"I'll let you know the second I get an outside signal--shit." Whatever else Cortana had been planning to say short circuits into a single violent curse when she gets a good look at where they've emerged.

It's not a real place. She knows that, a quick scan of her memories finding no complete matches, just an element here and there. The Forerunner towers, graceful and smoothly technological amidst the murky green life of the jungle, are from the Ark, not Halo, but the primordial forest is the one the Chief fought his way through right after learning those Covenant fanatics had released a parasite from before history.

And the bodies? The bodies are from everywhere, human soldiers and Covenant shock troops alike, some merely dead with the ordinary gruesome injuries of war, some twisted into unnatural forms that seem more fungal than animal. Pervading the tableau, more smothering than the heavy rainforest air, is nothing but death and silence.