Chapter 31 – Quaerere

August 19th, 2552 - (15:30 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Eridani System, Reach

Viery Territory, Eposz

New Alexandria, Csillagos éj Hotel

:********:

Erica watched the soldiers check their weapons with growing anxiety. They followed Corporal McPherson's example, working rifle slides, inspecting ammo counters and searching their BDUs to count their magazines. They would need to if what the corporal was proposing really did come to pass. Nevertheless, Erica was hesitant to follow his line of thought, yet alone to think that what they had on hand would be enough. By comparison, her and Sára's sidearms were entirely out of the question.

Not long after they had successfully switched the beacon back on, McPherson redirected his concerns to security. Just how defensible was the safe room? Was it really able to keep anything out? The corporal's questions were aimed at Erica. Despite what information she knew, it came across as negligible compared to an increasing number of potentialities.

What if the Covenant were able to hack their way inside somehow?

That one ultimately stumped her. She didn't know for a fact if they could do that or not. Outside of their blunt force approach to every human world they ever found, she was clueless as to how they operated. It was those fine details that gave the corporal a sense of foreboding. It was one he readily acted upon, ordering his troopers to prepare to leave the room, either for a possible rescue or, in the worst-case scenario, if the Covenant really did reach them first.

Erica went about checking her own ammo. Slipping a hand into both pockets gave her an account of her supply: two magazines, three including the one in her M6. Sára was roughly in the same spot.

Then there were the kids.

Of the two teens, the one Noah had come to call 'Gray-Eyed Soccer Boy' or simply 'Gray' looked the readiest to leave. Out of the three of them, Erica discerned that he could fend for himself the best. What that might look like in a straight fight with a Grunt, Jackal or Elite was a different story. Then again, he had somehow shown himself capable of surviving out on the streets since yesterday. His friend, the girl named 'Christa', though easily the more personable of the two, had also proven she could do the same. Noah was no exception either. His actions the other day left little room for doubt. A part of her took a kind of motherly pride in that fact. Another part felt something else, a gnawing feeling, a maternal guilt that he had even had to endure all that. Hardly did a minute go by without her thinking back to how she left him in front of the doors of Starry Night Elementary. He more than proved that he could survive where most kids couldn't. She just wished he never had to.

Sadly, she needed those same guilt-ridden realties to reason how things were going to play out.

Having finished his checks, McPherson moved to the main door and replaced one of his men at the watch. Erica observed the changing of the guard with trepidation. She gestured over to Noah and had him sit down beside her.

"Listen Noe, we might be leaving soon. When we do, I need you to stay close to me, okay? Just like you did with Mr. Mitchell."

She regretted it faster than the words could leave her mouth.

"Wait, we're leaving?" Intuitively, he looked towards the smaller room. "What about Mr. Mitchell? Isn't he coming too? We're bringing him with us, right?"

That familiar sense of culpability, already jabbed into her like a knife, twisted and turned. She felt it again. Another lie was on its way. She stifled it just as quickly and shut her mouth before it could escape. The truth slowly crawled forward one unwilling thought after the next until it broke through her resolve.

"...No, honey, he's not."

Noah's face went white, nearly as white as Mitchell's. "What?"

"He's staying, honey. We can't bring him."

"Wh-, why not?" He asked, voice cracking.

"Because we need to move fast if we're going to get out of here. Mr. Mitchell would slow us down." She steadied herself. "He has to stay."

Just when she thought his face couldn't get any paler, it did. His tone vacillated to the point that each word put him on the verge of tears.

"But-...but, he'll-, he'll be all alone. He'll be by himself. What if the Covenant come back when we're not here? He can't-...we can't-"

He started to shudder. She slowly reached out to him. To her relief, he didn't recoil like she expected. She pulled him close to herself as she shook her head.

"Noe, don't think we're leaving him behind 'cause we're not. He's in-... he's somewhere better. A lot better than where we are now. If there's one thing he'd want for us, it'd be to get in a better place for ourselves. He'd want you safe, Noe. That's why he did what he did yesterday. He wanted you safe. So does everyone else here. Everyone's going to protect you."

"I don't want them to protect me." He said shakily. "I want them to protect him. He's been through enough, hasn't he?"

The last question tore a hole in her. "...Yes, he has. And so have you, and so has everyone else here. They can't hurt him anymore." She hugged him closer, tighter. "But they can still hurt you."

Noah remained silent. She could feel him shaking, trembling even. Still, he didn't cry.

She looked him over. There, if just for a moment, she saw her husband's face. Strength was there. So was pain. The former was only barely holding back the latter with quivering lips and watering eyes.

Erica suspected she looked no different. "Do you understand?"

Noah gave a shallow nod. He mumbled something.

"What?" She asked.

Still sniffling, he met her gaze and she could see his own glimmering like pools of green. "...I miss dad."

Her heart broke at the sight and she hugged him tighter than she ever had before. "I do too." She clasped him by the arms and gave them a reassuring shake. "Soon, okay? We'll see him soon."

"...Promise?"

She didn't.

She couldn't.

Still, that age-old need to lie reared its ugly head again. Though it gave her nothing to say, it at least opened her mouth to make it seem as if she did.

Circumstance spared her the newest indignity as her datapad vibrated noisily in her pocket. A distant hope flared up at the thought that someone could be calling her, that by some chance it could be Duncan.

She pulled it out, checked the screen and watched her hopes die.

The crimson triangle of an emergency notification was blinking. A warning flashed:

'ALERT: CORRIDOR_1 – UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY.'

Fear.

It surged through her entire being like an electric shock.

She whirled around to the others. "Corporal!"

Several curious faces shot her way; McPherson included. "What is it?"

"Someone's opening the doors!" She pointed to where the corridor would be. "Someone out there is opening those doors!"

Like a severed wire in a pool, the shock spread from her to the rest of the room in an instant.

"What?" McPherson stiffened, froze up then thawed. "No one's contacted us yet. Do you have a visual? Cameras? Anything like that?"

She flitted through to her security cameras and sized up the feed in the outside lobby. The others quickly gathered about her.

An unpleasant sight awaited them. The wall beside the hotel's clinic had parted along the once unseen seams, exposing the dim passageway beyond. Red lights strobed into being. Blood red radiance illuminated the half dozen figures that stood and floated at the threshold.

Four Elites were present. Two sported orange armor. The other two wore an ornate white. Erica recognized the latter as the more dangerous, remembering the moment that one of them had let loose with a kind of cannon the day before. Instead of those, they each held a strange weapon that looked an awful lot like a handheld sperm whale. Pale eyes gleamed from their helmets to glare into the opening darkness. Erica's fear combined with a confused fascination once she spotted the rest of their party. Two balloons floated to either side of the white-armored Elites. But they were living balloons, jellyfish-like things that bobbed through the air as if it were water. Some of their tentacles wafted underneath them even as the rest of their limbs snaked and slithered across the walls. Each passing touch caused the conduits within to hum and brighten like an X-ray.

"What...are those?" She wheezed.

"Engineers." The corporal hissed, edging closer. "They must've figured out how to get in. Can you shut them back?"

She tried for the emergency lockouts and activated them. The button blipped twice before flashing her a new warning:

'ALERT: SECURITY LOCKOUT - (IMPEDED)_SYSTEM ERROR DETECTED.'

Erica shook her head. "It's-...they're still getting in. I can't-, I can't close it."

McPherson grimaced.

Just then, the distinct groan of metal on metal resonated into the room.

"Sounds like the rest of the doors." One of the troopers whispered.

"Sounds like we need a new way out." Lahey said as he came to stand guard beside the corporal. "What're our options?"

"Everyone up!" McPherson ordered. "Get ready to move!"

At that, Gray shot to his feet, as if he had been awaiting the order. Everyone else followed suit, backing away from the door while their guardians formed a defensive line in front of it.

Erica pulled Noah close and put a hand to her sidearm. She tried to mentally prepare herself for another round of running and fighting. Without meaning to, she snuck a glance at the smaller room and at Mitchell's boots.

"Is there any other way out of here, Ms. Iris?" McPherson asked with the haste of a demand. "If there is, now's the time."

All eyes turned her way.

The sound of grinding metal grew louder, closer.

Her heartbeat quickened. So did her breathing. Despite her body working against her, she pulled her datapad back out. Her thumb, still shaking, tapped feverishly through a host of schematics.

:********:

Not even the whining scream of the Falcon's jets could drown out the hellish maelstrom that Duncan called a mind.

Did they leave?

Were they still there?

Had something happened to them?

Where were they now?

Were they still okay?

A gladiatorial pit of questions vied, wrestled and murdered one another for his attention. There were so many that he almost wished the Staff had never told him anything at all.

The Staff himself had broken the news not long after he and the others had reached the Kombájn Building.

A High Value Individual, a UEG Rep he'd never heard of before named Mihály Azimoth, was confirmed to be hunkering down in a building. And not just any building either. That was where things got insane. It was the part that blew his mind with the magnitude of the coincidence and got him thinking with the immensity of its convenience.

It was the Csillagos no less.

Azimoth was sheltered somewhere in the hotel. The recent activation of his personal rescue beacon assured them of that. Now, his safe extraction was 1st Platoon's priority, but not Duncan's. Not entirely.

That line of thought kept him occupied through the rest of what turned out to be a very short briefing.

Their rides showed up not long after.

AMX-9, Kilo-9-2 and Kilo-9-4 were attached to their newest mission. The pair of Falcons, the last survivors of their unit, arrived at the Kombájn Building as escorts. Their charge was a single Pelican dropship that its pilot affectionately called 'Devilraid'. It was relatively well armed with a rotary cannon at the fore and a turret in the bay for rear security. It was to serve as the chariot for their new guest...or guests.

The second the two Falcons landed at the building; the platoon set loose on them like crows on a field. The question on everyone's mind was aimed at where their two escorts had gotten off to for so long. Kilo-9-2 had to take up the slack and explain things for the both of them. A constant influx of emergency requests for fire missions, forward reconnaissance, aerial coverage and casevacs had kept them on their toes. Things had gotten even worse with the arrival of the Covenant's latest air assault. So many friendly units were on the verge of being overrun that they were never able to leave for their tram assignment.

The blood-stained flooring on both of their troop bays served as extra evidence. As did the discovery that two of their gunners had been replaced along with at least one of their turrets. Their scorched and scarred hulls were equally convincing.

The platoon was left no choice but to accept the explanation. The hectic nature of what was quickly turning out to be more of a siege than a battle was forcing them to adapt. Though they weren't excited about the idea of possibly losing their air cover again, they loaded in for the trip to the Csillagos.

Duncan was strapped into one of the forward seats aboard Kilo-9-2. Even after settling in, he didn't notice when they took off. He only realized that they were actually flying some five minutes into the journey. By that point in time, they were hovering on a southwesterly heading.

Looking down, he saw the tops of skyscrapers slowly passing beneath his feet like an urban slideshow. Just overhead the Falcon's turbojets released their high-pitched scream. Above them, the rotors beat against the natural howl of the wind, whipping it into a frenzy like paste to a cake mixer.

Nova sat to his left. Zack and Yuri stood in front of him, holding onto the bay's overhead handles while Renni occupied the rear seat.

Outside, the Pelican Devilraid flew alongside them. Just across the way, Kilo-9-4 kept pace so that either Falcon acted as a wingman to the larger dropship.

The Staff and his fireteam had taken residence aboard 9-4 including Hector, Rico and Mito. Whiskey had gotten themselves saddled with guard duty and were remaining on standby within Devilraid's cargo bay.

The skies of the immediate sector were bordering on clear. Not only were there few clouds about, but there were also next to no aircraft around besides them, either friendly or hostile. They were entering into one of New Alexandria's dead zones, sectors where the fighting of the previous day had raged and petered out, much like a wildfire that had run out of combustibles. What that meant in terms of a clear winner was almost never clear. All that could be known for a fact was that the fighting had stopped in these places and everything had gone quiet. Reports from companies of the advancing 7th and 22nd were already coming in from earlier in the day. Some had encountered isolated Army units in these dead zones that had somehow managed to survive the onslaught. Others discovered all too familiar scenes of massacres. And then there were the minority who found something altogether strange. Every so often, a platoon happened upon a few dead Elites here or a few Brute corpses there. These would not have been anything out of the norm were it not for the knowledge that no UNSC forces, local law enforcement or even civilians were ever confirmed to have been in the area.

1st Platoon's locale possessed the same eerie quietness that others had discovered elsewhere. Though it lacked the occasional oddity, it made up for it with an unsettling emptiness.

The streets they passed over were unusually bare of cars. The traffic had mostly dispersed into the wider city. Small handfuls of vehicles such as shuttles and flatbeds were left ablaze. If Duncan had to guess, the location was a big part of why it wasn't congested. Being so far south from the coast where the initial assault had landed the day before, the people here must have had more time to react than their unlucky neighbors to the north.

He couldn't help wondering if that would have been enough time for Erica and Noah. Even then, that possibility played into his worst-case scenario: that they were still here on Reach, in the city.

"Let's run over this again." The Staff comm'd.

With an ever-watchful eye on the wider world, Duncan listened in.

"Our HVI might be present but as of now, we don't know who else or what else could be in the building. Dead zone or not, there's still a potential for survivors. Keep in mind, 1st Platoon, that HVI takes priority."

The Staff paused. Right then, Duncan could feel all eyes on him. He met none of them.

"That said," The Staff continued, "Anyone within proximity that's able to be extracted should be. As much as possible, we don't want to leave anyone behind that can still make it. Now let's get back on topic. Command's traced the signal from our target's beacon to somewhere in the upper half of the hotel. Sadly, it seems the power's turned up too high on whatever device he's using. The signal's fluctuating too much for anyone to get a solid idea of precisely where he is on the inside. That said, we've got two good guesses. The first is the hotel's main security center located between Floors 75 and 76. The second is a sealed safe room somewhere on '121. Intel suggests those are the most likely spots for survivors. Ep-2, take your team to the landing pads on Floor 70. From there you should be able to make your way to the security center. I'll take my team to the rooftop to check out that safe room. Report back if you find anyone. Let's keep this under half an hour. Any longer and we risk attracting unwanted attention from whatever else might still be in the neighborhood."

"Copy." Nova replied.

As the rest of the platoon sounded off, Duncan remained quiet. He was wholly focused on a new opportunity.

"What about Whiskey, sir?" Reznik asked. "Are we still pulling guard duty?"

"Nothing's changed, Whiskey-5." The Staff replied. "I need you, 1 and 2 with Devilraid. He could use the company. Whiskey-3, 4, your stop is coming up. Get ready to move."

"Roger." Lang said. "Just waiting for the door."

"Remember, 3, stay away from the big gun." Renni advised. "Stick to your sidearm if you really need to poke a hole in something."

Mackley let out a long, dissatisfied groan.

"Make sure to sweep for thermals the second you have that Stanchion up and running." The Staff said. "Scan the whole area if you can but your focus should be the hotel. Make sure nothing gets in or out without you giving it a once-over."

"Understood." Lang agreed. "Just one problem though, sir. I don't think we can ID anything in the hotel for sure, not from that range. All that fire is going to be messing with our sensors just like it did yesterday. When it comes to smoke, the 99's optics are only good for showing us what's alive, not what's human. We can handle anything outside, but for the inside, the best we can do is tell you what's where."

"Copy. We'll provide visual confirmation. Just make sure if you shoot off anywhere close to us, you give us a heads-up first. Don't want anyone getting pasted on this run."

"Or any run for that matter." Zack kidded nervously. "If you don't mind."

"Roger." Lang said. "Me and 3 will watch your ba-"

"Requesting permission to conduct a full sweep of the building, sir." Duncan cut in.

Again, all eyes turned his way.

"...Say again, Ep-8?" The Staff finally asked.

"Requesting permission to conduct a full sweep, sir."

"...Explain."

Duncan ran through his reasoning in his head then brought it to the fore. "Two eyes are better than one, and two thousand are better than two. Whiskey-4 just confirmed the Stanchion's thermals are going to have a hard time seeing what's what. That security center is the nerve system for the entire building. Every surveillance system in the hotel is connected to it. If we get inside and no one's there, there's still a chance we can find them, even if they're not on the upper floors. This way we lower our chances of missing anyone."

Out the corner of his eye he caught a pensive nod from Nova.

"You trying to put me out of a job, Ep-8?" Lang prodded.

"Not even close. You can't blow a hole in an Elite with a bunch of cameras, but you can at least confirm that it is one. If I get in the system, we can neutralize the threats inside before either team even runs into them. You spot. I confirm. You finish the job."

"Great." Mackley moaned. "Now I'm out of a job."

"No, you just need to stay ahead of the competition." Daz chided.

"How about it, sir?" Duncan queried.

The Staff's reply was slow and deliberate. "Ep-8, is this for our HVI?"

Duncan didn't respond right away. He felt what he knew was a lie about to leave his lips. He also knew that the Staff would recognize it for what it was. Instead, he traded question for question.

"What'll we do in case we find more survivors than we can fit aboard the Pelican?"

He had never felt more like an idiot in his life than he did after asking that. One, because he already knew the answer, that the platoon would readily stay behind in order to give others the chance to leave. Two, because of how low the odds actually were that they found more survivors than either Devilraid or the Falcons could fit. The Covenant had rampaged through the area the day before. If there was one thing he could count on from them, it was that whether they were in orbit or on the surface, they were always thorough. And that was precisely what he was afraid of.

Perhaps that was why the Staff didn't give him a straight answer. "Greenlight, Ep-8. If the security center is clear, then do what you can with those cameras." In a low voice, he added. "I just hope you don't find more than you wanted to."

The Staff's words boomed in Duncan's head like a cannon. It rattled him like one too though he did well to keep it under wraps.

Then an even greater noise boomed in his ears, the building thrum of fusion drives far larger than anything in the Pelican. All at once everyone started looking around, glancing outside the troop bay at the passing city.

"Where's that coming from?" Hector asked.

"I see it." Zack called out and pointed skyward. "Up top, six o'clock high."

Everyone else peeked out to where he was pointing.

Back behind them in the skies off to the east, the hulking visage of one of the heavy frigates was moving in their direction. It was rising, heading upwards to crest the tops of the lowest clouds. As it passed high overhead, briefly overrunning them beneath its afternoon shade, Duncan realized it was not the only one taking off.

Something similar was happening far off on their right. There, further to the north, another of the frigates had broken from its position and was ascending into the skyline. To their left, the last frigate was doing the same in the distant south, carving a slow path through Alexandria's cloud cover like a bullet through water.

All three of the city's orbital custodians were doing just that, heading into orbit. And yet despite leaving from different sectors, unless Duncan was mistaken, they seemed to be bound for the same destination.

"Where're they off to?" Zack asked worriedly.

"Focus on the mission, trooper." The Staff said, his own concern just barely restrained. "Let the Navy worry about theirs."

"I thought theirs was the city." Dalton added, a subtle angst in his voice.

To this, the Staff gave no reply.

The ships eventually slipped away, one after the other, into the cottony folds of the world above. Their silhouettes were visible for a few short moments. Then even these diminished in size until they faded from view.

In their wake they left behind a skyline still under siege albeit far calmer than the day before. Nevertheless, they also left behind the most profound sense of anxiety Duncan had ever known. Never before had he felt so exposed. The looks of the others as they tracked their course into the atmosphere assured him that he wasn't alone in that.

"Kilo-9-2 to ODSTs, target building's coming up, 600-meters out."

The memory of the ships completely vanished and Duncan was the first to stick his head out for a look.

While he didn't see the Csillagos right away, he did recognize the area. Chief among the nearby cityscape was the Herzl Heritage Building. The reason he remembered it so well boiled down not just to his overall familiarity. That was part of it. The other was the tail-end of the crashed dropship which stuck out from its side like a fiery dart.

Then there was the Csillagos.

He could never mistake the giant, multi-layered telescope of a building for anything else. For ranking among New Alexandria's tallest structures, it was remarkably intact. Some levels burned with the glow of small, condensed furnaces. Long tendrils of smoke twined into the air from others. Most of its floors, however, were untouched, or at least appeared to be so from afar. It was nothing out of the usual for the surrounding area which was possessed of an unnerving air of abandonment.

Duncan's heart clogged up his throat with every fluttering beat. It made the sudden dryness in his mouth all the worse. His stomach dropped even as his hearing turned every crackle of the burning floors into one giant ensemble.

He didn't care.

He didn't care about the smoke or the fire.

He simply wanted to get inside.

But they weren't heading straight to the hotel. Not yet.

Their first stop came up in the form of a smaller, domino-shaped skyscraper off to the east of the building. The apartment complex was one of the biggest in the city. That couldn't save it from falling under the three o'clock shadow of the Csillagos.

The group slowed above the building. The two Falcons took up a wide rotation as the dropship came to hover over the rooftop. The door to the troop bay hinged open. A moment later, Mackley and Lang came trotting out. A short drop landed them on the roof. Amidst the swirling dust clouds thrown up by the Pelican's drives they hustled over towards a westward facing ledge. Lang carried the Stanchion as Mackley affixed his new binoculars to his helmet. With one of the M99's cases in the latter's hand and the long frame of the weapon in the former's, the pair looked like a businessman and a hitman heading for their favorite rendezvous.

Once their overwatch was in position, the Pelican and its entourage made for the target building.

The towering form of the Csillagos loomed ahead of them. Its bulk immediately caught them in its shadow like an invisible net.

"Team 2, watch your backs in there." The Staff warned as the two Falcons peeled off from one another. "If there's anything hostile still inside, chances are high you'll be the first to know."

"Roger that, sir." Nova replied. "No worries, we'll send you a postcard once we're done."

The Staff nodded them off as Kilo-9-4 pulled up and away towards the top of the building. The Pelican rose after it, leaving Kilo-9-2 on its lonely descent towards the middle of the Csillagos.

The 70th floor was unique from the others in that balconies and railed observation decks rimmed its circumference from end to end. Then there were the walls or rather a clear lack thereof. The closest things to them were decorative support pillars that spanned from floor to ceiling, acting as teeth to a maw. Kilo-9-2 headed straight for it, aiming for one of the many landing pads that reached out from the building like thorns on a rose.

Duncan pulled up his rifle as he made a quick survey of his ammo. He was fully stocked, more than sufficient for the job. The spare plasma grenade he'd bartered off one of the soldiers from the tram could also come in handy.

The two machine-gunners made their own quiet sweeps of the floor as they drew closer. The Falcon maneuvered around a pillar of smoke rising from below before righting itself, aligning its starboard side for a final approach.

The touchdown was so soft that Duncan almost missed it. He hardly needed to pay attention as his body was already on the move. He was the first to leap out onto the pad and trained his rifle on the way ahead.

Once the others were off-loaded, Kilo-9-2's rotors screamed anew. The Falcon whirled into the air behind them and took off on a wide rotation of the building, leaving the team to their own devices.

There was no question as to who would take point. Being the most familiar with the hotel out of all of them, Nova and Yuri fell in right behind him while Zack and Renni fell in behind them. Duncan stood at the tip of their spearhead as they fanned out into the interior.

The lights were off. Nevertheless, the sunlight streaming in from the outside provided enough illumination to cover most of the 70th floor. It was a continuous and expansive space, much like an open cross section of the width of the hotel. The smooth dark granite of the flooring created a kind of glitter effect, one that in the right setting could have given the impression of walking on the stars. Yet what they found was anything but right.

The limited light forced Duncan to rely on his VSIR. He stifled a shiver at the spectacles that his HUD swiftly identified.

The team was moving through a sparse forest of thick, decorative pillars whose bulk helped to bolster the hotel's midsection. Some of them had people propped against them. They were hollow-eyed, burned and singed. Others lay at the end of long trails of red that ran across the floor, almost always leading away from the balconies. Their faces were frozen like time capsules, locked in a macabre gallery of expressions, from silent screams of fear and beady eyed confusion to teeth gritted in anger. All held panic. All held pain.

There were soldiers among them. Duncan counted close to half a platoon's worth of Army troopers scattered throughout the floor. Their deaths had been slightly different. Passing by, they often found them slouched awkwardly behind pillars that had been chewed up by bullets and plasma alike, as if they had been firing from cover. Some lay half-drowned inside of the floor's ornamental water fountains, their celestially designed spouts no longer flowing. What little remained in their basins was tainted crimson. The same went for the contents of the small, glassy canals that ran through the floor between the fountains like corrupted spider webs. Still more of the troopers sat against fallen coffee tables or were draped over them. Whether thrown there by the fight or held down for torture, Duncan couldn't say, but they were either ripped open or shot to cinders. He was extra careful to give one such man a wide berth. He had been a sergeant by the looks of the bloodied insignia on his BDU. Though he appeared more intact than the others, the three undetonated crystals still glowing out of his chest told a different story.

Then there were the Covenant dead. There were handfuls of fallen Grunts and Jackals as well as several Elites. To his surprise, he singled out an Ultra among them. The notorious hard-hitter and its concussion rifle sat at the epicenter of a serious firefight. Around it were several craters that pockmarked the flooring as well as battered pillars. A few soldiers lay about the scene who appeared more like broken toys cast haphazardly aside by a playful child.

The UNSC forces here had put up a good fight. However, most of the archipelago of bodies within the sea of deep reds and shallow blues were undeniably human.

A gust of wind whispered in from the surrounding overlook and found its way into his helmet filters. A sweet, putrid smell, something like overcooked steak or tanned leather hit him like a sledgehammer. He felt his stomach twist into a knot. It was a scent he knew well but one that years of experience had never made him numb to. It was so thick that he could almost taste it. In fact, he realized that he could. Grit alone kept him from ripping off his helmet and giving up his lunch.

He made a routine of checking the faces, mainly of the women and the few children that were there. He ruled out one after the next. At one point he saw a blonde woman lying on her side. Getting close enough, he was relieved, though morbidly so, to find that it wasn't her. He saw a little boy at another point that possessed a frightening amount of familiarity. A slow approach dispelled the last illusions of recognition. It wasn't Noah. He let out a breath that he'd held without knowing. That smidge of relief, however, did not spare him from the horror of it all.

This was his wife's hotel. The last time he had come here, she had taken him to the floor's café. It was their little date, one of the few they managed to sneak past Noah whenever he was on leave. Now even that café was in ruins. The food displays were shattered, the menu boards blown apart and counters smashed to pieces.

There was no sign of life anywhere.

By the time they neared the middle of the floor, the silence had become deafening.

They strode guardedly towards the central atrium. The massive vertical cavity tunneled through the building, from the skylight of its highest floor some 70 levels above to the main lobby of its lowest another 70 levels down. Epsilon Eridani's radiance no longer shone directly into the Csillagos' skylight as it would at noon. Instead, its afternoon positioning made it beam in at an angle, causing it to bounce off the glass paneled railings of the many floors like a laser show. And still the light became partly focused as it passed through the pentagonal lens that was the hotel's security center.

The team trudged through the small, artificial pond that encircled the inner walls of the atrium. A combination of cattails, lilies and coy fish bobbed limply in the reddened water. They were just as lifeless as the bloodied civilians that lay half-submerged beside them, their poisoned remains swaying in the rippling wakes of passing boots.

Duncan reached the wall first and got a good look at their objective. The security center really was a giant, glass pentagon that was lodged in the atrium like food in a throat. It was at least five floors above them. Seeing inside of it, however, was troublesome since the glass possessed a subtle tint. While light came in freely from above, details were nearly impossible to make out from below. Duncan had never gone there himself, but he did know for a fact that it was the heart of the hotel's safety apparatus. That meant guns. If he was trapped, unarmed and trying to survive, that would be his first option. Then again, there were other places he could think of hiding as well.

"Ep-2 to Ep-1, Floor 70's clear." Nova comm'd as she came up beside him to look for herself.

"Any survivors?" The Staff asked.

"...Floor 70's clear, sir."

"...Copy. Start making your way up to the SC. We're heading for the safe room now. It's quiet up here for the time being but I'll let you know when that changes."

"Roger."

"What about secondary points of interest, sir?" Duncan interjected.

"Come again, Ep-8?"

Duncan ignored a look from Nova as he made his case. "There's a banquet hall on the floor above us. There's also a theater and arcade space on '73. Both are close to stairs and elevators, meaning they're easy to access for us as well as our HVI. We could do a quick check, be in and out in minutes. That way we can make sure we didn't miss anything on our way up."

A thoughtful pause drew a few worried stares towards Duncan.

"Ep-2, think you can keep those room-checks under two minutes each?" The Staff asked. "We'll need you in place in at least the next six."

Nova glared uncertainly at the idea's originator. "...It's possible but I don't think we can be more flexible than that. Even six minutes is pushing it. But...we can pull it off."

"Then get to it. Ep-1 out."

"Pays to be thorough I guess." Yuri remarked.

"You sure about this?" Nova said, aiming her question at Duncan.

"When's the last time we were sure about anything?" He said, more a statement than a question, before pointing past her.

The team followed his finger to a nearby pillar that seemed far larger than the rest. That was because it wasn't a pillar at all but rather one of the many staircases that passed through the building. A door hung halfway of its hinges in front of a darkened arrangement of steps.

"That's the fastest way to where we want to go." Without further prompting, he trudged back out of the pond and jogged towards the stairs. The team didn't say anything as they took off after him. One pair of footsteps came a little after the others. He made no note of it, only focused on his newfound haste and his duties as point-man.

:********:

The Staff was wrong about the roof.

Kilo-9-4 and Devilraid had approached the top of the building in tandem. Coming to hover over the landing area, they stopped short of setting down. The reason why became clear once he saw the condition it was in.

The primary landing pad had been the sight of a massacre. Blasted and scorched, it was peppered with the burned bodies of those who had had the same idea as them. The bodies weren't so mangled, however, as to keep the Staff from figuring out who was who. Neither civilians nor the UNSC personnel who escorted them were exempt from whatever attack had taken place. There was even a glowing pyre of wreckage off in a corner of the roof that he recognized to be the remains of a Falcon. The crash had cast a wide arc of mechanical breakage across the human debris field.

Worse yet, the two entrances were collapsed. The crumbled skeletons of their doorways were still smoldering, having been destroyed and buried under rubble.

The Staff called off the landing and redirected them to a different pad on the 135th floor. The team made the insertion while Kilo-9-4 and Devilraid took off behind them, moving to resume a holding pattern around the building.

At first, he found nothing. No targets immediately presented themselves on Floor 135. There were no bodies either. In fact, there were no signs of a struggle besides the way they found every door blown open or broken down. The rooms inside were often ransacked as if a hurricane had stumbled on through, bleeding furnishings, suitcases and abandoned clothing out into the hallways.

They forged a path to the closest stairwell and began their descent. They got as far as six stories when an unexpected obstacle cut their journey short. The flight of steps to Floor 128 ended at a cave-in that had sealed off the landing to the doorway. They jogged back up and slipped out into '129.

The hunt for their next stairwell was a more enlightening venture. This time they found far more than they wanted to.

From one end to the next, the level somewhat resembled the last they'd seen: clothes strewn here, broken bed frames tossed there. That was where the similarities ended. The differences had made themselves apparent the moment they pressed forward into the area. It was the smell. A strong mixture of stenches and odors overwhelmed his filters and assaulted his nose. They wafted in from the myriad of dead that lay off to their left and right as they navigated the corridors. Some were in their way. These they took care to step over or around. Others they made a note of closely monitoring through their weapon sights, specifically the Covenant dead, more specifically, the Grunts. The memory of Császári was still fresh even if the bodies themselves were not.

They found the next flight of stairs and carried on as they did before. By the time they were halfway to '121, Nova called in her team's sighting of the security center. Duncan also chimed in with his idea of searching two more floors before they reached the SC. The Staff allowed it.

He didn't do it because he thought they would find anything. Rather, he did it because he knew Duncan. He knew he would tear off his operational leash if no one did it for him. He knew where they were and what that meant to him. Though the Staff didn't like to think about it, the whole situation made his stomach churn. It was as if they were inspecting Duncan's home after it had just been burglarized. Adding insult to injury, it was as if he had to tell the man himself that they weren't here for his family but rather some other guy that had stumbled in after the fact. It was a conflict of interest that pricked the stoney thing he called a heart if he thought about it for too long.

He didn't like it.

In fact, he hated it.

All the same, he kept his mouth shut about it. At least it was his op. He could run it how he saw fit. So long as their objective was secured, a side quest wouldn't be questioned. He wanted to give Duncan the best chance he could of finding Erica and Noah. Failing that, the Staff at least wanted him to leave knowing he'd done everything he could. If he couldn't get his family back then he wanted him to have a clear conscience going forward, if that was even possible. He had his doubts there as well. As per his usual, he kept them to himself.

His team had reached the landing between Floor 122 and 121 when he held up a fist. Hector, Mito and Rico stopped behind him.

He had the door to '121 in his sights as he switched to his radio. "Ep-1 to Whiskey-4, we're about to cross over to the safe room. Confirm you have a visual on us."

"I have you, sir." Lang replied. "Heads-up, most of your floor's pretty empty. However, me and 3 are looking at some activity within the area of the safe room, about five or six heat sigs. Thermals aren't clean enough for a solid ID. They're not really moving around much either. Recommend a slow approach."

"Goes without saying. What about above and below? We're clear?"

"You're good for the most part." Mackley replied. "From what I can see, there's a handful of stragglers two floors up and a few more three floors down. With those movement profiles, I'm guessing one or two squads on patrol. Probably Grunts, maybe a couple Jackals. Nothing serious."

"I'll hold you to that, Whiskey-3." The Staff said. "We're going in. If our HVI's in there, we'll sound the horn."

"Copy."

"Standing by." Lang echoed.

The Staff signaled to the others and pointed two fingers at the door. Hector came up. The two of them pressed themselves against either side of the doorway.

Hector took hold of the handle. With a final nod from the Staff, he twisted and pulled.

The door opened and the Staff led the way with his shotgun, stepping into the end of a three-way intersection. Rico and Mito came in after him, clearing the left and right passageways as he advanced down the middlemost route.

With Hector slipping in at the rear, they headed in the direction of the safe room.

The accustomed assortment of human and Covenant dead threatened to hinder their progress. Yet, as their overwatch had confirmed, there was nothing standing in their way. That was its own tragedy in and of itself as he made an unconscious count of how many civilians they passed.

Several twists and turns eventually brought them into the wide corridor of another three-way. Much to his confusion, the ground was covered in broken chairs. There were dozens of them. Even stranger were the two large openings at the back of the intersection. They looked to have once been two glass doorways that had gotten themselves shattered into oblivion. The culprits became obvious upon spotting the deep scorch marks at the thresholds, tell-tale signs of plasma grenades.

The moment the Staff figured out that they were looking at a pair of barricades, destroyed ones at that, he motioned for them to take it slow.

They crept along the wall until he could reach the closest of the entrances. He took a careful peek inside.

What might have once been a lobby of some sort had been turned into a small war zone. Several dead Grunts and the barely recognizable remains of two or three Skirmishers dotted the floor. He noticed bullet holes amidst the plasma fire that had burnt the walls. His eyes inevitably landed on the long counter on the other side of the space, more so on a part of the wall that stood behind it.

But it wasn't a wall. It was another doorway.

The section of the wall itself had split into two and parted. What lay on the other side was a dark passageway that traded the burnished flooring of the lobby for metallic steel. More restrictive barriers stood within, but these too had separated, clearing a path all the way to the very back of the passage.

There, he saw one last door. It was unlike the others. It would have to have been pulled open. And indeed it was.

Beyond it was a room of gray walls and dark carpeted floors.

It wasn't empty.

Though he couldn't see who it was, he could tell there were others inside, standing just out of sight. Their shadows were visible. They were completely still.

Something wasn't right. The Staff could feel it.

He didn't need to say a word. He simply took one quiet step after the next into the lobby. Hector was right behind him. Just as soft-footed despite his size, he followed the Staff to the left. Mito and Rico moved as a pair as well, weaving right. They covered the distance to the counter in seconds and closed in on the strange 'door' from both sides.

The Staff stopped to listen.

Nothing happened for a while. Then he heard a noise. It was a slithering sound, like wet slippers sliding over tiles. It came from the corridor, from the safe room.

Waiting just opposite him, he saw Rico cock his head. He could hear it too.

The Staff pointed inside then pushed on. The light of the main room fell away into the dim, red lighting of the corridor. Rico came on his right. They both stuck close to the walls while Hector and Mito brought up the flank.

The slithering noise became louder, clearer. So too did a voice that resolved into voices. They were deep, too deep to hear what they were saying.

They stopped upon reaching the threshold of the main door where the dim lighting became bright again. The shadows inside were taller than he expected. Too tall.

Once again, he edged his head inside.

The room was slightly bigger than he first thought. That didn't stop its occupants from making the entire thing look small.

Inside stood the armored frames of four Elites. Two were adorned in the orange-red war gear of Majors. The other pair were the most worrisome, sporting the pale-white plate of Elite Ultras. The former two were standing guard behind the latter who were conversing among themselves in their throaty language. Their attention seemed set on one of three doors that lined the room. It was more of a closet really. There, two Engineers floated in the air like organic buoys. Their sacs pulsated even as their tentacles slithered over something on the ground.

The Staff upped his magnification.

There was a hatch on the floor. It looked reinforced, sealed shut. A sophisticated console existed at its center. The tentacles of one of the Engineers were sliding over its holographic interface with troubling dexterity. The other seemed to be probing at the hatch's surface directly. They were trying to get in. With a final beep, they did just that.

The hatch gave a sharp sigh as a tentacle wrapped around an exterior handle and pulled it open. The interior was dark. Even so, the Staff could make out the beginnings of a ladder on the inside, leading down somewhere out of sight.

The two Ultras perked up and moved towards it.

The Staff's assessment was instant. First, as all six aliens had their backs to the main entrance, none were aware of their presence as yet. Second, there were no people around. If there were then there would have been signs. There were no captives and there were no bodies, at least he thought so until he saw a pair of occupied boots lying in one of the rooms. The white blanket draped over them freed him to rule it out as a casualty. Third, their HVI or whoever had been here must have escaped through the hatch at some point. Hence the interests of the Elites who were inspecting the hidden route. Fourth, they weren't shooting down the hatch. Whoever they were searching for wasn't in view. Therefore, they weren't within range of what he was about to do.

He withdrew and pointed to Rico's grenade launcher.

Epsilon's demolitionist nodded and swapped out his rifle for his signature weapon. The Staff slapped his own shotgun to his back harness. It freed up his hands to pull out his two grenades. He held up three fingers to Hector and Mito and clenched them into a fist. They understood and moved closer.

The Staff braced himself, waiting for the two Ultras to start talking again. Five seconds passed then he heard one of them say something like a question.

Right then, he gave a thumbs up.

Rico sidestepped halfway into the room, just enough for a clear shot. A loud THUNK sounded from the launcher as it hurled a grenade inside. As the grenade whistled through the air, as Rico drew back, the Staff popped the pins on both of his and stepped inside.

The group of aliens were still flinching from the projectile that came bouncing in front of the Ultras, distracting them from the two follow-ups that rolled behind the Majors.

Rico timed it perfectly so that everything went off in deafening synchronicity.

A trio of blasts combined into a single crack of thunder. It flashed through the room and shook the corridor. It didn't stop the Staff and Rico from moving aside, making room for Hector and Mito to sling their own grenades into the room.

Two more explosions rang out. By then the Staff had his shotgun up. As Mito and Hector stepped back, he and Rico surged into the smokey aftermath, weapons raised. They both cut a path straight through the haze and found the two Elite Majors on the floor. The first was missing half its face. The second was missing part of a leg. It still had the strength to drag itself along. One-handed, it raised a plasma rifle that the Staff never let it fire. A burst of buckshot blew away both rifle and fingers. He quickly pumped a second shell into its face, cutting it down in a spray of brains and teeth.

Hector and Mito piled in next. The Staff made a beeline for the other side to finish the job.

He spotted the door to the room with the hatch, noticed a silhouette pulling itself up against the wall then immediately threw himself to the ground. Three pink flashes zipped overhead, baking his spine with heat as they shot past. He rolled away. Behind him, the concussion rounds slammed into the far side of the room. He pulled himself up and braced against the edge of the doorway even as another THUNK sounded from behind.

A grenade whistled by and bounced into the room, going off the second it cleared the threshold.

A pained bellow roared from within.

Then silence.

The Staff got to his feet. Taking a breath, he wheeled inside. The blue circle of his reticle remained stable as he swept the space.

The two Ultras were down. One was sprawled on the ground. The other, the one that had fired at him, sat against the back wall. Its concussion rifle lay at its side, covered in the purple viscera that had spewed from its owner's chest. Both armor and body had been ripped open like two broken gates. With ribs and innards exposed, the Staff felt more assured that it was dead.

There was no sign of the Engineers. He was briefly concerned that they had escaped until he saw the evidence to the contrary. Like two burst balloons, said evidence dripped off the walls and even landed on his visor.

He wiped it off carefully to keep from smearing it. He put his boot on the shoulder of the last Ultra. He pressed the barrel of his shotgun to its temple, or at least where he thought the temple would be, and let it rip. Only when it didn't react to the gaping wound punched through helmet and skull did he finally let his guard down.

"Nice shot, Ep-6."

Rico walked in to inspect his handiwork. "Just making sure it didn't get off any more of those rounds, jefe. I hate those things. Shakes your guts around, ya'know?"

The Staff nodded as he slotted fresh shells into his shotgun's receiver, sliding them into place with a heartening clack. Without a word, the two of them gravitated towards the open hatch. They could both see inside for a short distance. The vertical passageway went 20-meters down before it became too dark to see. The Staff thought he sighted a red emergency light scintillating deeper in where the passage appeared to turn horizontal.

"Think our guy's down there?" Rico asked.

The Staff mulled it over.

Mito walked in. After whistling at the carnage, he gestured back outside. "I checked the other two rooms. One's a kitchen. The other's some kind of closet. Kitchen's empty. Strange enough, smells like someone was trying to bake in there at the last minute."

The Staff remembered the boots he saw on his way in. "And the closet? Is that our guy?"

Mito shook his head. "Checked him out too. Unless this UEG rep prefers wearing chef's whites over suits, he's not our man. Found some Marine tats though, a prosthetic too. My guess: ex-serviceman gets caught up in the situation here with our HVI, decides to lend a hand. With that blanket on him, those wounds, he must've died before they lost control of the safe room."

"Explains the mess outside." Hector said as he kept watch at the main door.

"I don't think he did that on his own." Rico added. "Marine or not, that's a lot of damage for just one guy."

"He probably had help." The Staff noted. "That's good, means if our man did escape then he probably still has some kind of security detail on hand."

"Any sign of civvies?" Rico asked.

Again, Mito shook his head. "Not that I can tell."

While the Staff inspected the hatchway more closely, Mackley's voice interrupted him.

"You know, sir, you could've let us handle that one, save yourself some ammo."

The Staff smirked. "Whiskey-4?"

"We couldn't tell your thermals apart, sir." Lang sighed. "Plus, that room's too small. If we'd have fired, the overpressure might've knocked you guys unconscious. Didn't want to risk it."

"And that, Whiskey-3," The Staff said, "Is why you're not the one with the gun."

Mackley grumbled.

"Don't worry." The Staff exhaled, casting a worried glance at the hatch and the dark passage below. "You'll probably get another chance before the day's out."

:********:

Duncan led the charge to the 71st floor. It was a short trip up. In less than a few seconds he was pushing open the door into the first corridor.

The pattern established on the floor below continued here as well. Hallways of ransacked rooms were paired with bodies, young and old, some much too young. If he had to guess, many of those he strode by hadn't tried escaping to safer parts of the hotel. They'd tried to hide instead. Sadly, as most tended to learn far too late when it came to the Covenant, running was almost always better than hiding.

The team were cautious traversing the scene that the enemy had left behind. Renni stopped every so often to check for vitals among those that were the most promising. She never lingered long.

Soon they turned a corner and the double doors of the banquet hall came within sight.

They stacked up on either side. With a go-ahead from Nova, Duncan pulled open one of the doors and moved in.

The hall was a mess. The wide space of red carpets and white-clothed tables seemed shrunken beneath a scatter of human wreckage. Close to a hundred bodies were left about in various states of death and mutilation. The usual mix of civilians and soldiers was made more visceral by clawed faces, limbs half-removed and so many other forms of damage that Duncan couldn't tell which had been killed straight away and which had been tortured. Perhaps there was no difference. All the same, the devastation made his heart sink, as did the stench.

The team stopped at the outer edges of the hall to scan everything from a distance.

"What did all this?" Zack asked. "Brutes?"

Yuri shook his head. "No."

"How do you know?" Nova asked.

"Because if it was, they would've finished the job. As bad as this looks, Brutes would've left them in pieces."

"He's right." Renni argued as she kneeled beside a trooper with claw marks on his back. "These marks I'm seeing are all over the place but they're too small for Brutes. See, they're all over the walls too."

She pointed and at last the others discerned the myriad of scratch marks that had been clawed into the walls. Some were very high up.

"Then what-" The revelation hit Duncan like a truck. Suddenly his skin crawled at a feeling he'd had once before on Miridem, of dozens of eyes, all watching him.

His instincts hadn't been wrong then either.

He looked up.

The lights of the chandeliers that hung from the ceiling were dim. He switched on his VISR and upped his magnification.

There was nothing.

However, though the ceiling was bare, it bore the same scratch marks as the walls.

"Same thing up top." He said.

The others looked up as well.

"Bugs." Yuri declared.

A newfound wariness fell over the team at the mere mention of them.

"We only have another minute here." Nova advised. "Let's be quick about this."

The team quietly fanned out across the hall.

Duncan took to the far right of the formation. As Renni occasionally stopped to check for vitals off to his left, he did his best to keep going. His eyes shifted from face to face. None, thankfully, he recognized. Then there were some that were too badly mangled to be recognizable. He remained on the lookout for the smaller details about Erica and Noah that he knew well. Even this criterion was left unmet.

He kept going, kept searching, until without warning he heard crunching beneath his boots. He stopped to look.

He'd stepped on an arm. It seemed part human, part insect. The rest of the body was missing. That didn't stop him from finding much more including other arms, legs, wings...antennae. Organic debris was dispersed around a spot in the carpeting that had been blackened by an explosion. He traced the destruction back to its epicenter: the doors to the banquet hall's kitchen. Unlike what he'd expected of that kind of detonation, the doors had been blown into the kitchen rather than out.

The kitchen itself yawned wide like a shadowy maw on the other side.

His VISR still active, he picked up on the trails of alien blood, the plasma marks on the floor and the bullet holes in the walls. "Ep-7?"

He got Zack's attention and pointed to the kitchen. The radioman jogged over and thumped him on the shoulder, letting him know he had his back.

Duncan drew in a breath and moved in.

Straight away, he heard more pieces of Drone crunching beneath his every step. Zack's were no different. If there was anything inside then it was sure to hear them coming.

He took in the full details of the kitchen. It was a maze of sanitized tabletops, stoves, ovens, fryers and dishwashers. Exhaust hoods hung at sharp tilts from the ceiling as their supports slowly buckled. He made out paths in the maze that ran from their end of the kitchen over to the next. He chose one. Zack chose another.

Their paths ran in a parallel course so that neither was out of sight of the other. They paused regularly to check beneath tables and behind ovens for clues as to where survivors could be.

It wasn't long before Duncan came across the first intact corpse of a Drone. Just after the flecked and pulped remains of one was another that bore several bullet wounds. Seeing that it lay on its back, he doubted that it was still alive. They often preferred to lay on their stomachs when it came to playing dead, making it easier for them to fly into combat at a moment's notice. He gave it a slight kick just to be sure. Doing so rolled it enough to expose the gaping hole where one of its eyes should have been.

A bit more reassured, he moved on.

He quickly stopped cold, however, as a flood of white illumination washed over him.

The ceiling lights were on.

Both he and Zack looked back to the entrance. Off to the side, Yuri had his hand to a red switch on the wall, an emergency backup.

"You're welcome." He said matter-of-factly and continued his own search of the kitchen.

Nova and Renni had come in as well, the former now so close that Duncan was surprised he hadn't heard her at all. At least it was her, he thought. Better a teammate sneaking around than an enemy.

Zack came out at an intersection that joined his path to Duncan's, landing him slightly ahead. It also made him the first to spot another Drone. Duncan could see from where he was that a chunk of its head had been blown off. What he couldn't see was the thing that made Zack stop in his tracks.

"What the hell..."

"What's up?" Duncan asked.

Zack bent down beside it. "Hey Ep-8, think you'd be brave enough to stab one of these?"

"Why do you ask?"

He covered the distance to the corpse just as Zack finished picking something off the floor. He held it up.

The sharp edges of a kitchen knife glittered in the light. It glistened from end to end in the greenish-yellow viscera of a Drone.

"Looks like someone got desperate." Zack said, pointing to the deep stab wound in its chest. "Had to be if they managed to pull off something like that."

"Wouldn't anyone be in that kind of situation?" Duncan questioned.

Zack expertly twirled the knife in his hand before whipping the blood off the blade and placing it on the counter. "Probably, but not everyone would be that lucky. "

"I don't think they were lucky." Nova remarked, her tone bearing a grimness that drew everyone's attention.

She had gotten further ahead and was closer than any of them to a corner of the kitchen. She was staring down at something no one else could see.

The others headed over.

"What is it?" Duncan asked.

She didn't answer.

Duncan halted once he was close enough to see why.

The corner of the kitchen was covered in yellow-green blood. The shattered remains of two or three Drones had intermingled with one another. So too did a distinct redness that trailed down from the wall like a crimson paste, oozing to where a body sat slumped against it.

It was human.

It was a soldier. The armor as well as the pistol and DMR on either side of it made that much obvious.

Everything else sent a distinct shiver up Duncan's spine.

It was covered in deep gashes. But what truly got to him was the lower jaw that let him know it had once been a man. That was all he could tell because there was nothing else above that jaw.

Everything on up was simply missing.

In the place of a head was a shattered assortment of things that once again tempted both senses and soul with nausea.

Duncan looked away as soon as his brain registered what it was seeing. Now more than ever he was aware that he had a brain. Now more than ever he knew fear.

Years of fighting and there were still moments like these that made him question why he had ever joined the service. Even then, it made him think of how fruitless his search had proven to be so far.

Where was Erica?

Where was Noah?

Had the same thing happened to them already? Or was it worse than that?

Even while he struggled to avert his gaze, Yuri showed he had the most stomach out of all of them. Taking a knee, he brushed coagulated blood off the nametag on the armor, not stopping until he could see.

"Lieutenant...A.G. Walker."

He looked straight on at the lower jaw as if there was still a face above it, one he could see and talk to. "You did good, lieutenant. Better than most."

After a moment's hesitation, he reached into the collar of the man's BDU and pulled out his dog tags. He snapped them off their lanyard and slipped them into his pocket.

"You earned that much at least," He said with an empathy in his voice that Duncan seldom ever heard from him.

Yuri grabbed the body by the shoulder one last time then rose to his feet. He turned to Duncan. "They're not here. We should move on."

He didn't say who he meant.

He didn't need to.

Nova nodded. "Let's go. We still need to check-"

The voice of the Staff broke in over their conversation. "Ep-1 to 2, come in, over."

"Right here, sir. We just cleared the first objective on Floor 71. Heading up to the next."

"Hold off on that for now," The Staff ordered with sudden urgency. "We just secured the safe room up on '121. Turns out the Covenant got here first. We took care of them but it seems like our HVI booked it ahead of time. He went down some kind of escape tunnel. Right now I need eyes on the hotel's schematics. Get to the security center and see what you can see."

"Roger," Nova said. "On our way."

She pointed everyone back to the door. The others trailed after her. Duncan, however, lingered on the scene of the lieutenant, or what was left of him.

Without warning, an understanding went off in his mind like a bomb. He was in fact in the Csillagos. He wasn't dreaming. It was the same hotel, the same building where he got to meet his wife and kid whenever they couldn't come to Falchion. This was the same place. But how could it be? How could so much have gone so wrong so fast?

"Ep-8?"

He turned to find Nova waving him over from the doorway. He took one last look at the lieutenant then strode back to the hall.

A piece of him made no such move. He watched himself leave the kitchen. He watched the team reroute themselves back to the stairwell and charge up to their next destination.

Not until he passed through the door to Floor 75 did he sense that he was back together again.

Much to his gratitude, the next corridor he walked into wasn't covered in bodies. The ubiquitous furnishings and personal possessions were left thrown about, nothing more. He took the moment of reprieve in stride.

He wasn't very familiar with the security center. Nevertheless, he had a general idea of how to get in.

The passageway was a direct route to the double glass doors that marked the entrance. Unlike the kitchen, the chamber beyond was well-lit, although a number of the ceiling lights flickered erratically.

The passage was sufficiently wide for Yuri to pair up beside him. The team closed in, moving slow on the last few meters.

At Nova's signal, Yuri swung open a door and Duncan swept inside.

The structure's interior possessed the same pentagonal shape as the outside. Two floors of workstations and surveillance monitors were stretched out and folded into five obtuse corners.

The ceiling lights flickered almost as much as those screens that hadn't been deactivated or blown to sizzling pieces. Nothing moved otherwise.

Over a dozen of the hotel's security staff were present. So were an equal number of soldiers and some fallen Covenant: two Elites and a handful of Grunts. Most were close to one of the main doors across the way which bore evidence of a former barricade, one left shattered by a plasma detonation. Other personnel were sprinkled throughout the room.

None were still standing.

The team quickly dispersed again. Yuri and Renni made for the closest set of stairs to the second floor. Duncan headed into the first floor with Nova on his left and Zack on his right. In moments their cautious pace saw them separated within the growing labyrinth of desks and displays.

Duncan moved across the glass flooring towards the central spot, a circular station shaped almost like a horseshoe. It was lined from end to end with monitors. From what he could gather, it was the administrational terminal for the head of security. And said head was apparently still there.

Upon approach he found a man slumped against the inside of the station. He was dressed in the uniform of the hotel's security personnel. He had a spent M6 in his open hand and a thick, black beard on at least half of his face. The other half was so badly burnt that beneath cracks in the blackened skin he could spot the red of muscles and the white of bones.

The eyes were still open. They looked tired.

He kneeled beside him and helped him to rest, closing his eyes for him. He then shifted to his next task of finding out what still worked and what didn't.

Not everything was broken or blown up. At least three screens remained operational. He brushed aside bullet casings and several mugs of half-finished coffee to give himself some room. His hands shot to the keypad of the largest monitor. His fingers moved like daggers, stabbing keys with quick bursts of alphanumeric code. He inserted the universal access key for surveillance systems logged with the city's municipal records, waited for a response then was delighted to see a user interface manifest in full.

"First floor clear." Nova declared.

"Second floor clear." Yuri said.

Duncan was already on the move, typing his fingers into a fury of deep-dives into the building's database.

"Checking out the hotel?" Zack asked as he patrolled by.

"No." He said, although he really wanted to do just that. "You heard Ep-1. There's an escape route from that safe room. Our HVI's on the move. We need to find him before something else does."

"So, schematics?"

Just as he'd said it, Duncan discovered a library of sub-folders within the database's 'Architectural Data' folder. Within the aisles of categorized information, he singled out one in particular: 'Priority_1 SF'.

He pressed it.

A request for an administrational password came up. He contemptuously typed in the universal access code and swatted down the request, opening the folder. A list of several files streamed in front of him. He chose the one labeled 'SF_Schema A' and opened it.

In an instant a three-dimensional display of the Csillagos appeared on his screen, not as it was but as it would have been on a normal day. The hotel's walls changed as the display zoomed into the finer aspects of its framework. The building's skin was peeled back to reveal the bare bones of hallways, staircases, elevators and rooms both great and small. The zoom dove deep into the structure until it came to an abrupt stop somewhere within its heart.

The cuboid dimensions of a single room became highlighted in a blink of green light. Three additional rooms appeared; smaller ones attached to the larger. Then something else blinked into being: a long, vertical shaft-like passage. It started beneath one of the smaller rooms and delved deep into the hotel like the lengthy taproot of a plant. It didn't go in a straight line. Instead, it went down for several floors before turning horizontal on another then converting back to vertical for several more. Its setup gave him the distinct impression of steps on a building-sized staircase.

"Is that what I think it is?" Nova asked as she came over for a look.

"An escape route from the safe room. Didn't think it went this far down." He reached out and switched on the monitor's projector. A three-dimensional projection leapt out at them. Raw shapes resolved into an accurate depiction of the schematic.

Zack whistled. "Nice. So-..."

"What?" Nova asked.

He pointed. "Isn't that us right there?"

Duncan squinted at it. The escape route continued on down before it reached somewhere that he recognized: the pentagonal perimeter of the security center. It went horizontal for a while until it reached the walls of the chamber. Then it went halfway around it only to begin descending once again.

Without a moment's hesitation, Duncan pinched two fingers at the projection and parted them, magnifying their view of the security center.

The route truly did connect to them, at least partly as it made a hard right against a section of the outside wall. He pulled the image in even closer. It resolved into more specific locations within the center, showcasing the different stations.

"That's..." Duncan turned away from the projection and panned to the furthest corner of the chamber, its northern wing. He saw the wall at the very back of the first floor. There, on its surface, was a black dot. He zoomed in with his visor.

It was an embedded handle, a handle with no door.

An idea was forming. It was more of a hunch really but one he felt too compelling to ignore. He glanced at Nova. Without saying a word, she seemed to read his mind as she switched back to her comms.

"Ep-2 to Whiskey 3 and 4, I need you to check on something for me."

"Not sure we can do that right now." Mackley said anxiously. "It's getting real busy out here. Two Phantoms and a couple of Banshees just showed up in the area. They're still looking around, but we think they're headed for the Csillagos. Ep-1 wants us on standby in case-"

"We can manage, Ep-2." Lang replied. "What's the job?"

"Get eyes on the northside of our position, 75th floor." Nova said. "Check for heat signatures."

"Am I looking for hostiles here? Like I said, I can't ID much with all th-"

"We don't know." Nova cut in. "Just tell me what you see."

"Roger."

The three of them waited for a response. On either side of the second floor above, Yuri and Renni walked up to the railings. They had silently caught on to what was happening and stood watch.

"Okay, I'm seeing activity here." Lang reported. "Looks like somewhere under a dozen heat sigs to your north moving slowly towards your position. Ugh, guys, is there a hallway in front of you or something?"

Duncan stiffened, as did everyone else.

"How close?" Nova queried.

"Close. Five, no, six meters out. They're coming straight to you. Want to call in a shot?"

"Negative, do not engage." She said firmly and whirled around to Duncan. "I think there's a door over there. Can you crack it?"

Duncan didn't need her to ask twice. His fingers once again raced over the keypad. He exited the holographic suite and returned to the files. One of them stuck out to him, a small application: 'SF_SC Access'.

He opened it and suppressed a shock of nerves that burned in his gut upon laying eyes on a single permission request:

'Unlock Door_SF - SC'.

He waited for Zack and Nova to get a bead on the spot with their weapons before he pressed 'Yes'.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then a loud hiss sounded from the back wall. Duncan turned to see for himself.

Two different seams now appeared around the handle. They lengthened up and down the wall as if they were being etched there by invisible hands. They ran parallel to one another before both turned left, connecting to one another in the shape of a door.

"Ep-5." Nova called.

"We got you." Yuri said as he and Renni took up overwatch positions on the new entrance.

"Let's go." Nova went ahead. Duncan and Zack followed.

Duncan's mouth was dry again. His stomach was on fire. His heart was pounding in his throat so that he could practically hear it in his head.

The HVI, he had to be in there. That reality didn't come as a relief to him. If anything, it set off the underlying sense of panic that he was barely keeping under control.

Now that the platoon had what they came for, would they leave?

Would they leave before he found what he'd come for?

No, they couldn't.

He wouldn't.

He refused.

With the full brunt of his willpower, he tried to warp reality itself. He wanted to wish it away, to wish that it was only some civilians that had managed to stumble into the escape route by accident. Or better yet, he hoped it was the enemy. At least then they could handle the threat. It would leave him with the time he needed to conduct a full sweep with the cameras. He could clear the building in 10 minutes, well within their allotted time frame. He could find them. He just had to deal with whatever was on the other side of that door first. And he would deal with it quickly.

They reached the newly made entrance and stacked up on either side of it.

"Whiskey-4, how close?" Nova asked.

"Close?" Lang huffed. "They're right in front of you."

Duncan tensed.

Nova snaked a few of her fingers into the handle and gave him a nod. Suddenly a profound dread fell on him like a dumbbell. Suddenly he really didn't want to see what was on the other side. What if it really was the HVI?

A combination of twitch-reaction training and years of survival seized his body. For that second he simply ceased thinking. Instinct had taken over. He nodded back and switched on the flashlights on his helmet.

Nova held up three fingers and counted down.

As soon as the last finger dropped, she pulled.

As the door swung open, Duncan swung into place with his rifle.

His helmet lights peeled back the darkness on the other side to expose the single metallic eye glaring back at him.

It was a barrel, the barrel of an M6 pistol. Behind its sights was a head of blonde hair from which two green eyes, two familiar eyes stared back.

Quaerere - Search