POST-INCIDENT REPORT

Summary: Four (4) Pilots belonging to the squad designated as Foxtrot-3, AKA 'the Heartless', stole a Crow, a Widow, and four (4) Titan chassises under the ownership of a Crusader-class frigate, the MCS Griffin. After going AWOL, they launched a personal investigation on the planet Erebus to determine the activities of the IMC forces stationed there. They remained on the planet for eight (8) days.

After attempting to steal intel from an outpost they found, Pilots Vale and Four were compromised. Vale's body was destroyed, and Pilots Crane and McFarlane were forced to evacuate without Pilot Four.

Officers Involved: CWO Tobias Four, WO Amelia Vale, SGT Tyra Crane, SGT Robert McFarlane

Losses: One (1) Ronin-class Titan chassis, one (1) Scorch-class Titan chassis, one (1) modified Atlas-class Titan chassis, one (1) Ion-class Titan chassis, one (1) simulacrum body, one (1) AI data-core

Resolution: Crane and McFarlane flew back to the MCS Griffin via a stolen IMC Goblin-class dropship. Upon arrival, they were subsequently apprehended and arrested for deserting. Three (3) AI data-cores were recovered from their possession, and installed in vacant Titan chassises. During interrogation, both Pilots claimed to have discovered alien ruins on the planet that had been excavated and studied extensively by the IMC.

The stream of memory data emitted on Pilot Vale's 'death' was received by the MCS Griffin seventeen (17) hours after the incident, and recompiled with a backup of Vale's consciousness. She was re-uploaded into another simulacrum body, then arrested and questioned as well. Her story corroborated with theirs, and she claimed that Pilot Four had proof of the IMC's activity concerning the alien ruins on his data-knife, not knowing that Four had been left behind on Erebus.

As of now, there is no evidence aside from their aligned testimony to support any of their claims. The three of them have been confined to the brig and await their court-martial.

Four and KT-0298 have been listed as MIA.

Personal Comments: ... You promised me you'd come back, Tobias.

Why did I let you go on that stupid ship? Why did I listen to you? If I had just grounded the damn thing, you'd still be alive. But you got in my head—you, with your awful jokes and smartass remarks ... you made me feel something for you I haven't felt for anyone before. You made me feel like I could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone—and it would be fine, because you would have been right there with me.

So I let you go. I let you leave so you could galavant off and save the frontier like the hero you were trying to be. You told me that you were going against Briggs' orders, and damn the consequences, because there were too many lives at stake to chance being wrong. And I believed you—I thought, 'What if he's right? What if we don't do anything, and it turns out we could have made the difference?'

So I let you go. And now you're dead. And I'm going to have to live with knowing I was the one who killed you.

— Captain Elizabeth Gates

— 6 DAYS LATER —

Out in the arctic tundra of Erebus, a trail of footprints could be seen before they were gradually covered by the snowfall. When followed, those tracks led to the top of a small rise in the land and ended at the feet of a fallen figure, one who was currently trying to drag themselves across the ice.

His legs had failed him due to sheer exhaustion. Tobias was now trying to progress forward on willpower alone, but he was finding that to be quickly fading. His rations were gone, he had no idea where he was going, and his armor's thermostat systems had finally failed. Now, he was essentially buying time before he froze to death or starved—whichever came first.

The only thing that kept urging him forward was the thought of saving KT.

The data-core was hooked to his belt, the only safe place he had for it. If he died, so would she; her core would be stuck here to be buried and never recovered. Her fate rested on his shoulders and the assumption that he made it back to a chassis he could put her in.

And so, he pushed on. Or rather, he was trying to.

The wind picked up, drowning out his own inner thoughts which had become fuzzy over the time he'd spent out here. His mind had begun to blur the line between reality and delusion, and he found his mental processes weakening to the point of almost becoming incoherent.

On the surface, his body followed the most basic order of natural instinct; survive. But somewhere deep in his tired psyche, he knew that he was shutting down. No human being was equipped to survive in these conditions for this long, and he was going to become yet another statistic added to the list.

His head crashed down on the pillow of white that threatened to swallow him up. He thought about how soft it was, how nice it would be to just take a nap here ... to rest for a while, and then go back to doing ... doing what he ... what he ...

... Wait.

With a grunt, he lifted his head up again to confirm what he was saying. There, in a wall of ice off to his left—there was an opening. A cave.

He noticed a few marker poles outside of it. Evidently, he wasn't the first to discover it; it was probably another excavation site. Each of the poles had a small flag tethered to them, little orange flags that flapped with every gust of wind that hit them. He tried to read the black lettering on them, using his HUD to zoom in and focus ...

127-D.

His eyes widened. "Well ... I'll be damned."

Adrenaline began to flow into his veins, and he found his arms and legs picking themselves up from the snow without conscious thought. Everything felt like it was on autopilot, now—he stumbled forward towards the opening, his legs shuffling in an unbalanced fashion as both the numbing cold and lack of circulation meant that he couldn't feel them at all—

He tripped, and gave a small shout of surprise as he found himself tumbling down the declining slope and right into the mouth of the cave.

The ground beneath him suddenly dropped off, and he fell into darkness. After a moment, he slammed into the ground and rolled across the ice as it audibly cracked beneath his weight. He let out a pained groan as he felt his right forearm collide with the hardened snow and ignite with pain down its center like a string of firecrackers.

When the pain had calmed down somewhat, he looked up to notice that this cave was not purely a natural formation. On all sides were walls of ice, but they all gradually transitioned into metal that seemed to be frozen within them—the underlying structure of an Architect ruin. The walls and snowy ground gave way to a series of dark halls and passages that beckoned him further in.

He lifted himself up to one knee, then up onto his feet. He retrieved his Flatline from his back, and held it out in his hands. With no small amount of caution, he stepped forward and entered the labyrinth.

His footsteps echoed in the silent crypt, the only noise now that the sound of the wind outside had disappeared. Visibility was limited to small floor lamps that had been placed every three meters or so, so he flicked on the flashlight equipped to the underside of his weapon. It wasn't much, but it at least illuminated his path forward. The hallway he was in stretched on for quite some distance.

"You think the Codex is around here somewhere?" he asked aloud, as though he were talking to KT's data-core at his side.

It did not reply.

Without warning, there was a small red flash. He held his arm up instinctively, and peered ahead. There was an adjoining passage that ran perpendicular to the one he was standing in, and he watched the glow disappear around the left corner.

"What the hell was that?" he muttered, his eyes wide with concern. At this point, he couldn't tell what was real and what was his head just playing tricks with him thanks to delirium.

He looked down to the core on his belt, watching it intently as though it were speaking to him.

He nodded. "Yeah, you're right—I'm not gonna get any answers sitting here."

Moving up to the junction, he cautiously peeked his head around the corner. The floor turned into an incline that led to another set of halls and passages above. His curiosity piqued, he forged ahead.

The faint red glow was never fully in sight, always just out of the range of his vision. For every step he took, it kept itself two ahead. Was this one of the hallucinations the project file had warned him of? What was it doing? Trying to show him something? Lure him somewhere?

For how apparently dead these ruins were ... he couldn't shake the feeling that he wasn't alone in them.

Turning a corner, he found himself faced with a wide, inclining hallway, this one stretching upwards for roughly twenty meters—but the shadows around him had given way to a faint red light at the top. Was there something up there?

As he made the ascent, his noticed the air around him getting colder. Apparently, this path led outside. Sure enough, he reached the top and found himself stepping onto an open platform of some sort, one connected to the rest of the structure with sturdy rails—

He felt his breath catch in his chest as he registered what was in front of him. He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but it hadn't been ... this.

The facility he'd come through was just one small section of a greater construct, a construct which stretched for hundreds of meters to his left and right until they curved inward and eventually met at some distance in front of him, forming an enormous circle. The platform he stood on was a mezzanine situated between the higher and lower levels, one that overlooked a massive crater—and by god, did it have a view.

In the center of the crater was a set of rings, superimposed within one another. He recognized their shape from the display he'd seen back on Tyche.

"The fold-weapon," he breathed.

Thankfully, it appeared to be derelict—it was completely still and frosted over with ice. But even from here, he could tell something was amiss. It looked different compared to its holographic counterpart; each of the rings were a dull bronze in color, and perfectly smooth. The rings he'd seen in the display had been ridged, segmented—and much, much smaller than what he saw here.

The red light returned, stealing his attention for the time being. He looked to the center of the platform he stood on, and saw a small dais with a pedestal atop it—that was where the glow was coming from. He stepped forward, drawn almost hypnotically to find out what it was.

The top of it was concave, like a bowl. Upon reaching it, he looked down and noted several engraved lines that started at the ends of the bowl and swirled around the interior until they all connected at a minute, circular space in the center. Within that space was a crystalline orb, one small enough fit in the palm of his hand. A soft red pulse emanated from it every few seconds, lighting it up as though illuminated from the inside.

His mind raced with a flurry of thoughts. This was it, this was the Codex. His first thought was to simply take it, but then he remembered what he'd read about it—how no one had been able to remove it thus far, how everyone had been deemed inadequate to be the Inferno. He recalled something about a mnemonic effect following any interaction—would it scramble his brains even further if he tried to mess with it?

Did he dare risk it?

He looked down to his side at the cylinder attached to his hip, and clenched his jaw.

Screw it.

He reached out and grabbed the orb.

He waited with bated breath for something otherworldly to occur, for some cataclysmic event to strike him—but it simply hummed in his hand. To his immense surprise, it came out of the pedestal as easily any other stone of its size might. It was warm to the touch, like it had been sitting near a fire for some time. He inspected it, turning it at different angles to see if there was anything of visual interest engraved on it, perhaps the same symbols he'd seen on the ruins. But the only noteworthy detail he could find was how perfectly smooth it was. In fact, he'd go so far as to say—

His earlier expectation of a supernatural experience was immediately validated as tendrils of red light exploded from the orb, swirling around in the air with a fluidity akin to liquid flame. His heart pounded as he tried to keep track of them, trying to decide whether or not he should be trying to run as fast and far away as he could. Before he could come to a conclusion, one of the tendrils plunged into his chest. There was no physical penetration of his skin, but he could feel it inside of him nonetheless. Hot, molten energy traveled up his spine, and set his veins ablaze—

...

Gates burst onto the bridge of the ship, Dimitri at her side, and pushed her way through the traffic of officers and techs that were practically running from one side of the room to the other in a furious panic. She saw an image of Commander Briggs standing on the holo-table, watching them all and issuing orders intermittently.

Gates motioned to the hologram, calling her attention to herself and Dimitri. "Briggs, what's going on? It's like everyone in here's gone mad!"

Briggs turned to her and let out a stressed breath. "Gates, you have no idea. Get your team ready for a ground deployment within the hour. The Griffin is the closest ship of ours to Erebus, so that means you're all we've got at the moment."

Gates jerked her head back. "Erebus? I thought—I thought you said we were done with it?"

Briggs nodded her virtual head towards one of the personnel on hand. "Fill her in."

The woman turned towards Gates. "Captain, three minutes ago we picked up an unknown energy reading—a massive energy reading."

Gates narrowed her eyes. "How massive?"

"It was large enough to have been detected from fifteen thousand light-years away in either direction."

Dimitri whistled. "That's past the frontier and then some."

Gates scrunched her face in confusion. "How is that possible? Light only travels so fast—"

"There was no travel time," the technician replied. "Something like this is completely unprecedented—the entire cosmic region just lit up at once in unison."

Another display was thrust into view next to Briggs, a model of the Milky Way. Roughly a third of it was highlighted in a red sphere, its color darkening the further away from its center. And at that focal point was a white-hot point of light that seemed to be responsible for it all.

"The only way I can see this being possible is if there were higher dimensions involved—something that could break the laws of quantum mechanics as we understand them."

Using this weapon in any capacity would not only register readings on every energy counter from here to the core worlds, but would affect the very fabric of the time-space continuum and cause temporal distortions wherever and whenever each side of the wormhole connected.

Gates looked up at Briggs who stared back at her, each of them obviously remembering the latter's reasoning for not clearing the mission to assault Erebus previously.

"And let me guess—it originated from Erebus," the Captain muttered dryly. "Could the fold-weapon have done this?"

Briggs' expression was hard to read. "We're not sure of anything yet, but it's possible. That's why we can't delay—I need everyone on your station ready for combat ASAP." She paused, then sighed with what sounded like remorse. "I made a bad call—looks like Four was right."

Gates felt her gut clench at the mention of his name, much like it had a week ago when she'd learned that he'd been left behind on Erebus.

"Yeah. He was."

...

You are ... different.

A voice spoke to him, echoing from all directions at once like a haunting chorus. He analyzed his surroundings, trying to discern what exactly had just happened. Everywhere around him was dark, nothing but blackness. He brought both hands to his chest, feeling for any sign of the tendril that had pierced it—but there was no wound.

He stood on what seemed to be water—but he didn't sink into it. Instead, each movement simply sent ripples cascading across the surface and into the shadows. Red lights flickered in the distant horizon, like an unending cataclysm rolling through.

"What is this?" he asked aloud, turning about to look at the void-scape that surrounded him. Whoever had spoken to him eluded his sight from somewhere within the darkness—

You are not like the others who came here.

He felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up—or maybe he didn't, and he just thought he did. He wasn't sure if any of this was even real. "The others?"

The ones who came before you. They were not entwined, as you are—and you do not seek to use our gift as they did.

The pieces were falling into place. "Are ... are you the Architects?"

We are an imprint of those who crafted the galaxy to their desire, the Architects of your world. We are what remains—all of their memories, all of their secrets ... all of their power.

He tried to process this gem of information as best he could—but he had to admit, it was a bit much to take in. "T-That's ... that's what the Codex is? Knowledge?"

The Codex is a living archive of our people and their collective consciousness, and more. It is a metaphysical source of energy that allows its wielder, the Inferno, to manipulate reality in ways otherwise not possible.

The meaning of their words sank in. "Like temporal distortions," he murmured to himself, "ripples in time and space. Is that what the IMC want it for? To make the fold-weapon work?"

The voice sounded disappointed. This 'fold-weapon' you refer to is a device we called a Plexus installation. We built a network of them spanning more than half the galaxy, allowing instantaneous travel from one installation to another. The others that came before you have butchered its purpose, and intend to use it as a blunt instrument to unleash destruction the likes of which your kind has never seen.

He felt a lump grow in his throat at that last line. "So the Codex powers the fold—er, these 'Plexus installations'?"

No, but it creates their fuel supply; the Arks.

"The Arks?"

Concentrated ingots of energy siphoned off from the Codex. Each Plexus installation requires an Ark to function, and only the Inferno can create an Ark. You must stop them before they find another to become the Inferno.

That made sense so far—he remembered the explanation Briggs had given them, how the fold-weapons utilized the power of a wormhole to fire waves of focused gravity at its target. These Arks would have to have similar properties if they were able to bend the fabric of reality. That also explained why they needed someone to be the Inferno—they needed to harvest an Ark from the Codex.

Still, something was bothering him. "What's your stake in all this? Why do you care about stopping them from getting the Codex?" He wanted to know what exactly these Architects'