



Glass and Steel by Random 14-Year-Old



Glass and Steel: Pt. 1

Date: 3 August 2005, 2:52 am



Part 1: The Ambition



A sudden rush of excitement hit the nerves of Pira 'Tipermee as he studied the signal readouts in front of him. The scanners had detected a lost Covenant artifact in deep space, thanks to a transmitter embedded into the object as a security measure.



"What's that?" Rigo 'Onermee asked as he looked over the screen. "Another lost artifact? Listen, Pira, we can't run to the Prophets whenever we think we found something important—"



"But what if it is important?" 'Tipermee argued. "An increasing amount of our battleships are being struck down by the humans, and almost all of them are likely to contain not only mortal lives, but valuable items as well, possibly even of Forerunner nature! Do we simply collect Forerunner artifacts just to lose—"



"I get your point, Pira," 'Onermee said bluntly. "All I'm saying is that the Prophets have more to worry about than stuff like this. Go ahead, ask the Prophet for permission to investigate..."



Pira 'Tipermee left the communications room, heading straight for the High Council chamber that the Prophets dwelled in. He entered the chamber warily; he had nothing to fear in a ship of the Covenant, but nonetheless the empty chamber gave 'Tipermee a strange sense of hopelessness.



"Permission to advance?" he called into the chamber.



"Permission granted," a grim voice echoed back. It was the voice of the Low Prophet of Gaiety, the leader of this specific fleet of Covenant ships. "Your name?"



"Pira 'Tipermee, from Communications. We have detected a Covenant transmitter signal, most likely an artifact that was lost when a Covenant ship was destroyed."



"What is the location of this signal?"



'Tipermee paused. "That is the reason you must trust my judgment. The signal is coming from a remote planet that is far off our planned course, but—"



"Then it is not worth my trouble," Gaiety declared. "However, if you have no doubt that the signal deserves investigation, I shall grant you a single Seraph fighter. Bring as many crewmen as the ship can carry, and a quick jump will be made to the system in question. From there, you are on your own."



"Thank you, Prophet."



"I expect that this artifact will be recovered—or there will be punishment."



"It will be recovered." And with that 'Tipermee left the chamber to rally his crew.





Ren Basely strolled calmly out of his new home, in search of someone to talk to. After all, he had deserted all of his friends back at Reach when his family made the decision to move to the Outer Colony named Luther. Apparently his mother and father were sort losing their minds living on Reach, constantly watching armory trucks go up and down the streets of the city.



Speaking of Reach, the planet's resources were starting to run tight. The war with the Covenant was not going well at all, and naturally this put more and more pressure on Reach to provide innumerable amounts of supplies in the likes of weaponry and even full-scale warships for deep-space battles. Thus, everyday Ren and his mom and his dad would hear the rumbling of heavy transporters as they shipped metals and stuff like that to factories somewhere else in the region.



"The war has reached us!" Ren's mother had cried once after hearing the news, which claimed "the UNSC is doing everything in its power to prevent the war from reaching Earth, the Inner Colonies and Reach." And for once in Ren's teenage life, she was right. The Covenant hadn't attacked Reach, but seeing trucks filled with weapons in the streets was just as depressing.



Ren, now 17, may have left his friends, but there were always more to be made. A new home also meant a new reputation; he could build a new image of himself in this new community. It was a whole new start, and Ren couldn't wait to see what kind of people Planet Luther had to offer.



"Penalty! Freeze! I said freeze!"



Ren spun his head in the direction of the girl's voice, and he saw a field full of kids playing some sort of game. Their field looked like it had once been the ground of two houses, a lot a seemingly wasted space for a bunch of little kids. Ren would have built something useful there, and he would have used the kids as assistants—



"Okay, two points from Shorts!" the same girl bellowed into the field. She had just stood up from her bench, and Ren realized she must be the referee.



"What?!" one of the little boys screamed. "That's not fair!"



"It's very, very fair, Dorko," the girl replied, turning up her chin. "Everyone gets equal treatment."



Ren made his way over to the field, interested in the strange game these children were playing, and also the girl barking orders at them.



"I hope this seat isn't taken," Ren said once he had crossed the field and arrived at the bench. "Because—"



"Taken?" the girl interrupted. "Everyone else here is playing the game, why would the seat be taken?"



"Because," Ren continued smoothly, "I'd normally expect a crowd to be huddled around someone so fine."



The girl smiled, but Ren couldn't help seeing more amusement than flattery in her expression.



"So you've got a name?" Ren asked.



"Yeah, and it's No-Stranger-To-Corny-Pickup-Lines," she replied. Ren had to force himself not to retort with a wittier and meaner comeback.



"Har, har. Okay, I'll just call you Nostra, alright? I'm Ren. I just moved here from Planet Reach—"



"Wow, Reach!" she interrupted for the second time. Ren felt himself losing control of the conversation.



"Listen," he said, sitting down on the bench and moving closer to the girl, "I'm on a stroll around the neighborhood, and if you could tell me your name, I'd appreciate it if you could, you know, show me around."



"Quite the smooth operator," the girl chuckled. "I can only imagine how many sluts you had back at Reach. But for the record, my name is Ariana."



"And for the record, Ariana, I had not even one girl on Reach, or else I wouldn't be asking for a walk with you. That's how faithful I am."



"Yes," she said, hardly even listening to what he said. "If you don't mind, I need to focus on this game. You see, my little brother thinks he can be above the law of the game since his sister calls the shots. But I'll tell you what—" Ariana turned and looked at Ren. Her brown eyes seemed to have a crystal-like quality to them, and her long brown hair shone in the midday sun. "This game is over in about five minutes, so I'll meet you at my house in a little bit—here." She picked up a memo pad and a pen that had been lying on the bench. The front page had a mess of numbers scribbled on it, apparently scores of the game the children were playing. She flipped to a blank page, wrote down her address and phone number, and tore out the page. "I like you, Ren." And she gave him the paper.



"Ditto," Ren said, looking at the paper. "I'll see you, then." He turned around and left, but not before giving Ariana a sexy smile that she returned to him.





The sun was starting to approach the horizon as Ren sat on the porch of 5132 Purchase Avenue. At last, a car slowed to a stop in front of the house and parked itself along the sidewalk. But it wasn't a girl that stepped out of the car, slammed the door, and stormed up to the porch of the house. Instead, Ren was now looking up at one hell of a pissed-off man.



"I thought...that I told you kids...to stop putting...your asses on my front porch!!!" The man cracked his knuckles and spit in the air. The saliva just nearly missed Ren's left leg.



Ren smacked himself. "Wow. What a prankster."



Glass and Steel: Pt. 2

Date: 7 August 2005, 4:40 am



Part 2: A Reevaluation



"It doesn't sound like she likes you."



"You think? I had the impression that she was madly in love with me."



Ren curved a smile when he saw his father's annoyance at the sarcasm. It wasn't often that he opted to confide in his parents, but he was really left with no choice when he came home with a black eye and a bruise to the head; the former caused by an angry stranger and the latter by Ren himself.



"Girls are tricky, Ren," his father continued, ignoring the sarcasm. "But I think that in this case, she wasn't tricky at all. You should have just left her alone."



"Are you kidding?" Ren laughed. "And admit defeat like that? Give me a break, Dad. Did you just give in when Mom rejected you for the first time?"



"Mom didn't reject me. In those days we had enough brain cells to tell when girls were interested in us or not."



"You're no help," Ren grunted, and went to find his jacket. It was a new day, with new opportunities and new ways of tackling them. He was going straight to that playing field, and he would sit next to Ariana and ask her out, right then and there. Ren would have to rethink his entire approach, which meant no more beating around the bush and definitely no more meaningless pickup lines. Ariana seemed impervious to them, anyway.



"Try and get home early," Ren's dad warned when he saw his son leaving the house. "It looks like a storm, but the neighbors say that they're really common on Luther because—"



Ren shut the front door and strode off the porch with a hint of nervousness in his step. Where he had been confident and cocky the day before, Ren now felt rather hopeless and defeated.



However, Ren forced himself to get over it when he saw the field he had come to associate with Ariana, but instead of seeing a bunch of bratty kids playing a sport, Ren was looking at a bunch of bratty kids beating each other up. And at the center of the mob was none other than Ariana.



"No, it wasn't there!" one kid screamed. "No! Shut up, shut up, shut up!" The child proceeded to beat another kid on the head with a ball.



"Ariana?" Ren called into the mob. She was struggling to pull the children off from one another, but her attempts were failing as the kids started hitting her as well. Ren hurried and started prying apart some of the worse fights; one boy had someone in a headlock with one arm and used the other arm to pinch the victim repeatedly.



"Ren!" Ariana cried. "Oh, thanks so much, these kids are driving me crazy!" Suddenly, most of the children stopped their assaults on each other, and turned their heads up at Ariana.



"Are you ok—" Ren started, but he was drowned out by the screams of several young boys as they leapt in the air and tackled Ariana to the ground. Ren watched in shock as all of the boys diverted their attention to Ariana, diving into the pile and searching for a body part to hit that wasn't already taken.



"Ren !" Ariana mumbled from beneath the rampaging kids, and Ren leapt into action, surprised that he had waited for so long to rescue her. He grabbed a boy and pushed him out of the way, then another, and another, sometimes actually throwing some of them several feet away.



"Get off of her!" Ren demanded at the last few boys who had Ariana pinned to the ground, but when they didn't budge he grabbed them and tossed them out of the way.



"Thanks," Ariana said as she looked up at him from the ground and smiled. She was wearing dark blue jeans and a white sweater, which normally would have conflicted with her silky brown hair had she not been so attractive. For a split second Ren wondered if she could look bad in anything.



"Are you okay?" Ren repeated, but Ariana didn't answer. Instead she easily stood up on her feet, approached Ren and kissed him. The shock and the pleasure combined drove all thought from Ren's mind, and then suddenly, it was over.



"Hahaha!" one boy cackled. Ren looked at him and remembered the boy as being Ariana's brother. "You got punked!"



Ren turned back to Ariana, puzzled. More boys around them began to chuckle and murmur. "What happened?" he asked, trying to sound casual.



"Good job, Ren," Ariana said, not answering the question, still smiling. "Let's take a walk. Wanna come over to my house?"



"What was your brother talking about?" Ren was genuinely dumbfounded, with no clue as to what just happened, and why Ariana wouldn't explain it him.



"You have a black eye," she said out of the blue. "Did one of the kids hit you? I thought they understood me when I told them not to hurt you!"



"What?"



"Okay, Ren, here's the deal," she suddenly started speaking with clear purpose. "I wanted to see how shallow you were, so I told the kids to fight each other until you came. Then I had them attack me so I could see what you'd do."



"You tested me?" Ren blurted out. They were walking along the sidewalk towards Ariana's house, and hopefully her real one. "You tested me?"



"Yep. And you passed with flying colors, too."



"Wait. Wait a second. So you tested me?" Ren paused, but decided to keep going. "I know a lot of things that girls can do to guys, and 'testing' isn't one of them."



"Why not?" Ariana argued back, her voice heating up. "For all the disrespect we take from guys, we should be allowed to—"



"Calm down," Ren said coolly. "Look, I'm sorry I was 'shallow' or whatever yesterday, okay?"



"We're here." Ariana pointed to her house, which was a white two-story with yellow trim. The front yard was small, but Ariana's family seemed to have made the most out of it, as they had a tree and a small garden sitting peacefully in front of the home.



"Come on," Ariana said, and pulled Ren to the front door, which apparently was unlocked because she merely pushed it open and tugged Ren inside.



"Um," Ren said mindlessly, "Are your parents home?"



"No, just my mom. She's probably in the living room watching TV—wait!" Ariana held out her arm and Ren froze. She put her finger to her lips, and pointed to the stairwell. Ren, obeying, quietly tip-toed to the foot of the stairs, but he glanced to his left and saw a woman sitting on the couch with her back to them.



"Ariana!" the woman called without taking her eyes from the TV. "Look at this! They're—Oh, my god!" The woman burst with laughter when one of the characters started yelling, "Wort wort wort! Wort wort wort! Wort wort wort!"



"I'll be in my room, Mom," Ariana called back, but she froze when her mom began to shout.



"Come look, girl!" the woman yelled. Ariana rolled her eyes and gestured for Ren to continue up the stairs. He slowly and quietly made his way to the top, and from there he listened to the sounds of the TV.



"Aghh, no, he's burning my flesshhhhh!"



"Wort, wort, wort!"



"Stop the paiiiin! Nooooo!"



The Covenant Plasma Rifle is NOT sold in stores, so call now if you want the perfect way to burn up your enemies or even roast a chicken with the efficiency of plasma!



Ariana's mom roared with laughter, unable or not wanting to control herself.



"I've told you," Ariana said without a hint of humor in her voice, "I hate Mad TV. It's so stupid." She then came to the stairs and went up to join Ren.



"Was that about the war?" Ren asked when they had safely arrived in Ariana's room. It was smaller than Ren's room, but a lot cleaner. Her bed was made, her desk was free of junk, and there weren't articles of clothing spilling like mad out of the closet.



"What—oh, you mean the TV? Yeah, they were making fun of the war. I don't think it's very funny at all. But, you know, I guess people have to relieve their stress sometimes."



"Yeah."



"I feel like I hardly know you," Ariana said. She stared at Ren with curious eyes. "What's your last name, anyway?"



"Basely. And come to think of it," Ren rubbed his chin jokingly, "I don't know your last name, either."



"Nice to meet you, Ren Basely," she said, and outstretched her hand. "My name is Ariana Jiles."



"Jiles " Ren pondered as he shook her hand. "I think I've heard that name somewhere—"



"You probably have," Ariana replied, suddenly frowning. "My uncle's the president or something of the pirates. They get stuff when they're out in space and sell it for money. Of course, my uncle never bothers to send his family some of the cash."



"Yeah, now I remember, Governor Jiles makes millions off of ship parts he sells—and he never gives any money to you? His adorable, beautiful niece?"



"No," Ariana said bluntly, but then added, perking up, "But he does send me some cool stuff sometimes. Look—" She turned around and went to her closet, pulled it open, and revealed a treasure trove of everything from scraps of metal to grenades.



"Are those grenades?" Ren asked warily. Most of the junk was small and meaningless, but he did notice several pieces of what looked like a Covenant vehicle.



"Yep. Uncle Jacob promises they're duds, but that didn't save him from a tantrum my mom gave him. 'Don't ever send us anything dangerous ever, ever'—"



"What's this?" Ren interrupted. He was holding a shiny scrap of blue metal about the size of a small watermelon. On one end it was perfectly curved, but on the other end several sharp points were jutting out of the object. He realized what it was before Ariana even answered him—



"That's the helmet of a Covenant Elite. Pretty cool, huh?" Ariana smiled. Ren loved it when she did that.



"Well," Ren muttered, "I don't know how it would work as a helmet " He trailed off, and raised the metal to his head, but instead of placing it on top of his jet black hair, he put it to his face and covered his mouth. "I am Ren Basely, the ultimate bandit! Ren Basely, Criminal Extraordinaire!"



Ariana laughed. She laughed a lot like her mother. "Stop stop that " she tried to say between breaths. "You'll get your breath all over it "



Ren continued joking around, but then Ariana suddenly moved closer to him. She made her face closer to his and gently pulled the helmet away from Ren's lips, and then they kissed. This time there wasn't an uncomfortable wind, there weren't any annoying kids, and the kiss lasted a lot longer. Ren felt no shock this time, just pleasure, and he held Ariana's head with one hand and moved his other hand slowly up and down her back.



"Wait," she said suddenly. Ariana turned to her door and quietly shut it, then returned to Ren. Before he knew it, they were on the bed, their bodies steadily interlocking, becoming one, becoming a whole—



"Excuse me!" a woman's voice said out of nowhere. Ren opened his eyes to find Ariana's mom in the doorway with a curious smile across her face. Without thinking he pushed Ariana off of him, jumped off the bed and straightened out his clothes.



"Um, sorry, uh, Mrs. Jiles," Ren stuttered, almost forgetting Ariana's last name. "I was about to le—"



"No, it's okay—what's your name?"



"Ren Basely."



"Ren, it's perfectly fine you're making out with my daughter. I was just shocked, just shocked " Ren felt his heartbeat calm down a bit.



"What do you want?" Ariana asked rudely.



Her mom looked disapprovingly at her, but merely replied, "Uncle Jacob sent you something again, and it's heavy " The woman turned in the doorway, picked up something from the ground and heaved it inside Ariana's room. The rectangular package was the size of a small child, and obviously it was too heavy for Ariana's mom to carry very far. She dumped the package at the foot of the bed and made her way to leave the room.



"Thanks," Ariana said, but she hardly looked thankful at all.



"If that thing is dangerous, you need to tell me. One more incident like last time and I'll start having the mail service block Jacob completely." She looked like she was leaving the room, but turned her eyes back to Ren. "Kiss all you want, but any farther than that and you're out of my house."



"Yes, ma'am," Ren responded, though he doubted that they were even in the mood for kissing anymore. With that Mrs. Jiles left the room.



"Sorry about that," Ariana said, and for the first time she looked shameful.



"It's really okay " Ren said awkwardly. "Well, uh, let's open that package!"



"Okay," Ariana said glumly. She reached over the bed and pulled up, with Ren's help, the heavy brown package. They worked together in silence and within five awkward moments they had it opened.



"Hmm " Ariana mumbled quietly, brushing away the styrofoam and bubble-wrap. At that moment, Ren saw the most interesting thing he had ever laid eyes on before. The object was a sturdy case of some sort, made of glass and a strange purple metal. Underneath the glass, however, lay a stone tablet, depicting dozens of odd characters Ren had never seen before.



"That's amazing," Ren said with awe. Adding to the glory and mystique of the object was a velvet glow that pulsed beneath the surface of the glass.



"Uncle Jacob has redeemed himself " Ariana murmured to herself.



"And I don't think your mom will take it away, either," Ren said. "This is a lot less dangerous than those grenades."



Glass and Steel: Pt. 3

Date: 14 August 2005, 12:19 am



Part 3: Interim



"Is there a note or something?" Ren asked, still with his eyes fixed upon the incredible object that lay before him. A strange stone tablet was encased beneath shiny protective glass and surrounded by a purplish frame, almost like marble—except Ren had never seen purple marble before.



"I don't know..." Ariana replied, briefly searching the mess of styrofoam for a message. "I doubt it—Uncle Jacob never sends notes explaining what these things are." She glanced at Ren for a second, then turned back to the object.



"It's alien, for sure," Ren said, but he was convinced this had been obvious since the moment they opened the box. He gestured toward Ariana's closet, "None of that other stuff is like this at all—this must be worth millions!"



"I bet it was worth a lot to the aliens, too," Ariana said, studying the intricate markings carved into the stone tablet. There were dozens of lines of foreign characters spanning the tablet, and at the bottom was a single, enlarged character, with two vertical lines intersected by a wavy, horizontal line.



"Yeah, since they had to cover the thing in this glass—" Ren paused, thinking. "How did you say your uncle gets this stuff?"



"Black market," Ariana answered. "But a lot of it gets delivered to him by people who just found this junk in space, and he buys it off them for cheap."



"Wow," Ren said with awe. Not only was he with a girl who could grow up to be a model, but she also had an uncle who could hook her up with really cool war junk.



"I think I'll stand it up against the wall over there..." Ariana said, pointing somewhere near the closet. Ren had forgotten that they couldn't stare at it on the bed forever.



"Here, let me do it," he said after watching Ariana struggle to pull the tablet off from the bed. Ren lifted the object to find that it was at least fifty pounds, but he forced himself not to show weakness as he heaved it across the room and stood it up against the wall.



"Thanks," Ariana said. Ren was looking down at the tablet, but he knew that her eyes were on him. And then she said out of nowhere, "You can stay the night."



Ren felt his palms get a little sweaty, but it wasn't from lifting the tablet. "What?"



"Stay the night," Ariana repeated. "Look, it's pouring rain outside!" She got up from the bed and pulled open her window. She was right; the sky was a horrible mess of dark clouds, and buckets of rain washed down from the unrelenting storm. In fact, Ren thought he even saw a glimmer of lightning in the distance.



"So..." Ren couldn't think of anything to say.



"You can't walk home in that!" Ariana exclaimed, much too enthusiastic for Ren's comfort.



"Let me call my parents," Ren said, finally finding a way out of the situation. There was no way he was going to stay at Ariana's house with her family there.



"Okay, here," Ariana grabbed a phone from her desk and handed it to Ren. He took it and dialed his number nervously—certainly, his parents would absolutely deny him from staying the night with a girl he had just met—and that would be his escape...



"We're sorry, the lines are currently damaged or busy. Please hang up and wait for the system to recover."



"Crap," Ren blurted. "The lines are messed up. I can't call my parents."



"Oh, well, that's okay; they can miss you for awhile, right?" Ren looked into her sparkly brown eyes and knew that she had realized that the issue wasn't with Ren's parents, it was with her parents.



"I can't stay here, Ariana. Your mom is here—I mean, it's not like we'll be doing Truth or Dare like it's a sleepover party—"



And then she kissed him. Ren fell into that ominous world of bliss once again, vaguely in tune with reality, wholly residing in this alternate universe, totally in love. Ariana let go of the kiss rather suddenly—or that's how it felt to Ren—and he was slammed back into the real world. He realized that with other girls, you could think "bad kisser" or "good kisser" during the kiss itself, but with Ariana, it was impossible to have any comprehensible thoughts while he kissed her. It was incredible.



"Alright—" Ren said, caving in. Whatever Ariana was excitedly getting Ren into, he prayed that she would get him out of it—which meant Ren would have nothing to say if Ariana's mom caught them way past second base. "I'll stay."



Ariana gave a squeal of joy and hurried to her closet, pulling it open recklessly. Ren caught a second glimpse of the pile he had seen earlier—guns, mounds of bullets, and small pieces of vehicles made up a lot of it. Ariana reached up for a shelf and pulled down a rolled-up sleeping bag.



"You keep a sleeping bag in your closet?" Ren asked. He only speculated how many times she had previously pulled this off with another guy.



"Yeah—is that suspicious?"



"Sort of."



She untied the bag and unrolled it next to her own bed. "That's where you're sleeping, but not until later." Ren glanced at his watch, but Ariana said the words he had neither dreaded nor welcomed: "Right now you're in my bed."



Their bodies came together again, and again Ren got lost in the world of bliss. Before he knew it Ariana had her shirt off, and articles of clothing indeed began to seem like meaningless barriers that served no purpose whatsoever. And the natural thing to do with meaningless things? Throw them away—



"No!" Ren exclaimed, pulling away. He felt a trickle of sweat run from his hair. "I just can't, I'm sorry. Your mom told me to go no further than kissing you, and I've already passed that—" He saw Ariana's look of disappointment, and he, too, felt rather disappointed as well.



"Fine," she sighed. After a moment she realized Ren was serious and pulled her shirt back on. "Oh—do you need pajamas or anything...?"



"No," Ren replied. He kneeled down to his sleeping bag, slipped inside, and pulled up the zipper. "I'm fine."



Ren laid there, fully awake, for several minutes after Ariana had shut off her light. In the silence he could only hear the wet sounds of rain from outside and Ariana's calm breath, but if he wasn't mistaken, he could also hear a faint humming from the alien tablet. He wondered what those markings meant on the stone, and why the aliens had valued it enough to encase it in glass. He wondered if maybe he shouldn't have denied to have sex—or maybe if Ren should've returned home in the first place. He imagined himself trudging through the thick of the storm, finally returning home to his mom—who would yell at him for being soaking wet—and his dad—who would simply shake his head as if to say "I told you so."





Ren groggily woke up to the distant sounds of an argument, but he didn't try to comprehend who was arguing or why, so he simply fell back to sleep.



Glass and Steel: Pt. 4

Date: 15 August 2005, 8:38 pm



Part 4: Luther Invaded



Ren laid in his sleeping bag peacefully as the morning sun flushed through the room, and he was trying to regain sleep when he realized where he was—his girlfriend's house.



"Shit," he cursed as he struggled to escape the sleeping bag. He stood up, tripped, and fell backwards onto Ariana's bed. "Shit—sorry, Ariana—"



But the bed was empty. Her blankets were in a clutter across the mattress, but other than that the room seemed perfectly normal and collected. Ren turned to the window and noticed a bright blue sky; the storm was over. But what was truly interesting was what was under the sky—Ren watched as families walked down the sidewalks, all in the same direction. Children ran ahead as their parents tried to restrain them; teenagers moved in small groups with an air of excitement; elders nudged themselves along to try and keep up.



"What the hell..." Ren muttered to himself. He found his shoes on the ground and pulled them on in a rush, then burst out of the room and practically ran down the stairs. "Ariana?" he called. But nobody answered. He checked the living room, and the kitchen, and even the bathroom was scrutinized. How could nobody be there?



Ren went to the front door and opened it. People chatted casually as they strolled along the sidewalk, all heading apparently towards the same destination. He shuffled down the front porch and went up to a man that seemed to be alone. He was wearing a long bath robe, as if he had just gotten out of the shower.



"Uh, excuse me," Ren said to the man, "where are all these people going?"



The man stopped in his tracks, and stared into Ren's curious expression. "Go back home, kid." His voice was tired and raspy, like an old man.



"But where are these people going? Do you even know?"



"Yes. Go home." Ren was about to turn around and ask someone else when the man continued, "I hear that a Covenant ship crashed nearby. And if all these people heard that, too, then I doubt they're only out to get coffee."



The words struck Ren hard. A Covenant ship? Was Luther being attacked? He suddenly wished to be home, or at least with Ariana. Maybe that was why she and her family had left the house—but why would they leave him there?



"Where are your parents?" the man asked, but Ren ignored him and rushed down the sidewalk, inspecting every group of people for Ariana.



"Have you seen the Jai—the Jiles family?" Ren muttered to a small family. They just stared at him. "Have you seen—oh, sorry—" He had accidentally knocked over a kid.



"Be more careful!" the kid's mother scolded, but Ren ran past them, following the route the people were following, keeping his eyes peeled for Ariana, doing a double-take whenever he saw anyone remotely like her.



"Oof!" he grunted, running head-on into someone's back. Ren looked up and found a heavy crowd huddled around something on the grass—and then Ren realized where he was: the empty lot that Ariana went to every day, to watch those damn kids play that stupid game.



"Watch it!" the woman scowled, rubbing her back where Ren had hit her.



"What's going on?" Ren said frantically. He jumped up and down, trying desperately to get a better view. He noticed a large tunnel of smoke fuming from the center of crowd. A crashed—



"Covenant ship," the woman replied. "People are saying it crashed in the storm, but people make stuff up. Why would some aliens decide to land a single ship in the middle of a storm? Please."



Ren tried to calm himself down. Any minute now Luther's military would roll up in a tank or something and investigate. They would track down the aliens, if there were any, and kill them. Ren would go home and return to his parents. He would call up Ariana and she would tell him that they had gone to check out the situation, too, and that she was perfectly fine.



"Yeah, the stories people make up," the woman went on. "Someone also told me that someone's hurt up there, like the ship landed on them or something. My God, so ridicu—"



Ren pushed her aside and dug his way into the crowd, shoving people and tearing apart a path he could move in. After several angry remarks and scolds from people around him, he reached the center of the crowd.



Low and behold, there lay a Covenant fighter ship. It spanned at least fifteen feet in length and was standing ten feet above the ground, though to say the vehicle was "standing" would be a lie. The vehicle was vaguely the shape of a teardrop, but its shape had been severely disfigured by the crash. Much of its dark, purple coating had been stripped off, and, most notably, a giant black hole dominated a half of the vehicle, which tore into the interior of the ship and issued the heavy smoke that hovered above the crowd. Pieces of the ship lay scattered across the ground, including an entire wing. But what shocked Ren even more was what was mere inches from his feet.



There, bleeding at the mouth, gasping for air, was Ariana's little brother. He lay face-up, looking into the sky, as a trickle of blood slid down his face and under his ear. His arms clutched at his chest, and one of his legs was bent a little bit in the wrong direction.



"Oh, no—" Ren muttered. "Oh, no—oh, no..." He didn't know what to do. He looked above the crowd in all directions—no military tanks—hell, not even an ambulance.



"They're here..." Ariana's brother gasped. He clutched at his chest even tighter when he said it. "Two big ones...three little ones..."



"Somebody call a goddamn ambulance!" Ren screamed at the crowd. He caught his eye on one man that had his cell phone to his ear. "Call an ambulance!" Ren yelled at him.



"The lines are dead," the man replied. The words didn't even register in Ren's head.



"What?"



"The lines are dead."



"How?" Ren shot back. He tried to think clearly. "You're using a cell phone!"



"Yeah, I dunno," the man shrugged.



Ren grew more angry and nervous. People pushed up behind him for a closer look, as if it were some kind of entertaining show that they couldn't miss. He looked around for a second time, but still no help in sight, and neither Ariana nor her mother was anywhere to be seen.



"Ren..." Ariana's brother said quietly. Ren looked down into the boy's small, helpless eyes. "Tell Ariana...tell her that they're here..."



"Who—who's here?" Ren asked. He didn't want to hear the answer.



"The aliens are here...they went somewhere..."



"What—" Ren blurted—more bad news. "They didn't die in the crash?"



Ariana's brother gasped for air more rapidly now, and his eyes were wide open, looking up into the sky. Ren couldn't just stand there any longer.



"Okay, come here," he tried to say soothingly, masking the panic in his voice. He reached down and picked up the boy, holding him between his arms. "You're going to get to tell her that yourself, because I'm taking you straight to her—"



"Gah!" Ariana's brother cried, reaching for his leg.



"Sorry—sorry—" Ren said. At least both legs were bending in the right direction again. The boy groaned with pain and a fresh helping of blood shot from his mouth as he coughed. Ren struggled to keep the kid in his arms as he ran them down the streets of Luther, desperately searching for Ariana's house. He felt almost embarrassed that he couldn't remember where the house was.



"Down there..." the boy said quietly, as if he had read Ren's mind. He pointed across the road at the white, two-story house they had been searching for. Ren had apparently left the front door open, because it stood completely ajar in the threshold. He climbed up the porch, with Ariana's brother still in his arms, and walked inside.



"Hello?" Ren called loudly. The house was strangely dark and silent. "Ariana?"



He heard footsteps at the top of the stairs, and felt a comforting rush of relief. A figure appeared above the stairwell, but it was very tall and bulky, just barely visible in the shadows.



"Hello?"



"Wort wort wort!"



Glass and Steel: Pt. 5

Date: 28 August 2005, 8:04 pm



Part 5: Nightmare Intro



"Wort, wort, wort!"



Ren stared in horror at the creature that stood on the balcony at the top of the stairs. It was no human being, nor was it a friend of the human race at all. In the darkness Ren could make out its bulky arms and legs, its huge chest, and the ugly, elongated head.



"There it is!" Ariana's brother shrieked hysterically, squirming in Ren's arms. "No...! There it is! Run!"



But there wasn't any time to escape, because before Ren knew it, the creature had jumped from the balcony and landed smoothly on its giant hooves. It wore segments of light blue armor across its body, leaving gaps of grayish skin in some areas. Two small, beady eyes were barely visible through the helmet on its head, and its mouth was divided into four jaws, which stretched outward when the monster roared.



"Graarr!"



"Run!"



Ren stood in a daze, paralyzed by the fear of this monster's unstoppable might. He felt something clench around his neck, and then a loud thud on the ground, and suddenly Ren found himself crashed on the porch in front of the house. Pain shot through his spine, and it felt like every muscle in his back was being brutally torn apart. Ren looked up into the doorway, and saw Ariana's brother lying on the ground, clutching his chest again, taking rapid breaths of air into his lungs. Above him, the figure of the alien monster disappeared into nothing, and in its place were ripples of distorted light—active camouflage.



"Aghh..." Ren groaned, trying to pull himself to his feet. But out of nowhere he felt the invisible monster wrapping its fingers around his throat again, and instantly Ren went flying over the porch and into the street. He landed on his arm and skidded to a halt before feeling the newfound pain. Ren's arm was severely scraped, and blood dripped across his shirt as he hissed with agony.



"Graarr!" The creature roared again. Ren looked up, and now he saw a glowing weapon floating in the air, accompanied by the ripples of distorted light. The weapon looked like some sort of sword, but it pulsated with energy and strings of electricity skipped across its surface.



Ren suddenly heard a car coming, and he was right in the middle of the street. But maybe, if he was lucky, the car would run over the alien—



To his disappointment, however, Ren heard a loud crash behind him, and strained his neck to turn and see that the car had spun off the road and into a lamp post.



"No...no..." Ren said mindlessly as he turned to face the alien again. The ripples in the air drew closer, as did the weapon the monster was holding. "No..." Now he could almost feel the breath of the creature as it loomed above him, raised the sword, and—



Gunshots exploded in the air, and suddenly the alien was visible again, its energy shields pulsing across its body. More gunshots, and the shields were gone, with just faint flickers of energy around the monster. Ren heard one last gunshot cut through the air, and purple blood gushed from the alien's ugly head. Ren watched in amazement as the monster collapsed onto the pavement—once an unstoppable fiend, now dead and lifeless.



"Shit—better get outta here, kid. There might be more." The voice seemed distant as Ren stared in disbelief at the horrible alien lying at his feet. "Hello? I said get outta here! Where are your parents?"



"What?" Ren mumbled. The alien's gray hand twitched on the pavement.



"I said, get your ass out of the street and go home!"



Ren turned his head in the direction of the voice, and saw a man standing on the side of the road, in front of a crashed car, with a gun stuffed hastily into his pocket. The face seemed familiar to Ren somehow...



"Damn it, come here!" The man stormed over to Ren, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and pulled him over to the crashed car. "Get in."



The car door was jammed, and it took Ren several seconds to open it and take the passenger seat. He looked over the man, whose attempts to start up the car only resulted in grunts and whistles from the engine.



"Piece of crap...thing won't turn on..." The man continued to turn the key until finally the car began to rumble. The fact that it could do anything at all was amazing; not only was the front of the car smashed by the lamppost, but it was a really old car in the first place.



"Wait!" Ren said. He had nearly forgotten—



"What is it?" the man grumbled with annoyance. "Damn it, I just got the car started—what do you want?"



"Just wait a sec," Ren assured, and pushed the jammed door open. He ran across the street to Ariana's house and looked down onto the foot of the doorway.



There, lying unconscious on the threshold, was Ariana's brother. His short breaths were scratchy and unpleasant, and Ren felt his heart do a back flip at the thought of the kid dying in his arms. Ren gingerly scooped up the boy and carried him out of the house. He passed the dead alien, and got a sudden click of inspiration.



"What the hell—" the man said with bewilderment as Ren laid Ariana's brother across the back seat. "Is that—that's Mr. Jiles's kid!"



But Ren ignored the remark and walked away from the car toward the dead alien in the middle of the street. It was lying peacefully in the morning sun, with glints of light sparkling on its armor. The alien's jaws slacked towards the ground, but the rest of its head was an ugly mess of gore and purple blood. Ren turned his eyes to the monster's right hand, which lightly held onto a handle-like object.



He reached down and picked up the object. It had strange curves and grooves in the shiny metal surface, fitted especially for the alien that wields it. Ren realized it was clearly related the energy sword that had almost killed him. The object would the prize of this victory.



Ariana would love it.



Glass and Steel: Pt. 6

Date: 3 September 2005, 7:51 pm



Part 6: Deliverance of Shock





"What the hell happened to him?" the man asked tensely, nodding his head towards the back seat of the car. Ren could barely hear the kid's sputtering breaths over the loud grumbling of the car as it trudged down the street.



The man had told Ren that his name was Howard Gaffer, and he had also apologized to Ren for the black eye. It was then that Ren instantly knew why he had recognized Howard.





"I thought...that I told you kids...to stop putting...your asses...on my front porch!!!"





"Basically," Ren began to explain to Howard, "he was hit by a landing Covenant aircraft—well, I think it was actually crashing, though..."



"Shit—we need to get him to a hospital. Kid, you got a cell phone?"



"No..." Ren looked out at the passing houses. They all seemed utterly tranquil, completely unaware that vicious aliens had set foot in the neighborhood. "Where are we going?"



"Well..." Howard trailed off, not knowing what to say. "We're taking that boy to his father."



Ren felt confused for a second—they had just left Ariana's house, and surely her dad wouldn't be at work on a Sunday. But then he realized that he had never seen Ariana's dad, much less heard her even mention him. Mr. Jiles was probably separated from Mrs. Jiles by divorce.



"What about the hospital?" Ren said, looking at Howard as he turned the car around a corner. The man may have punched Ren for hardly any reason at all, but that was a forgivable offense considering that Howard had saved his life from a Covenant attacker.



"Well..." he paused briefly, "I don't know where the hospital is."



Great. Ariana's brother was about to die, the phone lines were crashed and neither Ren nor Howard knew where the hospital was.



"Why don't we ask someone—"



"I'm taking the kid to his father!" Howard burst with anger. His temples throbbed and small veins became visible up and down his neck. "Shut up and let me drive, damn it!"



Ren stayed silent as they drove through a neighborhood foreign to him. In fact, every neighborhood on Luther would be foreign to him. He wondered if he would ever feel completely comfortable on Luther, since Reach was really his only real home. He would have to give his old friends a call when he got home: Johnny Aruno, who was stupid as a brick but could always give a good laugh; Wes Driefield, who made it his duty to be sport-savvy and tech-savvy at the same time; and of course, Kay "The Gent" Hunden, an absolute idiot that ironically was always there to help out his friends.



But no matter how hard he tried, Ren couldn't keep his mind off the situation at hand. The Covenant had invaded Luther. Hell, they had even landed on top of his girlfriend's brother in the process. Even more, they had specifically broken into Ariana's house. What in the world did the Covenant want with Ariana? And why had they decided to search houses instead of blowing up the planet in the first place? After all, from what Ren had heard in the news, just about every planet the aliens found with people on it was absolutely decimated within hours.



"We're here," Howard mumbled grumpily. Ren noticed the man's hands were shaking as he pulled the key from the ignition. "Get...get the kid..."



Ren got out of the car and pulled Ariana's brother from the backseat. The boy was out cold, his arms and legs dangling from Ren's arms. Ren didn't take the time check if there was a pulse, mainly because he couldn't imagine bringing Ariana a dead brother, but judging by the warmth of the boy's skin, he was still holding onto life.



The house they had arrived at must have been the ugliest house Ren had seen on Luther so far, and it rivaled some of the nasty shanties he'd seen in the slums on Reach. The one-story house was gray all over, though its original colors might have faded with age, and the front yard was a jungle of ferocious weeds that looked like they could attack. Some kind of creepy green stuff, whether moss or something else, hung from the rusty steel roof. In fact, dark green moss covered much of the house itself, and as Ren stepped up to the doorway, he saw fungus and moss growing on the front door, which emitted a wretched odor that seemed to fry Ren's nosehairs.



"Ughh...are you sure this is the house?" Ren said forcefully as the putrid fumes entered his mouth.



"Yes," Howard replied decisively. "Knock on the door."



Ren looked at the silver knocker nailed to the door. It was heavily rusted and looked like it was about to crumble. He grabbed it and knocked the door once with it—lo and behold, the knocker broke into several pieces and fell to the ground.



"Knock with your hand," Howard said.



"Thanks for the advice," Ren retorted with annoyance. He raised his fist and knocked on the door three times, feeling bits of fungus rub off on his knuckles each time.



There was silence for a few seconds before Ren heard the sound of a woman's voice, "Coming!" Almost instantaneously, the door flew open and revealed none other than Mrs. Jiles herself.



"Ma'am—" Howard began, outstretching his hand to shake, but he was completely ignored.



"Ren...?" the woman whispered. Her eyes met Ren's, and then moved downward towards the young boy in Ren's arms. "Jeffery..."



"I'm so—so sorry, Mrs. Jiles—" Ren tried to say something comforting, something nice, but the shock of the moment slaughtered his thoughts.



"Jeffery!" the woman screamed hysterically. She looked left and right as if she would find inspiration as to what to do next, but then quickly gestured Ren and Howard inside the house. "Put him down there..." She pointed to a raggedy-looking couch in the middle of the room.



Ren felt a nagging sense of guilt in the pit of his stomach as he laid the kid across the couch. Ren had slept over at Ariana's house, he had found her brother injured, and he was now about to explain the whole thing to their mom. For so much involvement in this unbelievable situation, Ren couldn't help but believe that part of this was his fault.



"What—what in the world happened to him?" Mrs. Jiles asked frantically to no one in particular. She scanned her son's body over and over again, fear and anxiety filling her worried face.



"I think that he was hit, um, by a landing aircraft..." Ren stuttered. The words came out of mouth like molasses.



"Wh—what?" She turned and faced Ren with a look of pure puzzlement. He was about to push the explanation from his mouth when a man entered the room.



"Did you scream a minute ago—" the man started, but then he saw the young boy lying on the couch. "What the hell is going on?"



Ren presumed the man was none other than Mr. Jiles, or at least the owner of this horrendous home. He was wearing a suit, but it was dirty in several places, the colors were mostly faded, and the collar and sleeves were ripped apart. He was a handsome middle-aged man, but it would have been easier to look at him if the man had shaved in the past month, and he also had a bushy unibrow just above his glazed eyes.



"These two," Mrs. Jiles pointed at Ren and Howard, "brought home Jeffery..."



"What?" Mr. Jiles blurted in confusion. "I thought he was spending the night at Kyle's! What the hell happened?"



Ren would have to explain the ordeal sooner or later, so he decided on sooner. "Mr. Jiles," Ren began. The man turned and looked at him. "I was walking down the street—" Ren made sure he didn't start his story with Ariana's house. He would leave that tale for another time—



"I'm sorry, Ren," Mrs. Jiles interrupted. "I saw you sleeping in Ariana's room, and I just assumed—well, that's why I took her down here."



Ren braced for the angry outburst from Mr. Jiles, but the man simply sat in a chair, took a deep breath, and rubbed his forehead anxiously. "Go on..." His voice was suddenly drained of energy.



"Well..." Ren continued nervously, "I was walking down the street when I saw these people looking at something in this field—"



"Oh, no," Mrs. Jiles interrupted for the second time. "Was it the playing field? The one they're always playing on?"



"Let the boy talk," Mr. Jiles said through closed eyes.



"Yes—it's that same field." Ren felt a stinging pain in his arm and was harshly remembered of the alien's assault. "I went and looked—and it was a giant alien spaceship."



Mrs. Jiles gasped. Mr. Jiles opened his eyes wide and fearful at Ren. Howard was emotionless.



"And next to the spaceship was him." Ren pointed uneasily to the boy, Jeffery, that now laid on the couch in front of him. "I picked him up, and took him back to your house." He nodded towards Mrs. Jiles. Tears began to well up in her eyes. "But when I went in the house, I saw—I saw—"



"A Covenant Elite," Howard spoke for the first time since they entered the house. "And it attacked them—am I right?" Ren nodded. "Right—and it was about to kill them both when I showed up and nailed fifteen bullets in the creep's ugly head."



Ren couldn't help but notice that Howard was completely at ease; he leaned against the wall calmly, and talked smoothly as if telling a fairytale. Ren, however, could not say the same for himself. His legs were going numb for some reason, and the stinging sensation in his arm was only getting worse. He wished he was at home with his parents.



"Okay, just hold on," Mr. Jiles said, looking up from the ground that he had been staring at. "Now, you said my son was landed on by this alien aircraft? Mind being a little more clear about that?"



"I don't know," Ren said truthfully. His arm felt like a pincushion now, as if it were being stabbed in twenty different places. His legs grew weaker...



"This is ridiculous," Mr. Jiles said, throwing his arms in the air. Ren could barely see the blurred figure...



"His lungs—are damaged—" Ren's own words seemed distant—he tried to fight it—he tried to cling to reality—but what was left of his vision went black, and the rest of his tingling legs collapsed to the ground. He lost grasp on reality and fell into unconsciousness.



How Ren had been dragged into this crisis in the first place was unknown to him...it would seem that Planet Luther had conspired against him...the whole godforsaken planet could go up in flames for all he cared.



This is not my home...Reach is my home.



Glass and Steel: Pt. 7

Date: 11 September 2005, 8:12 am



Part 7: Save a Life, Take a Life





The shadows were encroaching upon Ren's position. Every time he rounded a corner, desperately trying to escape, he could see the shadows in the corner of his eye. He did not know what he was running from, since the monsters were always behind a bush, or a sign, whenever he turned his head to look. But when he faced forward again and ran faster, he could hear their quick footsteps behind him and he could see the dark shadows they cast on the ground.



The shadows were now right beneath his feet—but how could that be, since the sun was in front of him and would cast shadows backwards? The monsters had that kind of power, Ren imagined. They could cast their own shadows wherever they wanted, and right now they were putting their shadows at Ren's feet, just to frighten him.



Ren knew this was a nightmare, it had to be. But no matter how much he told himself that his own dreams were controllable, the fear of the shadow-casting monsters kept him running.



Suddenly Ren was in a horizontal position, obviously having fallen off the edge of the Earth. But that was just a phrase—he had fallen off the edge of High Charity, not Earth. Silly Ren.



A chill ran down Ren's back, the instinctive response of the body to a sudden freefall—but he felt a rush of relief following that chill when he found himself in bed. Looking around, he realized it wasn't his bed, but rather, he was in a room he had never seen before.



A gunshot. A gunshot had awoken Ren so suddenly. It had saved him from the monsters and thrown him off the edge of—what was it? Right, he had fallen off the edge of Luther. Dreams were ridiculous sometimes.



"Aghh..." Ren groaned as he crawled out of bed. He looked down at his arm, which was stinging like crazy, and saw that somebody had crudely wrapped it in some old gauze. He made his way across the room and stumbled, nearly crashing into a dusty TV that sat on a table. Ren's legs were like jelly, uncontrollable and swaying every which way.



"I have tried my best to be helpful, thoughtful, and caring!" a voice yelled somewhere else in the house. "I rescued that damn boy! I brought you your son! And now, as I try to help you people, you don't give a damn what the hell I have to say!"



Ren forced his legs to move and pulled himself into the hallway, searching for the direction of the voice.



"Oh, I don't know anything, don't listen to me, I'm just a stupid retard!" the voice yelled, sounding more tense. " 'Seraph fighter'? 'Assault carrier'? Yeah, you think this is bullshit now, but believe me, when this godforsaken house goes up in flames, you'll be sorry you didn't listen to me!"



Ren trudged slowly down the hallway, which emerged into the living room that he had been in before he fainted. Mrs. Jiles was sitting in a chair, and both Mr. Jiles and Howard Gaffer were standing up, staring at each other in a tense standoff. Howard held his gun in his hands, and was pointing it directly at Mr. Jiles's head. Mr. Jiles was unarmed.



"They don't just come in small parties," Howard whispered fiendishly, shaking the gun slightly. "Their whole goddamn fleet will come and destroy all of us! The sky will turn red with the blood of Luther, the ground will split into pieces, and what you once knew as home will be melted, shattered, and desecrated! This world will become a melting pot of glass and steel, annihilated by the entity that is the Covenant!"



Howard rested his ominous monologue to take a deep breath, and in the silence Ren could hear a girl crying. There, on the couch in the middle of the room, was Jeffery Jiles still lying unconscious across the couch, and Ariana, sobbing as she held onto her dying brother.



"Ariana!" Ren croaked almost involuntarily, and suddenly the whole room had their eyes on him. Howard whipped around and before he knew it Ren was looking down the barrel of Howard's pistol.



"You!" Howard seethed with satisfaction at the sight of Ren. "You saw the Sangheili! Tell them the truth! They won't believe me!"



Ren looked from Howard to the gun to the others. Ariana was staring at him, tears muddling her face. "Sangheili...?" Ren muttered, his heart beating faster with every second.



"The Elite!" Howard exclaimed. He looked desperate—desperate to prove that he was right. And if he didn't—somebody could end up dead. "The alien! It attacked you, don't you remember? And you saw the crashed ship, too!"



"Yeah..." Ren agreed, praying that Howard would lower the gun if somebody agreed with him. "I saw the ship—and that's where I found him." He outstretched his arm and pointed at Jeffery, almost lifeless as he laid on the couch. Apparently Ariana could stand it no more—she got up, pushed past Howard carelessly, and reunited with Ren, crying her eyes out. She dug her face and arms into him, and he wrapped his arms around her as she sobbed onto his shoulder.



"Right...you saw the ship..." Howard said mindlessly. He watched as Ren and Ariana hugged each other, and with each passing second he seemed to grow weaker and weaker. Suddenly the gun fell from his hands and dropped on the ground. "I'm sorry...it's just that...we don't stand a chance—we're all going to die!"



Without warning there was a loud thud, and Ren and Ariana looked up to see Mr. Jiles with a steel picture frame in his hands. On the ground beneath him, knocked unconscious, was Howard.



"We need to get Jeffery to the hospital fast!" he said hurriedly. The entire time Howard had had him at gunpoint, Mr. Jiles had been formulating the next course of action. "Everyone load up in the car, quickly!"



Ren pulled Ariana to her feet—the ordeal had obviously taken a lot out of her—and they walked out the front door to Mr. Jiles's car.



"Are you okay?" Ren asked her. She wiped away some of her tears and gave a weak nod.



"I'm fine..." she tried to say in a reassuring voice. "But—but what about you?"



"What about me?" Ren replied jokingly, attempting to lighten the mood. "So my arm got scratched up, so what?"



Ariana smiled. They got in the back seat of Mr. Jiles's Dodge Debye 2540 and waited for Ariana's parents.



"So..." Ariana started, apparently clueless as to what to say. Or maybe she knew what to say, but had no idea where to start. "You—you found a crashed alien ship? And my brother was there?"



"Yeah..." Ren said, reluctant to tell the story. "It was at that field you always go to—the one we met at...and there were tons of people there, all trying to get a good look at who was injured." Ren clenched his fists—the ignorance of people sometimes...



"My brother," Ariana said. "And then you went to my house—and there was an alien there?"



"And it attacked me. That's when Howard came and shot it before it could kill me." Ren could feel the bulge in his pocket—the energy sword he had taken from the Elite.



Ren and Ariana watched as Mr. Jiles came outside with Jeffery in his arms, whose limbs were hanging lifelessly to the ground. "Here," Mr. Jiles said, putting Jeffery in the back seat with Ariana and Ren. "Hold him tight—he will not wear a seatbelt because I don't want to put any pressure on his body, so just—just hold him tight, okay? And Ren—"



"Yeah?" Ren looked into the man's worried eyes.



"Do your parents know where you are? Can we take you to them?"



Ren felt sadness as he remembered his parents and his home. It seemed like so long ago that he had left home to go see Ariana. He had disregarded his father's advice on girls as stupid, and he remembered how he was told to be home soon, because a storm was coming in...



"They know I'm here and they said it's okay," Ren said, straight-out lying.



"Good..." Mr. Jiles said, and he closed the car door and went back inside the house to get Mrs. Jiles.



"They know where you are? How?" Ariana asked with confusion.



"I lied," Ren said. "I can't let your dad waste time to drop me off at my house. We need to get to the hospital as fast as possible."



With that, Ariana leaned over and hugged Ren, clinging to him like they were going to die. And maybe they were, if Howard's pessimistic opinion was correct.



"...don't believe me!" a voice yelled from inside the house. Ren and Ariana looked through the doorway and saw Mr. Jiles, frozen in the wake of Howard's regained consciousness. His voice could barely be heard from inside the car. "...studied the Covenant! I used those UNSC files to learn of our enemy! We have a common enemy, my friend! A common enemy!"



A sudden gunshot shattered the air, and Ren watched in horror as Mr. Jiles dropped to his knees, then toppled over onto the ground.



"No!" Ariana screamed. "Daddy!"



Ren could see Mrs. Jiles now, as she attempted to claw at Howard's face in a fit of rage. Another gunshot, and the woman fell to the ground.



"Noo!" Ariana moaned through uncontrollable tears. Ren was frozen in place, paralyzed by fear, shaken with shock.



"Hey!" Howard yelled when he heard Ariana's screams coming from the car.



Horror took complete hold of Ren as Howard made his way outside towards the car. He had to do something—he had Ariana to protect, her brother to protect, and while he was at it he might as well save his own life for once. Ren forced the fear from his body and climbed into the driver's seat of the car. He found the ignition, but not the keys—



"Hey!" Howard yelled. The man now stood directly in front of the car, pointing the gun straight through the windshield at Ren.



"There!" Ren said frantically as he saw the keys on top of the dashboard. He grabbed them, fumbled nervously, and finally put the right key into the ignition and started the car.



"Wait!" Howard called. "The Covenant! You need to know how to beat them! Wait!" The man kept his gun pointed at Ren, his finger quivering on the trigger.



Ren shoved the gear into reverse and slammed on the gas. The car lurched backward and they were almost to the street when Howard fired his gun. Glass shattered, and now there was a bullet-sized hole in the windshield. Ren, not knowing for sure if he or anyone else had been hit by the bullet, continued to pull the car into the street.



"Damn it, listen!" Howard yelled from the driveway, almost screaming now. "I know what they're here for!"



Howard, in a fit of frustration, threw his gun at the car, which hit the windshield and made a giant web of cracks that blocked Ren's vision. He turned the car, shoved it into forward, and hit the gas as quickly as he could.



The last thing he could hear from Howard's mouth as they sped off was a mess of random words, like "forerunner tablet" and "trace signal."



Ren stared blankly into the broken windshield, not seeing where he was going, only seeing where he had been. He began to cry.



Glass and Steel: Pt. 8

Date: 16 September 2005, 12:56 am



Part 8: Blood, Sweat, and Tears





"Transmission from Special Operations navigator Pira 'Tipermee, your Nobleness."



The Low Prophet of Gaiety accepted the transmission reluctantly; no doubt 'Tipermee would be requesting to be picked up by Gaiety's fleet, which had already journeyed too far towards its destination to even consider a detour.



"Yes, eager wanderer?" Gaiety said into the transmission with disgust.



"Thank you for granting your time, Prophet," 'Tipermee replied gratefully. If Gaiety wasn't mistaken, there seemed to be screams of some sort in the background...



"What are those sounds I hear?" Gaiety asked. Static muffled the transmission, forcing the Prophet to lean in his dais to hear well.



"Those are the screams of the Infidels," 'Tipermee said. "We followed the signal of the lost artifact to this planet, but we were unable to make any judgments of the inhabitants before we landed. There was a storm."



"Rash mistake. And did you retrieve the artifact, as was your mission?"



"Yes," the Elite said. He paused for several seconds. "But one of the Infidels attacked Rigo 'Onermee and killed him."



"Pity," Gaiety said with little remorse at all. "He was a skilled communications engineer. Not evaluating the planet before landing was very costly, I hope you realize."



"I understand, your Nobleness," 'Tipermee apologized. Gaiety could imagine the Elite bowing, desperate for forgiveness. He would be lucky to have his life spared.



"Have the rest of your crew in the Seraph and at least one hundred thousand units above the planet's surface," Gaiety ordered. "My fleet will retrieve you, we will destroy the planet, and we shall continue to our planned destination. This is a very time-consuming detour, 'Tipermee."



"I am sorry for the inconvenience, Prophet. But I am also sorry that we will not be able to meet you above the planet's surface."



"Explain."



"As my ship entered the planet's atmosphere we experienced difficulties. A bolt of lightning struck the Seraph fighter, forcing us to make a crash-landing. The ship is fatally damaged. I and my crew would be forever grateful if you, Prophet, would be willing to send down a rescue team to retrieve us." After a moment of silence 'Tipermee also added, "We hold the artifact in perfect condition, Hierarch. It is the Magisterial Exordium of the Forerunner."



Gaiety sat upright in his dais suddenly. The Exordium had been lost for centuries, before the war with the Infidels had even begun. It contained the recorded purposes and intents of the Forerunner gods, presumably written in their earliest times. Attempts to interpret the tablet and its characters had halted when it mysteriously disappeared in space.



"Very well," Gaiety said, suddenly eager now. "My fleet will arrive, retrieve your crew and the Exordium, and destroy the Infidels. Forgiveness may grace you after all, noble Sangheili."



"Thank you, Prophet."



And with that, Gaiety cut the transmission and ordered all the assault carriers in his command to trace the signal and exact upon its position.





If Ren had ever thought that one's life could be stable and safe, he now knew that he had been wrong. In less than two days' time, his entire world had crumbled. Abandonment of his parents, destruction of his girlfriend's family, and even a close encounter of the millionth kind. The attacks replayed over and over in Ren's head—the Elite, the sword, the madman, the gun... Death hadn't managed to take hold of him yet, but insanity sure had.



It was unbelievable how the car hadn't driven into a tree or something yet. The cracks and stars that webbed across the windshield obscured most of his vision, but he was hardly paying attention to the road anyway.



The Elite, the sword, the madman, the gun.



"I'm so sorry, Ariana," Ren said gravely. He looked at her in the rearview mirror—she only stared out the window, not a single part of her body moving, except for her tear glands. Those were extremely busy.



And indeed, the situation was saddening, hopeless, depressing. Ren took a hand off the steering wheel and wiped some of his own tears away. It was pointless, though, because his hands were sweating up a storm. Wiping away tears merely spread sweat across his face, so Ren returned his hand to the steering wheel. It kept his arms from trembling.



"Ariana," Ren said, trying to get her attention. She kept her eyes trained on the environment outside, completely ignoring him. "Ariana, if there's anything I can do, anything to help you feel better, please tell me. We're—we're going to the hospital right now."



Ren saw her eyes flicker for a second. A fresh teardrop slid down her cheek.



"But I need your help to find the hospital," Ren continued. "Please help me; I have no idea where it is."



Ariana swallowed. "There's a ma—" Her voice was raspy, so she cleared her throat and went on, "There's a map in the car door..." The moment she had finished the sentence she exploded into loud sobs that filled the car with depression.



Ren's trembling, sweaty hand reached down into the pocket next to him and pulled out a map of the region—but he didn't dare look at it now; he could barely pay attention to the road without a map in his face.



The road. Buildings dotted the roadside, with houses in between and trees decorating grassy lawns here and there. Any one of those trees had great potential, or even the wall of a building. They could all destroy a car, if the car was going fast enough.



Ren pushed a little harder on the gas. Forty miles per hour. Fifty.



Ren swerved the steering wheel a little bit, getting a feel for how quickly he could spin it in a certain direction. The car was perfectly responsive.



All these aliens, and these madmen, they were only petty annoyances that could be taken care of easily. With one swift turn of the steering wheel, Ren could end all of his problems. Death meant peace. No more aliens. No more madmen. And definitely no more of Ariana's tears. That hurt Ren the most.



The crash would only take out Ren, if he did it correctly. That way Ariana could continue her life, and become a doctor or something like that. There was no reason why Ren should end her life just because he couldn't take the pressure.



"He never liked my dad," Ariana said out of nowhere. "My dad never liked him."



The madman, again. Howard. Ren couldn't stand to hear it. But he didn't interrupt Ariana.



"They had a fight once, and I told Daddy—I told him, 'He's not a nice person, Daddy. Please don't see him anymore.' But they had to see each other, for work. But I didn't care. I told him! Even Mom, too. She saw the evil in that man! I told Daddy to stop seeing that man!"



The young girl in the backseat started crying again. It drove a dagger through Ren's heart to hear it. A few more daggers butchered his heart when he looked in the mirror and saw those tears, the tears that tried to relinquish the sadness from Ariana's body. But her sadness would continue. And so would Ren's pain.



He swerved the steering wheel even more now, moving clumsily into and out of his lane. Good thing there weren't any other cars on the road; the honking would drive Ren crazy.



"And now they're gone!" Ariana sobbed. "They're both gone! Because of that man! I don't give a damn whether he killed an alien or not! He killed my parents, Ren! He killed them!"



Ren couldn't take it anymore. He would end all this grief. Sixty miles per hour. Seventy.



"And now Jeff is dead! I know he's dead! He won't breathe anymore, Ren! My whole family...my whole family..."



Eighty miles per hour. There was a turn up ahead—but Ren merely took his hands off the wheel and wiped the sweat on his jeans. The hands didn't return to the wheel.



"They're all dead. But thank God I have you, Ren. I love you so much—I would be lost right now, if it weren't for you..."



She would be lost—lost without anyone to hang onto. Realization, panic, and terror struck Ren just as the car sped past the Sharp Turn sign, and he instantly threw his sweaty palms back onto the wheel and slammed the brakes. The high-pitched squeals of the tires shattered the air, and then a series of cracks and snaps in the engine told Ren that the brakes had died.



"Goddammit!" he cursed, flying the steering wheel to the left. The tires screamed with stress as the car went into a spin, a spin that Ren only made worse when he flew the steering wheel in the opposite direction.



Ariana was screaming now. Great, Ren. Turned it from tears to screams. Real helpful.



The car went totally out of control, spinning down the street at least fifty miles an hour. Brief visions of houses, trees, and the road flew in a blur before Ren's eyes. It was a montage of chaos, with a young girl's screams as the deafening soundtrack. In a desperate move to regain control, Ren tightly gripped the steering wheel and slammed the gas as hard as he could. Maybe the sudden force would stabilize the maniacal vehicle—or maybe it wouldn't. But Ren's prayers were for survival. If he died, it was the end of everything that Ariana still had in life. All she had was him. He couldn't die. He wouldn't die.



Out of nowhere a brick wall made contact with the car on the right side—Ariana's side. Glass shattered—steel crunched. Ren's head was thrown to the right, and he felt something tear in his neck. He straightened himself and realized that the car was smaller than it had been, and he also noticed that Ariana had stopped screaming.



No—it couldn't be—



The car screeched along the brick wall, still going fast, until it spun one more time in a one-eighty-degree turn and thrust Ren's side of the car into the wall. He was lucky, though—the second crash wasn't nearly as severe, and only the window shattered, throwing shards of glass into Ren that cut through the bandages on his arm and dug into his already wounded skin. An eternity passed in those hellish seconds, but the car finally screeched to a halt against the wall of a building.



The fact that the chaos had ended took awhile to sink in. There was no sound, now, except for the faint pitter-patter of sparks flying out of the hood of the car.



"Ariana..." Ren croaked, "...you okay...?"



No answer. He turned his head to look, but a sudden shooting pain in his neck snapped his head back forward. No—pain or no pain, he had to see if Ariana was okay. Ren turned his head again, and his neck burned with agony, as if his muscles were raging with white-hot flames. But he managed to shift his position and face the back of the car.



The first thing he saw was Jeffery, lying in a crumpled position. He had only a few minor scratches, though. He'd be fine.



But there, on the left, leaning against the mangled car door, was Ariana. Blood drizzled down her face. It was in her hair, on her shirt, on her arms, everywhere. And she was unconscious—or dead.



It was all Ren's fault. Now he was just as bad as Howard Gaffer, having killed a Jiles. Goddammit... Of course, Ren couldn't be the one to die, it had to be Ariana. Now, as he looked at her as she sat peacefully in her seat, covered in blood, Ren couldn't help but notice that she was still pretty. She would always be pretty. Forever—



"Oh my god—" somebody said. Ren jumped in his seat and hit his head on the ceiling—damn, that horrible neck pain again.



"Who...the hell..." Ren muttered, rubbing his neck. He turned in his seat to see a middle-aged woman looking into the car, sheer shock filling her face.



"My—my god! Are you okay?" the woman asked. "Oh, dear, your mouth is bleeding, honey—oh, your arm! God..."



Ren felt irritated now. He pulled on the handle on the car door, and kicked the door open when the handle didn't respond. He moved past the woman, completely ignoring her, and used all his strength to pull open the back seat door. He looked at Ariana. What did he plan to do? What could he do?



"Dear, dear, dear—" the woman said to herself. Ren heard her flip open something—a cell phone, maybe—and start a conversation. "Yes—hello? Yes, emergency, yes. I need an ambulance, quickly, please! This poor boy—and, and his sister and brother, I think—they just got in a car crash, so please send an ambulance! Yes, yes, Northwest District, that's right. Thank you!"



The word "ambulance" didn't quite register with Ren. He was still thinking about what he could do to save poor Ariana—if she was still alive—when the sound of sirens came barreling down the street. Suddenly he saw an ambulance there. Somebody was asking him questions that he didn't bother to comprehend. He saw stretchers rolling on the ground. Men heaved the stretchers into the ambulance, and before he knew it Ren found himself in one of those stretchers.



Ren was relieved to know that his life was in someone else's hands now. Finally, he didn't have the burden of worrying about himself. If he managed to survive, then great. If he died, well, then so be it.



Life was chaos. Death meant peace.



Glass and Steel, Part 9 - To Add Insult to Injury

Date: 8 December 2005, 3:50 am



Glass and Steel



Part 9: To Add Insult to Injury





Ren could feel his muscles twitching, how his body was desperately trying to force itself out of this unrelenting dream. It was a nightmare, a nightmare that had smothered him in its evil. How so much grief could build in him—in such a small amount of time, after just arriving at his new home—was a mystery. He traced the nightmare to its source, and wondered, How had this happened?



He remembered meeting Ariana. She was nothing at first, just a subject of interest—but then suddenly she was the missing piece in Ren's life, the girl that had been missing during his years on Reach. He began to love her...he stayed at her house overnight, believing he was justified. A storm had just rolled in, Ren couldn't have walked home. But it was disobedience. Ren had left his parents in the dark—



"I'm so sorry..." he suddenly burst, and began to cry into his pillow. "I'm sor—sorry I didn't listen to you!"



Ren's parents were there with him in the hospital. He knew they were—he felt the sense of comfort and security that had been absent from him for the past two days.



"It's okay..." his mother's voice soothed, and Ren felt her hand rub his bandaged arm. Her touch spread warmth through his body...



"I went to her house...you told me to—to come home but I didn't listen!" Ren continued, his breaths growing shorter with every tear. "I should have...come home."



Ren envisioned himself in Ariana's house, completely still and quiet. He saw himself frantically searching for Ariana, then going outside and seeing the crowds of people make their migration to an unknown destination—



"It's okay, you're safe and you're going to be fine—"



"J-Jeffery..." Ren cried. "Laying there in the wreckage..."



"Who's Jeffery?" Ren's dad asked, finally speaking from his chair across the room.



Ren so vividly remembered. Carrying Jeffery back to Ariana's house, Ren had not expected anyone to occupy the home while he'd been gone. A flash, and he was on the ground, staring into those cold, ruthless alien eyes that sought to kill him—



"Howard..." Ren said, his voice muffled by the pillow that he'd dug his face into.



"Howard?" his mother repeated, baffled.



The madman had saved Ren's life. The irony sort of amused Ren, how the man had angrily hit him only a couple days before saving his life, but what was even more unbelievable was the cold-blooded murder of Ariana's parents. Howard had killed them without mercy, with the same gun he had used to kill the alien and save Ren's life.



Ren was a murderer, too. He opened his watery eyes to take in his environment: this white hospital room, this soft bed, these caring parents. Ren didn't deserve such luxuries. He deserved Hell for killing the only girl he had ever loved.



"Ren!" his mother screamed. His father sprang out of his chair and rushed to Ren's bedside.



With furious anger, Ren mauled himself. He tore and ripped at the cast the doctors had put on his arm until it lay in shreds on his lap. Then he tore open the cuts and scrapes that had been caused by the car crash—this way he would feel the pain Ariana had felt. This was his punishment, and at the same time it was his revenge against himself.



"Stop it!" Ren's father yelled over the screams of his wife. The man thrust his hands down to restrain his son. There was nothing Ren could do—his father was too powerful. Through heavy, heated breaths, Ren found himself being forced back onto his pillow.



"I killed her," Ren spoke calmly.



"If you're talking about Ariana," Ren's father said, "the nurse told—"



"I killed her!" Ren cried. He felt his throat rubbing against something that he just now noticed wrapped around his neck—a neck brace. His punishment—his revenge—could continue.



Ren's mother's screams intensified and his father let out a startled gasp as Ren twisted his neck as far back as he physically could, absorbing the excruciating pain that twisted his face in agony. He would feel Ariana's pain!



Suddenly Ren felt his muscles weaken into a jelly-like state, and his eyes drooped downward so that all he saw were the white bed sheets in front of him. At first he thought he had paralyzed or even killed himself, but then he heard a new voice in the room—



"There," the new voice said. "That sedative should work at least until his mind is at rest. You can sit down again, Mister and Missis Basely."



Ren forced himself to fight the drug and looked up at the doctor. He was a slightly older man than Ren's father, with dull blonde hair that was fading to gray and wrinkles that became apparent when he frowned at something on his clipboard.



"Ren," the doctor said, still frowning slightly, "the nurse found an interesting object in your pocket. Do you know what I'm talking about?"



Ren knew what he was talking about. He pictured the alien, looming over him like a bloodthirsty hound, wielding the glowing sword of death...



"He's just been sedated; he doesn't have the energy to answer questions!" Ren's mom exclaimed. Ren looked at her and tried to focus his eyes on her expression. She was worried—truly worried about him.



"What was the 'object,' doctor?" Ren's father asked. The man was stressed. He kept running his hand through his hair, rubbing his eyes. He was worried about Ren, too.



"We've identified it as Covenant technology, possibly a weapon—" the doctor explained.



"A weapon?" Ren's mother whispered, almost soundlessly. "But..."



"We can talk about weapons later," said Mr. Basely in a definite tone. "I want to know how my son is injured."



The doctor pulled down a white screen from the ceiling, tapped something on his computer, and a gallery of X-rays appeared on the screen. There were two columns—the first was labeled Basely, R. and displayed several images showing Ren's injuries, from the displaced bone in his neck to the fracture in his arm. But Ren already knew his own injuries very well—so he directed his attention to the column on the right, interestingly labeled Martin, A.



"Whose...pictures...are those...on the right?" Ren said through a sedated, slurring tongue.



The doctor looked at him with sympathetic eyes. "The young woman you were driving with."



Ren blinked. He thought her last name was Jiles—had it been Martin all along? No—she had told him her name was Ariana Jiles, hadn't she? Confusion filled Ren's throbbing head.



"There's a—a mistake," he said. "Her name is Jiles—not Martin."



The doctor said something, but Ren couldn't hear it. He began to feel his body succumbing to the sedation more than ever, even though he knew that he had to stay awake, in at least a sort of semi-consciousness so that he could look at the injuries Ariana had sustained—because of him. He blinked to wash away his blurry vision, and caught a glimpse of an X-ray of Ariana's neck; she had some sort of problem there as well, but it looked worse than Ren's case. Something about her skull, too—damn it! Ren had killed her, in cold blood—and the fact that her brother Jeffery wasn't on the screen at all must have meant that he was concluded dead. All Ren's fault. All his fault.



"Noo!" he screamed, slamming his fists into the bed. Screw the sedative—it had no control over him. He had control of his own body—he could kill his own body if he wanted to, or if he needed to just so that he would be even with Ariana, so that he could keep her from waiting in heaven, so that he could rise up out of this hellhole and be with her again—



Something pierced his arm. He didn't even know how much he was thrashing about until it all came to a stop when something soothing seeped into his body, calming his heart and relaxing his muscles. Ren spiraled out of consciousness once again...



Glass and Steel, Part 10 - The Chaos Before the Storm

Date: 20 January 2006, 2:15 am



Glass and Steel



Part 10: The Chaos Before the Storm





"What... happened...?" Ren groaned as he came to. He was still in the hospital bed, but he could feel a difference in his health, as if he wasn't injured anymore. His neck, albeit a little swollen and stiff, no longer pained him. And his arm—Ren looked down at his arm to see the bloody cuts and gashes gone, replaced by mere scars.



"Feeling a little better, Ren?"



Ren looked at his mother, but his eyes darted from her quickly. He was still a little ashamed for getting himself and his parents into this whole mess. Could he ever repay them for their forgiveness...?



"That's biofoam—" Ren's mother said. She looked at him as he rubbed his neck curiously. "The doctor said that it would take months of resting for the bones to heal in your neck—unless we paid for a biofoam injection."



Ren looked at her again. "Biofoam?" he blurted.



"It will keep your neck feeling normal, at least until your bones can heal themselves. And your arm, too—the biofoam is what closed your cuts so quickly. I saw your face when you looked down and saw that—" The woman smiled.



Maybe Ren had been wrong about all of this. Maybe this whole incident wasn't so bad after all, and he could walk away from it as if nothing had changed—



Ariana.



"Mrs. Basely?" the doctor said when he opened the door and looked inside. "A word with you, please."



And so Ren's mother quietly left the room to speak to the doctor and Ren's father. He was left alone to cry in peace. Please, he prayed, let Ariana be okay, let her still be alive. Let her still have a heartbeat, no matter how faint, but there must be a heartbeat within her stricken body. Ren would have his parents pay for her biofoam injection wherever she needed it, or hell, he would find a way to pay for it himself. After all, he was the one who did it to her. He was the one who crashed the car, causing shards of glass to maul her face. Please, let her be okay...



And what about Jeffery? Poor kid. Struck by a crashing aircraft. Almost assaulted by an alien. Further injured in that damn car crash. Jeffery Jiles was almost certainly dead, along with his parents—and for all Ren knew, his sister, too.



Ren swiftly swung his legs off of the bed and attempted to stand up. His attempt failed, at first—his legs were weak and numb. He fell back on the bed and prepared to try again. He had to find out if Ariana was okay, and that doctor would never tell him as long as he was still lying helpless on the bed. Ren had to get up and demand to know how Ariana was feeling, if she was feeling anything.



Though his legs continuously buckled and half-collapsed, Ren found his way to the door and opened it. His mother, father, and the doctor were having a conversation at a desk nearby. All three of them looked anxious.



"...could be a precursor—"



"A precursor? To what?"



"Well...ask him yourself," the doctor said when met Ren's eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Basely spun around to face Ren, and their expressions turned from surprise to nervousness.



"What?" Ren asked, feeling pressure.



His mother shot a glare at his father, who in turn looked apprehensively at the doctor. With a worried sigh, the doctor stepped forward and showed Ren something he held in his hand. "Can you tell me where you found this?"



Ren's heart stopped. He looked in horror at the weapon before him. It was the alien energy sword he had been carrying in his pocket since the alien had attacked him back at Ariana's house, when Howard miraculously arrived to kill the monster before it could kill Ren. The weapon was only a shiny handle now, but somehow it could be turned on and the crackling blade of white-hot energy that appeared could be used to kill.



"I..." Ren said, speechless. He had to tell them, even if they wouldn't believe it. "The Covenant came in a ship...and one was about to kill me with that before a man shot it to death."



The three adults stared blankly at Ren.



"Are you sure?" asked his father.



"Sure?" Ren retorted with annoyance. "Yes! The alien...it was invisible or something, and it came at me with that!"



"This?" Ren's father wondered, casually feeling the curves and grooves in the alien weapon. "What does it do? Do you get a concussion if you're hit over the head with it?"



Ren knew he was just trying to be light-hearted, but the man was being careless, almost ignorant—he handled the inactive sword like a toy. Any minute now, the thing would activate and the blade would rip through whoever happened to be standing in front of it.



"Here," said the doctor, and he took the weapon from Mr. Basely. Ren felt relieved that his father no longer had it in his hands—



Ren looked on in terror as the doctor now began squeezing the grip—what the hell was he trying to do, turn it on and slaughter somebody?



"Stop!" Ren shouted, and reached out to take the weapon. But his muscles were still weak, and his movements slow. The doctor pulled away and continued to play with the alien technology.



"Ren, we need to find out what this is," Mrs. Basely assured her son.



"Damn it!" Ren seethed. "I'm telling you what it is, it's a goddamn sword that can kill someone!"



The doctor stopped for a second. "Actually," he said matter-of-factly, "I'm pretty sure that this is a replica, maybe ordered from Covey.com? I think you must have dreamed your alien encounter... How—how do you turn on the holographic blade?"



Ren's mouth dropped. What? He stared in disbelief as the doctor rubbed the dangerous weapon like Aladdin with a magic lamp. Holographic blade? This guy was mental. He was going to kill one of Ren's parents—!



"STOP IT NOW!" Ren screamed, lunging forward with what little strength he had. He struggled to take the inactive sword, but his legs collapsed and he found himself on his knees.



People—nurses, patients, bystanders—everyone around looked in confusion at Ren. A desk lady looked up from her computer screen to see what the fuss was about. A nurse pushing a scraggly old guy in a wheelchair stopped to watch the scene—even the guy in the wheelchair watched the scene unfold, with curious, glistening eyes...



"Okay," the doctor said finally, and put down the inactive sword on the desk behind him. He looked at Ren's parents. "Even with the biofoam, Ren needs a lot more rest before he can leave here. Take him back to back his bed while I check in with the nurse."



Ren was still on his knees, looking down at the ground, beads of sweat crawling down his cheeks, onto his lips. If only he could convince these people that it wasn't a "replica," ordered from a random online store that for some sick reason made toy alien weapons. If only they knew that the Covenant had found their way to Luther, that the fate of this planet looked so bleak—



"HIYAHH!!" somebody screeched. Ren heard a burst of crackling energy—the sound that rang in his ears like a nefarious wind chime.



"Hunhh..." the doctor's voice groaned as Ren heard a sick burning sound. Did he dare look up—?



The doctor dropped, unconscious, in front of Ren. Two steaming holes were visible protruding from the doctor's now-bloody chest.



Ren looked up. Standing in front of him was the scraggly old guy that had just been in the wheelchair, and he was firmly holding the energy sword, fully activated and completely lethal. He must have picked it up after it was set on the desk—



In a flash, before Ren could try to comprehend what to do, the old, dirty man lunged forward and with two sickening burning sounds he did the unthinkable.



Ren didn't turn to look at what the madman was doing next, or to see who Ren knew had just been killed. Ren's eyes were fixed on the doctor, whose eyelids had not quite shut before giving way to cold death. The heat of the energy sword had burned the doctor's flesh and blood, and a pink gas could be seen steaming from where the sword had penetrated the chest.



Ren felt dizzy. He trembled and nearly tipped over onto his side. His hands clenched and unclenched, and he felt his slippery palms getting sweatier. He had to turn around—he had to—



"Noo!" he screamed. His parents were laying before him—in pieces. His mother's arm was two feet away from where it should have been. A large piece of his father's abdomen was sitting just next to him. Ren's parents groaned in agony. Ren choked in despair.



The scene ate away at Ren's soul. He... he didn't know what to do. His soul was shattered. He tried to think of what he could do. What was wrong with him? His parents... they had just been attacked—and he was just sitting here? His soul was dead.



No—he was in a fucking hospital—there had to be something he could do to save them.



"Hey!" Ren yelled into the hall. "Somebody help me, my parents are dying!"



Nobody answered. He got up, shaking madly, and looked for someone who could help him. He didn't look too long at the other dying people across the hallway, the other victims—he was only worried about finding a living person who could help him—



Breathing. Ren heard someone breathing heavily nearby. He turned to the desk four feet away—and looked underneath.



"No..." the woman whispered. She crawled out from under the desk and looked in horror at the lifeless hallway before her. Ren recognized her as the nurse who had been pushing the madman's wheelchair.



"Hey," Ren snapped, grabbing her shoulder. "Help me save my parents!"



She looked at him, and then looked at where he was pointing, at the two bodies on the ground. She just stood there for a second, stunned. Finally, she hurried behind the desk and retrieved two stretchers which she laid down next to Ren's parents.



It was all so surreal—here were his parents, who had cared for him since birth. And they were dying. Even if they lived, they would be severely disabled. Ren shook his head. He fought the tears. He fought the madness, which raged inside of him. He wanted to murder the monsters that had ruined his life. First the Covenant Elite, then Howard Gaffer, and now—now this fucking mental patient that had ensured his parents' deaths!



Ren wanted to grasp his revenge—but right now his parents were barely hanging onto life. He carefully pushed his mother onto a stretcher—there wasn't any blood, because it had either been burned to a crisp by the energy sword or heated to a boil and evaporated in a pink mist. Ren's father was a more difficult task, as the man had lost half his torso—Ren prayed his father's heart was still intact—but eventually both of Ren's parents were safely on stretchers.



The nurse said something to him, but he didn't hear her. In a trance-like daze, Ren helped the nurse carry his mother and father to the emergency room. It was useless, though. Just as they pushed through the double-doors the nurse tripped over something—a body. Several bodies littered the emergency room, all of them headless. Ren saw something out of the corner of his eye, turned to look, and saw six lifeless heads arranged in a triangle on a desk. The nurse broke down.



"No-o-o..." she whimpered on the ground, letting her tears flow out onto the tiles. Ren saw that she had dropped her half of his mother's stretcher, and now Ren's mom was sliding uneasily into the ground. He set her down carefully, and realized something. The psycho was on a mad killing spree in this building. Somebody who could save his parents' lives, who had also evaded the sword-wielding madman, would be hard to find. And even if Ren did find such a survivor, what made him think his parents would take priority over the dozens of other dying victims of the madman? The situation was hopeless.



"Try and..." said a raspy voice behind Ren. He spun around and saw his father, in his stretcher on the ground, trying to say something. "Try—try and g—get home early—Ren...try and get home early—"



Ren's father fell still and silent. Lifeless.



He looked back at his mother—she seemed to be breathing still, and was only unconscious. Ren looked at the crying nurse.



"Get up," he said. She ignored him. "Get up, damnit! We're going to sa—"



"All dead..." the nurse said in a harsh whisper. "Everyone in the hospital is going to die...all my fault...all my fault..."



Everyone in the hospital. Everyone.



Ariana.



"Hey!" Ren yelled at the grieving nurse. "Get up!"



He had run out of patience—he walked over to the woman, pulled her up, and slapped her. She quit crying.



"Now, do everything you can to keep her alive!" Ren said as clear as possible, gesturing toward his mother on the ground. "Do you understand?"



The nurse nodded, wiped away her tears, and bent down to assess Mrs. Basely.



Ren turned and started walking towards the elevator across the hall. He found himself breathing heavily, just thinking about how his father had just died, his mother was just clinging to life, and how Ariana was somewhere in the hospital, completely vulnerable to the madman on the loose...



Could he save her? Was it too late? Had Ren already lost every person in his life who meant anything to him?



The reality swept over Ren. He collapsed against the wall of the elevator, his sadness forcing rushed tears, even though he had to stay calm—he had to stay focused—he had to find Ariana.



"No... f-focus..." His trembling fingers found the elevator control, and he pressed a button that he prayed with his whole heart would lead to Ariana. But—but what would he see, if he found Ariana? A body wrapped in gauze that covered the wounds from the car crash—or—or a body sliced into harshly carved chunks of steaming flesh—?



The elevator doors opened to a new floor. Ren looked out across the hallway, his fingers twitching nervously with each dead, mangled body that met his eyes. It was too much—he was going to get himself killed—he was going to meet the madman face to face, hoping to stop the onslaught like the hero Ren only hoped he could be—and a split-second later, Ren would be have a fork of burning plasma piercing his gut.



So Ren fumbled through the options in his mind. He could stand here in this elevator, waiting until he regained his nerve. But then it would be too late, and Ariana would be dead. Or—or—he could race to catch the madman and get himself killed. And then Ariana would still be dead with nobody to save her.



Second option seemed best. Even if Ren escaped with his life, there was no way he could go on living without his parents—without Ariana. So Ren would be the hero. One last time.



"Ariana!" he screamed, racing into the hall. It was difficult to scream—not because he had just suffered a neck injury, but instead because of how his throat always seemed to choke up when he cried. "Ariana!"



Ren darted down the hall, following the trail of carved bodies that would surely lead him to the madman. He had no idea where Ariana was, and it occurred to him—now that he had regained some nerve—that he should have asked the nurse where Ariana's room was. Too late now, he had to find the madman and stop him as quickly as possible.



"Aghh!" cried Ren as he tripped over something. He flew forward and landed his shoulder into the ground. A shockwave of pain spiraled into his arm, forcing him to tighten his muscles and grit his teeth to null the hurt.



Those moments, as Ren lay crumpled on the cold tiles, seemed like years. He looked up at the ceiling and envisioned himself knocking out the madman with a single punch, reuniting with Ariana, and returning to his mother to find her in stable condition. But—he also envisioned himself being cleaved and dissected by the madman's weapon, succumbing to the cold fog of death, and descending into Hell where he belonged.



"Hahahahahaaaa!!"



The cackling laughter rang through the hallway, swinging Ren back into reality. He pulled himself off of the ground, squinting his eyes for any sight of the madman. The hallway was devoid of life. Dead, mangled bodies...stranded carts...an open door...



An open door. Ren found himself walking towards it, the only room in the