It had been at least a good two hours of Requiem's surface passing by underneath us before Fallen let the pelican slow at Thorne's request. I looked at my distorted and discolored reflection in the verdant green of my ODST helmet's visor, the visor well accenting the white armor trimmed in the same bright green. I was almost disappointed in what I saw. The same person who'd let, not just most of her own squad, but most of another one as well, be captured or worse. And the same hopeless soldier who was eventually going to tear herself apart with worry, and dread, and doubt, and fear. These were the times that I wished I was more akin to a SPARTAN-II. The legendary warriors of the UNSC. The ones who didn't have to think, or talk, or feel. As far as any of us knew, they felt just as much as any machine aboard the infinity.
I spun my helmet in my hands, lifted it above my head and slipped it on, watching the Heads Up Display come to life right before my eyes. Sarah popped into existence, same trademark smile plastered on her face. I couldn't help but smile back.
"We'll find them, you know that, right?" she asked, her eyes searching my own.
I had so many thoughts rush through the outermost edges of my mind at the same time, did I know that? Was I sure? Was I even fit to lead anymore? Why did they all trust me? How did they make A.I.s eyes so realistic? Though none of these thoughts were actually voiced. All that shot forth from my mouth was a struggled, "Yeah." though even I could tell it was not a very believable response. She wasn't satisfied with the answer but took it anyway, blinking out of my HUD and into her own little world.
"Beacon is 100 KM ahead and… 200 KM down?" said Thorne, the words seeming foreign on his tongue.
We all looked at him in a small fit of disbelief. Though no one questioned his statement. Jasmine brought the Pelican to rest near the location of the beacon. The ship landing with a small jostling. We each stood, rations on hand, and exited the craft. The surroundings were now entirely different from what we had campaigned through this entire time. Instead of barren deserts we were surrounded by lush green jungles. A rotting log lay fallen across the ground in front of the drop doors, moss and decomposition just now starting to grab hold of the dead trees bark. The ground was slick with moisture and plant life, though our all terrain boots seemed to have no problem traversing the mossy rocks and mulched ground of Requiem's jungles.
"We got about a 1 KM hike but with all this foliage it'll probably more like a 3 KM trek." said DeMarco with an irritated sigh.
I didn't blame him, of course. He got angry about everything and I was numbed. I numbed myself to the voices in my head telling me they were dead, that it wasn't worth it, that it was the wrong choice. I numbed them all into the deepest recesses of my mind, but what went with them were my emotions, my cognitive thinking, my ability to feel. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be a II. If so, I would have probably gone insane. The emptiness in my heart and in my senses left me feeling almost sick, but eventually I numbed that away too. I was left with the deafening silence of my helmet, even the sound of my breathing falling away from my ears after long enough of hearing the pattern of inhales and exhales.
Footfall after footfall we trekked through the heavy foliage that came with the territory on this side of Requiem. The sounds of the jungle were enough to put you on alert as me and my team would all turn to the sounds of birds and any rustling in the bushes. There were too many things that could go wrong for anyone to let their guard down now. DeMarco, directly ahead of Fallen, followed by Thorne and finally backed by myself, suddenly held up his fist. We each stopped in our tracks as DeMarco signaled the halt. He peeked out as if looking over the edge of something.
"We got about a 50 Meter drop ahead. We got some vines that we might be able to use but we aren't going down but one at a time." stated DeMarco, turning to face us.
I sighed and nodded to him. He nodded back and holstered his rifle, laying flat on his stomach and tugging at one of the vines plastered to the solid rock of the ravine, one particularly sturdy vine yanking free. DeMarco didn't waste a second before grabbing holt of the vine and swinging over the side. I heard metal slap against rock for a solid minute before Fallen grasped the rope in her right hand, wrapping it around her forearm, and slipping off the side. Again, another minute of waiting. It seemed the bushes were becoming more and more active as time passed, the rustling becoming frequent and much closer. I turned my head over my shoulder in time to see Thorne's head disappear over the ledge. I backed up to the edge, holstering my own rifle and turning around to watch Thorne's climb down.
He slowly made his way down, a foot on the rock at all times. He touched down at the bottom and stood off to the side with the others, craning his neck to look up at me. I took the thick, cord like vine in my hand and turned around to face the jungle. I straddled the vine and let myself swing over the edge, my feet planting firmly into the crumbling and cracked rock wall, threaded with roots and interwoven with smaller vines. I took a footstep down, letting the vine slip through my hands the same amount. Footstep after footstep and I'd gone 50 ft. Not near far enough to just jump and get it over with. I inhaled and tried to shake the sweat from my brow, looking upwards at the interwoven canopies of the trees and the lace like patterns of the sky shining through the branches. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and went to take another step down.
"Contact!" screamed Thorne, three guns snapping free from their holsters some odd 150 ft. below me.
I snapped my eyes open and looked dead into the face of a Promethean Knight, looking over the edge of the ravine. I kept a firm grip on the vine with my left arm and reached for my magnum with the other. As my hand brushed the metal of the handle the Promethean raised its sword and screeched.
I watched in terror, as I drew my magnum, the blade cut through the vine as if there were nothing there, the slack coming quickly towards my hand. My magnum came up to aim at the same moment I began to fall backwards. I had nothing to react to, nothing to hold onto to stop my fall. So I did what I was supposed to and I aimed and fired. My magnum rounds joined that of the three other rifles firing behind me, driving off the knight, an orange ball imploding on itself as it teleported away.
I fired until the slide on my magnum stopped falling forward on its own. As soon as my slide locked, I felt the ground rush up and meet my back with the force of a warthog at full speed. I felt my back bounce off of the dirt as my head collided, whiplashing my neck back upwards and letting it bounce back to the ground. My vision blurred and my head was clouded, the ringing in my ears near unbearable. I saw three familiar looking smudges surround the outer edges of my vision before they came back into focus, my helmet slipping off of my head somewhere in the time between.
I sat up slowly and rubbed my head. It felt swollen, like my brain was too large for the skull that held it and it was pushing to escape out of my ears. I squinted my eyes shut and shook my head clear before I actually began to consciously hear the questions.
"You alright?"
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Hey, can you stand?"
all these questions, they made my head hurt more. I brushed them away before pushing myself up, the ringing in my ears still there, but bearable.
I cursed to myself and scooped up my helmet, "Concussion." I stated nonchalantly.
They all gave me a slight symbol of remorse, a wince or two, but it wasn't a bad injury at all in my field, so I slipped my magnum, recovering it from where it lay, into my holster after a few tries. I proceeded to snap my helmet back into place and roll my neck around, each of them giving me a questioning tilt of the head before I motioned the all good with a thumbs up. They each turned, Jasmine waiting for me to catch up to her before continuing on.
"There have to be more of those things out here." She said lowly.
"Yeah, just about no such thing as a stray knight." I responded.
She gave a firm nod and seemed to lose herself in her thoughts. I didn't blame her for that either. DeMarco had his anger, I had my numbness, and Jasmine had her own world within her mind. Thorne didn't seem to have a quirk for this, he always seemed to be upbeat and supportive of everyone. He was different. If there were anyone I had to compare to Admiral Lasky it would be him.
Once we were moving again I was able to slow down and look at what was happening around me. On my left was a small stream, though how deep it was, was up to the mind's judgement. The water reflected and contoured the bottom as if in some places there was almost no water and in others, a bottomless pit. I looked up from my reflection in the smooth water's surface to look up at the two sides of the ravine, most likely carved by that stream. There was too much detail in these small formations of rock to be natural, though it beautifully was. Thorne looked up from the device he held every so often to look around, DeMarco making sure we were going the right way frequently. I let the gravel of the river bank crunching underneath my boot lull me into a trance. I was sucked into my thoughts.
Right now, that was a terrible place to be. The screams of Jordan, Nikolas, Shikoba, Lilith, Silas, Kathyrn. They all haunted me now. I highly doubted DeMarco couldn't say the same for his own. I hated to relive moments like this. I constantly relived that fateful day on my home planet. I relived the elite walking towards me with the glowing blue plasma blade extended in his hand. I also remember the man that saved me. But now I remember the screams of ones I would have died for. Ones that I could hardly stand to live without. I now remembered one in particular, either in her entirety or in a single, fleeting moment, these were the best memories to relive so far. I looked up from my feet to find that the group had pushed a few feet ahead of me, my footsteps falling slower as I drowned in my thoughts. I was surprised I hadn't drowned long ago.
I took a few wide steps to catch up and continued in the rhythm of our footsteps. Though eventually they had to stop. In our case they stopped at the opening to a large overhang. At the back of the rocky and overgrown outcropping was a door that could have fit a pelican lengthwise and then some, definitely of forerunner origin. Thorne looked down at the device and back up again.
"Well, we're in the right place." he stated with a scratch of his head.
"Well it would make sense, forerunners, prometheans. The two come hand in hand." responded Jasmine.
I sighed and shifted from foot to foot, looking at the door, "Sarah, can you get it open?"
Sarah came through my helmet's microphone, "Well if you can find a panel then I can definitely try."
I bit my lower lip and looked around while the others talked. I searched up and down, all around, scanning with my eyes.
"I got one" said Sarah, "bottom right of the door, should be an access port."
I sighed in relief and walked towards the door.
"Where are you going?" asked DeMarco.
"Just give me a minute ok?" I responded curtly.
I felt the gravel underneath my feet become solid stone, covered in moisture, the moss hanging from the ceiling mixed with the hanging roots of trees atop the overhang. A steady drip of water was rebounding off of the walls as I approached the door. And then I saw it, it wasn't in perfect shape but it should work. I sped up a bit and slipped the chip out of my helmet, sliding it into the port as soon as I got there, Sarah flickering into view.
Her voice was broken up but I could understand her wavering and cut model, "This ter-terminal I old. B-but I can u-use it."
And at that she got to work. Her hologram would occasionally have a glitch in its animation, her body breaking apart for a few moments before pulling itself back together. I was surprised when only a minute later she turned to me with a devious smile.
"Got it." she said, just as I was able to yank her chip from the slot. I was happy, I wouldn't even lie about it.
I stuck her chip to my faceplate as if to kiss it before slamming it into its port on the back of my helmet, the familiar cold rush running over me as she reappeared.
"Thank God for you Sarah." I said with a breathy chuckle.
She simply smiled and said, "It's what I do." before winking and disappearing from my HUD.
I turned around excitedly as the door made a large groaning behind me. The walls and roof began to shake, small rocks and clods of dirt shaking loose as the door was lowered into the ground. There was a terrible sound of metal grinding against rock as the door was scraped by the sharp and jagged rocks of Requiem before it broke off their points and sanded them down as smooth as the door itself. I was joined by three others, all looking at the gaping hole in the once covered wall, the interior the same shining grey, illuminated by unknown sources.
We had each been in places similar on good terms, but this time we were here for a much better reason, though not as pleasant. Two of the three SPARTANs flanking me held their guns on their shoulders, the other holding it low to his stomach. I reached over my shoulder and grabbed my own Battle Rifle, wrapping a finger over the charging handle with my left hand and yanking backwards, a satisfying clink coming from the gun's interior as the fresh mag loaded in its first bullet.
"Ladies first." said Thorne with a chuckle.
I smiled to myself before walking forward and hearing another transition of flooring, this time back onto synthetic material. My feet ached to be removed from their containment and feel the chilled metal against their soles but of course I could not oblige. I simply walked in, metal clanking against metal in a row of four.
"These places have always made me uncomfortable…" muttered DeMarco.
I didn't disagree with him, but he knew as well as all of us that we had a job to do, he knew better than some. I shivered as the suit's temperature adjustment system took a moment to kick in, the interior of this labyrinth frozen compared to the tropical jungles it was housed in. The deeper we stalked down the winding ramps the more our footsteps echoed, down through the construct and back to us moments later. Sounds from below us became clearer as the click-clack of crawlers feet, scuttering across the walls, became more evident. There were the voices of Knights, if they could be called that, the gritty mechanical scraping to their cries would put anyone on alert, and being SPARTANs, we were always on alert.
The gradient of the ramps downward began to lower, becoming flatter and flatter as we continued until we were met with a lat hallway, two paths branching left and right at the end.
"Split up?" asked Thorne.
And as much as I wanted to say no, there was to much unknown ground to cover, "Yeah, We'll go right." I said, gesturing to Fallen.
She walked over to stand beside me, the four of us looking at each other in a quiet goodbye as both our small squads walked forward and branched away from one another. I shifted my gun uncomfortably in my hands, one of the few times the weight was more uneasing than comforting. I looked to my right and saw the small SPARTAN that I was traveling with and smiled a bit to myself. My eyes fixed forward again, a small orange glow was coming from around the corner ahead. With nothing but completely smooth walls surrounding us we each looked at each other for any ideas of what to do. Unfortunately neither of us had one.
That wasn't entirely true, we both knew exactly what we were going to have to do. We each leveled our guns at the end of the hall and began walking, sights not moving from the end of the hall. The orange light was becoming brighter and brighter by the second. Fallen racked the charging handle on her DMR a soft click coming from the inside. And then, rounding the corner, came the Promethean Knight.
"Contact." said Fallen, more a formality than an alert.
We both opened fire, the shield breaking and the knight showing its human skull to us before we each shot that too. The promethean broke away in small flakes of orange, leaving a small ball of what was found to have been data being left behind. We each moved on, slipping another clip into the port after ejecting that mag, smacking it in there good and tight. We each racked the charging handle, knowing that more would be coming soon.
"Let's go, double time!" I said before breaking into a run around the corner, Fallen hot on my heels.
When we rounded the corner there was another short ramp downwards before branching again to the right, there we saw DeMarco and Thorne coming down a ramp on the opposite side.
"Well that was extremely necessary wasn't it?" asked Thorne sarcastically.
I scoffed and chuckled a bit before they each racked their slides and jogged after us.
"We heard the shots, thought you'd be here soon enough." said DeMarco with a smug tone to his voice.
Down the ramp that came together in the middle and then down another corridor we went before coming to the first door we'd found in this place.
"I can't get a good signal through all this interference but I'm sure this has got to be the place." said Thorne, tapping the tacpad on his arm.
I let out a huff of air before taking out Sarah and slipping her into the access port once more.
She appeared on the pedestal, already furiously typing, "You could at least give a girl a warning first." she said playfully, "I'll need a minute, this door is heavily encrypted. I can't get access to anything beyond it, and I can hardly access the door." she said with an aggravated lilt.
A screech from the opposite end of the corridor let us know we had some company.
"Uh, Sarah, you might wanna hurry up." I said
"I'm working on it!"
And into the hallway teleported a mass of knights, crawlers, skittering around the corner and up the walls, and Guardians, floating in afterwards. And then the hallway erupted. it erupted with sounds, lights, projectiles, and shrapnel. My gun spit fire from my own hands, the bite of my bullets felling prometheans of all the likes. A grenade slipped from my side, one hand still firing as I tossed the fragmentation grenade forward. A group of three knights all recoiled as their shields failed, becoming targets. Bolts of orange plasma whizzed by and some pinged off my armor's shields. DeMarco stumbled back, holding his left thigh before raising his gun again. I saw his shields flickering back online, and a brand new hole burned in his armor. I turned my attention back to the horde of prometheans before I heard the three words I'd been waiting for.
"I got it!" exclaimed Sarah.
I wasted no time yanking her and sliding underneath the still opening door. I ushered in the others DeMarco sliding in backwards, Fallen diving through and Thorne crouching under the gap, still firing.
"Close it!" i screamed.
"On it!" screamed Sarah, the door shuttering to a stop before lowering again, sealing shut to the sound of a promethean's cry.
I put my hands on either thigh and huffed out a breath of air before looking up at each of them, a drop of sweat dripping onto the inside of my helmet.
"Intense." said Throne, a sly grin you just knew was there on his face.
DeMarco groaned, either from pain or from annoyance I didn't know. He slipped his can of biofoam out and squeezed it off in the wound. He gritted his teeth before standing.
"I'm good, let's keep moving."
I nodded at him and looked at everyone else, they seemed relatively fine. I looked around now noticing how dark it really was in here. It was illuminated with a dim, bluish light. I was unnerved, but not undetermined. We pushed on, a small room a little ways off. When we stepped in we were relieved, frightened, angered, and just about any other emotion you could possibly think of. There, in some form of a cryopod, lay our teams, four of the pods on the left emptied. I became almost sick before swallowing the bile that had crept into my throat. I walked over to the nearest control panel while the others went over and brushed their fingertips against the glass of the pods, the helmets of each SPARTAN removed.
I slammed my fist downwards on one of the larger buttons that seemed like a good idea to press. A hiss of air escaped the pod and frozen air leaked from the sides and bottoms as the top lifted. Each occupant fell out of their corresponding pods, taking gulps of air and coughing up the frigid air. Madsen puked on the floor, but no one minded right now. We each ran to our teammates, helping them up and looking them over. Silas was stumbling on his feet, looking at each and every one of us, no matter if we wanted it or not. He patched up DeMarco's wound a bit better, gave Madsen some pills, took some himself and sat down I patted him on the shoulder and walked into a room adjacent. I grabbed an armful of helmets and took them back into the room, laying them out and doing this until everyone was equipped. I kept trafficking helmets, and then moved to weapons. By the time everyone was armored and weaponized, they were mostly good. I had questions, sure, but this was not the time or place.
Lilith seemed a bit more shaken up than the others, slowly moving, rarely blinking. I'd have her with Silas before long. Right now we needed to get out of here. I walked over to the door and had Sarah open it, the prometheans gone and the halls strangely silent. I kept my gun trained on the hallway as everyone filed out, I following closely behind, the door shuttering closed again. I walked with my back to the group, watching our backs. We all had to make the journey back up these godforsaken ramps. They seemed never ending.
"We're almost there guys, keep it together." said Fallen, in response to Phoenix having to stop to catch his breath for a moment.
I was worried out of my mind for them, I couldn't fail them now, I just couldn't. There were so many things to say, to d-
Hold that thought. A gun burst whirled me to face the front, a large group of prometheans appearing. We all fired, but they kept teleporting at random intervals. Turns out they were smarter than we'd anticipated. While we were focused on the jumping knights, I was thrown to the ground from behind, a crawler scratching and ripping at my back. The crawler was soon gone, Grant's boot crunching the metal. I took her hand and stood, recovering my weapon and continuing fire. I took a scattershot to the shoulder, shields flickering madly, alarms crying out in rebuttal.
"We're moving! Go for the door!" yelled out Thorne.
"We're coming! Go!" I screamed back.
I ushered each of my squad mates ahead of me, still taking popshots at the prometheans. The hall was becoming thick with crawlers, guardians providing undesired protection for them. I watched a guardian swoop in to revive a knight before I could get hold of it. I leaped at it, grabbing at its midsection and ripping out its hardlight shield. I threw the scrap heap to the ground and ran off with the shield.
When I rounded the corner Everyone was waiting at the door, Felicia already working on the door's functions. Dragon was up front, ready to yank the chip at a moment's notice. I turned to watch the crawlers round the corner as well.
"Grenades, now!" I yelled.
Seemed I didn't have to tell them, pins already out and grenades mid air. Shrapnel and crawler bits flew everywhere. A great firework show for our exit. I whooped a bit and turned to watch the door lower a bit more, Dragon, flamethrower in hand, waiting for any opposition. When the door lowered nothing stood in our way. I jogged my way to the front just in time to be reminded that we weren't home free yet.
Dragon raised the barrel of his firespitter and went to torch a newly teleported knight before the gun could be slung from his arms by the promethean's superior strength. Everyone was raising the barrels of their guns as Dragon opened his arms in a fighting stance. Worst mistake he will have ever made. The promethean bore down on him with its sword, the mysterious orange blade slicing directly through Dragon's left stood in shock for a moment before falling backwards, his arm being lopped to the floor. I was the first to move on the knight as it raised for the killing blow. I raised the hardlight shield above him and let the sword rebound before everyone opened fire. The knight was down in seconds. Silas was too. He slid on his knees up to Dragon who was suddenly surrounded by everyone else. He was looking to his right, breathing heavily.
"How bad am I cut?" he asked, refusing to look.
"How bad did the bastard cut me!" he yelled, his voice desperate and his breathing rapid.
Meteor was already bandaging and applying, and doing things above my own knowledge. He didn't seem to feel anything, He grabbed me by my arm and pulled me down to his face.
"I can not feel my arm." he said matter-of-factly.
I cleared my throat and spoke, "It's pretty bad, but, uh, you're gonna be okay, alright? Just don't look, look at me alright?" I said
He seemed disturbed by this answer but nodded anyways, looking only at me as Meteor and I helped the brute to his feet, Crow coming in from behind and wrapping his arm around Dragon's waist, putting what was left of his arm over his shoulder. I was on the other side, Dragon's eyes still on me. Meteor was mumbling about shock, and blood loss, and treatments of all kinds in his rapid english. I feared for what would happen when he came out of shock.
We helped him hobble to the ravine's wall, the loss of blood making him weaker and weaker.
"How in the hell are we gonna get him up there?" asked Phoenix, looking around for… who knows?
"Hell if I know." responded Hoya.
Fallen spoke up, "I can go get the pelican and try to get it to you guys, though I don't know if it'll be the smoothest getaway."
"Well that's the option we have right now. Go." I said.
She nodded and immediately began scaling the wall.
"I'm going with her." "Me too." came to voices.
Phoenix went up, then Thorne. I sat against the wall and waited. It may be a hell of a time getting them all out of here, but leaving anyone, no matter the status, was unacceptable.
No man left behind.