Disclaimer: Halo and Signalis DO NOT belong to me. They're owned by their respective owners and the only thing to my name is possible OC's and this story.

Anyway, enjoy.

"Internal Dialogue"

"Regular Speech"

"Foreign language translated"

Sound Effects

... Scene Break

Location... Unknown

Time... Unknown

Name... Unknown

Rain slammed into the trench like shrapnel, feeling like sharp needles against exposed skin. A constant, pounding deluge that turned dirt to slurry and drowned out all else. The sky above was a bloated, roiling smear of stormclouds—no sun, no stars, just noise and gravity and water. The smell of fresh water mingled with the taste of salt in the air.

The war here had no front—only segments where the dying slowed, and others where it accelerated. This sector was one of the latter. The screams came in waves, usually just before the next barrage.

She stood half-exposed at the lip of the trench, shoulder pressed against more mud than dirt, rifle braced and aimed over the edge. Her eyes scanned the horizon—though "horizon" was generous. The rain reduced everything to blurred motion, blocking what would have been a sparkling ocean and sizzling sand. Shadows moved out there, figures darting through the downpour and into torn concrete and steel, some real, some imagined.

Her finger tightened. The rifle barked, the recoil pushing the stock back into her shoulder. Once. Twice. Muzzle flashes flickered like lightning in miniature, tracers blazing bright trails through the haze. Return fire lashed back—erratic bursts chewing through air and mud alike. She saw a figure drop. She readjusted her aim to the next—

The air cracked next to her. She instinctively ducked. Not thunder. Not gunfire. It rang metallic.

Something hissed past her face, struck the trench wall behind her with a clink and landing in the mud at her feet.

Lying half-buried in the mud was a twisted lump of metal, still spinning faintly in the puddle it had made. Two bullets from opposing sides. The lead distorted, copper jackets curled like petals in a mockery of perfect violence, collapsing each other's trajectory into a single ruin. The fused mass of lead and copper still steaming in the cold rain.

She stared.

The odds were absurd. Impossible. The war had been long, brutal, endless... yet it seemed like nothing was impossible in this war. No line unwilling to be crossed.

Then—a sharp crack over her head. A round tore past her head, close enough to feel the rush of air whip her brown locks up. She blinked, ducking back behind the trench wall, and resumed firing. Can't afford to be careless. Need to survive and fight.

She never gave it another thought. For it can never happen again.

...

The hallway trembled under her feet—quietly, rhythmically, slowing... Not from movement, but from the pulse of a failing system. Radiation leaked through the ship akin to an invisible but palpable fog. She had shut of the Geiger counter long ago. She couldn't handle the reminder. Her sensors blinked warnings, flickering amber and red, then dead.

She took another step. Slow. Mechanical.
Joints hissed. Servos lagged. A hand scraped the wall for balance.

The lights overhead flickered in uneven stutters. Shadows stretched too long across the floor. Ahead, at the corridor's end, a sealed door waited—beyond it, her everything. Still. Silent. Cold.

But she wouldn't reach it. She already knew, but she can't admit it. She can't... give in.

Her vision shuddered. The world bled colors that didn't belong—ghost hues, ultraviolet echoes. Her fingers twitched. Her knees faltered. Systems dimmed, one by one. Motor control degraded. The hum of the cryo-station sounded distant now, submerged.

Then came the memory.

Rain.
Mud.
Gunfire.

The trench. The ocean. That war.
Not her war. But the pattern was burned into her.
Neural scaffolding. Echoes of someone else's dying.

She wasn't that soldier. But she remembered dying like she was.

The hallway dimmed again, her foot tripping over a stray wire. She fell short of the door. One hand grabbed onto the floor, dragging her forward. Another. The warning in her internal display blinked COMPARTMENTALIZING TRA- before vanishing for good.

She dragged herself again, then reached for the door. Her hand brushed it's cold surface. She braced against it, but her legs didn't respond.

Not much further.
She told herself that.
Lied to herself.

She wanted to say the name. Hers. But her mouth didn't work, the servos in the jaws locking.

Only her thoughts remained. Flickering.

I said I would protect her.
I said I'd wake her.
I said… I wouldn't forget.

She reached up, grabbing a ridge on the door's surface. Lifting her body weight, then slipped.

She hit the floor. Hard.
Metal on metal.
Silence followed.

Her eyes remained open as her vision flickered in static waves. Somewhere ahead, behind the sealed door, she imagined the hum of cryogenics, the soft breath of someone still sleeping.

I couldn't keep your promise.

Darkness crept in, slow and irreversible. That same sharp crack rung out in her receding mind. Such odds... if only if she had that again... just once more...

Her eyes dimmed and stilled.

...

Silence hung like frost in the cryo-chamber. A pristine stillness that bordered on sacred. Nothing stirred. The air was thick with preservation—a mechanical stillness born from cold, containment, and countdowns long since expired.

Then, a monitor lit up.

A low hum echoed through the chamber, almost apologetically, like it regretted disturbing the dead. Pale light bloomed from a dormant console, its curved glass screen flickering to life, shedding a dim glow across the chamber's metal walls. Dust danced in the sterile light. A projection shimmered, stabilizing.

One tagged as the Forward Unto Dawn—torn, drifting, yet holding. The other... unknown. Too far, sensors too aged and damaged to properly recognize.

Lines mapped their trajectories. Not intersecting, colliding. But parallel. Close. Anomalously so.

The screen blinked. Numbers scrolled in measurements and calculations. Distances. Drift speeds. Rough size.

Nothing moved in the pod itself. Frost still clung to its outer seal, slowly fracturing under time's persistent pressure. Inside—stillness. Still breathing. Still waiting.

The display is wiped away by an artificial blue hand. The monitor turns to black again.

And the chamber returned to silence.