly empty; in one corner, a dead Hunter lay quietly. Good.

Sortan led us forward and through the next door. By placing his palm on the cylindrical tables – he called them activation consoles – each door would get a bit of emergency power and open up for a while. The moment we walked into the next area – another valley – I knew we were in trouble. First, it was the Combat Form we immediately ran into. Sortan tore through it, but we marched to a ledge overlooking the artificial basin.

Below, five more Combat Forms slowly patrolled their territory. Brute bodies lay beneath them, some under the water of a small pond directly below us. Sortan immediately turned and ran down the slope. I waited excitedly for the Elite to appear – he did, Energy Sword blazing. Alicia and I began blazing off rounds with our rifles. I found my MA5B, while it fired a spread comparable to a fully automatic shotgun, was extremely good at taking down the Flood.

Once they were all dead, I jogged down the slope and joined Sortan. Alicia quietly followed me.

"Good!" I said. Sortan grunted.

"We better keep moving," he advised. "There are probably more in this valley, and I don't want to stick around for them to come."

As we went up the next slope, another Pelican flew by and clipped the edge of the valley. The sound caused me to leap visibly. Heart beating, we continued upwards as pieces of Pelican wing dropped into the artificial basin.

About two rooms later, we came to the energy bridge connecting us to the In Amber Clad. It was a beautiful sight: the huge crashed starship, jutting out majestically from the purple Covenant tower. Every now and then, some still-volatile piece of machinery would explode, sending a shower of sparks and steel onto the city below.

The three of us stared. But there was still a problem: without any power to the tower, the energy bridge wasn't activated.

Without a word, Alicia stepped up to the interface near the bridge. The console was completely dark – she tried tapping a few buttons, but nothing happened. "It looks like we're going back in."

"Ohh crap," I sighed.

"There should be two command consoles on our level," Sortan told us, "by activating both of them, we should get the grav lift working . . . which can take us to the ground level and into the next tower."

"The command consoles won't let us activate the energy bridge?" Alicia asked, as I quietly began banging my head against a wall.

"No. Because most of the energy has shut down in the city, this means that most emergency power has been diverted to maintaining a breathable atmosphere. Using the command console, we can use a little power to activate the grav lift, but not the energy bridge, because the console was designed to be used for escape from the towers or entrance into the towers."

I didn't listen to him. I just wanted to be out of this damned city, maybe back on the Cairo . . . Or even on Earth. Yeah, in a nice, soft bed . . . with chocolate! And cookies –

"We'll need to split up for this." Sortan commanded.

"Noooooo!" I moaned.

Ignoring me, Alicia replied, "Okay. I'll hit one command console, you hit another . . . Nathan will head to the grav lift and tell us when its working. We'll meet there."

I stopped banging my head against the wall, and quietly walked inside the tower. Inside, Sortan added, "I'll head left, you head right, human. The command consoles should be on opposite sides of the tower."

They walked off. I stepped through the frontal door and began moving back into the tower. I assumed they wanted me to go to the first grav lift we came across, and that I did. Marching forward, I was sure that I'd run into something soon enough . . .