Timepiece [Chapter One]

[b]===========================ONE============================[/b] His arm was gone. Again. Tears of blood and dust coated the inside of his visor and the spit in his mouth felt dry and harsh. A rock pressed against the fiberweave armor of his abdomen. He shifted. It felt wet, pain spiking like hot fury through his left side. He ignored it. Pain was nothing to the Dead. The condensation was building on his visor. His rebreather might have been cracked in the fall. He made a mental note to check. No time now. He closed his eyes and lifted himself by the stump of his arm. The rock pulled from his abdomen, the wet spreading as fresh blood spilled down his side. He rose to his knees. "Ghost." His voice was little more than a croak. "I am here Guardian." The tiny machine was little more than a speck of blue light dancing through the murky glass of his visor. He stemmed the flow of blood with his remaining hand. "Find my arm." "I have it here Guardian." He smiled through bloody teeth. The humor did not reach his thin lips. "You know the drill." "Yes Guardian." It sounded resigned. He undid the seals along his neck, the internal pressure venting as the air rose cool against the blood caking his face. His hood had long since fallen back. It bunched in piles atop his shoulders. The tattered remains of the red cloak were singed by the fire of his descent. Air burned in his lungs. Each breath felt desolate as it rasped from his throat. The air was stale down here. He pulled the helmet from his head and set it beside him. "Limb reintegration at 82% Guardian." He flexed his fingers as feeling began to return. "Sit-rep." Ghost buzzed around his shoulder. Each pulse of Light that sprang from its iris brought warmth back into his arm. "We are currently 300 meters beneath Skywatch's Lunar Complex. The grenade ignited necrotic hydrogen built up in a old gas main beneath the floor. We descended -roughly I might add- approximately 3 levels via an old service hatch blown open in the resulting explosion. As to our current position, I believe we now lie within a closed section of the Транзит туннель." "I don't speak Russian." "Roughly translated, the Transit Network." He grunted and swatted the little machine away. His fiberweave creaked as he rolled his shoulder. "Weapon?" "I detect no applicable firearms within a 100 meter radius." Ghost flitted down to his abdomen. The warmth of Light began to fliter out the dull ache of his impact. The slow trickle of blood from his wound lessened then stopped. He stood with effort. His legs were only held up by the rigid boots and thigh-plates integrated into his armor. He leaned against the cold concrete wall and grasped for the scabbard at the small of his back. His hand fell upon the hilt of his shock blade. Good. He wasn't defenseless. His eyes adjusted to the dim light and he took his bearings. Dust chocked the tunnel, a pile of rubble marking his descent and entrance into the cavernous tunnels. Angry sparks fell from a florescent light that hung by a hinge overhead. The bodies of his pursuers lay half-buried and splayed against the concrete floor. He stepped from the wall and turned one over with his boot. Fallen: spider-like scavengers that plagued the abandoned wilds of Earth. These only had two arms. Dregs, marked by the metallic docking clamps that hid the stubs of their amputated limbs. His sneer was cut short by a chittering that echoed through the tunnel. His shock blade slid from it's scabbard with a metallic hiss. The length began to glow as the shock drive crackled to life. He stepped forward towards the rubble. Another Fallen lay pinned by a thick slab of concrete. This one had all four arms. An officer. A brutal alien killer that had clawed itself up the chain of command until it earned the right to regrow it's second arms. It's abdomen leaked black blood as it struggled weakly to push the weight from its chest. It shrieked as he stepped into the light. Its limbs thrashed and its incandescent eyes bulged in panic. He stood over it with a pitiless expression. "Send the Dark my regards." He spit. His blade shook as the soul screamed out of its severed neck. He retrieved his helmet and locked it back into his fiberweave bodysuit. The lights of his HUD sprang to life as it reintegrated. He flicked the blood from his blade and it spun down as he slid it back into its sheath. "Distance to objective?" He didn't like the pleased sound in his voice. [i]All you will ever do is kill.[/i] He quickly banished the thought. Ghost seemed to sense his mood. Its response was muted. "500 meters due west." The waypoint flickered onto his visor. Guardian and Ghost trudged off into the darkness.