Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Ground Zero

They popped their heads inside and were surprised to find no one there. The room was empty, a deck of open cards sat on the table along with two discarded poker hands. A glass had been knocked to the floor and lay there in glittering shattered pieces.

Mingled together with blood.

The two men went from relaxed to high alert in seconds raising their weapons and fanning out to clear the room.

"Command we've got a problem,."

"What is it?"

"Team 5 is missing."

They hurried further into the room clearing as they went before stacking up on the door to the far hall. The first patted the shoulder of the second and they eased the door open. Neither of them heard anything and quickly turned the corner, their guns raised.

The hall was empty.

They walked a few more steps before one man held up a hand motioning with the muzzle of his gun towards a room with a bathroom placard on it. The two men paused and inched up beside the door.

Something shuffled inside.

They raised their weapons

The door was flung open, and the man they just accosted let off a high pitched undignified scream raising his hands up to cover his face, "Don't shoot!" For a moment they hung on the edge of precarious before muscles relaxed and the group eased back into some semblance of relief.

"The fuck is this?" Team one demanded.

"Taking a massive dump, what does it look like asshole." They glared at him and he raised his hand which was now tightly wrapped in gauze, "Cut my damn hand on that glass when it shattered. Corporal is around here somewhere getting the broom and paper towels."

She appeared at the end of the hall just then looking a little more than miffed, roll carried under one arm , broom swinging lightly in the other, "The hell are you guys doing in here?'

"You missed check in dipshit, maybe want to keep your radio on next time." She fumbled down to her vest looking a little sheepish. "Whoopse."

Her radio crackled to life, "Team one, tell team five they are assholes."

"Will do." Team, one said

Back in the control room the on duty sergeant leaned back in her chair and shook her head. The UNSC command had really gone out of their way to send her the cream of the crop hadn't they, and she said that in the most facetious language possible. It was lucky they weren't doing much more than guarding a patch of dirt. She hadn't see hide nor hair of any Void constructs since her installment at this stupid little middle of nowhere installation.

And all of this just because she had been caught having an affair with the unit chief. Not her unit chief luckily as if she did that she probably would have been fired, but even so it was enough to get her sent to this boring backwater town to watch a path of dirt. She scratched absently at an itch on her thigh counting the hours until she could go home and take a hot shower. She didn't like the rain here, it was cold and made her bad foot ache.

She had injured it sometime during her high school cross country career, and it had never been the same since. It ached when it was cold, and ached when she had been on her feet to much. It even ached when she was in a bad mood or overly anxious. It was aching now with the rain and with her unhappiness, and she reached down to unlace her boot. She kicked off the shoe and pulled down her sock to rub at the tender tendons on the top of her foot.

What a nightmare this was.

"Sargent."

She grumbled, "Oh what now."

She was sitting at the console, and when she slammed her foot down for emphasis, it almost vanished in a mass of cables and empty candy wrappers she had neglected to clean up. Her exclamation of frustration turned into a yelp of pain as her foot came down on something sharp, "Son of a bitch!" She shouted, "hold on."

She drew her foot back and was surprised to see blood.

"What the hell." She bend down under the desk and began tossing wrappers aside, pulling wires out of the way until.

"No."

She pushed more to the side.

"No No no no no."

When the area was clean she was finally able to get a good look at what had caught her foot, its tip now crimson with her blood.

The bone shard protruded up from the aluminum flooring of the command center like a grotesque plant bud poking up through the soil. Behind it, several other small sprouts had begun to poke up through the metal, while small bumps and ridges in the aluminum showed others eager for their own entry.

Her stomach tightened and her heart began to hammer in her chest. Her hands trembled as she reached forward and began peeling back the metal which had been tortured and warped for the bone to break through. It came peeling away with a creak and a groan until an entire metal panel in the floor popped off.

To reveal.

A swath of pulsing red meat and bone.

She staggered back, falling onto her butt on the control room floor, scrambling away from the strange pulsating mass. Her hair had come out of its tidy bun and now ringed her face in a confused halo of desperation.

She scrambled to reach her radio but that's when it happened.

A sudden sharp, stabbing pain in her chest.

Mouth open, she looked down to find the glittering red point of a spear protruding through her chest red with her blood.

"Wh-...."

"Shhh." The voice from behind her said, It was deep, inhuman.

General Kazna knelt next to the dying woman and gently stroked a hand through her hair, "I hope you don't mind letting me borrow the vessel of yours. You can run along."

The Sargent died with a gurgle.

Kazna watched as the woman's Anima burst from inside the body lurching away at high speed towards Revelation. She wasn't interested, the woman's should was week, not a deus at any rate, but the body, the body would do just fine."

***

President Hunt paced around his Alexandria office. Outside the night was lit by streetlights, and the stars in the sky were obscured by light pollution. Inside his office a clock loudly ticked away the minutes.

He glanced at his watch.

He felt her before he saw her, there was no way to miss the presence of someone like her, and he reluctantly turned on the spot towards the shadows where she always seemed to appear. Her gold eyes blinked at him once through the swirling of shadow.

"What the hell are you doing."

"You better watch your tone with me, human."

"I'lll do whatever I damn well please." He shot back, "We had a deal, which you have now broken."

The shadow remained silent, and Hunt pushed on, "We had a deal that if you helped me to win the presidency, you wouldn't come after earth. " He slammed the palm of his hand down against the desk, "But yesterday one of the Void sites was found active, the entire building had been taken over by void growths and now one of our sergeants is missing. We had to cordon off an entire state and the authorities are looking for her. Want to explain to me why that is!"

Kazna blinked at him again with something that might have been mild amusement, "You are pathetic."

Hunt froze stammered and blustered for a moment, "Excuse me!"

"You are a pathetic weak willed man. You have fed a wild animal and assumed it was tame. Now you throw a fit when you get bitten."

"What... what are you s-"

"Don't be stupid. I helped you because it was a means to an end. I needed earth as week a possible before I stuck, and the last thing I wanted was Tala Kelly to get in my way. You were the perfect candidate, cut off earth from the GA isolated her from her allies, alienated the populations of Mars, Luna AND the Europa colonies. You even managed to get rid of Admiral Vir for me, so thank you president hunt, thank you for giving me earth."