Recursive Function

The air was cold. Dry. Sterile, in a way Hari couldn't quite put a finger on. Behind her, the puddle of light flickered for a moment before dissipating, leaving behind a dead stone archway. Ahead, the passage opened up, the hexagonally-cut walls growing into a broad, tall hollow, one broken up by almost tombstone-like slabs at irregular intervals. The urge to call out - to throw a simple Hello? into the void - rose, unbidden, but years of drilling into her that the easiest way to be caught was to make your presence known suppressed it. A cavern this clearly man-made - but this empty was suspicious enough already.
No, not man-made. Artificial, maybe, but the sheer faces, the sharp angles of the hollow were too clean to be human. The tired polycrete towers she had once called home, the drone-built prefabs of Camp Currahee, even the vast UNSC ships she had occasionally been shown during zero-gee exercises; none of them were quite this geometrically perfect. And if it wasn't human-made, then...
Well. Maybe her imagination was getting the better of her. Maybe her mind wasn't quite coping too well with the sheer emptiness of the place. Even when on her own back on Miridem there was light, noise, a living city around her; and on Onyx, she was never far from the wildlife of the jungle. More importantly, she was never far from her team. Far from Ly. Her bruised knuckles were more than enough to tell her whose fault it was she was down here alone, but still - Gods, she missed him already. Was it only minutes ago that they had come to blows? Hours? It was hard to keep track of time down here; all she knew was that she was alone, kept company only by her own nervous breathing. 
And by a faint, golden light that silently blinked on above her.
-----
In an instant, Hari dropped to the floor, reflexes acting before her brain realised the futility of the act. There was no cover here, no concealment, nothing but the rattle of her empty pack broadcasting her position to anyone listening. Squinting through the gloom, the light drew her eyes to its source; an orb, hovering a dozen feet off the ground, an unblinking eyeball flanked by a trio of rods, as if spears waiting to be thrown. 
It stared at her.
She stared back.
Rolling over, she drew her pistol, loosing three rapid shots at the drone. All three hit it square-on, the anaesthetic paint splattering uselesly across its "eye" - but she was already on her feet, her pack discarded, sprinting as fast as her weary legs could carry her. Never mind a way out - right now all her brain sought was to put something between her and the drone. A run turned into a dive, into a slide, with Hari managing to pull herself behind one of the inert slabs before a searing heat cut through the air. 
Any other time, training and attention-to-detail would've asked - why wasn't the slab singed? Burnt? Charred? Right now, though, all there was was fear. A primal fear of being alone in the dark, of being hunted - but also a fear that the Trials were right. That she was soft, that she wasn't ready, that she wasn't anything without-
Another blast of heat, one that she could still feel, even from behind cover. Lethe. Half of her knew she didn't have the energy to keep running, and the other half figured that, either way, she should get this over with. That was more her style, wasn't it?
Again, she dashed from cover; again, her sidearm spat fire. This time, only two TTRs hit their mark, slamming into one of the floating spars and knocking it off balance for a brief moment. Only a moment, but there wasn't time to see if it was enough. There wasn't time to think about the sharp edges of the slabs cutting into her hands as she vaulted one, sprinted across to another and hauled herself atop it. There wasn't the time to think about whether she could make the leap or not, or even whether or not she could hold on to the drone once she grabbed it. Hari did it all, anyways.
The pistol clattered to the ground, spent, her hands instead scrambling for purchase on the smooth chrome sphere. Without time to plan, to prepare, she moved on trained instinct alone, reaching to her waist with one hand and fumbling for her multitool. If its blade could wedge open a Warthog's fuel cell to the point of uselessness, like she'd been taught... well, you don't have to know how it works to break it, Harris had always said. She jammed the tool's edge into a seam, twisting it with all the force she could bring to bear with her hands. Her tired, dirtied, scraped hands, bleeding from some scratch or another, trembling with one last effort. Only a few hours ago they had held his, had said that it was all going to be alright. Said that they'd make it back home. Said that-
The housing gave. 
Hari's blade sparked, crackled, the jolt shaking her grip on the floating boom loose and sending her tumbling to the ground below. The drone lasted a few seconds longer, wobbling in mid-air as its eye flickered, before the glow - and whatever was keeping it suspended in the air - gave out. 
For a few, long moments after, there was nothing but her own ragged breathing, and barely-suppressed grunts of pain as she tried - and failed - to get to her feet. Then, above her, another golden light flickered on. And another. Three, four, five of them.
Something, deep inside, knew that she really was out of her depth this time.
She just really wished she wasn't alone down here.
There was a flash of light, of burning heat-
-----
The air was cold. Dry. Sterile, in a way Hari couldn't quite put a finger on. Behind her, the puddle of light flickered for a moment before dissipating, leaving behind a dead stone archway. 
"Hello?"
Category:The Weekly
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