SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone in Silent Horizon plot
What| Fighting the Faceless, a perilous escape, and a chance to have a breather
Where| In the In-Between, the Silent Horizon, and then the Legion Cruiser
When| Chronologically, only hours have passed in the outside world from when the team disappeared, but it's up to players whether their characters perceived it as being hours or days
Warnings/Notes| Gore, blood, body horror, all the usual


They hear the voice again, calling out to them. Not the Faceless, not the dark whispers of this world. It's the same tinny voice that warned them, that told them not to give into the Faceless' offer. It's the voice that told them their Phalanxed teammates can still be saved if the Faceless is killed in time before they die.

It calls out again. Wherever they are, whatever the landscape is doing, they can hear it.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you've been probably hearing lots of voices in this place, telling you all kinds of things. But I'm trying to help you. There's a way to end this, to stop the Faceless. Just follow my voice. My language synthesizer is broadcasting in the telepathic range like telepathic earplugs and I've managed to reconfigure it to broadcast through the entire In-Between. You should be hearing it wherever you are and you should be able to use its broadcast strength to navigate. I think I've managed to secure it from the Faceless and his Phalanx but there's no way to be sure."

How loud the voice is changes as they get closer or farther away. They can use it to navigate, albeit very crudely. And now that it's clearer, it's far more recognizable: it's the voice of the Robotican in the horrible footage that played before they were taken -- the one that had his head knocked off.

"My name is N-45LEN/Keth Series. My organic crewmates call --" He pauses, and sounds distraught. "--called me Lenny. I was a crew member of the Silent Horizon. This entire dimension is called the In-Between. It's made up of the body of the Faceless and I'm currently trapped at its core. I can see you Legionnaires from here through...what appears to be some kind structure for processing what equates to ocular stimuli for the Faceless. If any of you get lost, I can see enough to guide you here."

If they need it, they'll find that he can give them individualized directions, no matter what the landscape does, and he can give them to multiple people simultaneously. Having a complex processor for a brain has its perks.

"My organic teammate and I managed to discover the core of the Faceless and its nature, but I'm currently incapacitated and Bob...he just lost it. He nearly destroyed what was left of me and ran off before we could stop the Faceless. I saw him eventually accept the Faceless' offer and turn. If you make it here where I am, you may be able to destroy the Faceless' body enough to kill him, save your teammates, and destroy this dimension once and for all."

A pause.

"And if you could maybe take me with you when you leave, uh, I would appreciate that. Like, a lot."

[ooc post here]

Comments

[prettycoolguy]

Sombra's parting remark gets a short nod in answer, but the Chief doesn't say anything more. It's what he suspected. No one in the Legion has had an easy day.

The Mjolnir reports a breach and several broken connections in his left arm, and the pain signals agree. The Chief has already muted the alerts from his comm, which has several unread pings from the tech team. The essence of the messages is, in spirit if not exact wording, why are you like this???

Something besides Cortana's absence has upset him, because he's less tense but it's not totally gone. He starts walking, just as eager to get out of here as he was to reach Cortana. They're unloading several critically injured members of the team, and he doesn't need to be in the way.

"The Joker is captured. Blue Rose is dead," he says. Those are the two most important details, but it's obvious which one is on his mind. People die.

It's part of his job, and always has been. But no one had on this team had yet, and John feels a sort of protective responsibility toward the rest of them. On some level, it feels like a failure on his part.

He doesn't want to dwell, though.

"What happened?"

[steelandtemper]

He's fought with the armor in worse shape, and the biofoam's doing its job. Cortana busies herself with making minuscule tweaks to compensate for the damage, but that's just because she's Cortana, not because they're necessary. Nothing here's bad enough she needs to harangue him to Engineering or the Medbay, and she mutes all the techs as well. They'll live, and so will the Chief.

He's the only person who'll get an honest answer from her--have fun with that mandatory session, Dr. Ry'kerr--but even the Chief is going to have to push through some flippancy. The nightmare's over. She's fine.

"Don't know how much you heard yet, but the ship we were looking for got hijacked by some entity calling itself the Faceless that was trying to assimilate everything it came across. Really terrible recruiting pitch--'hope is a lie, everything is doomed, join me and survive.' Some people bought it."

If he thinks that sounds pretty much exactly like the Gravemind...that's because it sounds pretty much exactly like the Gravemind.

[prettycoolguy]

The thing about talking to Cortana is that, most of the time, she has no visible avatar for the Chief to give meaningful looks to. It means he has to talk.

"Sounds like someone we knew," he says. It's flippant too, but loaded with worry. That's far too close to the Gravemind for comfort, and while he hasn't openly discussed it with her, he knows that facing off with the Flood hivemind hurt her badly. This can't have helped, and the Chief's concern hangs between them, the question of her welfare unspoken but obvious.

They haven't been friends for a long time, by most standards, but the circumstances have strengthened it more than years ever could. He respects Cortana, and will give her a chance to come around to it herself before he'll push the issue outright.

[steelandtemper]

Cortana can feel the muscle movements as he side-eyes her, precise little electrical signals shooting up through the suit's interface, and as usual chooses to ignore anything that conflicts with how she's decided the universe should be. In this case, she's decided she's fine.

"This thing only wished it was a tenth as scary as the Flood, Chief. It had no way to force the issue and we didn't need Halo to kill it." Cortana's using an interesting definition of 'force' here, but she's technically correct that the Faceless didn't seem able to do anything without some kind of consent.

Bush league, right?

Considering Sombra looked like she lost a fight with an ODST and an EMP simultaneously, it's just remotely possible the situation doesn't warrant Cortana's breezy assurance.

[prettycoolguy]

If it were the Flood, the affected Legionnaires wouldn't have returned. They'd have had even more deaths on the team today, this is true. But people still had to be carried off that shuttle, and Sombra wasn't the only one still walking who looked like they'd been through the wringer.

It's a good sign that Cortana's still brushing things off, but it doesn't mean they're as fine as she wants him to think they are.

"Cortana," says the Chief, gentle but firm. "What happened to you?"

[steelandtemper]

It's so much harder to dodge direct questions when no one's shooting at them...though given that 'direct' is the Chief's only setting, you'd think she'd be used to it by now.

"Nothing that didn't happen to everyone else." She sighs, letting go of some of her control to let the fatigue peek through. "Just a nasty environment to be operating in and lot of bad memories."

[prettycoolguy]

"The Gravemind?" he asks. Because he's going to have to be the one to drag it out into the open and shine a light on it. Telling her knows means she doesn't have to pretend otherwise for him. He understands. It's not going to shake his faith in her.

[steelandtemper]

There's a pause, just barely perceptible, which means Cortana is taking her sweet time answering.

"It was looking for weak spots, Chief." So that's a yes, then. She sounds...not defeated, not exactly. Just mortally tired, alarming from an unsleeping AI.

"Azúcar was knocked out for almost an hour right at the beginning. It only took a few minutes for the thing to start in on me."

An hour represents a virtual eternity in AI time, alone with a familiar and unwelcome voice echoing in her head, Cortana's perfect computer memory a fearsome liability. Though the sensation had faded when Sombra came to, standing vigil over her sleeping partner in the lonely darkness had struck a little too close to home. Despite the knowledge it wasn't the Dawn and rampancy would no longer end her life, the fear that she would never see John again had still crept over her, icy fingers around the throat she doesn't have.

"I...didn't have a lot to keep me busy."

[prettycoolguy]

The Chief doesn't care much for expressing emotions, especially through physical contact, but there's still an impulse somewhere that makes him wish he could hug her. He isn't good at talking, much less talking through this kind of thing, and it makes even an awkward gesture like that appealing if only he could get the feeling across.

"Next time, they're not splitting us up," he says instead. It's a fact. Their abilities complement one another perfectly, they're meant to fight together.

But he also doesn't want her getting stuck alone again. He won't let that happen.

[steelandtemper]

Despite the ample evidence the last day or so has provided for why Freelancer-style direct neural connections are a terrible idea, a part of her still thinks she and John could pull it off. She knows the inarticulate need he's feeling right now, but what if she could know it, and he wouldn't have to speak at all?

Then he does speak, and she has other things to think about. Namely, the standard John-117 problem-solving method of assuming all responsibility for everything.

"Hey, I volunteered." Cortana sounds much more lively now that she's trying to keep the Chief from blaming himself. "It was supposed to be a shakedown cruise for the new recruits." Never mind that their shakedown had involved 'friendlies' firing armed missiles at them.

"Azúcar was rock-solid. She'd never seen anything remotely like it, but she hit the ground running and didn't stop. If I had to be stuck with someone besides you, I could have chosen way worse."

Cortana won't be caught dead saying nice things where the targets can hear them, but beyond the fact the Chief always gets her honest analysis, she really does want him to know that Sombra meets her impossible standards. She deserves someone else appreciating her, and Cortana can't think of a better person for it than the Chief.