- Beep - Beep - Beep -
Each pulse struck like a hammer against the inside of my skull, the sound growing louder, heavier, more insistent with every passing second. It was not merely noise; it was pressure, vibration, something that resonated through my bones like they were paper.
- Beep - Beep - Beep -
The world around me was bright. Endless, suffocating white, as though my eyes had been forced open beneath a sun.
"Will he live?"
The voice came from above me, distant and distorted, as though filtered through water or glass. I tried to focus on it, to locate it, but the light swallowed everything before my vision could take shape.
"No."
The reply was flat. Final.
The beeping continued, but now it felt slower, stretched thin, as if time itself had begun to unravel. I wanted to speak. I wanted to scream. Panic surged through me, hot and immediate.
'WAIT,' I tried to shout. My mouth did not move.
There was a sudden click, sharp and mechanical, followed by the long, unbroken tone of the machine giving up.
Silence.
Then-
*HISSSSSSS*
Cold vapor washed over me as something enormous opened nearby. The sound was wrong, metal straining against metal, hinges protesting movement they had not known for eons. The white mist curled and spilled outward like a living thing.
A voice spoke, cold and mechanical.
"Stasis capsule disengaged."
My vision fractured, darkness bleeding into the light as my eyes finally adjusted. Shapes emerged. Steel walls, shadowed ceilings, the dim outline of machinery.
Text appeared in the air before me, glowing a sterile blue.
- Rank — Chief of the UMCA -
- Name — Maximus -
- Status — Reactivation -
The words lingered for a moment, then dissolved.
I inhaled sharply and gasped, my chest burning as frozen air rushed into lungs that had forgotten how to breathe. My eyes snapped open fully, greeted not by the sterile white of a hospital room, but by darkness, vast, a near-endless abyss.
I raised a hand to my head. The movement was slow, stiff, as if my body were resisting me. My arm felt wrong: heavier, stronger, aching in a deep, unfamiliar way. Pins and needles crawled along my skin.
I tried to stand.
The moment I shifted my weight, my legs betrayed me. I took one unsteady step, then another, and then gravity reclaimed me without mercy.
"Shit," I muttered as instinct took over. My arms came up just in time, but the impact still sent a jolt of pain through my shoulders and spine as I slammed hard into the metal floor.
The sound echoed. Not once, but many times.
"What the…?" My voice wavered as I pushed myself upright and looked around.
The room was colossal. Not a room, really, more like a cavern carved from steel. Hundreds of meters in every direction, disappearing into darkness. Only then did I realize the floor beneath me was not fixed. It was hovering, suspended by a unseen force.
As my eyes adjusted further, shapes emerged from the gloom. Rows upon rows of pods, identical to the one I had emerged from, each resting on its own floating platform. A graveyard.
I looked down at myself.
My hands were not mine. They were larger, scarred, calloused. Old, but powerful. My legs were encased in a amour unlike any I had seen, my body felt broader. Heavier.
"This isn't my body," I said aloud before I could stop myself.
A sound stirred behind me, soft, yet artificial.
"Commander Maximus."
I turned.
A figure stood where nothing had been moments before. It was a hologram, rendered in startling detail, complete with color and expression. The only indication of its artificial nature was the faint transparency that allowed the room behind it to bleed through.
"As of this recording," the voice continued, "the war against the Forerunners is over. Humanity has lost."
The words struck harder than the fall.
"We were faced with extinction," the hologram said. "With no remaining options, we enacted Protocol Exodus."
Images flared to life beside it, ships burning, worlds baptising in walls of fire.
"You were sent against your will," it continued, "to the furthest reaches of space accessible to humanity's greatest vessels."
Another image appeared.
"The San'Shyuum have betrayed us."
The form of a bloated, hovering humanoid rotated slowly. Recognition slammed into me like a memory I had never lived.
'The Prophets.'
My mind raced, connections snapping together with horrifying clarity.
'Halo.'
The hologram shifted again.
A massive, writhing shape appeared, contained within an energy field. It shifted endlessly, tendrils reforming, flesh crawling over itself.
"This is the Flood," the voice said. "We believed it to be a benign fungus. A tool. A means to enhance our allies and friends, the Pheru."
A new image replaced it: a dog-like creature chasing its tail, harmless, almost playful.
"We were wrong."
The scene darkened.
Planets burned. Cities collapsed. Flesh twisted into obscene shapes. Men and machines alike were torn apart, absorbed, repurposed.
My stomach churned.
"This vessel," the hologram concluded, "is the final ark of humanity. And you, Commander Maximus, are its first and last, Protector."
The figure began to fade.
"Your mission is to rebuild. To restart the Human Empire. Within this ship lies technology from allies, enemies, and even the Precursors themselves."
Silence followed.
I lay back on the platform, staring into the darkness, my mind numb beneath the weight of what I had been told.
Then the platform lurched.
Without warning, it began to rise, accelerating rapidly. I grabbed the edges as the ceiling rushed toward me. My breath caught in my throat as I sharply closed my eyes.
And then the motion stopped.
I was no longer in the chamber of pods. Instead, I found myself inside a narrow airlock, walls of glass and metal enclosing me.
Before I could react, the airlock shot sideways.
I clung to the platform as the world blurred past. Through the glass, I glimpsed impossible sights, hangars stretching for kilometers. Vast production lines, silent and pristine, frozen in anticipation.
Finaly after what seemed forever, the airlock seemed to slow as a door meldedin frontt of my very eyes. Where there had just been a wall was now a door.
The door hissed as it opened, and with it opening,g thplatformed moved like a program doing its task. The room in carried into was vast, very vast. Lights began to flicker on as I sat atop the platform, hovered passed.
Finally We reached a seat. Surrounded by others similar, and yet this one was distinct. It looked to be etched in gold and obsidian, yet the gleam from the white lights above gave it a indiscript look.
The platform stopped moving, I looked down, my feet moved and plating themselfs on the call floor.
The coolness sent shivers up my spine as I moved to place myself on the seat.
As soon as I placed myself within the seat. The whole room shook. I looked rapidly at my surroundings as panels similar to the hologram began appearing in front of me.
- Inactivity -
- Last known Signal From Charum Hakkor - 110,000 Standard Erde Years