Author's Note: For your information, I write this author's note before writing the story, mostly out of laziness. So at the moment, I have no idea if I have released this on time. I'm hoping I can as much as you. So you are ether relieved or angry depending on when you are reading this. Hope it's not the ladder. Hope you enjoy!

Re-Author's Note: Same as before, edited format and fixed a few spelling errors.

Chief POV:

The trip to the phantom was rather uneventful. The may have cleared the path I was taking, even the hanger was empty. The ultra went up to a table by the entrance of the phantom. "As per our agreement, we provide a weapon." "That is just a plasma pistol." "Yes, if you didn't know the general you angered was also the general that decided your weapon. I had managed to convince him to also provide a pair of plasma grenades." "I've worked with worse." I placed the grenades in the grenade pocket and strap the pistol on my side. "As a personal gift, also take my active camo pack." He hands me his pack from his back. "Thanks, this will be helpful. I do have one question though." "What is it?" "Why are you going out of your way for me? It's pretty obvious most of the covenant still despise me, but why not you?" "The covenant have done many bad things, and I see that. I actually almost joined the heretics, as they made more sense then the prophets. Then you ended the war. I owe my gratitude to you for the stop of the mindless violence. As you had said, we killed likely hundreds of human, many of them innocent, for every one of our soldiers you killed. Least I can do is be kind to any humans that I come across. I can only hope it can at least grow farther and make amends for what we did" "That went far longer than it needed to be, but I do like the sediment. Hopefully if I get back, and you ever need anything, don't hesitate to get in contact with me for help. I will do anything in my power to help." "I am forever grateful." He bowed slightly as he said it. I hope he doesn't realize I don't know his name. I can never remember sangheili names. Also hope he doesn't notice that I took his sword. That would be bad. Probably. Maybe. It will be fine.

We made our way into the phantom, with the hunters in tow. The ultra says something in sangheili into the cockpit before returning. "2 minutes before we leave." "So has the monitor told you guys anything more than he needed a strong Reclaimer?" "No, we had found it strange. Oracles tend to not stop talking, but this one is adamant on speaking as little as possible." "I just hope this one won't try to kill me." The phantom started up, swaying the entire cabin. "Calm down, the oracle has yet to kill any of your people on purpose." "Wait wh…." The rest of my question was cut off as the phantom launched out of the hanger, slamming me into the wall at the surprise launch.

Once I recovered and the ship slowed to a manageable speed, I finally got a couple of words in. "You planned that didn't you?" I had no idea what sound he started making, but my best guess is it is the hardest an elite can laugh, and likely ever laughed. "Was that pay back for ruining your chances at a promotion by angering the general? That's about the only thing I can think of that I did." Calming down to something that actually sounds like a laugh, the ultra finally responded. "No, it was for robbing me of my sword." And he continued chuckling. "How did you even notice that?" Calmed down to the point he stopped laugh, he responded, "You know our swords are linked to our shields, so it will never run out of energy as long as it's in our possession. My shield produced a alert the moment it left my person." "I was always curious how you used them for so long. So do you want it back? I mean if you do it's fine but it's always nice to have a good secondary…." "Keep it, it's not even my sword." "Then whose is it?" He chuckled a bit before replying, "General Grykan 'Radomai has been missing his sword for weeks now." "You didn't. Would that happen be the same..." "Yes it would. And yes I did. He really is not a good General. We should get ready, we reach our destination soon." It was my turn to laugh. "Let's hope I get to use it a bit, so I can give him it back used by the demon himself. Almost as good as an autograph." "I think he would rather enjoy that."

The phantom doors open and we walk right into the Forerunner structure. It looked Forerunner, all the metal, pulsing lights, and even a few sentinels flying around. But, something was a little different. All the pulsing lights, and even the sentinels, glowed purple. I have never seen this type of Forerunner structure. The lights really are bugging me. We head to the entrance, but the door is surrounded by a purple energy dome. "Oracle, a reclaimer requests for you." The door inside the dome opens within seconds. "Who have you brought me this time?" A monitor turns the comer as he finished the sentence. The monitor appears to have a dark green bulb, contrasting the bright purple around the area. He comes right up to the edge of the dome. "Interesting, he is registering as an unknown in the system, his armor must be interrupting my scans. Please come, protocol dictates I need to perform a thorough analysis." He turns back towards the door. "Wait, what do you mean you can't read what I am? Other monitors recognized me as Reclaimer, even with the armor." The monitor stood still for a moment. I noticed something odd about the monitor's back. His front had looked fine, but his back was covered in dents and scratches. I even think I see a sparking wire somewhere in there. He turns back at us and started speaking. "My database contains no records of other monitors." Curious, let's test his knowledge a bit. "Does your database have information on the halo rings?" He paused for a moment. "The halo rings are weapons of mass destruction, designed as a last resort against the flood. They are currently under construction and due to be finished in approximately…." He froze for close to a minute before finishing. "Infinity centuries. Hmm, my internal clock appears corrupted. I am very sorry, if you ask one of the researchers currently entering the facility, I'm sure they could help you." "No one is entering the facility." He froze again. "Welcome to Research Facility 057, I am the facility monitor, 001 Trenchant Guard. I am here to provide assistance to the researchers of this facility, and that includes getting new researchers such as yourselves familiar with the facility. Please follow me for your official tour." The shield fell, and Trenchant turned towards the door.

What happened to him? He's acting delusional, at least by monitor standards. I decide to follow, and the ultra tries to follow, but the shield reactivates before he can get in. I look back at the ultra , "I'll be right back, just hope he doesn't kill me first." "Hope is the only thing you have." "Hurry, we do not have… Interesting, you are registering as an unknown in the system….all day!" The door closes behind me, and I start following the monitor through the hallway.

Sentinels swarm about, more than a few into walls and closed doors, parts all over the place, and doors that refused to close. Most rooms didn't have windows into them, but the ones that do look like they've seen better days. Destroyed equipment, smashed sentinels, and different colors splattered on walls. One room we passed by was two thirds filled with a bubbling black slime, and another one had a window smashed outward, with claw marks just everywhere around the room. All this damage seemed recent, maybe a couple weeks at most, a couple days at least. "What happened here?" "Something has infiltrated the facility, an unknown in the system. Appears to have come from main observation area approximately….. Experiment 356 escaped containment, location main observation area…. Error 427 in main monitor program, head to main observation area for backup reset… Now here is area you will be working, biological engineering." He turns towards… a wall. "Please follow me to your work area." He then proceeds to slam into the wall. Well I guess all the action is in the main observation area. "Where is the main observation area?" "Protocol dictates new recruits can only visit the main observation area if they have been requested by the head researcher…. The main observation area is this direction." He then went flying down the hall, to the point I had to run to keep up.

We got to a door at the end of the hallway. The door was at least twice as big as the other doors. Trenchant turns just five feet away from the door into a wall, again. The door opens anyway, so I walk carefully around Trenchant and head to the room.

I enter the room on the side, in the front row. The area reminds me of a college classroom, only Forerunner. Rows rising in elevation for each row and Forerunner consoles lining the rows. Only where the chalk board and front wall would be, it was a huge observation window. I also notice a window about a quarter of the way down was smashed inward. On the other side of the glass, was…. A portal? I'm not sure. It was rectangular in shape, about 5 meters in height and 4 meters in width. It was black along the edges, about a meter thick. The texture looked almost pixelated, but it was just the colors, as I could tell it was smooth. The inner area was swirling mess of purple. Purple particles, almost ember like in how they moved, constantly came out of the purple area. I decided to look at some of the consoles first.

Most appeared barely functional, flickering and being blurred. I got to the top row, when one along it caught my eye near the middle of the row. I went to it to take a look. It appeared somewhat functional, coming in and out of focus in random intervals. At first all that was on it was words in something I can't understand at the top, and a large circle in the center. However, in a few seconds the words change into English. 'Monitor Maintenance and Repair'. That's right, Trenchant had said he had an error, and he needed to go here. Maybe I can fix the mess he is in. I head back into the hallway to find Trenchant still hitting the wall. I grab him and hurried to the console. "What are you doing?! This is against protocol! Lunch is provided by the facility. Error 467 found…" I push Trenchant into the circle on the console, and the console starts going through the actions it was performing on screen. 'Collecting Data', 'Error 427 Detected', 'Error 467 Detected', 'Error 573 Detected', 'Internal Clock Corrupted', 'Facility Controls Corrupted', 'Database Corrupted', 'Repairing Errors', 'Replacing Corrupted Data', 'Damaged Shell Detected', 'Transferring Data To New Shell', 'Destroying Damaged Shell'. The leftover monitor dissipated, and the console returned to saying 'Monitor Maintenance and Repair'. Well that was… informative. I thought there would be more.

The entrance door opened and a monitor entered. Definitely cleaner and less damaged, but other than that, looked just like Trenchant. He came up to me right away. "Thank you! You have potentially saved this facility from myself!" "What exactly happened?" "Well, the Precursor artifact started giving irregularities in data. A signal was sent to ask for a nearby researchers to return to the facility. Protocol dictates only Forerunners and Reclaimers can enter the artifact." "Wait, enter? What is this thing?" He looks towards the portal. "That is still unknown. I transfers those who enter to another dimension, as many different laws of physics and gravity are not present there. The dimension wasn't explored much due to the invasion of the flood forced all researchers to work on a solution. This facility has been vacant for some time now." "Then what caused all the mess?" "I did, at least in the state I was in. Someone entered the facility and attacked me. They damaged my database card, setting many primary functions to unidentifiable code and setting my internal clock to infinity! I was receiving all commands I have ever been given, all received data, and all movement data, all at the same time and constantly receiving all of it again every possible chance! My system just couldn't take it!" "Wait, someone was in here? About how long a go?" "Around a week by your standards of time." "You said something earlier, about an unknown infiltrator in this room, were you referring to that person?" He stops for a moment, "Yes, that would be correct. An unknown form entered through the precursor device on the day I was attacked and returned an hour later through the device as well. I can pull up some security footage if you would care to see it." "Pull it up. If someone made it here, and knew enough to disable a monitor that way, they likely knew what they were doing." Trenchant looked at me for a moment, as if processing what I said. "That would be a possibility, however its attack patterns would suggest what happened was one of the best out of the possibilities. Here, this console is the security panel. I will see about the repairs that are required." He moves to one of the consoles farther down the row and starts interfacing with it. "Odd, appears to be power fluctuations from the power room. I will head there and fix the problem. Please stay here, some of these consoles are still active even if you can't see them, so don't touch any of them." Trenchant left and the room became quiet.

This was a bad time to remember the other thing that Trenchant had said, about an experiment escaping and being in the main observation room. I mean, he could have been referring to something a while back, right? But it was also right after the thing with the intruder, so they may have been close together. Oh no, maybe it followed the intruder out. That would definitely not be good. Doesn't matter what it was, it would probably not be a good thing if it got out of this facility. Actually, if it was still alive after all this time, then that thing would be tough. It would have been here since the first firing of the Halo Rings. That's a scary thought. If it survived. I still can't be sure, could have been an innocent a long time ago.

All the consoles lit up simultaneously. Looks as though Trenchant knows what he was doing. The security station started going through the different cameras around the facility. I only saw a part of the destruction of this place. Areas were caved in, destroyed sentinels all over the place, and… oh shit. I forgot about that. The camera showed the inside of one of the rooms we had passed on our way in. The one with scratch marks all over the room and the smashed window. From the angle of the camera, I can see towards a fairly large room off to the side. The room had what looked like hay covering the floor, bones scattered along the floor and a twisted tree in the middle. The room was shielded, but nothing alive was in there. That's definitely not good.

"Well, the power has been restored to full power. Something had cut some wires, but it was a simple replacement of wires." I'll deal with the thing later, for now let's see what infiltrated this place. "Alright let's find out who got in here." Trenchant flew up to the console and pulled up some footage. It shows from a top right corner of the room with the portal, aiming towards the front of it. After a couple of seconds, a black figure walked out of the portal. It was tall, above all else. It was close, if not taller then me. He was humanoid in shape, but was real lanky, thin and long arms and legs. It even looked a bit like it was wearing a hoodie. A hood protected his face, baggy sleeves, reached the ends of his hands, and even appeared to have pockets in it. Dark black and baggy pants even came close to covering his shoes. This thing looked more like a depressed teenager then something that came from another dimension. As it came to the glass, Trenchant changed the camera to this room, the camera being squarely on the portal with a widened view. Sense this camera was up on the higher rows, we still didn't have a view of its face. Once it reached the glass, it raised its right arm and punched through the glass. Definitely strong, not much can break through Forerunner glass. When he punched through, you could see the hand. It was quite pale, but looked like a human hand. Something is off with this thing through. The body proportions are all off for a human that can punch that hard with little effort. It walks through the broken window and then turns to the door. It does appear to know what it's doing, he doesn't even look for the door.

Trenchant changes the camera to one aimed at the other side of the door. The door opens, but it has its head down, so we can't see his face. I notice two purple rectangles sitting or the hoodie, almost like eyes. I can definitely tell it is a hoodie, this camera is real close to it. It continues to walk through the hallways and Trenchant keeps changing the camera to follow it. It's becoming clear that it knows the facility. It moves throughout the facility without any hesitation and knows to keep its face hidden from the cameras.

We get a camera angle of it walking down a long hallway, back towards us, but it stops just within range of the camera. It doesn't move, almost like it notices something and is trying to distinguish what it is. A few seconds later, Trenchant turns the corner on screen. He notices it,and starts moving toward it. I see Trenchant's bulb flicker meaning he was saying something. Once Trenchant got within about seven or so feet of it, it disappeared. Poof, gone in a light cloud of purple particles like the ones around the portal. And at the same time, appeared in a similar cloud. On the back of Trenchant. Its tall body made it look a little uncomfortable, legs bent to hold itself with its feet firm on each side, one arm pulling itself as close to Trenchant as possible, which was closer than possible by normal or even abnormal levels, and the other arm appeared to be inside the back of Trenchant. Trenchant starts to fall, light flickering out. It disappears again, in the same manner as before, reappearing farther down the hall. The video then cuts out. Yeah, definitely something not normal.

"What happened to the video?" "My system had told it to stop. Security systems came on and off in random intervals during over the the time before you came along." "Are you able to figure out what it wanted?" "I will run an inventory check, however it will be difficult to pinpoint what is missing through what was destroyed." "Do it. We need to know what it took." "Alright, I will go now." Trenchant left, leaving me to my own devices once again.

(Note to author: Stop while you still can, you are over a thousand words more in this chapter alone then the entirety of the original story! Stop at this decent stopping point!)

Author's Note: I was going to continue, and I had to stop myself from doing it. I was honestly trying to keep a similar sequence of events from the original story, you know chapter one ended just before the take off to the structure, and chapter two ended at chief going through the portal. However, I wanted to add more of a reason to go through the portal, as well as create a possible end to the story. I had the idea of Trenchant Guard before I even before working on the first rewritten chapter. He was also a major factor in deciding to rewrite the story. I liked him that much. I had plenty of ideas to show his broken side a bit more, but they just didn't work out, so if he was a little underwhelming, that's why. What's even worse is I flushed a few things out in this story so far and none of it will even be seen again till the end of the story. I should probably end the author's note now, as to not increase the word count. But the good news, it was on time! Extra long chapter for no charge! (Kill me now) So hope you enjoy, next chapter will likely be two weeks, and the chapter after that three. But it should stop increasing there. I will be resume updating my other stories at that point so if you want, with my other stories included, there will be an update every week! That will be good won't it? Favorite, follow, and review your thoughts and until next time, see ya!