[Installation-09 Control Room]

"Professor, it's now or never! Show us what you got." The voice of Spartan Jerome-092 rang out from the radio, echoing within the control room as Professor Ellen Anders stood at a console in front of a massive hologram, showing the entire Ark as well as the Ring hovering above it's center. She brought forward a smaller hologram onto the console displaying a sector of land on the ring, with blue square markers indicating UNSC forces and red circles indicating troops of the Banished. She put her two fingers together and used them to trace a red circle around the Banished troops, as the circle morphed into an awkward shape before highlighting it's interior in red as the entire room shook.

Anders placed her hand directly below the highlight chunk, slowly starting to lift it upwards as it was elevated and separated from the rest of the section.

"I hope this works." Anders said before she rapidly lifted her hand upwards and flung the hologram into the air, watching as the red hologram flew upwards into the void of space before quickly breaking apart and shatter from the force of it's rapid ascent, removing what remained of the Banished's presence on the ring with it. Her job here was now, watching as the last UNSC markers vanished from the display, indicating all ground troops had evacuated off the ring.

"Professor Anders, we are on our way. Get to the rendevous." Jerome-092's voice spoke once more as Anders interacted with the console and observed it's data, silently cursing herself as she read the ancient Forerunner text before speaking up.

"With all due respect Spartan..." She looked up to see the rapidly expanding swirling circle, appearing like a whirling vortex as it depicted the newly opened slipspace portal which the ring was now rapidly approaching. "I believe that's an option any longer."

"Professor Anders, there must be some way to-" The voice of Captain Cutter rang out, only to be interrupted by Anders as she frantically interacted with the console and inputted several commands before holding on tight.

"Don't worry, Captain. As soon as I'm back to the Soell system, I'll get that beacon out. It should only be a few weeks, until I can figure out how to get back to you!" She shouted, before the ring fully entered the slipspace portal right as it sealed behind it. She shook her head and sighed as she stood at the console, watching the hologram of the Ring and data swirl around it as it traveled through slipspace, with a long holographic bar being an indicator showing how close it was to it's destination.

"Alright, now to-" Suddenly the large hologram of the ring ceased it's spinning, the swirling data around it vanishing and indicating it had exited slipspace. "What's happening? It should've taken a lot longer for us to get there, why'd we drop out of slipspace so early?" Anders asked in a puzzle tone, interacting with the console and calling for the elevator with the press of the button. Right as she was about to turn away from the console, a beep was heard as a message box appeared with a warning symbol. She quickly turned back and interacted with it.

'WARNING, SLIPSPACE ERROR DETECTED, TARGET DESTINATION COORDINATES LOST. IDENTIFYING NEW SET COORDINATES... COORDINATES FOUND. CONFIRMING DESTINATION... ERROR 404, DESTINATION NOT FOUND.'

"Well, that's reassuring... Let's see where I ended up." Anders said as she turned and stepped onto the lift as it raised upwards.

The lift quickly arrived at the entrance of the control room, as Anders stepped out onto the grass and quickly walked along the path through the forest. The way the rings created these environments always fascinated her, and the amount of biome variety on the Ark made her even more interested. She wondered what these biomes were originally home to, seeing as the Forerunners made them to preserve lifeforms after the Rings activated and purged the galaxy of life.

The quiet forest was dark and misty, causing Anders to seem a little unnerved, before finally coming to a ledge overlooking the section of the ring she tore out only a few minutes ago. She stood at the edge, looking up to see the stars illuminated above her, yet something felt different about them...

"This... Isn't the Soell system..." Her words contained a hint of fear as she gazed at the planets and the system's sun, noticing how they were off from what she remembered reading about the Soell system. Even the stars seemed different somehow. She turned and rushed back to the control room elevator, descending down and interacting with the console as her fears were confirmed. "That's just it, we aren't in the Soell system, hell might not even the same galaxy."

The readouts on the screen showed her very limited data, which made no sense because the Forerunners cataloged every single planet in the galaxy. Anders immediately ordered the Ring's sensors to run a scan of all nearby systems for any forerunner installations or facilities, no matter how small, waiting for the results to come back before examining them. According to the scans, there were no Forerunner installations or facilities anywhere near here. There were six other rings, the Ark, dozens of shield worlds, and even more facilities and stations and yet it was detecting none of them.

However, after further scanning, a beep was heard as Anders quickly zoomed in on the source, pinpointing the source of the signal to be from a system similar to that of the Sol system. Anders had the sensors run a more intense analysis of the planet from which the signal was originating. When the results came back, she was both relieved and frightened.

The scans showed the planet was in fact, Earth, it's standard moon orbiting it. However, the scans detected zero UNSC orbital installations above the planet, and zero ships as well. What did show up, were ships that did not match any form of design she had seen before, showing no similarity to either human nor covenant design. The large majority of the ships appeared similar to that of a disk or saucer, like how a UFO was depicted in many old science fiction holo films that Anders used to watch as a young child.

Anders needed time to think to herself, as she pressed a couple buttons and allowed a seat to raise out of the floor behind her and let her sit down. She thought back to the many history logs that Isabel had provided her and the crew, allowing them to get caught up on events that occurred while they were in cryo-sleep. According to the logs, while the Covenant did find Earth, they were never successful in conquering it, being stopped due to a combination of civil war and the loss of the prophets.

This knowledge, combined with the presence of unidentified ships in orbit, confirmed that this was not the Earth that Anders knew. This became even more apparent when the surrounding planets such as Mars did not line up with the originals. Mars was barren and uninhabitated, identical to how it looked before being colonized by the UEG and turned into a massive industrial hub. The moon lacked any form of colonization as well, it's orbital skyhook platforms being absent. It was becoming clear that Anders had likely wound up in an alternate reality.

Normally, someone would panic when learning this knowledge, but Anders was surprisingly calm. As she sat and thought to herself, she rubbed her forehead and groaned.

"Ugh... Why can't things ever be simple? First the Spirit of Fire gets teleported above the Ark, and now what was our only way of contacting Earth gets me sent to an alternate reality! Honeslty shouldn't be surprised, the Forerunners might as well have been able to travel to different realities with their slipspace technology. Maybe this Ring accidentally travelled into a different reality, would explain why it couldn't detect the Soell system, cause the Soell system never existed..."

A few moments later, Anders stood up and stretched herself out. "Alright, time for a new plan..."