5: Hammer of Thor Chronicles: The Augment

by La Aardvark

Somewhere in the deep of space, there is a world, and its sun. On a periodic cycle of three days, this duo will disappear, though to where no one knows, and then return. Going there is quite possibly the biggest mistake ever made...

7. Somehow Still Friends

7: Somehow Still Friends

ANUNA-02

I was impressed. Pained, yes. The Machine felt some of it, I was sure, but I was as finely attuned to my old nerves as ever. When Flint struck me, I felt it, and I wanted to double over in unquestionable agony. He was doing a fine job of breaking me in half, augmented and super-powered or not. My faith was not in vain, it seemed, even as I choked and gasped, fighting down my sense of self-preservation.

I wanted this… wanted to die. That 'Zelis would grant me a warrior's end was more than I deserved. I just wished I could fight the Machine down, too, and force it to stop fighting back. It got some nasty hits back on 'Zelis, in turn, and I was forced to watch as we slugged him back, knocked him down, threw him aside.

The Machine was holding nothing back, as terrified of 'Zelis' potential as I was assured of it. But the Machine did not know how to fight like a bipedal two-armed organic creature, and it was sloppy in its mechanical brutality. It fought, I understood, like a Machine. Everything was broken up, a little angular, and hopeless. There was no finesse, no style, no grace at all.

If it understood the depth of its flaw, it did not show. 'Zelisee seemed no less his old self, breaking me apart a little at a time, throwing aside the Machine's meager defenses and striking through them as if they did not exist. I felt it when the armor over my front finally could take no more and the metal shattered apart like tough glass. Shrapnel exploded from the fist he embedded in my chest, and it threw me down. The Machine floundered, unable to fathom that if it just tossed our legs over our head, we could ride our falling momentum and be back on our hooves. No grace.

I did not share, and held in my scream when 'Zelis came after us and lifted us bodily off the mossy ground with the most savage kick I had ever endured. I felt as if he might have taken a Scarab leg to effect the strike, but it tossed us into a roll so we hit face-down, and the Machine just shrugged off the nervous reports and stood us back up. We charged back after him, the Machine angry that its new toy was not good enough to win against a combination of my old friend and its old nightmare. Indeed, I found it a suitable combination.

When we hit, the sparks of jumping electric charge on his combat skin reached back and smashed into our fists, searing off flesh and roasting agonizing heat down through our bones. But impact had damaged the outer layer of his armor, and our next hit, with our other fist, sent a terrible looking crack snaking up across his chest to end at the shoulder I knew he favored. He staggered back, knocking against a tree for a heartbeat before peeling away from it so we smashed bark instead of his face in our pursuit. Rounding on him, he met us with a stiff blow that bashed our head off that same tree we had just debarked, and while it made my marbles roll dizzily, the Machine just reset, blinked the fuzz out of our eyes, and returned as if unhurt.

'Zelis was killing me, and had the Machine not been in control, I would have dropped in a useless heap several punishing blows ago. He got us by the head, and brought us down over a rising knee, smashing our throat across it with enough force to drop even the Machine to our knees. We gagged there for half a second before 'Zelis got a boot under our mandibles and flipped us over ourselves again.

By the time we made impact, the Machine had gotten my throat open again, and we could breathe. Rising, we saw he had brought those shoulder-mounted mini cannons out again, but the Machine just charged through the terrible hail and tore one of them right off of him. Somewhere behind us, I could just hear that familiar soft hum of an approaching teardrop. Doubtless the sound of our battle was attracting attention… but the last thing I wanted was for 'Zelis to be felled by a robot when I needed him to finish me… to finish the Machine.

My elbow came up and back, and knocked him in the side of the head, slugging him over sideways back into that same tree from a moment ago. He rattled against it for a moment, but before he could come back with anything, the Machine wound up as much energy as our augmented muscles could contain and smashed the bones in my left hand breaking through the broken armor over his chest. Several fragments lanced away as glistening, steel-colored bone shards came flying out the arc-burned hole in that wrist. The Machine did not care if it broke me to bits killing 'Zelis… and we sent the shattered end of that arm back in for another punch, this time with no blunting end (a hand) on the tip.

I screamed in protest when I felt ribs snap.

No! 'Zelisee could not lose! I could not bear such an end!

We pounded mercilessly until he could take no more of our abuse and caught the side of my face in his hand, crushing both mandibles on that side down into one another as he yanked me over and down, unbalancing me. I would have laid down willingly, much of my body throbbing and in broken agony, but the Machine was not done with me yet.

'Zelisee raised his other hand and brought it down over my head, lifting with his grasping hand as he did so. The punishing impact sent shudders of dizzy fatality all down my frame, letting me know that his head-crushing tactic was about to earn him the victory despite the Machine's desperation.

I could never bite him with his fist crushing my mandibles, anyway. But the Machine did not want us to lose – did not want me to die. I begged for it to give up, but it would not listen – if anything, it raged all the more against my counsel. My spine arched, and the Machine snapped us out of 'Zelis's grasp directly after the third crushing strike. We staggered backwards a few steps, but when he came off the tree and came after us, moving haltingly but no less quick, the Machine caught him by his leading fist and spun us around, hauling up and then back down as he threw the hapless human right into the tree opposite the one he had been up against a moment before. I saw him flip fully over, crashing into the wooden pillar and shaking leaves loose some five hundred feet above us.

I railed against the Machine, desperate to make it let go of me. I did not want it to win, and certainly I did not want to be forced to watch as I was made to kill him. This was not what I had wanted! 'Zelis sagged where he landed, obviously wheezing. The Machine stalked after him, intending to finish it.

We grabbed him by the lip of his helmet and brought our broken, ruined hand down across it, using the busted end of that arm to smash the helmet from around his head. Bringing him up from the ground I saw his favored arm hung entirely limp – but that did not stop him from catching me by my mandibles again (was that a favorite latching point, or something?) and twisting us around to the side. Once we were swayed over and off our balance again, he pushed himself up and stomped down hard sideways across our leading knee.

The joint snapped instantly, and we both went down. 'Zelis came down on top of us, though, and with his good arm he bludgeoned our head until surely he had broken the flesh and could see the steel glinting out at him from under the blood. He did not seem to care if he did… but though blinded now in one eye, the Machine still had a few tricks to employ. First it took our arms and caught him by his remaining good arm, and rolled us out from under him. When he tried to kick us off of him, the Machine rotated us out, and using my destroyed hand, stabbed him through the hole in his armor. My bones splintered as they parted metal, the armor apparently better made than they. But when the muscle tissues of that plunging arm met the broken ribs I had felt cave earlier, they were only stripped away from my bones, clawed back as if by some great mechanical claw.

'Zelis has metal bones, too?

I felt the ground stir, and around us, trees began to sway, tipping precariously in both directions before finally, the first one collapsed. Wood screamed as it tore apart, fibers long and sharp shattering out in all directions as it came down. The other trees were too disturbed to stop it, and many of them collapsed in like manner around us.

One came down across us, and swept 'Zelis away so I could nolonger see him. I let out a long and mournful wail, aware that while I would not survive my encounter, I had struck an equally condemning blow. In all my years as a warrior, I had never once met a human capable of surviving having their middle perforated. It was, much like my own people, a tender area filled with many important organs.

Even as much as I had wished it would not be so, I knew the Machine had killed him… it had won. We tumbled down into the bottom of what I suppose had once been a shuttle bay along with the dirt and settling wood fragments, but I did not wish to know what happened next.

.

FLINT-093

When I finally finished tumbling, another swath of wood came and shoveled itself right into me, peeling up my broken alien armor and breaking it away, sending the mangled pieces clawed off of me away to hide them under heaps of splinters and moss.

At first I lay where I'd been tossed, aware I was more beaten than I'd ever before been in my whole life. My bum shoulder had shattered, tearing away, and I knew at least one of the bones in that forearm had snapped as well. I didn't know if there remained a single whole rib on my right side anymore, either… but I did know that I had not been left to poke myself full of holes on my own with the shards. Anuna had used the broken ends of his own ulna and radius to make sure I had holes aplenty in there.

Every breath hurt like plasma fire, and while I hadn't the capacity to choke yet, I could literally feel the blood racing up my bronchial tubes. If the thing was just that broken or if that was just how it came off I have no idea… but when I pushed on the lip of my shattered helmet, it lifted free of the jawline seal. When it was off, I managed to get most of the glass fragments off my face, but I knew it was a shredded mess.

So much for not having marked my face with scars.

Still, if I lived long enough to scar over, I doubted I'd truly want to. But Anuna was still out there, and I didn't need him ambushing me like the damn robot he was pretending to be. He'd put up a good act, too.

I rolled over, getting my ruined arm out from under me, and shoved up on my good elbow. Getting my legs beneath me, I pushed into a seated position, looking around at the settling timbers. I was now in an enormous hole in the ground, some fifty or so feet below the old ground level. Funny… I hadn't realized there were trapdoors in places other than the cleared areas. Perhaps this one was just embedded deeper, deep enough to support those massive trees atop it. At any rate, I didn't see any metal to suggest it was deep enough to contain all the dirt and wood it had just tried to swallow.

But despite the heaps and piles of wood spears gathered around me, I could almost tell where to look for Anuna. I wrapped my good arm around my wounded ribs, and with as much effort as I had left, I got to my feet one more time. My broken shoulder hurt, but not in the same way I was used to – it had my attention, but not all of it. I had gotten used to getting pain out of that joint, just not to this degree. It hurt when it dangled, but I was more concerned about the mulched ruin behind my broken ribs. Coming out over the top of the tallest heap of wood splinters bigger than a typical Pelican, I finally spotted him.

Damned if he didn't look like he was trying to get back up, shoving wood bits away and clawing at them. I set my jaw against the pain, and made my way across the gap. I was less than four strides from him when he finally turned his head, lifted to an elbow but no farther up, and looked dead at me.

I didn't wait for it – I just dropped to my knees, wrapped my good arm around that head and braced a knee into his shoulder. He clawed frantically at me for a split second, until I extended my torso and rolled against him, twisting too far for his flexibility to follow.

The sound I got when his motions went stiff and twitchy was not the crunch of dislocating bone, but the screech of scoring metal. Still, his arms fell limp to the mulched ground, and I knew he was finally dead.

I sat there like I was, on my knees, my good arm wrapped around his head, looking down at his frozen face. His skull had caved on one side, his teeth blunted inward at the front of his face, and the eye socket under the caved place nolonger contained an eye. But the other was intact, and still open, seeming to stare accusingly at me from within a lifeless face.

I couldn't breathe anymore, but I knew the pain in my chest was not because of my broken ribs.

I had torn him apart, smashing and crushing and breaking until at last, I had killed him. Anuna was dead, gone. Sitting there half-curled over his collapsed form at the bottom of a pit filled with broken trees and splintered branches, I was reminded of a certain Brute Chieftain and the fate he had dealt to a certain small child.

I had failed, in as much as this had been the sought end result, again.

I drew the body up closer, feeling lightheaded. My mouth had filled with blood, and I knew it was running down my chin, but I didn't, couldn't, care. What I now held was everything I had left, and I didn't feel there was anywhere else to be but right here.

He had called me brother.

.

TORI-138

Artemis looked sad. Looking down into those brilliant, liquid gold-on-green eyes, I felt I knew more about why than I fully deserved to. She wanted to know where her human was – cats adopt humans, not the other way around – and she seemed to understand that I, guilty as I felt, knew where he was.

Knew, it seemed, where he would never be again. She had been Grace's cat before, but though I had kept her for my own reasons, she had not become my cat. She was Flint's cat… and she missed him. Missed him as much as I did, but with much more innocence. She had not betrayed him, had not turned her back on him, had not walked away.

Had not been the one to condemn him to a fight that I had seen he didn't start. Yes, he had argued for its occurrence. But I had seen the Elite start it. I had walked away anyway. I had left, but ever fiber in my being wanted to go back, make amends, perhaps separate the two if I possibly could.

Make them understand… if that was possible. But if either one were still alive at this point, I knew it was by far too late to go back, to try to affect anything now. It was too late to fix it, too late to seek absolution.

I had condemned my soul to a dark, forbidding place at the bottom of the deepest pit. I had thought that losing my friends at the asteroid had been rough… but I had not betrayed them, had not been the one to put them down. I had been trapped behind a sheet of plexi-steel, and made to watch as they were reduced to ash. It was where I had gathered the rage to be able to pull the trigger when I found Tam after the fact.

Now, it was I who stood in his shoes, and I found myself at very much the same fault. I had done as he would have, and now I found myself wallowing in my guilt and unable to fathom a way to fix any of it.

All the reports of Spartan and Elite hand-combat that I had read always put the Spartan in a bad place… it was why very few of anyone ever tried to pound an Elite into the floor. It was just too easy to lose. So, given the attitude of the Elite in question, I knew the odds of it being Flint to walk away from that fight were rather small.

Being a scientist, I could easily disassemble the situation and analyze it until I was blue in the face… but sitting there on the bed we had shared and petting the cat who refused to sit in my lap, I knew I had been wrong… and I had committed an unforgivable sin against him.

Against both of them.

I wanted to fly away, wanted to go up to the bridge, and fire up the engines. Flint had said that being here was a bad idea. Time to leave, he'd said. But while I felt I had no one to wait for – if Anuna appeared at the airlock I would surely panic and fly away then – I still did not feel I had the strength to leave it that far behind.

If it was some lazy, half-hearted, meager attempt to regain some form of hope, it wasn't obvious enough for me to fully grasp. Lifting Artemis' front paws in a hand in an attempt to draw her near, I watched instead as she pulled her paws free and leapt down off the bed, meowing as she went down. Once on the floor, she raced away through he door and off down the hall, abandoning me in the same way I had done to Flint.

It hurt, but it was no less than I felt I deserved.

.

ANUNA-01

I felt as if I had been pitched down a long and dark tunnel to plummet freely to my death at the bottom. Impact woke me as if from a terrifying nightmare, and I surged against the glass as if a thing possessed. I slapped against it bodily at first, my eyes popping open wide as my face made contact with the smooth surface. I fumbled my arms for a moment, but when my elbow struck something behind me, I twisted on instinct away from it, gathering at the other end of the tube.

I felt my expression wither into horror at what I saw there – waving softly in the still, stale air inside the narrow tube, I saw the neural contact cables that had a moment ago stolen away all semblance of my life.

Had not I died? I recalled vividly the sight of 'Zelis, standing over me, bloody, wounded beyond all hope of recovery, and yet standing still. I remembered the feel of his hand closing over my cheek, his arm coiled around my head.

And I remembered the knee in my neck, and the sudden moment of absolute terror before he had jerked my neck apart. I had died. I was dead.

But then… how could I still be in this tube, facing down those cables swaying before me, breathing hard and still as nude as I had been when I had first arrived in this little chamber? Slowly, slowly, the truth trickled in. That form sent out across the forest… that was not me…

When the cables suddenly stiffened and lunged for me, I leapt away, kicking at them as I clawed for purchase against the smooth, cornerless surface surrounding me. I felt them bite into my unprotected shins, but I kicked them loose again and braced myself at opposite ends of the tube to wriggle my way up. I was not going to be made subject to that shame again! No way was I that weak.

Familiar hands reached out from the same arms I had come to know so well, and a body long and sinewy from battles and work that I felt at one with extended out behind my head. I was fragile, and as the brilliant violet blood poured down my clawed shins and across my hooves, I knew that I was myself again.

I was normal. I had not, it seemed, been changed. I had been downloaded, not into an augment but into a construct, and when contact had broken with the construct, the Machine had been unable to hold me. Now I was free, I was going to escape. I hit the sphincter door at the top of the tube and shouldered into it, pushing with all my might until it buckled and bent.

I got a hand on the lip at its edge and hoisted myself up and out, into the dried dissolution reservoir above. Looking up, I saw the entrance doors were still open… I had only to make the fifteen-foot depth to the surface and I was free. Immediately I raced on the legs mother had borne me with to the nearest wall, and leapt to it to climb up to the lip of the open doors. When I got over that final edge, I stood up, and filled my lungs with clean air. I was free!

I leveled my gaze at the tortured trees around the clearing's edge, calculating almost before I was done celebrating. I ran my empty hands down my bare chest, just to feel my own skin again, pondering the data the Machine had unwittingly given me. I knew where I was… I knew where I had been… and I knew where I needed to go.

But I had to hurry.

Bracing against the turned soil under my hooves, I bent into a rushed run, pelting naked through the woods as quick as I could, hoping to pass any robots by without gathering their interest. The last thing I needed now was to be cut down shy of my reach for salvation, for absolution. I had a massive debt to repay, and I meant to repay it before it was too late to matter.

I saw a robot or two, but they looked more interested in the study of their fallen brethren than in seeking new prey to hunt. It felt so good to nolonger have the Machine in the back of my mind, controlling, punishing, dishonoring. I was free, and I was in complete control. Everything I did was by my own permission alone, and no one and nothing else held sway.

It was remarkably nice to run, without pursuit… but rather, with destination. The soil was especially soft and while it was good for running on barefooted, it was not especially good for making good time across. Every step slid a little, until after the twentieth step I felt sure I had lost a whole stride's worth of distance.

But I still hit the lip of the collapse in good time, and drew up before I pitched myself bodily down into the mess at the bottom. A single pause later and I knew just where to go, so I circled around to a propped branch and trotted quickly down the length to the bottom. The splintered wood bedding was squishy, flexing under my weight, but it had a coarse, roughened surface that stabbed mercilessly at the bottoms of my bare, unprotected hooves. I do not walk on hooves that a human would be familiar with, after all – and the part they call the 'frog' is a bit larger for me than for an Earth-animal.

I reached the place where the Machine's broken construct lay sprawled, soaked over in sticky red blood. At first I pondered that, having thought I had seen violet bodily fluids when I had broken the thing's hand on 'Zelis' chest. But when I knelt next to the pair and pulled the human back, I saw why it was all red, and there was no violet to be seen.

"Ah, brother… look at you." I lamented, cradling his limp form in my bare arms. "Come with me, now…" I began, tugging him away from the construct he had thought was me. It was touching, really, to see how he had mourned me even after my blatant betrayal, but that thing was not really me at all. "… I will take care of you."

I was sadly forced to tug him out of what remained of his ruined armor, alien as it was to me, before I could carry him out of the collapse in the ground. It weighed too much for me to carry, and I could not hardly move him at all while it clung to him. I felt frustrated for the waste and loss of time doing so, but trying to move him with it on would have been more still of a waste.

Lifting him out of it, I found the skinsuit to be covered in fractured contact points, each one of the little sensory disks not at all unlike those found under the combat skin of a Heavy Cruiser… to find them on a personal armor suit was novel indeed. I had to walk up the branch to make sure I did not over balance and tumble us both back to the bottom of the pit, but once out back on the soft, level ground, I felt confident of my footing again to step into a trot.

'Zelis is no small human, so I could never run with him as my burden, but I was not about to spend half a day reaching my next goal. My own nudity was by far the least of my concerns, and if I found something proper where I was going, then perhaps I would don it then. But not before I had found care for my fallen kin.

He had done me the ultimate honor when I had suffered the ultimate shame… he deserved better. I was counting on that mystic human quality to spare me the risk of failure – that of being able to get back up, given half a chance to do so.

I trotted until I was out of breath and I felt it would take me a year to complete my journey, but I pushed on, forcing my legs to extend and my lungs to open. I needed to reach my destination, and I needed to do so quickly. Barely had I lifted him than he had covered me in the blood he had lost, and already there were stripes down the skin on my legs. I was flinging droplets all over the forest with my quick stepping motions, but the moisture only fueled my desperation.

I felt I was going to drop, and I was almost ready to believe that I had been duped yet again by that damnable Machine, when I heard the condemning hum of a teardrop robot surge up behind me.

Ahead, I could just see the beginnings of a sunny patch. The freestanding ruins were of a long-familiar make, and the moss caps that covered everything else had found no purchase on these. They shone brilliantly like fractured glass statues in the sun, bright, blinding beacons at my distance.

Hearing that hum only fed fear into my desperation, and I trotted a little faster despite the pain in my legs. I needed to make this work… needed to reach that sanctuary! I pleaded with every god I had ever heard the name of to allow me that one victory, not for myself but for 'Zelis, who surely deserved a second chance.

I leapt clean out of my skin, crushing the human in my grasp nearer to my chest when the first lance of heat lased the nodding ferns to my left. "No! No!" I screamed, desperate not to lose. I was so close, so close!

Lights flashed ahead, and the telling twinkle of more robots formed in a hovering cloud above the clearing. Alarm coursed through my veins as I hopped aside from the next shot the teardrop behind me took. More robots? Why were they in the clearing?

But when they spread out and moved forward, approaching me, I began to recognize them.

Three booms, unattached but holding position around a central eye. They looked like steel-colored wilting blossoms, both beautiful and deadly but most welcome in my eyes. The bright, loud, searing lances of Flood-purifying lasers branched out from their central eyes, slamming hard into the teardrop pursuing me, and though I did not look back, I heard it explode in ways no human rifle or plasma rifle would ever be able to mimic.

My racing steps eventually earned me the clearing, and I stumbled badly into it until my imbalanced stride finally dropped me to my knees. I had landed sadly far shy of the open steps that had a moss carpet all the way down to the floor at the bottom, far beneath the surface of the world.

I gasped hard, still clutching 'Zelis to my chest, unable to force myself to rise – I had not the energy – but unwilling to believe I had failed, so close to my goal. If the Forerunner Sentinels cut me down for this intrusion, then my failure would become absolute, and 'Zelis would die in my cold, dead arms.

Past my harsh gasping, I looked up and saw a pulsing orb appear at the bottom of the stairwell, the all-too-familiar rings of expanding light signature of a ponderous Installation Monitor. If it was rampant, then I was out of luck. But nothing else on this world had seemed to be, so I held my shriveling hope in check for one final moment of truth as I watched the Monitor float easily through the air up the steps.

The orb paused when it saw us, me sitting helpless on my heels, clutching the human I had carried in a savage unwillingness to let go, and cede defeat.

Just when I thought it might decide to attack, like everything else on this cursed world, I heard it emit a soft, treble-tone voice, saying, "Bring the Reclaimer inside, Protectorate."

Reclaimer. They said that the first human to earn the title of Demon had been called that. But Protectorate? Was that the similar name for my own kind? My shriveled hope revived, and somewhere, I found the strength to rise. Pulling 'Zelis from the ground, I dropped heavily down the stairs, feeling each footfall land like a Scarab tank. The Monitor led the way, hanging a left at the bottom of the wide stair. Once I was off the moss carpet that blanketed the steps, I found the entire place to be shining, clean, and brightly lit… and fraught with the angles and glass insets all Forerunner architecture is renowned for.

I smiled, feeling almost at home. We stepped down a corridor almost too wide to be considered as much, and mounted a pair of shallow steps at the far end to enter an absolutely panoramic chamber with a large raised dias in the center. The ceiling looked vaulted, but from the center hung what amounted to the largest chandelier of equipment arms I had ever seen. The whole thing hung nearly fifty feet from the top of the room to hang just barely above the surface of the top of the dias. Oscillating slowly around them as if in pastel contemplation of their function were nine long spire like petals forged of the same angular patterns of glass and metal.

When I paused, the Monitor turned to see me. "Place the Reclaimer on the dias, Protectorate."

I knew from the Machine's database that this had once been a medical frigate. But sudden doubt stabbed through me – what if something went wrong? What if the Forerunner programming tried to treat his non-Forerunner self wrongly, and finished the job the Machine had begun? Still… there was nothing else I could do for him, and I knew I had likely taken far too much time just getting here. Tentative, but willing to try, I stepped up, and laid him across the top of the dias. It felt a little like putting him on the floor, but when I backed away again, the oscillating petals pulled inward around the equipment arms and sealed against the first lip of the dias on the floor, stilling once there.

I was alone, barring the Monitor.

"Will the Sentinels keep the other robots out?" I asked.

The Monitor seemed to nod, almost. "Of course."

I folded my arms across my bare chest, feeling the slick reminder of 'Zelisee's ruin sliding across my skin. I felt every bit the traitorous bastard he thought me to be, even though I knew it was not true.

"Would you like something to wear, Protectorate? You seem unusual, standing at duty without a uniform."

"Yes." I sighed, allowing my eyes to close and my exhaustion to sink through me. "And something to wash with."

The Monitor bobbed again, before turning and making a parabolic arc for a far door I had not been through. I stood still; I did not feel willing to leave this chamber, not so long as I knew 'Zelis might still be saved.

I waited for the Monitor to return, and for those petal-doors to lift again, but it took a while for either to happen. The Monitor arrived first; without any item trailing its path, but soon enough a Sentinel emerged from a typical Sentinel-chute high on the wall, and sailed down towards me, a small box affixed to its undercarriage. The box it set down at my hooves, and then opened for me, before drifting back up and away. I knelt, lifting out the cloth and bowl of sparklingly clear water on the top.

By the time I was done washing off, the water was stained almost as darkly as the cloth, but I was more or less clean. Clean enough to dress; I cast a glance at the medical interface for a moment, but it did not move, so I pulled out an outfit that looked remarkably tailored to fit my kind. There were trousers and a fitted tunic with a stiff, upright collar, and a pair of sturdy leather boots. It was simple, and certainly not armor, but it would do.

Barely had I slid on the second boot and gotten the toes of that hoof settled comfortably against the insole, than the large petals lifted from the dias. They turned as they spread, rising away from the floor in a graceful arc that belied their size and stiff disposition. I stood up immediately, hoping for the best. Beside me, the Monitor bobbed once, then chirped, "That's odd."

Worry creased my expression as I cast the orb a look. "What is?"

The Monitor turned its glowing blue eye to regard my query fully. "This Reclaimer seems unusually weak. His body has been healed completely, and is in perfect working order. But… he is fading. There is nothing I can do." I stared openly at the orb, too shocked and too in denial to have words for a reply. "I have done all I can… it is almost as if he wants to die… as if he has no reason left to live." The Monitor seemed to give a helpless shrug, though it owned no shoulders with which to effect such a motion.

I turned back to see the still form sprawled across the top of the dias, wanting above all else just to see it move. Move, I insisted, mentally. Please.

He did not… and as I drew closed the gap between us, stepping up onto the dias to kneel beside him, I wondered what I could do. He had reached a precipice – this I knew. But there is no machine, no medical wonder, no pill, to cure what ails the mind and soul. He did look better… the hollowness was gone from his face, and the blood had been cleaned away, leaving only unbroken skin showing through the few ragged holes torn through his skinsuit. It looked to be made of a thin polymer resin, backed by a softer, absorbent material. But despite this seeming restoration of health, he looked no more alive than when I had first lain him there.

I shifted my weight to my heels, settling where I had knelt. "Ah, I suppose I should likely explain what has happened to you, brother." I began, mumbling. It was a strange thing, for me… to sit beside a fallen brother like this and speak words I knew no one would hear. But it served as a small comfort to myself, with my searing need to explain, to be understood – to tell them that it was not I who had wronged them. "I need to tell you what greatness you have shown me, what valor and honor as I have never before seen in anyone, of any race."

I lifted my eyes, watching as the Monitor stayed where it was, bobbing up and down hesitatingly, in that typical, usual Forerunner Monitor manner.

Still looking that way, I added, "It was not my intention to cause what grief I doubtless have… to burden you with this terrible fate. It was a great kindness, 'Zelis, for you to come to my rescue when I saw no out from the terrible shame I suffered at the hands of that Machine. You have proven beyond any doubt, doubt that I confess never truly existed to need surpassing…" I hung my head, lifting a hand to rest it against my face. "I am sorry, 'Zelis… sorry I could do nothing for you, when it was you in turn who needed me to return the favor."

I opened my eyes again to watch my hand fall back to my thighs, turning both over to see my palms. I could still feel the needle-holes written all through my skin down my spine, but each was hardly big enough to well a bead of blood from, and all had sealed of their own accord even before I had made it to the collapse where I had found 'Zelis to begin with. I was in no danger from those minor prickles. Nor would the flayed skin across my shins harm me overmuch.

I had just flicked my eyes over to see his face again when I heard the Monitor chirp brightly. Startled, I swung my head around, to see what the commotion was about – had he died, so suddenly, quietly, fading away in such a manner that I might miss it?

Seeing me looking at it, the Monitor bobbed in my direction once, before stilling again.

"What is it?" I asked, daring to be told of such a fate.

I was blessedly disappointed; "His condition has stabilized. If you wish to move him, Protectorate, you may do so now."

Relief flooded through me to such a great degree that I felt flushed and alive afterwards – had I really been holding my breath? I looked back down at the human, and crooked my mandibles into a tentative smile.

Time to make amends on his behalf, for that lovely mate of his…

I owed him still.

.

TORI-138

If memory serves, he never asked me what her name was. I let my fingers idly play across the charging sequences, warming the engines on the sloop but not firing them yet. My mind lingered on the cat, more because there was really nothing going to reconcile me to her so long as she associated me with the disappearance of her chosen pet human. It had happened twice to her so far.

I didn't really have a plan, but I had spent several hours just lying on the bed and bawling my eyes out. I was out of tears – there were no more to cry. I knew also that if either hadn't turned up by now, then neither likely ever would. I certainly hadn't seen Flint come tromping up the corridor from the airlock, and there was no signal from the systems that an Elite was banging on the hull.

I let my fingers rest on the lip of the console under the control board, watching as the ship did a self-diagnostic, running all the pre-flight checks before it turned over flight controls. I half wondered if the droids in the forest could penetrate the sloop's hull with their weaponry, but when I glanced over at a soft chime from a sensor reader, I felt my eyebrows rise somewhat.

There was an Elite, banging on the hull. I studied the readings from the airlock exterior, pondering what I was seeing; either Anuna had decided to drag in Flint's carcass for me, or there was someone else with him. But the sloop was pretty certain that the one doing the knocking was an Elite.

With a sigh, I stood up from the pilot's chair and made my way to the rear hatch. Technically, the sloop has three exit points – personnel exit hatches under the fore of the left and right wings, and a bay exit in the back under the engine manifolds. The one in the back was big enough to drive a vehicle up into, I guess, but I had not seen anything parked in there. If ever Flint allowed something, though, I was betting it would be some modern-day version of whatever they were calling the Warthog these days.

Hell, they might still call them Warthogs, even. I don't know.

On my way past the ancillary weapon lockers, positioned in sets of six on either side of every airlock the sloop harbored, I smacked the side of my fist against one of them. I paused long enough to lift a standard MA from the rack it extended for me, then continued. I was not above shooting Anuna dead if he tried to hand me a mangled carcass as an apology.

And, I was in that kind of a mood, now I was over the initial onset of guilt and remorse.

Reaching the hatchway, I opened the internal seal, then touched the override to let the exterior slide back and descend the mounting ramp. I stepped through the airlock itself and up to the head of the ramp, and looked down, wondering what I was looking at.

From somewhere, Anuna had gotten a different outfit… and he'd peeled Flint out of that weird-ass beetle-exoskeleton armor he'd been wearing. Bits of the black skinsuit hung away in shredded holes, but he didn't look hurt through any of the ones I could see. Needless to say, it was a confusing sight indeed. I slid my finger down into the trigger guard and rested it on the trigger, unsure why he'd be standing there holding Flint like a limp rag.

"What." I said, eventually, when all he did was stand there and stare at me.

When he cocked his head just slightly to the side in regarding me, I noted something odd… he looked like the same splitlip, but this dude did not have black eyes. Rather, they were a soft, almost pastel yellow. Was it a different fellow, someone else who had known Flint and found him abandoned in the woods after Anuna had left him for dead? I felt my demeanor soften slightly.

Letting my shoulders sag a little, I sighed. "Bring him up." I turned away, wondering what I was supposed to do with either of them… I wanted Flint no less, but there was tension between us that was both damning and condemning. I had put my best effort forward, but all I could ever get out of him was conflict. It had seemed to be all he knew how to do.

I stepped out of the interior side of the airlock and stood to one side, watching as the Elite stepped in past me, having followed. When he cast me a glance, I tipped the barrel of the MA in my hands past him down the corridor. He turned his head that way, then after casting me another glance, turned that way and began to walk.

It was a little odd, seeing Flint like that.

I shut the hatches, figuring if I caught their ship in orbit (or a span back from it) I could just plug in and drop the splitlip off before going my own way. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with Flint – or if he was dead, what I was supposed to do with the body – but I knew despite outward protest that I was relieved to see him again.

I followed the splitlip up the corridor once I was done, and caught him waiting for me at the first juncture where the hall split and went both inward, deeper into the sloop's midsection, and also farther forward. I gestured him to go to the side, figuring if Flint turned out to be dead I could always just hole up in the other (mainly unused) quarter. By gross technicality, the sloop had more than a dozen of the things, but only two had been fitted as such. The rest were empty, available as holding cells (if we needed prisoners on an op) or storage (if by some chance we turned into pack rats that badly).

I didn't see Artemis around anywhere at all, but I figured that was for the best – she would probably only freak out at the splitlip anyway, and that would require me to interact with him more than I was now. I was not in the mood for any such event to transpire, so the lack of the cat was, for the moment, a good thing.

He laid Flint on the bed without me having to tell him as much, so I stayed at the doorway with the MA hanging from one hand and wondered what to do now. After the Elite withdrew, I saw Flint breathe.

Seeing him turn and look at me, I flicked my gaze up to him, wondering anew about the situation.

He made a strange little half-noise, then offered, "Might I take a moment to explain what has transpired without you?"

I snorted. I felt I already knew enough to be suitably damned… I didn't need a splitlip to spell it out for me.

He, though, took that as a 'sure', somehow, and began with, "I would beg forgiveness of you on his behalf."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, feeling a little surge of puzzled curiosity. Maybe he wasn't going to reiterate my own version of things… but could that be his alien culture talking?

He excused my doubt without so much as the honor of forewarning, though; "Things were not as they appeared, when you found what you perceived to be myself in the forest. Nor were they how you perceived them, when 'Zelis in turn met up with us."

I wrinkled my face. "What I perceived to be you."

He inclined his long, sausage-shaped head. "I was present in mind, only. I was a prisoner of a Machine, and had endured a mental upload into a mechanical representation of myself that the Machine could control… much like a puppet."

Inwardly, I cringed… but even as I took that in – not sure if I believed it or not yet – I began to gather where the rest of this conversation was going to go. I was not slow, nor an idiot, after all… but it still felt like a condemnation on my part. I had, it seemed, not abandoned Flint to fight with an Elite. Instead, I had abandoned him to fight with a robot Elite… doubtless nine times harder to put down in a fistfight. I felt my eyebrows crawl across my face to meet in the middle. "You didn't say anything?"

"I could not." He answered, sounding as if he were ashamed of his inability; "there was no contesting the Machine for control of that replica. For a time, I was fooled into believing that it was indeed I, changed only with implanted mechanisms… until such time as I was granted my release when 'Zelis destroyed the replica and freed me from the Machine's grasp."

I felt my whole world swim, and I sank into the chair beside the door. The same chair, I realized as I sat in it, that nobody had ever sat in before. Ever. So much of the sloop never even got walked through, that items that never saw use were just as common as those that did. "I guess you suppose he knew something I didn't… could see you needed help you couldn't ask for."

"I wanted above all else to be able to tell you, yes." He answered, softly. "To correct what you thought of me… and of him… to call you back when you turned away from him. You were in err… but I could say nothing. The Machine would not permit me. Once freed, I went back, and found him." He cast a glance over at where Flint still lay, not having moved an inch from where he'd been put. "I have brought him as far as I can."

I let my gaze sink down to Flint, wondering anew what all I had missed. Questions remained, of course – how had he known? What had clued him in? And why hadn't he told me, rather than feeding me that righteous bullshit about how the splitlip had killed a human and deserved his fate? Or had Flint only come to the same conclusion that Anuna had wanted him to, but by a wholly other, unsuspecting path, and not known at all?

Knowing Flint… honestly, either scenario was just as likely.

"'Zelis is something of a complex creature, as I do not doubt you have discovered." Anuna added, turning his gaze back to me. "On the outside, he appears as any other warrior might; but he is no less fragile than you or I. There are aspects of every living being that cannot be ignored, and I fear he has done so for too long. Perhaps he will never show it… but he harbors wounds no physical weapon could ever inflict. He will need his friends, his companions. He will need to trust their loyalty without question. I have healed the injuries my replica inflicted, but that is all I can do."

I blinked at him, feeling a little torn. How could this alien know my Flint better than me? How could he have such a deep understanding, where I had failed utterly?

"This is where you must take over." Anuna said. "I must return to my place among my people… doubtless after this, there will be questions needing answered, and amends needing made. I have suffered a great shame, all without cause or deservance. That leaves you… Tohrey… to pick up what slack remains."

I looked back down, at Flint, still a little mixed. Yeah, yeah, rattle on. But would Flint understand half of this? Anuna might be forgiving as hell, but the last thing Flint had seen of me was my back, walking away, abandoning him to this fate. Flint was not terribly renowned for his forgiving nature, even towards me.

I still had a rough stripe on my lip where he'd busted it for me, after all. I looked up at the Elite for a moment, feeling a little aspect had gone unmentioned. "You sound as if you've a particular vested interest in…"

He interrupted me. "I most assuredly do. Take care of this human warrior, Tohrey. He has proven himself no less a brother to me than my own bloodkin, and I do not aim to see that go unrewarded."

That explained quite a bit about the unsaid bits Flint would on occasion mention. Anuna this, G'wi that. Never the how or the why. But while the story was still grossly incomplete, now I understood better… and perhaps, why the splitlips had their own name – or word – for him, when every other human I had seen interacting with them always got called by their real names. I nodded, for lack of a worded reply.

Seeming satisfied with that, he turned past me, and stepped through the door heading out. I lurched to my feet, going after him. "Wait."

He paused about three steps down the hall, and half-turned back to see me.

"I can take you to the ship… there probably aren't any more dropships out there by now anyway." I offered, all in one breath.

I saw him crook his mandibles at me, and I swear it looked a little like he was smiling at me. Inclining his head, he answered, "Thank you."

.

FLINT-093

When I woke up, I felt like a zombie. I couldn't see at all, as my eyes felt like they'd been burned right out of my face. My skin was clammy and a little itchy, but while I didn't feel cold, I certainly wasn't comfortable. Every muscle I owned ached miserably as if I had been taken after by Brutes with big clubs… suffice to say I just wanted to go back to sleep and finish decomposing, like a proper zombie ought.

But I was awake, now, and rarely did I ever get the opportunity to just go back to sleep after such an event as my waking. During my youth, this had been governed by Mendez. Later, it was more because I had too much to do and I often caught winks in-suit and on-the-job. Nowadays… it was because of that cat.

But as the bits and parts of me began to check in, I noted a couple oddities. First of all, there was no cat. Secondly, I was face-up, when I duly recall being sitting curled over forward when I blacked out. As more and more of my environment checked slowly in, I began to realize that whatever had happened between then and now, it had been vast and had gotten me moved to somewhere else. After all… that heap of shattered timbers could never feel like a standard mattress, and all I recall taking off was the broken helmet. If my nerves were not lying to me, I nolonger wore any of that overpowered armor suit. Not a scrap.

I did feel like I was still up to my neck in the skinsuit, though… had someone come along and seen me, and picked me up, thinking I had somehow survived that mess I'd been through with Anuna? Memory of what all had hurt then trickled in past the full-body ache I now endured. Oh, I was sore. But beyond that, I couldn't seem to agitate enough to figure out if I was still punched full of raggedy holes.

I finally got my eyes to open, and I studied the ceiling of the quarter I was in for a moment, feeling puzzled. Wasn't this room inside the Whispers of Fate? What in all gods-be was I doing back here? I remembered Tori being mad at me again right before Anuna had jumped my shit, but I was still struggling to recall the exact details of that particular conversation when I saw her appear off to the side. I paused in my recollections as I watched her get closer, then twist halfway to sit next to me on the bed. She reached up and drew a finger across my face, making me squint, but when I raised my arm to catch that hand and pull it down, I experienced a mental hiccup after I had caught her hand and been holding it for a full second.

That arm was supposed to be useless. I had felt the shoulder joint shatter, had felt the severed collarbones follow it down out of my side as ligaments and tendons tore right apart. I even remembered that forearm being snapped in two.

I looked at that hand, curious why it didn't even hurt – and it worked fine. I saw Tori smile at me, probably thinking I was looking at her hand, which I was still hanging onto. I let go of it, and flexed the fingers of that hand. Had I mistaken…? Was it the other arm…? No, that one worked fine, too. I brought them up and held them together, watching. After a moment, I felt mild amazement when neither one so much as trembled where I held them. After having the Longsword spear me to my seat, I had lost the ability to hold very still at all, when extended out in mid-air. This… this was novel.

Still marveling at the whole thing, I turned my hands around, to see my palms. Nothing looked amiss. Finally, I rested them both on my chest, and looked up at Tori. Had I dreamed the whole thing? If I had… then I had a few more issues going on inside my skull than I liked. I'd have taken watching G'wi chop me in half again and again every single night over this, any day!

But that did not explain Tori still sitting there, looking back at me. Tori was a recent development. She'd happened after I crashed my Longsword, after the 51st Aeronautic had been wiped out of the sky. So now I was confused anew.

"How do you feel?" She asked.

"Um." How did I feel? I was elated that my arms both worked, felt I should be bouncing off the walls with jubilant glee that I wasn't a mangled corpse, but also still quite sore after being laid into by those Brutes… of whom I wasn't sure any were actually Brutes. "… hard to say."

She smiled at me again. Was there something wrong with this picture? Tori was not easily pleased, and for all intents and purposes, she really did look quite satisfied with herself. It was nice, for once, to not feel as if I needed to watch my back around her, but… nonetheless, it still seemed weird on her.

Rather than answering to what I had said, or adding another question, she took both of my hands in both of hers, and stood up, drawing away. I sat up after her retreat, pondering the utter lack of pain from anywhere on me… what really got me as she drew me off the bed and stood me up was the part where my bum shoulder hadn't so much as twinged at me for that.

"Should probably get this… whatever it's made out of… off of you." Tori mentioned, regaining my attention from the musing distraction. She took a combat knife (it was that or a steak knife, honestly… we did not have scissors aboard) from a sheath atop the Mjolnir lockers behind her, and reached her empty hand for my throat. I held still as she plucked the spray-on skinsuit from my skin and made a slit down the front, for some reason feeling trusting enough to let her risk slicing me open. She didn't even nick me, remarkably enough, but she stopped cutting at waist-level, and set the knife aside to peel the strange stuff back.

As if in sympathetic apology for her earlier temper, she tugged it off my good shoulder first – then took a bit more care to do the same over my left. This attitude came to a dead halt, though, when she got it over the deltoid. I looked down at it, pausing in much the same way she had.

"Flint…"

"Isn't there supposed to be a scar there?" I finished for her, just as puzzled as she sounded. I poked the spot, but it felt not only solid, but built just like the other shoulder was. It looked like I had never been hit with the strut at all. I marveled at it for a while, but Tori went back to peeling the polymer skinsuit off of me with renewed vigor – I half-smirked, imagining she was doing that more to see what else was missing than because she wanted me out of the suit.

My expression tickled her, and she cast me a grin before she circled around behind me, holding the shoulders of the skinsuit as I pulled the rest of my arms out of it.

"Flint."

I tried to turn around, but she was still holding on to the skinsuit, and I only got about halfway turned when she stopped me by that virtue. Her eyes were on my shoulders again. I cocked an eyebrow. "What now?" If the front of that scar was gone, why wouldn't the backside be, too?

She finally met my gaze. "Flint, you have a tattoo."

Oh.

That.

I nodded. "Yes… you didn't know that?"

She made a face at me, finally letting go of me so I could turn the rest of the way around. She slapped the back of one hand off my chest as if in greeting. "I've seen you plenty from the front, Flint, but I've never seen you bare-assed from the back. Where on Earth did you get a tattoo?"

"Marine took an ink wand to me." I answered, with a shrug.

She wrinkled her face again. "You sat still for that? What's it say, anyway? It's not English."

I couldn't help it – I smirked at her. "It's not."

"Well, I'd wager to guess the first two or so letters are gone." She informed me, cocking an eyebrow at me as if wondering what to think of me now she knew I had a mark that was not a scar.

"Why's that?" Not surprising, really… given that he'd written it across the top of the back of my shoulders, and that was precisely where that Longsword landing strut had gone through me. Probably wasn't a word anymore, actually.

She pretended to be holding the words in the air in front of me, reading off from memory for me; "It says 'lior morior bellator."

"Melior." I corrected. Yeah… couple of letters got punched out. Oh well. I didn't care enough to get it fixed. Though, what incarnation of "better to die on one's feet" I was wearing now was anyone's guess.

"Why that?" Tori asked, more than likely well knowing what the words meant given that she'd spent thirty years with her head buried in the sands of science. It was Latin, after all.

"It was the motto of the 51st Aeronautic." I shrugged. "Said I was one of the guys, and they all had the same thing. So they all drank some beer and had fun drawing on me."

She giggled, evidently thinking that was funny. "And you just sat there and let them. Bunch of drunk Marines, doodling on a Spartan. That's the most hilarious thing I have ever heard, Flint." Folding her arms over her chest, she asked, "Were you drunk, too?"

"Nope." I shook my head, tugging on the end of the slice she'd made with a thumb. "Doesn't agree with me."

"What doesn't, being drunk, or just alcohol in general?"

Okay, so that was a jab. It was, I have to admit, the least hurtful jab she'd aimed at me so far. "Alcohol in general, Tori." I answered, shaking my head again, this time in bemusement. "Being hung over never agrees with anybody."

She sighed, but she was still wearing the remnants of that grin from before, so when she reached for the skinsuit again, I didn't back away. As she busied herself with peeling me out of the rest of it, she changed the subject. "So Anuna tells me you've a soft interior?"

I hiccupped at her. "Aside that he wouldn't really know, Anuna's dead now." I told her, feeling mixed and rumpled all at once. Go and spoil the moment, why don't she! For once we were getting along fairly well, and she had to go and bring up a subject like that.

"No, he isn't." Tori replied, casually. "He's the one who brought you in."

I stood silent for a moment, trying to puzzle that one out. One thing I do recall distinctly, was having finished that fight by breaking his neck for him. How could he have brought me in, with a broken neck to his name? Also, why would he have brought me in, given what kind of concerted effort he was giving to trying to kill me? I gave Tori a confused look when she stood up, gathering the skinsuit up in a bundle in her arms.

"He's the one who patched you up after that last fight, too. He didn't say anything about erasing scar tissues, though… to that end, your bloodwork is clean, now, too… somehow." She sounded almost as if she were rambling. "Asked me to forward his thanks, by the way," she added. "Said you set him loose when you killed the replica."

Eh?

She laughed, and patted me affectionately on the shoulder as she went past, stepping the length of the room to drop the bundle into the chair that nobody uses that stays next to the door. Turning back around, she continued with, "That was a robot, apparently." She shrugged. "Looked like him, wasn't him."

Oh… that explained why he seemed to be full of metal parts.

Closing the gap between us again, she poked me in the chest with a finger, and pushed. Wondering what that was about, I backed up. "I dropped him off with the first purple-hulled ship I found, so he's off doing damage control for all the nasty crap his… avatar?… did for him. Probably won't see him around much for a while."

"Poor kid." I muttered, finding the bed with my calves and deciding to sit down since it was that or fall over. Tori finally put her pushing finger down, then.

"Anuna's a kid?" She asked, suddenly plopping down on my lap, straddling me.

"Well, he's younger than G'wi." I answered. "Don't really know how old he is."

She unzipped the front of her shirt and shrugged out of it, leaving it on the floor behind her. "Not really important, I guess." Freed of the shirt, she was now sitting there – on my legs – in nothing but her pants and bra. I had learned a while back what this meant, which might have been why she'd never let me get started after any of the clothes in the drawer set next to the Mjolnir lockers.

Would have only needed to peel me out of that, too.

Like I said… Tori can be pleasant, sometimes.

Just past her, I could see the cat sitting in the doorway, watching us.