Noxa refrained from growling in mounting frustration as he stalked through his failing base. He had stumbled upon a minor mystery. It had merely pecked at his mind at first, hardly noticed. But as time passed and he discovered that running, or even maintaining, this operation was getting more difficult, the mystery grew. Eventually, he decided that he needed a break, even a small one. His tasks were tantamount to trying to squeeze blood from a stone. So he marched towards the command center, intent on information.
The picture of the strange being he had seen, Noxa did not know its origin. He'd checked out the information that was tagged with the photo. Typically, it was stamped with a date/time index, basic location, and the name of the operative who had taken it. But when he'd gone looking for this information, he had found it strangely blank. He'd dug through the database inasmuch as he could from his own private terminal, and finally decided to go see what the operatives in the control center had to say about it.
He could have called them, done this remotely, but he wanted to walk.
There was a lot going wrong just now, and Noxa had to clear his head. He stepped into the command center and saw the three operatives there hard at work. He'd had to send the other into the field, as many of his teams were missing. He walked over to one of them and, once he had time, explained the situation to the operative. Noxa watched the warrior work, sorting through information. He glanced around the command center and suddenly wondered if he was going to be able to salvage this operation.
"The only relevant piece of information I can pull from the database is the time with which it appeared in the database. And the fact that it did indeed appear, it was not transmitted, should be impossible, and yet, there it is," the operative explained.
He had called up the image.
Noxa stared at it intently. A mystery indeed.
"You may resume your work," he said, and left the command center.
* * * * *
Zek stopped as he and his squad cleared the treeline. Dark purple blood spattered his black armor, almost blending in, though it was already being washed away. They had finally found Zuka. He had been insane, his eyes like pools of deep space, driven to madness in whatever method it had been done to the humans.
His former ally had come after them with a feral intensity, a relentless determination that spoke of singular focus.
He had been exceptionally difficult to put down.
He looked back at the body that Grez and one of the other scouts were dragging. They were bringing their dead ally to a drop-off point so that another team could retrieve him. He wondered what they were going to do with the body. He was also deeply curious as to what had happened to Zuka, how he had been transformed into this abomination. It had been a long night so far, and he had an idea it was only going to get longer.
Zek activated his comms. "This is Squad Leader 'Nosolee to Base Command."
The response took several seconds. "This is Base Command." The operator sounded harried and irritable.
"We've brought the body to the appropriate coordinates and are ready for our next task," Zek replied.
There was a longer pause. "Understood. Attempt contact with the personnel at the human military station. We have not been able to raise them. If you as well fail to raise them, head directly for the station and investigate."
"Understood," Zek responded, but Base Command had already cut the link. Sighing, Zek attempted to raise the Sangheili stationed at the human outpost, as he had memorized all of the various squads' frequency numbers. He tried three times and each time was mocked with the silence of an open channel.
"Come," he called to the others, and set off.
* * * * *
"Found it!" Lara called.
Kane felt his heart jerk in his chest and a cold bolt of fear shoot through him. They'd been working in near silence for ten minutes now and her shouting like that had about scared the crap out of him. He abandoned his hunt through the variety of crates he'd been pulling open. They'd been down there in the basement for what felt like too long now. Surely it wouldn't be much longer before the Sangheili figured out something was up. He wished he could believe his previous assessment that they'd be too busy, but he could feel apprehension welling within him. Kane headed out of the small side room he'd been hunting through.
Coming back into the main antechamber of the outpost's basement, he saw Lara coming out of another room with a crate in her hand. Goll and Ross came out of other rooms. Kane glanced at the far side of the room, opposite the entrance. There was a large door that was shut to them, the words SERVICE TUNNEL scrawled over it.
"Where does that lead?" he murmured.
"No idea," Goll replied. "Come on, we have to hurry."
He had a point. Kane led the way, shotgun tucked tight against his shoulder. Anyone or anything could have entered the base since they'd come down here. Maybe one of them should have stayed up and stood guard. They were getting sloppy. He'd been on longer assignments than this, much longer, but being terrified for so long was flat-out exhausting. They moved quickly through the base, double-checking the area, and had to waste another five minutes ensuring that they were still alone. And they were, for now.
They found an access ladder to the roof in one of the maintenance rooms and Kane went up it first, taking point as he almost always did. He opened the hatch and hauled himself up and out. Outside, it was still raining and very dark. The base punched holes in that vast darkness. He moved along the roof, scouting the area beyond the base's perimeter as Lara and Goll quickly assembled the booster. Well, as quickly as they could manage.
Kane started to get antsy quickly. He could see nothing out there, but that didn't mean there was nothing out there. And how was he supposed to feel secure when there was an enemy that literally teleported? He still wasn't even sure how that was possible, or what the Slender Man was. In fact, not for the first time, he thought with certainty that he would never find out, even if he managed to survive this wretched mess.
It took ten minutes to assemble the device, and then another five to install it. Kane felt the increasing press of time. They moved back down the ladder and through the base, then gathered in the control room.
"Okay," Lara murmured as she began firing up the controls for the communications console. "Hopefully we can reach the Winter's Edge now, or someone." After a few minutes, she sat back, gestured to Goll. "It's on."
Goll linked the local comms with his suit and tried calling out to their ship. Kane waited in terse silence, keeping watch on the door with Ross. The longer it went on, the harder it was to wait for a response. After about two minutes, Goll suddenly got one. Kane heard it, as he had his own radio open and tuned as well, but it was so faint that it was almost nonexistent. Despite that, through the static-riddled fuzz, he heard the words 'Winter's Edge'. And then the signal vanished. Goll growled in frustration.
"What's wrong with it?" he asked.
Lara shook her head as she studied the controls. "Nothing," she said. "It's doing what it's supposed to do, it just can't cut through the interference created by the energy signature that's blanketing the region."
"Great," Goll muttered. "Well, at least we know the Winter's Edge is still there." That alone had lifted a great burden from Kane, and from the way he said it, and the others visibly relaxed, he could tell they felt the same way.
"So now what?" Kane asked.
Goll was staring at the floor now, clearly thinking. Something suddenly sparked in his eyes. "The Covenant," he said, looking up at Kane. "The Spec Ops Elites should have brought a comms booster with them. If we can get it, I should be able to rig it up here. They have more powerful equipment than we do."
"Well...I guess it's better than no plan," Kane murmured.
Goll nodded. "Let's go."
They left the control room and hurried through the base. Kane could feel his fear and paranoia lowering to much more tolerable levels as they came into the main hallway. Although it didn't help when he looked at that damned painting or drawing or whatever it was, about Slender Man and his Proxies.
Right about the time they were approaching the end of that tunnel, Kane caught sight of movement. There were Elites coming towards them, half a dozen of them. Goll raised his fist, freezing them. He began to give an order, and then everything fell apart. A bolt from a Covenant Carbine seared towards them, narrowly missing Kane's head. Kane returned fire uselessly with his shotgun. Goll hurled a grenade.
"Service tunnel!" he called.
They beat a hasty retreat as the grenade went off.
* * * * *
Zek let up on the plasma rifle. "After them!" he called.
As he watched the dark shapes of his fellow Sangheili warriors race into the gaping maw of the tunnel, he knew now what had happened to the others stationed here. The humans must have killed them. He had to admit, begrudgingly, that they were exceptionally resourceful. He'd heard the report that they had escaped confinement during a power outage at the base, and had hoped to be the one to find them.
Surely that would look good in the report.
However, it was not to be. Before they could even get a quarter of the way down the entry tunnel, his radio came to life. "All squads! Return to base! We are under attack! Return to base immediately!" The operated sounded genuinely panicked.
"Let's go!" Zek roared.
As the others began coming back towards him, he turned around. And froze.
What appeared to be a very tall human with no face, (but it's not a human, is it? His mind whispered to him), suddenly stood before him. How had it approached so unseen? What was it doing now? It was...unfolding.
Like a dark, malignant flower.
Evil radiated off of the thing.
Slender black tentacles slithered into the air out of its body. Before Zek or any of the other Sangheili could do anything, react in any fashion, the tentacles shot forward and ensnared them all. Zek began to scream.
It ceased abruptly as the entire group disappeared into thin air.
* * * * *
The service tunnel seemed to go on for a mile.
Kane had been positive they were screwed. He'd nearly taken a shot through the chest when he'd been falling back, laying down cover fire. He was sure the Elites would follow them down into the service tunnel, which turned out to be not very large, and gun them down. They'd encountered very few doors, all of them leading to little side rooms, most of which were empty, some of which served as storage for crates that obviously hadn't seen any attention for a long time, none of which led to exits. But they remained alone.
The Elites never followed.
They'd traveled in near darkness for a long time before finally, after what seemed like ages, the tunnel came to an end. For a brief but paralyzing second, Kane thought that the tunnel had dead-ended. But there was a door and Goll got it open. They moved silently single-file up a narrow stairwell of instacrete. The next door led them to a low instacrete tunnel, similar to the one that served as entryway into the military outpost.
"Where are we?" Ross murmured.
"Not sure. Scout the area. Kane, Hendrix, take the left. Meet back here in five minutes," Goll replied quietly.
The two of them gave clipped replies and headed off to the left, down the darkened tunnel. The place was suffused in a dull glow, the lights set to their lowest setting. The fear was close now, threatening to become a full-blown terror as he and Lara quickly checked out the doors they came across. Kane fought for control. The first door revealed a generic storage room packed with gray crates, all of them labeled with a variety of tech talk. The second had nothing to show but walls covered in control panels and terminals.
He still had no idea where they were, this could be anywhere. Or maybe that was just his confused brain, but so many of the places he tended to hang around looked like this. Storage rooms, rooms with technology for walls, dark, dank corridors. They came at last to what appeared to be a control room with a handful of workstations spread across a floor of pitted, discolored metal deckplates. Lara took a seat at the largest control.
"We don't have much time," he murmured.
"I know. I just want to figure out where we are," she replied.
A moment later, they had their answer and the two of them were hurrying back through the dim tunnel. They regrouped with Goll and Ross.
"We're at the local power station," Lara reported.
"Perfect," Goll replied. "That's not all that far from the Covenant camp. Did you run into anyone?" he asked as he turned back around and began leading them out the way he and Ross had originally gone.
"No, no one and nothing," Kane replied.
"For the best, I suppose."
Kane knew what he meant. At this point, he was almost completely convinced that, outside of his squadmates, there was not a single friendly thing alive in this entire forest. He checked over his shotgun as they found the entrance to the power station and left it. Fully loaded, in working condition, with a good amount of shells in store.
"How the hell are we going to get into the base?" Kane asked as they moved past the perimeter fence of the power station and began jogging into the forest.
"I'm not-" He paused. Kane realized at once why: he could hear conflict. Roars of orders and pain from the Elites, the distinctive sounds of plasma rifles and carbines being fired off. The occasional detonation of a plasma grenade. And he could actually see this, too. Brilliant blue and white flares and pulses of light.
"What's happening?" Kane murmured.
"The Proxies, they must be attacking," Goll replied. "This is perfect. Stay low and move fast. Stick together. I've got a half-decent idea of where this thing should be. I'll need some time to get it out but it's not that big. Understood?"
They responded affirmative.
The ODSTs descended into chaos.
It was exceptionally difficult not to open fire as they rushed out of the treeline towards the nearest entrance. Their entrance went unnoticed, for the most part. Kane fought the urge to blast away with his shotgun as he ran full tilt across the hard-packed ground. A handful of Elites were doing their best to hold their own against twice their number in human and Elite Proxies. Good, let them keep occupied. Goll hit the door and had it open quickly. The four of them slipped into the room beyond. Goll took a moment to orient himself, then selected one of the three corridors that snaked away from the entryway and jogged onward.
The purplish walls of the Covenant base's interior flashed by them as they ran through the base, stopping only occasionally as Goll found his way. As he followed, keeping a tight grip on his weapon and a sharp eye out, Kane had just enough time to think that there was no real time to think, and he was deeply grateful for that. Acting was a lot easier than thinking. Acting on something was reality, thinking about something was all theoretical, and that's when your mind chose to let you in on all the ways the situation could go wrong.
"Hold," Goll whispered harshly, and opened up one of two dozen doors they'd come across. He slipped inside. "It's here! Watch my back!"
Kane had a chance to look into the room, mainly to determine if there were any other entrances. There weren't. All he saw was a bulky piece of alien tech taking up the center of the room. He left Goll to it, taking up a defensive position with Lara and Ross. The sounds of battle were intensifying outside. He wondered who would come out alive. Well, either way, it was thinning out their numbers at least. Although how far did the Slender Man's reach extend? He remembered from studying the map of the region that this forest was pretty isolated. There really wasn't anything beyond the rough perimeter of the forest itself for a good ten or fifteen miles in any direction. But what were fifteen miles to a thing that could teleport at will?
How far could the monster teleport?
How in the hell were they going to deal with this?
He honestly had no idea. How do you kill an enemy you can't shoot? Can't even hit? He supposed, if it came down to it, they might just bomb the whole area. A FURY tac-nuke would take care of it. Well...maybe. Could the Slender Man stand up to a nuke? He really didn't want to find out, but he was honestly stumped otherwise.
"Got it," Goll said, reappearing several minutes later with a small but heavy-looking device tucked beneath his right arm. "Let's get the hell out of here."
They almost made it.
When they came back out the way they'd come in, the fighting had only gotten worse. There were more Elites over here now, and a lot more Proxies. The four of them made a break for the treeline. All they had to do was get back to the outpost, probably be easier to hit the service tunnel again, move unseen. Then they could install-
"Damn!"
Kane turned, frozen fear stealing into him, suffusing his entire body. It was Ross. He'd almost never heard the man raise his voice in just that way, and now he saw why. There was a brilliant blue-white flare coming from him.
Ross had been stuck with a plasma grenade and it had already fused to his armor.
A trio of Spec Ops Elites were coming after them. "Keep going!" Ross screamed, and before any of them could say anything, turned around and sprinted back towards the three Elites hounding them. They all disappeared in a tremendous blue-white flash that only grew in power as the Elites' own grenades touched off as well.
Kane found himself staring at the spot where Ross had last been until Goll yanked him almost off his feet and screamed for him to get moving.
And, in the end, he did the only thing he could do.
He kept going.
* * * * *
All was lost.
Noxa stood among a field of corpses on both sides of the conflict, a plasma sword in hand. It was close to extinguishing. The attack had come out of nowhere, from all sides. They had at least had a little bit of warning, because of their tracking system, but even so, it should not have been possible for them to have been surrounded the base as quickly as they had. But only a fool argued with reality. He'd rallied his army, calling back every single unit to the base, and had gone out to lead the defense. He thought it was still possible to salvage the situation.
But it was not.
He hadn't realized this until perhaps five minutes ago.
Noxa drove the blade of his plasma sword into the chest of a human Surrogate, picked it up with the sword, raising it high into the sky and then threw it to the ground. As he spun, preparing to attack another one of the godless bastards, intent to take down as many of them as possible with him, he realized they were no longer attacking him.
Breathing heavily, Noxa moved slowly in a circle.
He was surrounded. Surrogates on all sides, a silent army, looming in the darkness, staring at him with pitiless obsidian eyes.
He knew, somehow, what they were waiting for.
"Face me!" he roared.
The Faceless One appeared before him.
And then Noxa knew, and was, no more.
* * * * *
Kane didn't realize it, but he was holding his breath.
"I repeat, this is Sergeant Goll of Echo Seven to Winter's Edge, do you copy? Over."
They'd managed to get back to the military outpost and get the Covenant comms booster installed without any hassle. Apparently, all the Proxies were still busy at the Covenant camp. He truly hoped that they had wiped each other out, though he doubted it. He couldn't stop thinking about Ross. Seeing the way his stocky, armored frame had disappeared in a pulse of blue-white light. Couldn't stop hearing him screaming for them to keep going.
They were just three, now.
"This is the Winter's Edge, we hear you Sergeant Goll. Over."
Kane let out his breath in one long exhalation that briefly fogged his visor. "Oh thank God," Goll murmured. "What's happening up there? Over."
A new voice came onto the line. "Sergeant, this is Captain Harper. How about we trade information? I'll catch you up to speed first," he said. Kane listened intently. They all did. "We were driven off by a Covenant cruiser. Tenacious bastards. They didn't pursue us, so we managed to hide on the other side of the planet. We got in touch with the nearest UNSC cruiser, who happened to be quite close, on patrol. We rendezvoused with the ship and attacked the Covenant carrier. It's in pieces right now and we're presently holding a steady orbit over you. Now why don't you tell me what in the hell's been going on down there?"
Goll immediately reported their situation, from the landing up to now, hitting all the key parts and crucial pieces of information. Kane was standing behind Lara now, as she sat at the comms console, his hands on her armored shoulders. She rested her helmeted head against his chest. He wished, suddenly, that they didn't have this armor on, just for a moment.
"Well...that's a hell of a story," Harper murmured after a little bit. A burst of static rolled over the line, causing the three of them to tense. "I have to keep this short. They're telling me that the energy field is interfering with comms. In not too long, we won't be able to communicate at all. We've managed to get in touch with ONI and I pulled a little bit of information out of them. That satellite data core you found, do you still have it?"
"Yes," Goll replied. Kane had practically forgotten about it.
"Good. You're going to need it. Apparently, it was tracking the energy signature as it was initially building. Based on what they told me and on what you've told me, and our own scans over the past several hours, this is the best working theory we've got: there was a noticeable decrease in the energy field just within the past hour. I believe this is the primary reason we're even able to talk now. This seems to coincide with the attack at the Covenant camp, where several of this Slender Man's Proxies were killed.
"It stands to reason that these are giving it its power. Kill the Proxies and take away its power, and it should be vulnerable then."
"And then what?" Goll asked.
"Based on what ONI told me, there is enough of a similarity between this energy signature and some technology that the Covenant use that one could affect the other, theoretically. Since the Covenant built their camp around the point of origin of this energy field, if it was weakened enough, you should theoretically be able to set of an explosion at the camp and collapse the point of origin," Harper explained.
"That's a lot of 'theoreticallys'," Goll muttered.
"I know. Unfortunately, due to the nature of this threat, we have to enact a quarantine over the site. We can't send anyone else down. It's too dangerous. And...if you haven't managed to report back in twelve hours, then I have been ordered to drop a few tac-nukes on the site," Harper reported reluctantly.
Kane almost laughed.
"Great," Goll replied. "Understood, Captain Harper. We'll get back to you within twelve hours. Over."
"Understood, Sergeant. Good luck. Out."
Goll sighed heavily, looked at Lara, then at Kane. He pulled the satellite's data core out of one armored pocket.
"Let's get this over with."