The tram ride was tense, but uneventful.

It was when they pulled into the station at the end of the line that Greg began to worry. Out the windows of the cart, he started to see a curious, spongy green growth along the walls, and by the time they had arrived at their destination, it was covering up most of the tunnel.

"Well, this is...concerning," Izzy murmured as she joined them once the tram had locked into place in the receiving bay.

"Don't lose focus," Greg replied, hefting the shotgun as he stepped up to the exit. He peered through the glass into the room beyond, spying the remains of the human element that had once occupied this area in the form of workbenches, tables, shelves, chairs, and tools, and other, far more disturbing, forms. As he opened the door and stepped out, playing his flashlight across the nearest wall to be sure that he was actually seeing what he thought he was seeing, the stench hit him like a hammer. He gagged, grimacing, but stared hard at the green glop covering the far wall.

"Are those..." Rydell whispered.

He saw skeletal remains baked into the green goo, bony limbs and grinning skulls covered in green slime peered at them like something out of a hell-fueled nightmare. There were no Combat Forms or other Flood types lurking among the goo-infested area, at least that he could tell, but Greg definitely heard something growling nearby.

"Focus up," Greg snapped as he realized that Rydell and Baranov were staring at the wall of goo and corpses intently.

They seemed to come out of their almost trance-like stares of horror and readjusted their attention to the situation at hand. He had to admit, it was a pretty horrifying sight. He made quick gestures, splitting the team to secure the area. Baranov and Ellis went towards a side door that led to a maintenance bay, Izzy, Rydell, and Pollard went off towards a side entrance, and he led Laney and Halpert over to the tunnel they were looking for, the main one. Greg stared down it while the others secured the area, and didn't like what he saw.

The green glop continued proliferating along the walls and up to the ceiling of the rocky tunnel.

"That's where we have to go, huh?" Halpert muttered unhappily.

"Yep," Greg replied.

No gunshots were fired as the rest of the team finished checking the area. They were alone. The team reformed on him at the entrance to the tunnel.

"All right," Greg said as he kept staring down it, using their combined light sources to try and get a better idea if anything was waiting for them deeper in, "it's pretty simple. We take this tunnel all the way to a cavern. From there, we take another tunnel, which should put us directly over the roof of the Proto-Gravemind chamber. We plant the bomb and get the hell out of here. We all ready for this?" he asked, looking around.

Each person gave a grim but affirmative response.

Greg took point, leading Task Force Reaper into the tunnel, deeper still into the darkness. The walk down the tunnel was harrowing and miserably long. The green substance that covered the walls sometimes tracked across the floor and stepping on it, even with combat boots on, was awful. It was like stepping onto a wet, gooey sponge. Occasionally, something would drip down onto the floor and a few times it dropped onto their snow camo uniforms and armor. Greg did his best to ignore it, filtering out the nightmarish environment in favor of actual threats. Because he kept asking: where were the Flood? They were around, he knew that, but where?

They made it to the other end of the tunnel without a problem.

As they came into the larger cavern, at last, Greg saw some Combat Forms milling around, and felt something very close to actual relief.

"Take them down!" he snapped as he shouldered his shotgun and fired.

The blast took the nearest Combat Form in the chest, sending it sprawling as it knocked the life out of it, and alerting all the others in the immediate area. He pumped the shotgun, fired a second time, blowing out the chest of another Combat Form, and then repeated the action once more. As he took aim for a fourth Combat Form, he found none, and realized that they'd already killed the supply of Flood in the area.

He frowned as he began feeding shells into his shotgun to replace the ones he'd spent. Something was off. It could just be that having an eight-person team of well-trained Marines who'd already dealt with this whole song and dance enough as it was during their time on Wintermute was extremely effective, but...no, something was wrong.

This was a crucial area close to the Proto-Gravemind, and although the Flood were certainly more animal than, say, the Covenant, they clearly weren't mindless. There was an intelligence at work behind them. Which, Greg knew now, was the Proto-Gravemind. It had to know about this place, it had Flood in it.

Why leave it so unguarded?

Something heavy began to thud from across the darkened rock cavern.

"What the hell is that?!" Izzy snapped.

All the flashlights shifted in that direction as whatever it was came towards them. It was hidden in shadows as it stomped closer. Greg was positive that they were facing a Tank, and yet...something seemed off about it.

As it drew closer, he realized what it is: the cadence of its footsteps.

This was not the stomping of a bipedal organism.

This was something else.

And he got his first look at the something else just a few seconds later as it came lumbering into the light.

"Holy God..." he whispered, momentarily stupefied into brain-dead terror as he got a real look at it. It wasn't particularly tall, maybe six and a half feet, but it did seem heavy, and large. It had a presence to it. A bulbous body with what might charitably be called a face sat atop a trio of thick, bent limbs. Two huge misshapen eyes that he wasn't even sure actually were eyes, sat lopsided over what might have been a mouth. All three of which were seething, writhing pits of small tentacles and fleshy protrusions.

It let out a deep huffing sound as it seemed to study them. It looked strong, and Greg did not want any of those three thick, bent limbs to come in contact with him. It looked like any one of them could casually flick him across the entire cavern.

But, he discovered as he prepared to open fire, those limbs were, by several magnitudes, not the most dangerous aspect of this creature.

It suddenly jerked forward and a spray of dark green stuff, almost like a cloud, came out of its 'face'. It flew onto the nearest person, who happened to be Rydell. The Marine dropped his weapon and began screaming, clawing at his face.

"Get it off! OH GOD GET IT OFF! IT'S GOING INTO MY SKIN!" he shrieked.

"Kill it! Shoot it! Ellis, help him!" Greg screamed and opened fire.

Ellis raced towards Rydell, getting hold of him and dragging him away from the creature, which was moving towards them again, and the others opened up. A hail of gunfire peppered the huge beast, but it was clearly armored. Greg cursed as he worked the shotgun, pounding out shell after shell until the shotgun was dry. The latest and greatest in Flood nightmares conjured straight from the depths of Hell itself was lumbering right towards him, so he didn't have a chance to reload. Cursing, Greg tossed a fragmentation grenade its way while backing up rapidly and then swapping to his battle rifle. He saw the others taking advantage of its focus on him, blasting away with everything they had. He opened up with his battle rifle as the grenade went off.

Rydell was still screaming at the top of his lungs, and a quick glance his way revealed he was on his back, thrashing violently as Ellis tried to help him.

For whatever reason, the new Flood type seemed intent on coming after Greg now. He kept firing until the battle rifle was depleted and then was forced to throw himself into a roll as it spat another thick cloud of green something at him. He narrowly managed to avoid it, came up out of his roll, and hastily slammed a new magazine in.

"Frags on my three!" he screamed, pulling out a grenade. "One, two, three!"

Six fragmentation grenades arced out, several rolling under the creature and the rest pelting off of its hardened exterior. Greg backed up rapidly, opening fire again, praying it didn't move too quickly. And then he was thrown off his feet by the concussive blast of concentrated force as the grenades went off. He landed flat on his back and was soon pelted with a wave of pulped Flood gore. As he got back up to his feet, he could still hear Rydell shouting.

He called the man's name as he began running towards him, glancing at the new Flood creature to ensure that it was actually dead. When he saw nothing but a smoking crater and a pile of shredded remains, he shifted his focus back to Rydell. Greg skidded to a halt as Ellis was suddenly thrown backwards and Rydell leaped to his feet.

The man saw Greg coming and abruptly raised his pistol.

"Whoa! What are you doing?!" Greg cried as he skidded to a halt, and then he realized all at once that he was no longer looking at the man he'd fought beside for the past however long it had been. Half of his face was covered in an amorphous, bubbling green mass and his eyes were wide and vacant. He'd stopped screaming by now. The green mass seemed to be growing, covering more of his face millimeter by millimeter even as Greg watched.

A gunshot rang out and half his head disappeared in a plume of green and red gore. The thing that had only moments ago been Lance Corporal Rydell collapsed into a heap. Greg glanced over, saw Ellis lying on her back, holding her own pistol with trembling hands, gunsmoke coming out of the barrel. For several seconds, no one said anything.

Izzy broke the silence. "What the hell was that?"

"It covered him in some kind of spores," Ellis replied as Greg walked over to her and helped her to her feet. "They were...burrowing into him. Into his flesh. They took him over."

"Hell," Greg whispered, staring at the corpse, "that was...this is..." He shook his head violently. "Come on, we need to get the hell out of here before another one shows up."

"Or something worse," Ellis muttered.

Greg didn't even want to consider that. "Everyone okay? Laney?" he asked, looking around.

Everyone quickly checked in and confirmed they were still alive, still in fighting condition. Greg took point again as they tracked down their tunnel. They plunged into it, going as fast as safety would allow, making for their destination. They were so close. Greg told himself that several times as he tried not to see the mask of horror Rydell's face had become. They were so close. But it felt like the universe was finally cashing in on all that anticipation it had been building for the past however long. Speaking of which...

He glanced at his HUD and saw they had less than ten hours now.

Well, at least that wasn't going to be a problem. Unless it somehow was.

He tried not to think about it, instead focusing on just getting his job done. The tunnel seemed to be closing in around them, shrinking until it was just wide enough to accommodate two of them shoulder-to-shoulder and just high enough to avoid hitting their heads on. Greg kept waiting for something to happen, some new or old horror to lurch out of the darkness as it was pushed back foot by foot ahead of him by their flashlights, but after a few moments, they abruptly reached the end of the tunnel.

"This is it, we're here," he said. "Laney, do it. Izzy, make sure it's set properly."

They both maneuvered carefully around him and he watched over them as Laney slowly got out of the converted backpack nuke, set it on the ground, and opened it up. He stepped back and let Izzy take over. She looked over the device for several moments, her movements careful and controlled. "All right," she said, "this thing has an extremely powerful transmitter that should link up with the others. I'm activating it now."

"How long will we have?" Greg asked.

"Not sure, that's the problem. The countdown begins once all three are activated."

He sighed. "Okay, hit it."

She punched a button. Suddenly, a new countdown timer appeared on his HUD. It read 30:00 in bold red letters.

It switched to 29:59 a second later, and then continued counting down.

"Oh shit. We've got half an hour," he said.

"Well let's get the hell out of here then," Izzy snapped, lurching to her feet.

"Yep, let's go people!" Greg said, turning around.

They all started hustling back the way they'd come and they made it barely a dozen meters before Greg felt something shift underfoot. He paused and then suddenly the ground gave way beneath him. He screamed, hearing the others shouting in shock and terror as well as the ground disintegrating and dropping them into a huge cavern. They fell through the air for a heart-pounding couple of seconds, then slammed into the ground below.

Greg gasped, or tried to, as the breath was driven from his lungs and his entire body became lit up with raw pain.

For a few seconds, everything seemed to be an incoherent, jumbled mess of pain and confusion as he tried to get his bearings.

He'd fallen, he knew that much, and landed on what had to be more of that awful spongy Flood material that had probably saved his life just now but was still disgusting as hell. What snapped him back to reality, however, was hearing Izzy in pain. Real pain, not the usual background level they'd gotten used to putting up with ever since coming to Wintermute. Hell, ever since becoming Marines. He got to his knees and looked around.

An awful green haze hung on the air, and the whole place they were in seemed to be covered in the green material. He saw the others around him, trying to get to their feet, and spied Izzy on her back, grimacing, clutching one arm.

"Are you okay?" he asked, crawling over to her.

"I think I broke it," she groaned. "Goddamn that hurts!"

"Ellis!" he called.

"Coming," Ellis groaned.

"Sound off!" Greg said, looking around, his frazzled mind trying to focus. This was bad. This was really bad.

They had been directly above where the Proto-Gravemind was supposed to be, which meant...

He looked around and froze as he spied a large, uncertain, amorphous shape suspended from the ceiling and partially attached the far back wall by thick strands of what, for the life of him, looked to be flesh. That had to be it. It was the size of a dump truck, but it seemed immobile. Or, at the very least, it wasn't reacting to them.

"Present," Laney said.

"I'm here," Pollard groaned.

"Alive," Baranov coughed.

"Here," Halpert reported.

"We've got to get the hell out of here," Greg said, calling up the map of the installation he'd been given. "We need to find a way back to the tram station. We've got a little over twenty eight minutes right now and-"

"Sergeant! Incoming!" Halpert reported as Greg began to hear as much as fell a rhythmic pounding, getting closer. Another one of those tri-pod bastards? No, it felt like two feet. A Tank, it had to be.

"Ellis, get Izzy back, study the map and find us a route to the tram!" he snapped.

"Yes, Sergeant!" she replied, hauling Izzy to her feet. She cried out but began stumbling away as Ellis led her away from the fray of combat that was about to begin. Greg started preparing to take out the Tank that was coming for him when he got an actual look at the thing that was currently barreling right at them.

And felt terror like he had yet to feel on Wintermute as he saw it.

The thing had to be twenty feet tall.

It stood on two tree-trunk legs and, somewhat akin to the Tank, had a bulky torso that seemed to serve it as chest, face, and head all in one, supported by thick strands of hardened muscle. Where it largely differed from the Tank, aside from sheer size, was the fact that it had two very long arms ending in sharp points. The arms had to be a dozen feet long each, giving it an insane reach. As if to demonstrate this particular fact, this immense Flood, this Juggernaut, suddenly lashed out with one of the arms.

Halpert let out a strangled scream as the tipped end punched right through her chest. The thing lifted her easily into the air, blood spraying everywhere, and then flung her across the entire length of the cavern where she slammed into a far wall, hit the ground, and did not move.

"Kill it!" Greg screamed, opening fire. "Shoot it! Everything you got! Stay mobile!"

He wasn't sure if they were going to be able to kill this thing. His shotgun had been flung free of his grasp when he'd fallen and he didn't know where it was, not that it would do a lot against something this big. Would anything they have do much good? He still had his battle rifle, and he joined Baranov, Laney, and Pollard in opening fire on the huge thing. The Flood Juggernaut reached out for them, sending its arms flinging at them in an attempt to repeat the murder it had just committed. Greg dodged out of the way, barely managing to avoid it, feeling the whoosh of air as the tip narrowly avoided obliterating his skull, and he saw Laney do the same.

Recovering, he hurled a grenade, and then another to buy himself some time to reload. Pollard did the same, and three grenades exploded in rapid succession around its feet, peppering its legs and underside with flaming fragmentation. It seemed to have little effect. The creature loosed a roar as it regained its footing and then brought one of its huge limbs straight down, aiming right for Pollard. He barely managed to dive out of the way as the limb smashed into the ground with an impact that Greg felt even thirty feet away.

"Ellis, where are we!?" he screamed.

"Almost!" she replied frantically over the radio.

Greg cursed and kept firing. He emptied another magazine into the huge beast, and then grabbed for something he'd been holding back.

A thermite grenade.

He had no idea how effective it would be against this beast, but given how insanely high a temperature it burned at, it should do something at least.

"Ellis!?"

"Got it! On me, now! South side of the cavern!" she snapped.

"Go! Go! Now!" Greg screamed.

The creature was coming for him again. He began backing away rapidly, seeing the others falling back. He cooked the thermite grenade until there was just one second left and then hurled it directly into the central mass of the creature.

It burst in a brilliant spray of phosphorescent light and covered the Juggernaut, which immediately began roaring and thrashing violently. That was going to have to do. Greg turned and ran for all he was worth, seeing the group converging on a tunnel that Izzy and Ellis were standing at the threshold of. He kept running, pushing himself hard, his lungs burning, his whole body aching, screaming for a rest. An age later, he got to the entrance.

"Go! Go!" he snapped, skidding to a halt.

Greg spun back around and took the situation in at a glance. The others were rushing towards him, almost there. The Juggernaut was somehow not only still upright, but still mobile, and it was lumbering their way as well.

Laney made it and ran past him into the tunnel. Then Baranov got there.

"Go! Hurry!"