Chapter CCX: Convergence

August 26, 2552 (UNSC Calendar)/

Esztergom, Viery Territory, Reach, Epsilon Eridani System

"I'm going to tell you a story, a story that you won't believe..." - Anonymous UNSC servicewoman

The dog growled lightly and then fixed its position a little bit. For being one of the smartest dogs in existence, I was starting to think it was pretty damn stupid. It was also incredibly sweet.

"You're going to die," I told it. "Run."

Gunny said nothing.

A spike grenade landed to my right, just out of arms reach.

I sighed.

For the first time since I had seen my father die, I gave up.

The long fuse just made it worse.

I closed my eyes, but nothing flashed in front of them. I just felt a whole lot of pain from the piece of rebar going through me and curiosity as to whether I would be able to feel the jagged pieces of hot shrapnel tearing me to pieces.

Then I heard a bark.

That's the first time I found myself rooting for the dog to die.

I opened my eyes just as Gunny hopped over me and clamped its jaws around the spike grenade. The medium-sized Australian Shepherd bit into the grenade's handle and in an instinctive response that had been hardwired into its brain by years of playing fetch with Pavel and Amber, he took off. Gunny dragged the heavy spike grenade, jerking its head to get the spikes at the edge from debris and loose rocks. It seemed like an eternity, but the dog broke the three meter kill radius and then went even further, jumping over the ruined wall and disappearing from sight. I closed my eyes as I heard the detonation, thankful that there hadn't been a yell of pain. Gunny's head had been torn to shreds, the dog hadn't even had time to process its death.

"Fuckers gonna pay," Schitzo growled dangerously.

I was angrily screaming and tearing at the rebar on my chest when the brute stalker hopped over the wall, dragging behind it the chieftain's gravity hammer. Predictably, it pressed my chest back into the ground with its heavy foot. I slammed my knife deep into its ankle and propped up my shotgun . I squeezed the trigger once, but it deflected the blast with the bottom of the gravity hammer. I kicked wildly, ignoring the extreme pain and connecting with the stalker's left knee. The alien roared and fell to the ground next to me. I grabbed onto the rebar coming out of my chest and pulled hard as I used my other arm to push myself up. The rock behind me creaked a little bit, but I dragged the foot-long piece of metal out, freeing my body.

I kicked the brute again, this time in the face. As its body turned around I grabbed the mauler it had attached to its belt and fired three times into the back of his head.

The brute's leg kicked out once and then stopped moving.

"Fuck you!" I shouted, kicking it again. "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck. You!"

I cried out, half anger and half pain.

My legs finally gave way underneath me and I fell on my ass, crying as I tried to hold back the pain. I could hardly breathe. I knew that I had survived many injuries that should've killed me, but none of those had amounted to having a piece of metal sticking out from your chest after going through your entire torso. I had seen guys survive with the weirdest things, but they always had the luxury of a medic, biofoam, and a speedy medevac. Hell, Tank had survived that injury through his thigh and a snapped femur. Two weeks later and he was good to run.

Modern medicine had made dying a very hard thing to achieve, yet I might as well have been living in the middle ages.

"Except we're not," Schitzo said, squatting by my side. "It's the twenty-sixth century, bitch. And you're not dead yet."

"No we're n- I'm not," I said, agreeing. "Ok, ok… Phew. Let's go. Alright, I got this."

"Debatable," Schitzo shrugged. "But I don't have the luxury of betting on anything else."

I grabbed my shotgun and aimed at the head of the gravity hammer. I pressed the muzzle against the spot where the handle became the head and fired three times. The strange metal was durable and designed to absorb the shock that came from the hammer's gravity explosions, but it wasn't made to take fully-automatic buckshot. The head fell off and I grabbed the handle, as tall as myself, and heaved it as a staff. I slowly dragged myself to my feet, wheezing to get air into my good lung.

"North?"

"I don't want to look at the dog," Schitzo said, "so we might as well."

"North it is then."

I started shuffling down the street and never looked back. Not once.

I could hardly get enough oxygen into my body. I was no expert, but at least one of my lungs wasn't working. Well, it wasn't working at full capacity. The rebar was keeping my lung airtight, keeping most of the air from escaping and letting the organ do its job at least halfway properly. I was already beginning to feel the blood come up my throat again. The metallic fluid was leaving a stale taste in my mouth and the inside of my visor was stained with drying blood. Every time I coughed the pain was magnified tenfold.

I coughed and more blood came out.

"Shit," I croaked.

"It's a good thing you didn't pull the rebar out," Schitzo said.

"Yeah," I agreed.

"Lung would've collapsed completely and you would be choking on your own blood."

Not only was the rebar keeping my lung airtight, it was also keeping large quantities of blood from clogging the organ. Respiration was a complex process, throw a little bit of trouble into the mix and things can go south very quickly.

It hurt like a bitch.

"So what are you doing?" Schitzo asked me. "What's the plan, Francisco?"

"There's no plan," I replied. "I'm going to keep walking until I come across friendlies or I am killed."

"That's no plan."

"It's what I said," I replied. "No plan."

Schitzo rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. It seemed like such a familiar gesture, but I don't remember him ever doing that before.

"What?" I asked.

"You've got a piece of steel impaling your chest. I think we need a plan."

"My helmet can't access anything," I said. "I can't get to a med station and even if I did odds are that it'll be destroyed. You know the Covenant target those."

"How about increasing your odds to get to a friendly unit then?" Schitzo asked. "That might be a good start."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And how would be go about that?"

"That is your problem."

"Wrong, it's both of our problem."

"I don't think that's the proper grammar."

"English isn't your first language, dipshit," Schitzo complained.

"That means it isn't yours either, fucking dick."

Schitzo laughed and then disappeared, leaving me alone.

I sighed. This wasn't getting any easier. I could breathe a little bit, but that was bound to change. Stab wounds to the lung were deadly if you failed to get any medical attention. A med bay could potentially patch me up, but those things were notoriously unreliable. Even the companies that set them up admitted that nothing could compare to attention provided with a human doctor in charge. Still, a little bit of biofoam wouldn't have harmed me.

I winced as a pang of pain shot through my chest and I coughed up more blood. I kept on coughing and for a moment I thought I would choke. I went on one knee and removed my helmet before I managed to spit out a sizeable chunk of blood and tissue. A little bit of my lung had gone there. I took in as much air as possible, wheezing as it entered my body.

I looked up ahead and pulled myself to my feet.

Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus

"How's the tunnel exploration going?"

"Good, we're blocked going north and the southern side has a car there that funnels everything into the right side," Marv told me.

"Can we see about blocking it?" I asked.

"We're setting charges," he told me.

"Alright then, looks like we're good for now."

"Pavel, I'm getting some transmissions from the Marines and soldiers, should I relay our location?" Grass asked me.

"Negative, give them the subway stop we're at. They should be able to figure it out that way," I said.

"You're being paranoid," Grass let me know.

"Am I?" I asked her. "Am I really?"

Grass shrugged but otherwise said nothing.

My men had mostly settled down. Marina had parked her Pelican right outside the entrance, providing an additional machine gun for defensive purposes as well as quick evacuation. The Hornets were also close by and we were prepared to bail at any second, the pilots had helped out in establishing a perimeter in the surface and already we were getting some of the first evacuees at our position. Apparently the majority of the survivors had clustered together before moving here. I hoped they weren't set upon by the Covenant before they got here. We had no way to provide any support for them.

"Tank, how are things looking up top?"

"Pretty good, Gunny," he said. "No Covenant activity to report."

"Good," I replied. "Snark?"

"Likewise, sir."

"Don't call me sir," I told him.

"I was saying sir in a respectful way, like one would address a senior."

"Snark, you might be younger than me, but three years still means you're in your mid-thirties."

"Don't remind me," he huffed. "I can already feel my knees beginning to get stiff."

I rolled my eyes.

"Just keep your eyes peeled," I said in my best Frank impression.

"El-tee always said open instead of peeled," Snark said. "But yeah, wilco."

The subway station was fairly large, with enough space to keep all the survivors there. It would be a wee bit crowded, as they say, but the entrance was perfectly defensible and had a very low profile, with it being surrounded by mountains of debris and everything. It would hold for the time needed. We had a sizeable supply of ammunition and enough food to go for at least three days. If every Marine and trooper had at least half a standard load then we would go for around a week. The vending machines were even partially stocked. Looters hadn't gotten to them in time, I guess.

"So we wait?" Lady asked when I walked past her.

"So we wait," I confirmed. "Is that going to be a problem?"

"No."

She was less snappy than usual. I don't know if her attitude problem was finally getting fixed or if it was just being tired, but it was relieving.

"Why so blue?" I asked her, surprising myself. I usually avoided her.

Lady looked up at me and sighed. Usually she had the tough bitch act down to a t, but it seemed like she was starting to crack. "I'm just tired, Gunny. Not like body tired, you know?"

"I know exactly what you mean," I told her.

"Does it get better?"

I shook my head. "You got to keep fighting, that's what separates the good from the great."

"That sounds like something El-tee would say," she noted.

"It does, but that actually came from somebody else. Colonel Zavala, I miss the old man."

"What happened to him?"

I shrugged. "Never did find out. They retired him from the Inconvenience and then he disappeared."

"Well, he might still be alive then," Lady said. "That's more than can be said for many others."

I looked at her quizzically. She didn't ever go into bouts of depression, she was too proud to even let it show.

"Well, listen to me now, eh?"

I snorted a little bit and shook my head. "Get some rest Tash."

"Please don't call me that," she said. "It's what my father calls me."

"I'll call you as I damn well please, whether it be Tash, Natasha, or Lady. Now get some sleep."

Lady shrugged slightly and then slid so that she was using the bench as a bed. I looked at her for a moment before making my way towards the entrance. The escalators had stopped working a while ago and the elevator for handicapped people was all but useless. I climbed up the stairs three at a time before coming up on the small hall. Bits and pieces of wall and ceiling had fallen down, leaving a nice coating of dust that was slowly being pushed towards the sides as boots left their mark. Immediately to my left was Marina's Pelican, parked tightly in between two piles of debris and providing the support of its rear gun.

The Hornets were behind me, only a short climb away. The two support craft were very well hidden, but I still hoped that we wouldn't require their use.

I left the subway and looked at the sky. One couldn't usually see the stars in Esztergom and today was no different, even with most of the lights off there was still enough dust and smoke in the air that we couldn't see anything. I could, however, see that the dark night sky was beginning to light up.

I turned around and looked at the subway station's rooftop. Tank was belly down, his battle rifle propped on the edge of the roof as he scanned for any enemy movement. He gave me an acknowledgement signal with his right hand and I kept moving. Our perimeter was only a hundred meters or so, and even then it was a very weak perimeter. Snark could catch anything that came at us from the front or left, Tank could do front and a bit of our right flank. We had the Hornet pilots and the first three men that arrived on watch behind us, but that was about it. My own men were tired, even if we had been on board the Pelican we had been awake for longer than most. Marv and Serge were exploring the caves and the rest of the guys were getting busy with a plan of action or resting.

And Frank was dead.

I stopped walking as I thought that.

"Gunny?" Tank asked after what seemed like an eternity.

"What?" I asked.

"Something wrong?"

Frank wasn't dead. There was no way in hell that fucker would go down without burning down half the planet before. I hadn't risked all those men in an attempt to save as many as possible, that had only been a happy coincidence. Frank was not dead until I saw the body and I needed the Hornets to look for him.

"No," I said. "Get the pilots to board their Hornets. Get me Snark, Serge, and Andrea."

"Sir?"

"Tank, fucking do as I say."

Two minutes later the Hornets were taking off and I was flying home.

First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo

The pain was starting to recede a little bit now. I don't think there should've been a particular reason for that, so it was slightly worrisome. I shook my head. I was gripping the hammer's grip so tightly that my palms were beginning to burn. I would be getting some blisters. If I survived, that is. I kept shaking my head like a drunkard, but that was the only way I could stay awake. I could barely see beyond my own feet and pulling my head up to look ahead was more effort than I could manage. More than a few times I had surprised myself when I realized I was crawling on my knees.

"Shit," I grunted.

"Alright Frank," Schitzo said. "You're bleeding out."

"Who'd have thought it? Bleed out before dying of trauma."

Schitzo muttered something intelligible. "You need to stop the bleeding."

"No shit," I said. "I've got a fucking piece of metal through my chest, that ought to be enough."

"Well, obviously it's not."

I sighed. "What do you suggest?"

"Duct tape always works," he said. "But I think gauze and bandages would be better."

"Hardware store?" I asked.

"What the fuck did I just say?"

"I can't see anything," I sighed. "My head is pounding and I'm very cold. Just give me something."

"You still don't understand how this works, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, you give me hints and I figure it out."

"Because I'm in your subconscious," Schitzo added helpfully.

"Yes."

"Ok, so hardware store or medbay. I could do with a blood transfusion."

"Medbays are probably not an option anymore," Schitzo said. "They're usually targeted first."

I nodded. "I know. Blood transfusion isn't an option then. Duct tape or any kind of tape would be easier to find and use than bandages."

"I don't know about use…"

"Fine, but it's probably more abundant."

Schitzo stopped pacing and turned to look at me, he grabbed my helmet forcefully with both hands and lifted my head, straightening my back. I blinked at the bright sparks in my eyes and turned towards the left. There was a surprisingly intact house there. It was a strange fit in the pre-planned, modernistic city. It reminded me of those joke pictures about life in the twentieth century. Only one floor, a slanted rooftop that met at a point in the middle of the house, with what was obviously a garage to the side.

"It's one of those nutjobs that want to live in the past," I said to myself. "Probably has an ethanol-powered car or something stupid like that."

"And?"

I squinted. Bee had made me go through enough films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that I knew garages weren't exclusively used to store cars. Manly men would have workbenches with power saws and maybe a rack with a shotgun on it. Fucking dumbasses.

"It'll do, pig," I thanked Schitzo as I waved my hand through his body and shuffled towards the house. "It fucking better."

The house was easy enough to break into. The guy must've had a fancy security system if his door was made of hollow wood and had crystals on it. I simply punched one of those in and opened the door from inside. Just like in Bee's movies. It was a simple turn to the left and I walked into the garage. The stupid fellow had built himself a series of wooden shelves and had stacked them against the wall. Funnily enough, they seemed to be handmade too. With nails and everything.

I couldn't avoid a chuckle.

"Wacko."

I promptly felt a stabbing pain and fell to my knees. That was my cue to start tearing the content of the shelves apart. I kicked and threw boxes and containers away until I finally found that little roll of gray tape. It rolled away from me and hit a wall, stopping and falling on its side. I slowly made myself walk towards it and picked it up slowly. My vision was beginning to go dark, but if I could survive with this much blood in my system then I wouldn't die from blood loss.

I began patching myself up. Taping myself up would be more appropriate perhaps, but after a few minutes of frantic jerking and more than a few tears of pain I finally had the places where the metal met skin completely covered with duct tape. Now all I needed was to get me a pint of blood.

"Get some sugar," Schitzo said. "Kitchen."

My head cracked as I got to my feet. It had been hanging down for a while and it had gotten a bit stiff. I stumbled towards the kitchen and opened the fridge. Once again, it was white and old-fashioned. A pungent smell hit my nostrils even through the filters of my helmet. It took a moment for the smell to be blocked, but I already felt like throwing up.

"Freezer," I told myself.

Opening it I saw that the result was no different at all. Rotten meat and ice cream.

I sighed and moved to the pantry. In there I finally found what I was looking for. Sweets.

I grabbed a bag of candy and sat down at the table. I took my helmet off, ignoring the smell, and began cramming my face with stale chocolates. I must've had around three before I felt a little bit dizzy and against my instincts, fell asleep.

Sergeant Naveen "Snark" Avninder

Riding in a Hornet was always a bit of a bitch. The turbines roaring above you tended to be incredibly loud and the craft vibrated so much that your ass ended up sore for the next four days. If you wanted to avoid a sore ass you could crouch, but that was only good if you wanted to kill your thighs with cramps. Either way, one could not win when he was riding a Hornet.

"Stabilize for me, will you?" I asked the pilot.

"Stabilizing."

The Hornet stopped circling and instead hovered at eighty feet above ground. I stretched my left leg out and propped the tip of my rifle on the foot. It provided a slight increase of accuracy, but otherwise just served to get my muscles from cramping.

"What are they doing?" the pilot asked me.

"Going through the rubble," I told him. "Gunny used to live here."

"Hmm," the pilot muttered.

"They should be back up soon," I said. "Nothing's left down there."

The Hornet pilot mumbled something and held his position above Pavel's. The place had been completely wrecked by the artillery strikes. A wall of the building was still up, but for the most part it was only rubble and debris. I watched as Gunny, Andy, and Serge searched through the debris with an astounding degree of urgency. The pilot of the other hornet kept watch, holding his SMG at eye level.

"Gunny, found something," Andrea said. "Is this yours?"

I saw as Gunny awkwardly walked through the debris and met up with Andy as Serge watched with mild interest. Gunny knelt down near a safe.

"Yeah, that's mine. Here, help me turn it."

They groaned as they turned the metal box on its side, revealing that it was open.

"Son of a bitch," Gunny muttered.

"What?"

"This is where I kept my ACS."

I chuckled. I remember when Gunny used that big-ass shotgun. It would throw an elite back on its ass and then shred through its torso in the span of a second and a half. Rather impressive. I always wondered why he never used it…

"Did he figure out the password?" Andy asked.

Pavel nodded. "I'm never going to hear the end of it."

"Why?" Andrea asked.

"Not important. We do know that Frank survived that fall."

I winced slightly. We had found the other crashed Hornet and Pitcher's mangled corpse. We hadn't gone down to examine them, but instead had to move on when a small Covenant patrol fired on us. Pavel's was just a small distance away, so we could start our search there and double back if we didn't find anything. It seemed like our cowardice had paid off.

"Where to now?" Andy asked.

"Back towards our lines. Or wherever our lines were half a day ago. Frank's smart enough to know that."

"Ok then, let's move."

The pilot on my Hornet moved his craft down to the ground and let Serge hop on board as Pavel and Serge moved on top of the other one. The two pilots flew close enough that I could've tossed my rifle to the former French legionnaire without straining myself too much. Pavel kept his eyes down, looking for any sign of Frank. We managed to find something soon enough. A trail of dead grunts and a brute or two were a clear sign that El-tee had made his way through here, but after that we couldn't find anything concrete.

"Split up?" Andy suggested.

"No," Pavel said. "Keep moving."

The ruined city reminded me of countless battles in the past, from Catamaran to Paris-IV, but the thing it reminded me most was the Mumbai outskirts where I had grown up. The Tea Wars had killed my parents, at least that's what they told me in the orphanage, the turmoil that followed and tense political relations meant that no international aid could get through. By the time the country got itself back on track I had already enlisted. I had grown up in the outer neighborhoods most affected by the fighting and made my home in craters covered with tarps and tank wrecks.

I sighed a little bit louder than usual, sometimes I could almost see my friends getting gunned down by rival gangs or being stabbed after a successful day of pickpocket work.

I clenched my teeth when I remembered the first time I was stabbed. It had been by far the worst, I still had that scar next to my navel thanks to it. George had been the only person I ever talked to about that. Despite our different upbringings he had found himself in some trouble as a kid; he could identify with me more than anyone else I had known before him.

Then he got himself killed in the most horrific way possible.

"What's that?"

"Let me check," I said. "Brute, brute, brute. All dead. Chieftain and a stalker. Wow, that's quite a bit of blood."

"Looks like Frank?"

"Definitely the work of the El-tee," I said. "Some shotgun shells here and there. Nothing else."

I could feel Gunny smiling even through his visor. I was smiling myself for that matter. The El-tee could be a little bit superhuman sometimes. In fact, ever since he had drafted me into Reaper I felt like I needed to try harder just to keep up with him. I was lucky I played the role of sharpshooter and sniper. With the caliber of men and women we had on our team I felt like I had to try too much just to stay in the same league. If not for my ability with the SRS I might've not been on the team. I was mediocre at best with assault rifles and I could only hold an accurate burst with the SMG for five seconds. To be fair, that was two seconds longer than most men in the UNSC, but when you have four brutes coming at you for killing their leader it came in handy.

"Snark, see anything?"

"A whole bunch of dead buildings, Gunny."

"Anything that might point out to the location of your commanding officer?"

I waited and scoped the street. The brutes had been blown up rather violently by what appeared to be spike grenades. There even appeared to be more body parts than the number of brutes warranted. Some of the fur even seemed to be brown, but under the dust it all looked gray to me. I found a trail of blood soon enough. It was redder than the brutes' blood and clearly human.

"Huh, blood. Human."

"How much?" Andrea asked.

"A fair amount," I said. "We need to move slowly if you want me to see it."

"Alright, you heard him, boys," Gunny told the pilots. "Andy, Serge, eyes up. I don't want a missile hitting us on the side."

I sighed at the grim comment and looked through my scope, following the little droplets of blood as they moved from the head of that gravity hammer and down the street.

Suddenly, I had a very revolting suspicion of what those extra body parts had been.

First Lieutenant Francisco Castillo

Alright, I'm alive. That's a good sign.

I got my head up from the kitchen table and leaned back. The rear end of the rebar stuck in my chest scraped against the chair and a bolt of pain shot through my body. I snapped from my drowsiness and clenched my jaw tightly. I sighed and got up.

Gunnery Sergeant Pavel Klaus

I was worried. The blood splatters were surprisingly regular. Frank had lost a lot of blood just getting here.

If it even is Frank…

It had to be. Nobody else could've opened my safe and there was no way it had been broken that cleanly. Snark could track the trail of blood droplets no problem, but it was slow going and exposed us. So far we had only encountered some jackal scavengers that got a bit too excited to see us. Those we could handle, after all, they were most likely deserters from the main body of the Covenant army trying to find themselves something valuable. If we came across anything larger than a squad we could potentially find ourselves in trouble, especially at this altitude and with the speed we were maintaining.

"Merde. Movement, movement!" Serge warned, two words more than usual coming from him.

"Pull up!" I shouted, banging on the Pelican's hull. "Go!"

The two pilots were good at their shit; they hadn't survived this long with no chain of command by luck alone. They were already speeding up and gaining altitude before Serge had finished his warning. I heard then saw three plasma spheres fly past my Hornet and disappear in the distance. The ambushers had missed on their opening barrage and now found themselves on the wrong side of a Hornet. The pilots began turning towards whoever had fired at them, spooling the massive gatling guns. I aimed my machine gun at the windows and opened up, trying to hit anything. The Hornet pilots were considerably more successful. Their ammunition was faster than mine and larger. The houses exploded as the large caliber bullets punched through the polycrete bricks like it was tin foil. The pilot strafed the hornet as two green fuel rods flew at us. One of them nearly took my head off, but the grunt exposed itself as it fired. I hit the little alien with a sustained burst and the pilot fired two missiles into the window, blowing half of the house into oblivion.

The other Hornet was having a little less luck. Instead of a simple two-story house they had some sort of warehouse, four stories tall. I awkwardly switched my position to fire at the windows while the pilot circled around the warehouse, positioning itself on top.

"Do you have thermal?" I asked the pilot loudly.

"Don't tell me how to do my job," he replied calmly.

I shrugged as the man positioned his Hornet along the longest axis of the warehouse and spooled its cannons. He began firing through the rooftop while the other Hornet brought the pain in from the side. It must've been hard to have all that depleted uranium raining down on you with absolutely nothing to stop them other than your bodies.

I chuckled. Poor fuckers didn't have a chance.

"Alright, I'm out," the pilot said. "No more ammo."

"Did you get them all?"

"Oh, I got them alright," he said. "Some are still alive."

"I'm not wasting ammo on those," the other pilot said.

I sighed. "Serge, Andy."

"We've got it," she said.

The two of them hopped off as the Hornets hovered over the rooftop and went inside. It took them just a minute to go in and execute the survivors. It wasn't strictly necessary to kill them, but this was no-man's-land and there was a chance that they might be rescued and patched up to fight another day. I had participated in a fair amount of counter-insurgency operations, but those had been almost exclusively assassinations. To be honest, the rules of engagement were a bitch, with the Covenant it was simple: shoot on sight and shoot to kill.

"We're good, we're good," Andrea checked in. "Moving back up."

Once they were up in the Hornets again we began moving. Snark tracked the blood perfectly. We had to hover for a few moments in a spot where the blood drops were slightly more concentrated, probably because Frank had stopped there. Snark noticed that the blood led to a weird little house on the side of the street.

"Yeah, he went in there," Snark said. "Punched through the glass on the door, I think."

I scoffed. "What kind of weirdo builds a house to have the security capabilities from five centuries ago?" After that little rant I sighed. "Set us down. I'm going in. Andrea, I need you with me."

"I've got all manners of needles and ointments ready," she said.

As my feet hit the pavement I was suddenly worried that Frank was not going to greet me with a cocky smile. He had made it so far and done so much with whatever injury he was carrying. It was entirely plausible that he had bled out. I tried to reassure myself, but with every step I took towards the door my heart started pounding louder. The door was slightly ajar and another door that led to the garage on my left had been opened. Inside the garage I could see scattered boxes and ancient woodwork supplies.

"Gunny…"

I stopped looking at the mess that had been made in the garage and walked down the hall before turning into the kitchen and past Andrea. Sitting face down at a table was a man in full ODST armor. I would've been skeptical, but the shoulder pieces were certainly Frank's. One could hardly confuse that right pauldron with four spikes still embedded into it. The crimson stripe going through his left arm and the front of both his boots were also familiar colors to me. Frank wasn't wearing his helmet, showing his hair with the shape of the helmet still pressed into it.

Despite everything, the thing that drew my attention the most was the two foot long piece of rebar coming out of his back and his chest.

"Pieprzyc."

Neither of us moved. I had seen Frank stomped in the chest by a brute chieftain, but even then he had put his hands up and managed to slow down the deadly move. Andy had seen him get shot, stabbed, and beaten. She had also patched up more injuries than I could count. A piece of grooved steel half an inch thick going through your chest was a little bit different.

"He walked all this way?" Andy said in barely-concealed awe. "There must've been at least twelve dead covvies!"

"Pieprzyc," I repeated, watching the unmoving body of my friend, leaning on a crappy table as if taking a nap.

Suddenly Frank's head moved slightly and my heart started beating again. He slowly turned his head to look at me. His face was so pale that it looked blue from the veins underneath. His eyes had a triple set of bags around them. Most of his face was white as paper except for a spot in his forehead near the hairline where he had been cut open and his mouth and chin were completely covered with dried blood.

Frank blinked twice and smiled, showing blood-stained teeth in a disgusting grin that brought joy to my heart. I had felt happier only twice in my life, when I got married and when I saw my daughter for the first time.

"You're alive!"

"I don't think so," he replied softly as Andrea moved towards him. "Are you here to take me? You're not dead too, are you?"

Andy tapped the edge of the rebar lightly, drawing a grimace from Frank that almost made me feel his pain and made the scar on my belly tighten.

"You're alive Frank," I assured him. "You're all good."

Frank scoffed with an expression very close to annoyance and then leaned his forehead on the table as Andrea began to frantically work on him.

Thanks to Colonel-Commissar2468 for proofreading this chapter. I want to apologize for the delay and for the relatively short delivery. Titan, the fucker that he is, went to vacation on Hawaii in order to get away from this fucking cold. I don't want to throw shit at Colonel, but he did take a little bit longer than usual. I'm sure he had his reasons, but you can flood his inbox with angry PMs if you feel like it.

Well, we now know what happened to Gunny, the single most heroic dog in existence of ever. We also know that Pavel is probably the most savvy character in this universe and that Frank is one badass motherfucker. To be fair, having rebar shoved through your torso would probably kill you, but I did some (admittedly limited) research and people can in fact survive with something through their lung. I agree that I might've stretched the boundaries of imagination, but I am justified in doing so because that is motherfucking badass, as they say in my home country.

Rackushun: Pavel is a bit more passive than Frank, but he had to step up his game a little bit. Plus, he's still an ODST, so passive is relative.

Next chapter: Frank heals up and gets ready to kick some ass. The Battle of Reach is slowly turning into the Fall of Reach. Hell will rain down upon the planet and scorch everything! People will be badass too.

I hope you enjoyed and if so, please do let me know what you thought.

Stay strong.

-casquis