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| - His head hurt. Simon coughed weakly and opened his eyes. Or tried to. Everything was blurry and dark and there was something wrapped around his head. He lifted his arm and felt his fingers brush against rough fabric. That was what was covering up his left eye, he realized dimly That was what was blocking off his vision. "What the hell," he muttered. The fabric was wrapped so tightly around his head it felt as if it were cutting into the skin. His prosthetic's metal fingers scraped against the fabric, trying to get underneath to tear it off. Someone grabbed his skeletal arm, pushing hard enough to make him stop scrabbling and look to see who it was. He had to turn his whole head to look off to his left; it felt strange not to be able to just glance over to see what was going on. Zoey shook her head at him. "Don't take the bandages off," she told him. "He said we needed to keep that spot clean." "Him?" he rasped. The last thing he could remember was Peter's hideously familiar face laughing down at him. His body tensed up just from the thought, sensing the places where the clone had been kicking him. "Where'd he go? What did he do?" "No, not that... thing," she said, as if the very thought of Peter made her ill. Simon didn't blame here. "The guy in armor. The one who brought us here." The Reaper? "What was he doing here?" "He... he saved us. He beat up the guards and kicked Peter out. Then he treated you for a while." She held up a canteen. "You need to drink." It was the best water he had ever tasted. He had to struggle not to gulp it all down in a single swig as Zoey helped him keep the bottle steady. Like a shot to the arm, the water threw everything back in his face. The thumb coming down, the searing pain, the ringing of his own screams in his ears... And his head hurt so much. "No," he whispered. "He didn't..." "I'm sorry, Mordred," Zoey said from somewhere far away. "You protected me, and..." "Enough." He didn't want to hear any talking right now. He didn't want to hear anything. The darkness on his left side pressed in as if it threatened to steal the vision from his right eye as well. "Enough." Was there nothing that couldn't be taken from him? Was this really all there was to his life? He had thought there was nowhere lower to sink to, but Peter had proved that wrong with one jab of his thumb. He was shaking. Even his prosthetic trembled, the canteen slipping through unresisting fingers. He closed his eyes--no, his eye-- and shook his head. "Damn it. Damn it. Damn..." "Mordred..." Someone took hold of his shoulders. He barely felt Zoey's hands through his filthy, bloodstained jumpsuit. "Mordred, thank you." He wanted his eye back. He wanted to get out of this cell. He wanted to stick a knife in Peter's throat. He wanted to stop running. He wanted Cassandra. He wanted... His fists clenched tightly as he seized this last lifeline and clung to it like a drowning man. Maybe this was the end. Maybe his life went no further than this cell, but before he died Venter would go first. The very thought of it pushed more fire into his body than any amount of water ever could. And then the alarms began to sound outside the cell.
*
* "What the hell?" Venter grabbed the nearest tech officer and shook him. "What the hell is going on?" "The sensors," the man yelped, shaking like a leaf. "They're all going down!" "Get me a visual! Where are the cameras we installed?" "They're all down! Something's jamming them! All of them!" From her secluded holo-terminal, Diana waved a hand. "Hey boss, want to unshackle me? Maybe I can help you fix your technical difficulties." "You shut up," Venter snarled, shoving the tech away. He tugged a headset on and opened a channel. "All personnel, grab the nearest weapon and get the fuck to the nearest entrance!" "Sir?" the tech asked, bracing himself against a terminal. "We're about to get hit, shithead," Venter spat. Someone had sold them out. Stray had probably told someone about where he was headed before he came here with his half-assed assassination attempt. It was the only explanation. "Get a gun or sit here and piss yourself. Just get out of my way!" There was still time to salvage this. They just needed to beat back this first attack and buy enough time to evacuate. "Where the hell is the Reaper? And Peter? Where is everyone?" "Sure you don't want my help?" Diana asked sweetly. "Someone unplug her!" Venter snapped, strapping a sidearm to his hip. The entire command center was in an uproar as technicians and guards readied their weapons and shouted orders to the rest of the base. "Anyone who's close, get down to the holding area," Venter ordered. Time to correct a mistake he'd let the Reaper convince him to make. "Put the prisoners down. All of them."
*
* As the rebels busied themselves going to high alert and generally panicking, Diana was more than happy to stay right were she was. At the moment, she was busy picking through Venter's data files and analyzing everything there was to know about the facility. The firewalls her ex-boss had put up had come down like rice paper the minute she'd been activated, and the "experts" who'd been in charge of monitoring her had never known the difference. Diana was pretty sure there weren't too many A.I. who could pull off a stunt like that. No, "pretty sure" indicated doubt, one of her lesser subroutines noted in passing. She was quite certain that there weren't any other A.I. who could pull something so graceful off with the resources she had at her disposal. It hadn't mattered that Venter had isolated her holo-terminal, because her data chip was already embedded with several high-frequency transmitters. They had cost Simon an arm (the one he still had) and a leg and the dumbass had complained about the purchase for weeks. Diana had recorded every second of griping for just such an occasion as this; she intended to remind her partner of his lack of foresight for some time to come. Of course, in order to do that she would need to get him out of here alive, which was a good deal harder than breaching Venter's security. Extending herself into the facility's security feed, she saw the first lance of Sangheili blast a hole through the side of an exposed hangar. Warriors leapt through, cutting down rebels with every burst of plasma. Not exactly a healthy environment for the dumbass, but then again it hadn't been Diana who'd decided to waltz into the middle of a terror operation. She shook her hologram's head and moved on to check the detention records. Time to spring a dumbass.
*
* The Reaper leaned over his latest experiment. This latest Sangheili had a remarkably sturdy composition; the aliens had naturally-occurring strength and durability, but this one's muscles and bone structure were even more well-developed than the average subject. Probably a warrior, or at least he was at some point in his life. That life was over now, thanks to the toxins the Reaper had exposed the subject to at the beginning of their session together. The formula had progressed considerably since the Sanghelios operation had begun. Paralysis had been almost instantaneous, and the subject hadn't even known he was being exposed until his limbs had seized up and stopped working. Higher brain functions had shut down less than a minute after that, and the subject's pulse had flatlined exactly three minutes and twenty three seconds after initial exposure. It was good. Good, but not perfect. Sliding his scalpel down the dead subject's arm, the Reaper checked his progress via a chart of the Sangheili anatomy displayed before him on his helmet's HUD. He still hadn't figured out how to make the toxins lethal exclusively to Sangheili. Based on the tests he'd run on himself, the worst side effect they induced in humans was nausea and vomiting, but he wouldn't cut corners and begin mass-production until he was certain they were perfectly safe for humans. A case of vomiting might be the worst they could do to a fit and healthy human like himself, but an infant or the infirm might be a different story. It was a risk he simply refused to take. But once it was safe for humans... The Reaper smiled behind his helmet, making a note of the nerve endings his scalpel was uncovering on his HUD chart. The ability to release the toxic agent in the major breeding grounds, the cities and keeps of Sanghelios, would make all the pain and effort he'd poured into the last decade and a half more than worth it. And if he could somehow introduce it into the atmosphere... These animals die out, and the UNSC has no one left to challenge it on the galactic stage. And humanity will never be threatened by anything like the Covenant ever again. It would even be worth becoming a hired dog for greed-driven scum like the Syndicate in order to fund his research. And having to put up with Venter's nonsense... He rolled his eyes. It was doubtful Venter would even deploy the nerve agent if it was given to him. He'd proven to be utterly useless for field-testing some of the other poisons the Reaper had concocted so far. The insurrectionist completely failed to grasp the elegant potential of chemical warfare, though the Reaper supposed this was better for humanity in the long run. If the man couldn't shoot it or blow it up, he couldn't be bothered by it. Had the Reaper laced that one female with toxins rather than a bomb a few days ago he doubted Venter would have even agreed to deploy her. There wasn't much more he could learn from this subject that he hadn't already confirmed before on previous subjects. Time to wrap up and call it a day, then. Perhaps he should go check on G294 and the girl down in the cell. They might need more water, and he could probably scrounge some rations for them as well. Poor G294, he mused, setting his scalpel down. The young man shared so many similarities with him, yet their paths had differed so wildly. Truth be told, the Reaper felt sorry for him. To become such a broken husk that he'd forgotten his role as a defender of humanity was heart-breaking. The least the Reaper could do was ease his suffering as much as he could before Venter decided to do away with him. He had just decided to do just that when the alarms began blaring. Frowning, the Reaper reactivated his helmet radio in time to hear someone shouting: "They're inside! Repeat, Elites inside the facility! Oh God, they're everywhere...!" The transmission ended in a burst of static, but the Reaper already knew what was happening. The jig was up, and now this facility was about to be burnt to the ground along with everyone in it. The only real surprise was that it hadn't happened sooner. Crossing over to his workbench, the Reaper quickly downloaded all of his research data from the station computer and then copied the files into his helmet's computer, just to be safe. He slipped the data chips containing his research data into one of his ammunition pouches, then picked up his assault rifle and combat pack from the floor. Flicking the safety off, he sprayed the workbench with machine gun fire. When the clip was empty, he prepped three grenades and set them for a timed detonation of two minutes. He couldn't let the Sangheili see the extent of his research. It wouldn't do for them to start developing countermeasures. After placing the grenades throughout the room, the Reaper reloaded his assault rifle and headed over to the door. He could already here the familiar mingling of bullet and plasma fire in the distance. Time to abandon ship.
*
* "We're in," Jake announced as the door slid open. Behind him, Ralph and Felix stepped over the corpses of the insurrectionist squad that had attempted to prevent their entry. Rosch, clad in ONI's distinctive "recon" armor, brought up the rear with Cassandra. "Make sure the Sangheili are updated on our position at all times," Rosch ordered. "I'd rather not waste time with unnecessary firefights." They announced down the tight corridor, weapons at the ready. Felix's helmet translator fed him the Sangheili transmissions from throughout the facility. Autel and his forces were making good progress; the rebels had only managed to cause them serious problems in a few chokepoints. "We move for the lower levels," Rosch told the team. "Weapons free against all hostile targets. We find G294, we kill him, and we exfiltrate as quickly as possible. Leave the rest of the clean up to the Sangheili." Jake and Ralph sounded off before moving up to take point. Standing taller than anyone else in the team, Felix brought up the middle where he could shoot over the Spartan-III's heads in the event of an ambush. He flexed his armored fingers over his rifle grip and resisted the urge to shake his head in regret. Rosch's orders left little room for interpretation. G294 was to be killed, not captured. It was that simple.
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