The swarm poured over the edges of the roof like a cup overflowing and she could hear them on her heels coming out of the stairwell too.

She closed the distance between her and Three in two long strides. She didn‘t slow down. She scooped up Three, threw him over her shoulder, ran to the edge of the roof . . .

And jumped.

She landed with both feet on the roof of the building opposite and didn‘t waste any time locating the exit leading down—the door had been blown open by a Covenant raiding force many months

ago.

She took the stairs down by leaping from one landing to the next, stopping only once to adjust Three to a more comfortable position across both her shoulders.

As she did so Three said, ―For a minute there I didn‘t know whether you were going to save me or your bugger boyfriend."

―That would be because you are a moron," Two said.

Much of the swarm was waiting for them in the lobby when they burst out of the stairwell. Howling like Sioux warriors on a final charge across the plains, the Spartans unloaded their assault rifles, Three while still draped across Two‘s back, and cleared a narrow path through the Drones to the exit.

But now came the impossible part—the scenario One had wanted to avoid in the first place: a hundred meters of open ground between the Spartans and the Beacon with clouds of infuriated Drones swarming overhead, everywhere they looked. Each of their ARs was on its last clip and they wouldn‘t make it ten paces without expending all their ammo if they tried to fight their way through.

So she just had to run.

The Drones flew down and tried to grab them, or snatch Three off her shoulders, but she was too strong and Three beat them back with the AR, firing off a burst or two when absolutely necessary.

Then Two felt her feet kicking empty air—she was rising off the ground against her will. But no Drones were near them.

―Oh crap," Three said.

She looked up—and saw several Drones floating above them, the antigrav grapplers they used to excavate mantle for the Beacon now trained on the two Spartans.

She saw a familiar form flitting by their side—she had blown off his front arms but he was still alive, limbless but still able to hover-hop on what remained of his tattered wings.

So Unmutuals weren‘t completely incapable of cooperation.

They just needed the right leadership.

Her helmet headset crackled, ―Black-Two, this is Black-One. Come in. Black-Four has powered up the train and we are ready for evac. Return to Rally Point Beta immediately. Over."

―Copy that, Black-One," Two said, ―but I‘d get that thing moving now."

―Why?"

―Because I am about to drop something extremely heavy on top of it."

And she detonated the blow pack she had attached to the antigrav pylon of the Beacon.

The huge C-12 explosion was so violent that it startled many of the Drones into dropping their grapplers, which in turn dropped Two back onto her feet. She didn‘t waste any time in dashing for the warren holes. The other three antigrav pylons struggled for a few seconds to keep the

unforgiving mass of the Beacon upright on their own, but gravity emerged victorious and yanked the machine downward on one side. The plasma stream still emanating from its top cut an apocalyptic swath through the Yanme‘e swarm, vaporizing Hopalong and the dozens of Unmutuals around him.

It sliced the buildings Two and Three had just escaped from in half like a giant scythe.

Two dropped underground just as the first pylon hit. The tunnels immediately began collapsing around her and it was a mad dash to stay one step ahead of the flattening ceilings. She barely made it to the subway tunnel and handed Black-Three into Black-One‘s outstretched arms as she stood on the back of the train car before leaping onboard herself.

The subway disappeared into its tunnel just as the remains of the fallen Beacon crashed through the platform roof.

For a moment, everyone inside the train car paused to catch their breath. The train whined quietly through the absolute darkness of the metro tube. Spartan: Black was too exhausted to celebrate.

―ETA at Pelican in twenty," Four said after a moment, as if nothing had just happened.

Three punched Two playfully in the shoulder. ―So what did we learn today, huh? If you see

something that looks different from us in any way, kill it immediately and without question."

Two just cocked her head. ―We are a hell of a lot more ‗Mutual‘ that‘s for sure."

―Huh?" Three said.

She watched the tunnel darkness recede back into itself behind them as the train hummed its way to the drop point.

―Nothing," Two said with a smile only she knew was there.

THE MONA LISA

JEFF VANDERMEERAND TESSA KUM

OCTOBER 2552 [EXACT DATE CLASSIFIED], SOELL SYSTEM,

INSTALLATION 04 DEBRIS FIELD, ―HALO"

>Lopez 0610 hours

Sergeant Zhao Heng Lopez stood in the cargo bay of the UNSC Red Horse , looking at an escape pod. A huge, pitted bullet. About two and a half meters long and thick, pocked and smacked by debris. Around her: Hospital Corpsman Ngoc Benti, Technical Officer Raj Singh, his helpers, the ever-silent, inscrutable Clarence, and a crack pilot named Burgundy who‘d just come back from a recon mission. All of them staring at the latest catch. It was so dented the container itself almost looked like something living. Almost expected to see plants growing out of the sides. Was that all it took? Lopez wondered, to make something lifelike? Kick it around enough? Maybe.

James MacCraw joined them. Rookie. Raw. Big-boned, lanky, and freckled. Unimpressive. Maybe if she kicked him around he‘d show some life.

―I‘m here, Sarge," he said, but not like he meant it. God, she hated indifference in the morning.

―Yeah, you think you‘re here, MacCraw," Benti said in a half mutter. Next to Benti—who looked so small in combat armor that seemed to eat her up—MacCraw was like another species.

Singh had conscripted Burgundy into helping pry the pod open alongside his assistants. The thing obviously wasn‘t going to open easily for them—the line revealing the crude little hatch, locked at the side, almost couldn‘t be seen with the number of impacts it had suffered.

―Not much to look at, is it?" Burgundy said. Lopez knew that the Marines sometimes called her

―Stickybeak" because she was too curious, but she didn‘t seem to care.

Benti: ―Is it, like, old, or a recon pod? Am I here to tranq or treat? I don‘t get it."

―Is it even ours?" MacCraw asked, ignoring Benti while asking the same question.

―Sure as hell ain‘t Covenant," Lopez said. ―It‘s human." Just not necessarily military. Serial numbers, but no UNSC markings.

No idea what it was doing out here in uncharted space, floating in the ruins of Halo, a gargantuan alien artifact Lopez hadn‘t even tried to explain to herself. Hell, Lopez had no real idea what she was doing here, for that matter. They‘d popped out of slipspace like a greased egg just three days ago, with no more specific task than ―recon and recovery and watch out for Covenant patrols."

Lopez wasn‘t in the mood for more mysteries.

―But—that doesn‘t mean it‘s friendly," she added, not wanting them too relaxed. Except for

Clarence, who was at his best when he was so relaxed he didn‘t even seem to be alive; sometimes Lopez wondered if he was a ghost. But it was hard for the rest of them not to be complacent, standing in the bay of their own ship. Lopez knew from experience sometimes you took the worst hits where you lived for that very reason.

They‘d seen pods before on this tour—too many. They were plucking them from the void with such tenacity it made her think they were looking for something in particular. But almost all of what they‘d recovered had been sleeper pods from amid the exploded chunks of continental plate, the almost delicate slices of superstructure: cryotubes ejected from the Pillar of Autumn when she was brought down by Covenant fire. All DOA, cracked and ruptured by the wealth of debris out there.

Go to sleep expecting to wake, and wind up in a floating coffin instead. There were worse ways to die. There were much better ways, too.

MacCraw might have been slow, but he wasn‘t that slow. As he helped Benti unsnap a stretcher, he said, ―So much for a highly classified top-secret hush-hush location. That‘s a civilian pod."

Lopez didn‘t answer because she had no answer. Their mission remained fuzzy, and the rumor mill was surprisingly quiet. All she knew was that even though the Red Horse operated under wartime rules, she‘d felt like she was signing away her soul when they‘d given her additional security documents. Not to reveal . . . Under penalty of . . .

The oddest thing? Their old smart AI, Chauncey, had been replaced with an AI named Rebecca.

Chauncey had been only three years old when they‘d yanked him out like an old motor block. No question of his having cracked up. Besides, Chauncey would‘ve dropped her a hint or two. He had taken a real shine to Lopez. Rebecca hadn‘t.

―Maybe we should tell the commander it‘s civilian," MacCraw said.

Poor MacCraw. Still so wet behind the ears. She didn‘t look at him. Didn‘t need to.

Benti couldn‘t resist, gave Lopez a cheeky grin as she said: ―There are cameras in here, MacCraw."

He frowned, reddened.

Burgundy and Singh‘s assistants had moved away from the pod.

―Sir!" Singh waved Lopez over. ―Life support is still online. We‘ve got a live one in here." An instant quickening of her pulse. This could be something, finally. She was sick of being a funeral director. ―Just give the word and we‘ll have it open."

Lopez motioned to Clarence. ―Step on up, Invisible Man. Singh, get your team clear. Sleeping Beauty here is a stranger." Unholstered her pistol, checked the chamber. ―Benti, c‘mon, get your weapon out and your head out of your ass. Treat as hostile until proven otherwise." Benti had a talent for making friends that served the squad well on leave, especially regarding bartenders, but it wasn‘t a useful trait here.

The sound of boots behind her as additional Marines filed into the hangar, ranging around the pod at Clarence‘s command. Assault rifles raised and ready. She didn‘t have to check—they knew what they were doing. Lopez had trained most of them herself.

Ever-silent, Clarence drew up beside her, finger on the trigger. A good man to have at her back when faced with the unknown.

Lopez nodded at Singh, who tapped his control pad. The seal on the pod sighed, and the technician stood back.

Three, two, one . . .

She wrenched at the hatch. A hiss of escaping pressure as the hatch rose.

Clarence didn‘t move. Just stood beside her, watching, calm, even when she started.

―Damn!"

There was a lot of blood. A man, too. But a lot of blood. More than seemed possible. That was what got to her first. The blood sloshed in the creases of the berth. It ran down the floor to pool in the footwell. It had saturated the man‘s clothes. His face was crusted by blood, his eyes white and bulging in the midst of it. Couldn‘t at first tell if he really was alive. She and Clarence stared down while he lay there, looking up but not really seeing.

Burgundy grimaced in disgust, mumbled something like ―I‘ve got to be going," and fled the

hangar. That amused Lopez. Stickybeak‘d become unstuck.

Where did the smell come from? Where? It was rank, like the stink she remembered coming off corpses after about three days into a firefight, still pinned down by Covenant at some godforsaken outpost on a planet no one even cared about. But behind that, some sort of infection. She could smell it because she could also smell the antiseptic of whatever the man had used to fight it. The smell reminded her of the nursing home where she‘d had to leave her mother a few years back, mumbling prayers and counting her rosary beads.

The man rose up. He rose up like something coming out of darkness into the light, the blood spilling off his chest. Clarence had his gun aimed point-blank between the man‘s eyes. Those eyes focused as the man cried out, ―Don‘t let them get me!" through a torn mouth. Lopez could see that the blood wasn‘t just spilling off his chest but out of his chest, and that‘s what made her take a step back, more than anything else. That, and the way he looked at her made Lopez realize the man already understood he was dead.

As dead as any corpse they‘d recovered from a cryotube.

>Benti 0623 hours

Stabilizing ―John Doe" took Benti a few minutes. A thankless task. A pointless task. Not all the bandages in the world would help him now. While a couple of the others lifted him out and onto the stretcher, Clarence kept his gun on the man. Good old Clarence. Other Marines talked behind his back—said he was messed up in the head, said he had his own agenda—but Benti had always liked him. You could depend on Clarence. Who cared about the rest?

With Clarence on the job, Benti kept her calm even with the guy babbling don’t let them take me, please don’t let them take me . This guy wasn‘t going anywhere soon. They could have brought a proper bed down; at least Mr. Doe would‘ve been more comfortable.

Mr. Doe had kind eyes. Frightened eyes, but kind. Benti could tell. She was a strong believer in what you could figure out from a person‘s eyes. It was one reason she trusted Clarence, and why she found MacCraw a waste of space.

Great slashes, vicious and brutal, constituted most of Mr. Doe‘s wounds. The worst had penetrated his chest, but his feet were a mess too. If only he‘d been wearing shoes. Benti tsk ed a little at the lack. The left foot had blackened, and it would have to come off. No, scratch that—chopping his foot off won’t save him now. His left arm had a chunk missing. A shattered shoulder and missing ear were just afterthoughts in her catalog of his problems. The bandages she‘d applied were pitiful, the skin around them blue, and a down-and-dirty IV had been hooked up. A waste, but Sarge wanted some quality face time with Mr. Doe, so anything to keep him with them a little longer.

For an instant, Benti had a vision of Mr. Doe encountering some great force. That he‘d sustained all this damage in one moment of terrible clarity; of knowing, as they would all know eventually, that the universe was stronger, and meaner, than any one of them. It was something the Marine Corps, after Benti‘s cushy upbringing in a suburban home on Earth, had been teaching her for five years now.

She depressed the plunger in the syringe. Mr. Doe jerked up, a sudden tension wracking the lines of his body, jaw clenched. Benti noted absurdly that he hadn‘t been flossing lately: bad gums. That they were gray concerned her more.

―There," Benti said, rising to her feet and wiping her bloody hands. Blood never bothered her, only where it came from. ―He‘s stable. For the moment."

―Good to talk?" the sarge asked her.

Benti twisted her lips, unwilling to commit to a yes or no. ―I gave him a cocktail—painkillers, and an upper. He can talk." Yep, he could talk, although it wasn‘t going to be one of those scintillating discussions you remembered the rest of your life. Besides, the sarge had never been good at polite conversation: one reason Benti liked her.

She caught Lopez‘s eye, knew the sarge understood. Mr. Doe could leave them at any time.

Benti stood back as Lopez crouched down. ―See that?" Lopez pointed to a tattoo and indentation on his right arm, across the edge of Mr. Doe‘s tricep. Prison barcode, with a scar where they‘d implanted the tracking chip.

―Interesting." It didn‘t really interest Benti, but you had to humor the sarge sometimes.

Mr. Doe spoke up. ―Marines. You‘re UNSC." His voice broke, too long without water and use.

―You‘re safe," Lopez said.

Benti frowned. Mr. Doe was also at the ass-end of the galaxy, light-years from anything

unclassified. But I guess you don’t complicate a dying man’s life.

―Thank God," he wheezed. The tension that had gripped and defined him until then slipped away.

―Thank God."

They were attending his funeral, Benti realized. Her, Lopez, Clarence, MacCraw, Singh, and the rest. Forming an honor guard around a man who might or might not deserve it. For once, MacCraw had fallen as silent as Clarence, thank goodness. She‘d been about to nickname him ―Jackdaw."

―What‘s your name?" Lopez asked. ―Where are you from? What ship?"

Too many questions for Mr. Doe. He coughed, as though clearing his throat, but the cough didn‘t stop. Blood, dark and fresh, dribbled down his chin. Benti knew what that meant. Everyone did. She shot a glance at Clarence, who met her eye. It wouldn‘t be long now.

―I don‘t know," Mr. Doe wheezed, the words hard to utter. Even Clarence, who usually didn‘t give a crap, was leaning in, trying to hear him. ―I don‘t know where we are, I don‘t know."

―What ship?" Lopez repeated.

Mr. Doe‘s reply sounded like ―moaning lizard" to Benti. That had to be wrong.

―The what?"

―The Mona Lisa ." And then: ―You don‘t know, do you? You don‘t know."

Lopez smiled, which, Benti had told her before, on leave, was grim and not at all reassuring and the main reason men fled at the sight of her, but still she wouldn‘t give it up. No way Mr. Doe wouldn‘t see his own death there.

―I don‘t know because you‘re not telling me. Tell me, and we‘ll get you off to the infirmary, and you can sleep."

―I would tell you all kinds of things," Mr. Doe said, stumbling over the words. ―If I had anyone left in the world. This is where I‘m supposed to say, tell my girl I love her, that sort of thing." A terrible, pitiless laugh from Mr. Doe, then, that contracted his eyes, his chin. A laugh that convulsed him, brought blood fresh through the bandages. ―I know I‘m dying. I know I‘m dying. But that‘s okay."

A clarity in his eyes, despite the kindness of the drugs. ―I‘m clean. I‘m here. I won‘t come back. It‘s okay. It‘s all okay."

It surprised Benti when Lopez took his grime-covered, bloody hand. Somehow Benti thought

Lopez would pay for that touch. Benti was used to touching people when they were vulnerable, understood what it meant. Lopez really wasn‘t. He‘d just been this thing that talked before. Now how did Lopez see him?

―What do you mean, you won‘t come back?" Lopez asked.

Like a thunderbolt, a lightning strike called up unbidden: the shimmering image of the ship‘s smart AI, Rebecca, appeared beside them, also kneeling. So sudden that Benti had to suppress a sound of surprise, almost lost her balance, and Lopez pulled away a bit.

Rebecca was in her warrior avatar, looking like half-Athena, half-Ares, with a feathered Greek headdress and ancient armor. Rebecca looked so good that Benti almost clapped.

Rebecca asked, imploring almost: ―What do you mean you won‘t come back? Come back from what? Come back from what ?"

Benti looked through Rebecca to where Lopez knelt, staring wide-eyed at them both. Then realized a moment later, with a fading spike of sadness, that Mr. Doe had gone silent, had become Mr. DOA.

Now they‘d never learn his name, and all they had was ―Mona Lisa," which might be a ship, a painting, or nothing at all.

Rebecca made a sound close to exasperation, and winked out. This new AI wasn‘t big on niceties like ―Hello," ―Goodbye," and ―Incoming!" Not like Chauncey.

Benti stared down at Mr. Doe. Really, such a waste. Those nice eyes, that strong chin.

―Come on, all you big strong men," Benti said. ―Help me get him to forensics." Which was in the infirmary, but Benti didn‘t like saying that, since it seemed to mix the living and the dead a little too easily. She also didn‘t like telling people she assisted with autopsies, which Mr. Doe definitely required to write the proper ending to his story.

A slow, sad shuffle then as they took the man‘s body out of the landing bay. Mr. Doe seemed both heavier and lighter than before. Clarence seemed to take most of the weight, and didn‘t seem to mind.

When Benti looked back, Lopez was giving a good, hard look to the space that had been occupied by Rebecca‘s avatar, like the sarge had been trying not to see through her, but into her.

>Lopez 0932 hours

By the time she met with Commander Tobias Foucault and Rebecca, Lopez knew this much:

nothing that might identify the dead man, not his prison brand, fingerprints, retina scan, DNA, came up on any of the databases aboard the Red Horse . Not that surprising. No way to check against the live databases back home. ―Hush-hush," as MacCraw said.

They met in one of those featureless rooms adjoining the bridge that smelled like disinfectant.

Lopez had wanted Benti there, too, but she was more valuable sitting in on the postmortem.

Gray walls and plastic chairs that rocked back too far if you tried to slouch. A live image of the empty pod, with MacCraw and some other Marines cleaning up the blood, played across one screen.

A video of the Halo artifact prior to Spartan-117 detonating the Pillar of Autumn ‘s reactor and destroying it played across the other. A blue-green place. Like a delicate, inverse cross-section of Earth. Now: a black-and-brown snake with orange cracks raging across its pieces, with the vast bulk of the gas giant Threshold looming behind it, inexorably pulling the debris into its gravity well.

Commander Foucault sat opposite her, as always immaculate. The smell of aftershave. Foucault looked haggard and thin and prematurely graying, not at all the robust man she remembered from before his promotion. When he‘d been just another one of them. Something about that soured in her mouth. Now she had to call him ―sir." They all respected him, respected the extreme circumstances that such a field promotion called for, but still resented the division of rank.

At the far end of the table, Rebecca manifested in her more usual avatar of a flabby, middle-aged Mediterranean woman in a flower dress. She looked vaguely Italian. Benti had always clucked when she saw Rebecca that way, wondered aloud in their berths why she chose that avatar. But Lopez knew: the same reason off-ship, on leave, she would wear something feminine.

It made people comfortable around Rebecca, took the edge off of their fascination and slight fear of something so seemingly alive made out of motes of light, bits and bytes. But, then, Chauncey had never cared whether they were comfortable around him. His actions did the job instead. So why, exactly, did Rebecca want to be disarming?

―Anything new to report, Sergeant Lopez?" Foucault asked. Despite the worn look to his face, the commander‘s light-blue eyes had a powerful effect. A gaze with a kind of grip to it.

―No, sir," she said. Wondering when the shit was going to hit the fan. Because you didn‘t waste the time of the two most important people on the Red Horse by sticking them in a room with a sergeant.

It didn‘t scan. She found herself counting rosary beads in her head, against her will. The image forever anchored to the smell of old wooden pews and her mother as a younger woman, kneeling in church.

―What about you, Rebecca?" Foucault asked, with the air of someone who already knew the

answer. Lopez thought she noted a hint of sarcasm there, too.

A smile from Rebecca that was meant to reassure Lopez, but didn‘t. Not one bit.

―The pod was launched six hours ago from the Mona Lisa , a prison transport. I backtracked and calculated the Mona Lisa ‘s approximate location at the time of launch. The coordinates have been uploaded to the nav system."

―And it didn‘t show up on our sensors, I‘m guessing, because of the debris?"

Rebecca frowned, as if something annoying had just occurred to her. ―That‘s correct." She brought up a schematic on the screen of a freighter with several levels, a docking hangar near the front.

Storage bays hung off of it, seeming to weigh it down. To Lopez, it looked ugly. Like, if it were a ship meant for water, it would list heavily. ―This is a simulation of the same ship type. They‘re converted freighters, for transporting prisoners and ore to and from the penal colonies, along with the resources from the mines. The bridge is situated in the top level. The prison cells are down below, close to the hangar. In between you have the usual: kitchen, mess, infirmary, berths, the majority given over to cargo. Most prison ships have minimal defenses and minimal firearms on board—a precaution against an uprising—and rely on an escort for protection. There‘s no sign of an escort, though."

A thin smile from Foucault as he stared at Rebecca. ―What would a prison transport be doing at the most significant alien discovery of the past twenty years?" he asked, cutting through all the irrelevant details in a way Lopez admired.

Rebecca shrugged. ―That, I can‘t tell you."

Foucault said, ―Because you don‘t know, of course." It wasn‘t framed as either statement or question.

―Perhaps they encountered Covenant and made a random slipspace jump to escape."

―Quite the coincidence, if they did. They show up here, we show up here." It wasn‘t directed at Lopez, but in a way it was. Probably the only hint she‘d ever get.