Red warning lights strobed through the cryo bay, bleeding across steel walls and frozen glass like open wounds.
The alarms had not stopped since the ship tore itself out of slipspace.
Sierra-027 stood motionless inside his cryo pod, systems waking in layered sequence. His visor cleared first, then the world sharpened. Life-sign indicators bloomed across his HUD—green where they persisted, red where they had not.
There were too many reds.
Cryo pods lined the chamber in silent rows. Some still hummed, frost clinging to their frames. Others were dark, fractured, or open—coffins suspended in metal. Bodies floated within them, caught forever between waking and death.
Daloka did not linger.
The split-space rupture had done this, but it had not acted alone. Structural failure. Power loss. Deceleration trauma. The causes stacked neatly in his mind, categorized and stored.
Responsibility did not.
He drew back his fist.
The first strike against the pod was controlled—enough to fracture the glass but not shatter it. The second was deliberate and absolute. Reinforced plating screamed as it gave way, glass bursting upward, metal deforming under Spartan strength.
Steam poured into the bay as emergency release systems triggered.
Daloka stepped free.
His boots struck the deck with weight that seemed to settle the room itself.
The alarms continued to scream, uncaring.
He moved.
The corridors leading to the control room were a catalogue of disaster. Loose equipment drifted where gravity had failed during the crash. Bulkheads were buckled inward. As he traversed the hall, he notices burn marks scarred the walls where overloaded systems had vented violently.
Daloka's footsteps were heavy and even, the sound of something built to advance through chaos rather than flee it.
At the control room door, he paused.
The access panel did not respond.
He peeled back the emergency cover and engaged the manual interface. One second.
Two. Three.
Nothing.
Daloka stepped back, adjusted his stance, and drove his boot forward.
The reinforced glass door collapsed inward with a violent shriek of tearing metal. One side struck the deck hard, the other sagged uselessly in its frame.
Daloka passed through without breaking stride.
The alarms died seconds later.
Silence rushed in to fill the void, thick and sudden, unitl one did.
"…About time."
The voice was unsteady. Female. Close.
Daloka turned.
A woman stood at the threshold, braced against the frame as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. Her uniform marked her as combat medic, though it was rumpled and stained, and her breathing came in shallow bursts.
He crossed the room in two strides and guided her to a chair before she could argue.
His helmet systems came alive.
Bruising. Elevated pulse. Nausea. No fractures.
He picked up a dented trash can and held it out just as she folded forward, one hand clutching her stomach as she vomited violently.
Daloka did not move until she was done.
"Vestibular shock," he said. "Common after high-impact displacement."
She wiped her mouth, glaring weakly up at him. "You always comfort people like this?"
"Only when it's accurate."
She snorted. "Figures."
"Let's hope this was the last crash you experience," Daloka said.
She lifted an eyebrow. "You think I'll die that easily?"
"No."
The certainty in his voice made her pause.
"The Covenant are gone," he continued. "The Created no longer operate. The Banished were neutralized years ago."
She studied him. "And your point is?"
Daloka faced her fully. "You don't have to die the way civilians did."
She huffed. "That's a terrible thing to say to a lady, Spartan."
"Then it's fortunate I wasn't aiming for polite." The spartan said answering the man as he thought truth of honesty over lies, especially in their current predicament.
"Well," a new voice cut in, "at least he's honest."
Daloka turned.
Two figures stood in the doorway.
One was a woman with pale hair and sharp features, posture straight despite exhaustion. The other was a bald man in UNSC Army armor, olive-green plates scarred and scorched from the crash.
Daloka's gaze went to the rifle in the man's hands.
"Weapon's up already," Daloka said. "We expecting trouble?"
"No confirmed hostiles," the man replied. "But an unidentified dropship just landed twenty yards from the Sister of Flames."
Daloka glanced back at the medic—Gabriella—who had recovered enough to sit upright. "I'll go see it myself."
"I'm coming with you," the man said immediately. He stepped forward and offered a sidearm. "You'll need this."
Daloka looked down at the pistol, then at his empty thigh. No rifle. No mag-locked weaponry, even on the back of his armor.
After accepting the sidearm. He veered his head down to him. "Name," Daloka said.
"Cassa."
"Sierra-027," Daloka replied. "Daloka."
Before they left, Cassa turned back.
"Get the wounded stabilized. Count the dead. Count the living. I want numbers."
Gabriella nodded, expression hardening.
As they moved out, Cassa glanced at the Spartan beside him and allowed himself a thin smile.
"What about the captain?" Asked daloka who stepped out of the room before they had. "Whats her current status?"
"Alive and well." Answered cassa, attempting to hide his discomfort. "The landing, apparently once we had crashed, she was the last to have gotten inside her cryo. She'll live, but I do not know how long of a coma she'll be in."
"Ok, good. Cause we'll need to inform her of what and why we are here." Answered daloka.
Monsters like this had been built for moments like these. Cassa said thinking to himself. He was used to seeing his kinds acting out on matters that weren't their own. He knows so because of issues regarding others around them.
And if the man were to be honest to himself, cassa was glad that at least one spartan, one of the last remaining original generations of two's was here with him, here with them.
__________
Ark Drop-Ship
When the daloka and the other two troopers exited the sister of flames, they had first made sure to survey the area around them.
"Trees, I remember these kinds of trees." The trooper lady spoke looking around and everywhere but blocked a sunlight from blinding her, while also thanking the spartan after he had held her by the shoulder from having to walk right into a tree.
"Were on earth." The stoic yet monotone voice of daloka spoke replying to her.
"How do you know that?" Cassa says asking him.
In response to his inquiry, the Spartan simply brought one finger and pointed at the common flag of a certain country, one which every unsc folks learned from the twenty sixth century.
Then after that, he gestured to one particular oak tree. "Those tree, they're the only ones that grows back on earth. I know so, cause ive seen and was station on the planet itself... Plus, American, United state flag." daloka told him. "And telling from the year stamped on the outer hull of the ship, 2149."
"Well I'll be damned." Uttered cassa in mere disbelief.
"How in the hell are we in the past!?" Gabriella muttered underneath her breath.
"Possibility of slipspace malfunction, in which we were then sent through, or spat out unto an unknown time of alternate reality." Daloka said answering the woman's question due to her frustration.
"That might be true." added cassa as he and the two slowed their trekking.
Just then the two of them stopped when daloka brought his one hand up, signaling for them to stop.
Recognizing the hand signal, the two troopers stepped forth quietly and halted next to their armored comrade.
Gabriella turned her head left and looked up at the Spartan. "What is it?" the woman said hands gripping the handles on her rifle.
Meanwhile cassa took a deliberate scanned around of the surrounding forest area. "I Dont see anyone. What are you seeing that we don't spartan?" The man said asking daloka.
"It's opening." Daloka said.
Ever since they've gotten closed to the dropship, daloka's hearing, enhance by not only his augmentation, but by his mjolnir armored systems, was able to pick up the numerous voices that he guessed correctly were a bunch of delinquent teenage children.
One he learned of who Bellamy is, which thanks to his sister calling after him, daloka was able to pick up his names.
"Relax, Octavia. You two princess." The young man named Bellamy said responding nonchalantly at his sister and the girl called Clarke.
"Should we hide?" Gabriella said asking her two companions.
"Kinda of too late for that." answered daloka as he gestured at the creaking sound of the dropship front door.
Cassa sighed deeply, not at the two of them, but at himself. But now he knows there's no turning back. And if he were to be honest to himself, he was just glad to not have to deal with any covenant factions, created nor the banished. Yet, one part was what he was well affiliated with, the innies.
The dropship's ramp lowered with a hydraulic hiss, metal grinding against metal as it met the forest floor.
For several seconds, no one moved.
Daloka remained still, towering amongst his two peers, his presence more silhouette than man. The forest's ambient sounds filtered through his armor—wind through leaves, the distant call of birds, the irregular breathing of the humans emerging from the ship.
As the dropship's front ramp descended onto the dirt, debris from the bark of trees was expelled outward, resembling the splash created when a boulder strikes water.
Gabriella was just about to step forward to meet the person inside when a hand unexpectedly rested on her right shoulder, stopping her.
"What are you doing?"
"Wait it out." Answered the Spartan.
"Woohoo!"
The trio stopped, each and three of them turned their attention towards the dozen of kids, mainly teenagers standing still inside.
The first to have made the first step was a young girl, possibly sixteen or seventeen to eighteen years old. Long dark black wavy hair that reached her shoulder. Dark brown eyes, tan fair skin. Five foot six inches tall.
Others, teenagers like her stayed back hesitant of what might transpired if they walk out, each and every one unaware of the two unsc soldiers and the eight foot fwo super soldier in green armor.
The courageous young woman was the first to make the leap; she exited the dropship and paused to take a deep breath, envisioning scenarios in her mind.
Her brief moment of relief was unfortunately interrupted when a girl of her age approached from behind.
"Octavia." The blonde hair girl said getting the girl's attention.
"What are you doing!?" The girl named Octavia says spinning around and came to a stop when her brother paused next to the blonde.
Bellamy smiled at his younger sister, but then felt the need to interrupt her moment and signaled to the three individuals who were standing a short distance away from them and ninety-seven others.
Acting out of instinct as the protective brother he is, Bellamy pulled Octavia back and had her stand behind him.
The three of them could tell from the young man's expression that neither he nor any of the children behind him expected anyone to be alive, to have lived in a world they believed to be long dead.
Yet the trio didn't blamed them to be in the way they are. Afraid, apprehensive and not so trustworthy of them.
The young man, Bellamy, whom Daloka had guessed, raised one arm high in a gesture of peace. Before he could utter a word of greeting, the girl with blonde hair interrupted him.
"Hello." Clarke griffin spoke stepping forth with her hands raised, obviously aware of the weapons, of the guns that the three unknown people carried with themselves.
"My name is Clarke." the girl spoke up loud enough for the three to hear, her voice Cracking almost as if she was afraid of something. "I Am Clarke Griffin, thi-this here is Bellamy Blake, and his sister. Right here to my side is wells jaha."
"We are just kids." the boy named wells said as he then pointed up at the sky. "We are up there, from the ark, beyond the skies."
"The ark you said!?" Cassa asked the very mentioned of the word stringing something within his head.
"Yes." Wells replied back with slight relief in his voice. "The ark. We, I and the other ninety nine kids are from the ark, a space station. We,-
"We didn't know that there would be any survivors, or anyone at all down here, alive at all." An Asian boy said creeping through his colleagues.
"How long have you and your peopl have been up the, in space that is?" inquired Gabriella lowering her weapon as a first sign of peace between her and the groups of kids.
"Long enough for us to remember." Bellamy blake says stopping mid sentences and glanced over at the two kids in his left. "What the hell do we do with this!?"
"Honestly, they're the only people we've met since we landed." Monty says adding in his two cents on the matter at hand.
"Well, except the big ass robot over there." Octavia jested seeing the Spartan who has been silent since she and her people exited the dropship.
"I'll take that as a compliment." Daloka answered back with his own dry sense of humor.
Gabriella evantually followed after Cassa and the Spartan, noticing that two of her own colleagues had dropped their weapons. After sheathing her rifle in the back of her magnetic holster, the trooper stepped forward and chose to be the first of her group to greet the children with a handshake.
The blonde girl, Clarke griffin as they were told strode forth with hesitant steps right arms brought up and clasped gabi's own.
"Gabriella of the unsc army." The trooper smiled assuring the young girl that she meant no ill harm.
"Clarke griffin of the ark." the girl said giving a smile of her very own.