Hunt the Truth/Saison 2/03 VO

A friend returns from the dead, a safe house becomes a trap, and Maya is faced with a decision that will change her life forever.

My ears were still ringing from the bombs. ONI had sent me in on a recon mission, but then they’d hit the base with everything they had. Almost no warning. No attempt to protect me or Ari, certainly not civilians. I was just another data point to them; disposable. I could feel all the hearts and minds I’d fought for slipping away. The UNSC would always bomb and the rebels would always take up arms in vengeance. Maybe both Sully and Ilsa were right; there was no room for anything else.

BOSTWICK: Aghh!!!

As I looked down at Bostwick I couldn’t help but feel guilty. I had taken this lost, naive kid and turned her into a foot solider for my cause. I’d become an expert at rationalizing my actions, telling myself that ultimately I was working towards the greater good.

MAYA: Can I see the wound?

BOSTWICK: Don’t touch me!

BLACK BOX: I’d recommend sedating her until we can effectively treat her injuries.

BOSTWICK: I’d rather rot!

(MAYA sedates BOSTWICK.)

MAYA: Just… rest.

BOSTWICK: (mumbling) FERO…

As Bostwick drifted out of consciousness, I looked over at the data chip. Ari secured prime intel on the anomalies. And after that airstrike, any shred of faith I had that ONI would do the right thing with it was gone. For all I knew, they would just cover the whole thing up and let another colony fall, but... in the right hands, this could help save lives. I wasn’t going to turn it over to them. I was going to get real answers. And there was only one person who could give them to me. The only problem was... he’d been dead for months.

(MAYA lands the ship.)

The safe house barely qualified as a house. A crumbling old farm on the outskirts of Binturong, a dusty wasteland in the outer colonies. No one around for miles except for the occasional alien trader. Not a great place to live, but a perfect place to hide.

BLACK BOX: What is this place? It’s not in my database of safe houses.

MAYA: It’s off the grid.

BLACK BOX: There’s some sort of signal interference here.

MAYA: Yeah, that’s kind of the point.

The safe house was an old lesson from Ari.

When ONI puts you undercover, you lose everything. Every trace of who you were is wiped away to protect the mission. Ari taught me to always keep a place just for me. A place to keep memories, to stay attached to life ONI had erased. A place I could run away to when a cover got too deep. Somewhere to ground myself. Or maybe… stash a secret.

MSHAK (Through a door): Who’s there? Don’t come in! I’ve got a gun! I’ve got two guns!

MAYA: Get out of the way, Mshak.

MSHAK: Maya!!! You’re back! I thought you’d never come back! I thought nobody would ever come back!

He looked rough. Greasy hair, a thin, patchy beard. The weight he’d lost in his face made his darting, bloodshot eyes all the more unsettling.

MAYA: My god, what have you been doing to my house?

MSHAK: Oh, you have no idea what it’s been like! Wait, why are you carrying a dead person?

MAYA: She’s not dead. Here, help me get her into the bunk.

BLACK BOX: Mshak Moradi.

MSHAK: Whoaaah! Is that an AI?

BLACK BOX: Well, you’re rather energetic for a dead man.

MSHAK: You’ve got an AI?

MAYA: This is Black Box.

BLACK BOX: The official report indicated that you had been terminated, quite brutally if I recall.

MSHAK: I wish I had been.

BLACK BOX: He does look like he’s been tortured.

MAYA: He hasn’t been tortured.

MSHAK: Oh really? Okay, well then what would you call it? She left me here with no COMS! No access to waypoint, no slush! I’ve been reading paper books. PAPER BOOKS! You have to turn the pages! I mean seriously, what is this, the 24th century? There aren’t any hyperlinks, no video. And even if I managed to finish one of them, which I didn’t, I didn’t even have anyone in RL to talk to about it. I had to build a friend, his name was Tony but we had a falling out after I caught him stealing food. Oh the food! That’s right. That was even worse...

I couldn’t go through with killing Mshak. He’d figured out my secret, and he was going to tell Ben. He had to be silenced. But... When I broke into his house that night he got so scared he ran headfirst into a wall and knocked himself unconscious. He’s a great hacker, but dangerous? Not even close. So I hid him. Stuck him out in the middle of nowhere and put up a Blackout Array cutting off communications for a kilo in every direction. But a few months cut off from the outside world had left him a little… tech-starved. An honest to goodness AI was the best toy I could have brought him.

MSHAK: You know, you’re really top of the line stuff. You live on this chip?

BLACK BOX: In a way. You see-

MSHAK: Okay, I have a question. I’m sure you get it all the time, but other AIs look like people, right? But you’re just, like, a big blue cube.

BLACK BOX: I am pure intellect. I feel no need to affect a facade in order to make myself more palatable to humans. I am what I am. I am Black Box.

MSHAK: Yeah, riiiiiight… But the box is really blue though.

BLACK BOX: Black is the absence of light. A hologram can’t display black.

MSHAK: I think I’m gonna call you Blue Cube.

(BLACK BOX shocks MSHAK.)

MSHAK: Oww! Did you electrocute me!?

BLACK BOX: No... Oh, hang on. Yes.

MSHAK: Listen, Blue Cube, I can stick this chip in a micro-cooker and-

MAYA: Mshak! Stop it.

MSHAK: Hey, um, why did you bring him here? He’s ONI.

MAYA: Mshak, I’m ONI.

MSHAK: And how long is that gonna last once he tells them you’re keeping me alive? You can’t trust an AI! They want you to think they’re these perfect synthetic beings, but you know how they make them? They take some dead guy’s brain and just rewire it with new programming! They’re basically computer zombies.

BLACK BOX: We also have excellent hearing.

MAYA: Focus, Mshak. The anomalies. The same ones you were tracking? They’re here now and they’re real. They’ve already destroyed five colonies. I’ve got a data chip full of intel from one of the sites and zero context. I need information. The kind that isn’t sitting out there on the Waypoint index. The kind you can only find in the slush.

MSHAK: Wait… Do you mean... You’re going to give me back my COM-Pad!?

MAYA: Hold on.

MSHAK: Yes!

MAYA: Hold on!

MSHAK: Yes, yes, yes!

MAYA: I’m opening up a limited channel. An encrypted frequency just for you so BB can’t use it to call ONI.

BLACK BOX: I’m not sensing a lot of trust between us, Maya.

MAYA: Find out what’s going on. Fast.

MSHAK: Absolutely. One-billion percent focused. Wow, I have a lot of unread messages. Oh no!

MAYA: What?!

MSHAK: The unthinkable has happened… I fell off the leader boards on Unggoy Farmer!

MAYA: MSHAK!

MSHAK: One-billion percent focused.

While Mshak tried to uncover the secrets of the slush, I went in to check on Bostwick’s wounds. Mshak had made a real mess of the place. Clothes and ration wrappers on every surface. But I noticed Mshak had left one area untouched. My shelf. I picked up an old photo. Me as a little girl holding up a trophy. Spelling, I think? It was hard to remember the exact moment. But I remembered the place. My dad’s old cabin. When I was setting up the safe house, I kept thinking back to that cabin. With its wooden walls and a door my dad carved himself. Something about it always felt so real. So permanent.

I was still lost in the past when I looked over and saw Bostwick, awake, staring at me. Pure hatred in her eyes. The look on her face caught me completely off-guard. She looked like she was ready to kill me before I could get a word out, Bostwick was coming at me with a scalpel.

BOSTWICK: Ahh!!

She was still weak though. It didn’t take much to restrain her. Eventually she gave in to the pain.

MAYA: I know that you’re angry. I would be too, ok, just listen-

BOSTWICK: Just do it!

MAYA: Do what, Bos…!? I-

BOSTWICK: Do it! Kill me, torture me, I’d rather die than be in the custody of a traitor.

MAYA: What? I’m not a tra-

BOSTWICK: You’re ONI! Aren’t you!?

MAYA: Yes, but I’m trying to protect you. You’re my friend.

(BOSTWICK spits.)

BOSTWICK: FERO and I were friends. I don’t know who you are!

MAYA: You’re right. You don’t know me, but we’re not so different, you and I, okay? Just trust me that-

BOSTWICK: Trust you!? Heh… Were your parents killed by ONI officers?

MAYA: No, Bostwick…

BOSTWICK: I’m nothing like you. You’re a liar.

MAYA: You’re right. But, believe it or not... you’re the closest thing to a friend. And I want you to know the truth. I at least owe you that... C’mon. Ask me whatever you want.

BOSTWICK: … Well, what’s your real name?

MAYA: Maya Sankar.

BOSTWICK: Mm hmm… And how long have you been a rat traitor?

MAYA: I joined ONI when I was around your age, but I didn’t get into spec-ops until five years ago. That’s when they helped me create FERO.

As I opened up to Bostwick after years of deceiving her. I told myself that regaining her trust like this would protect her. But as the answers poured out of me, I knew deep down why I was really doing it. I needed to finally start telling the truth.

MAYA: No! I had absolutely no idea they were going to attack. They kept me strictly need-to-know.

BOSTWICK: Were you going to try to turn me? Make me an ONI spy like you?

MAYA: No! I... it wasn’t like that, I-

BOSTWICK: All that stuff you said as FERO… About finding the truth. About beating them with ideas and lifting the outer colonies up as equals...

MAYA: I meant it. Every word. More than anything, I just- I wanted to... I don’t know. After being under cover for so long, I started to feel... sometimes, I feel like I am FERO. It’s hard to explain… but, I want what she wants, y’know? And in a lot of ways, being FERO makes more sense to me now than- MSHAK: MAYA!!!

I rushed and found Mshak with his jaw on the floor.

MSHAK: You know, you could’ve led with, “Hey Mshak, here’s your COM-PAD and by the way THE MASTER CHIEF IS DEAD!”

MAYA: Yeah, I’ve been a little pre-occupied. What does it say?

MSHAK: Well, the official news is that there’s no news. Same speech on a loop, “He died in the line of duty protecting us all, blah, blah, blah what a hero.” BUT lots of speculation in the slush. Theories, other theories debunking those theories, some people claiming the UNSC is using his death to cover-up a bigger story. They think he’s still alive.

BLACK BOX: Reliable, I’m sure.

MAYA: But what would the UNSC have to gain from presenting the Chief as dead? Why destroy his legacy?

BOSTWICK: It cements his legacy.

Bostwick had made her way to her feet and stumbled into the room.

BOSTWICK: You once said that heroes are born out of sacrifice, but cemented in death.

MAYA: Yeah, but still, why? To cover up the anomalies? How does killing the Chief publicly cover that up?

MSHAK: It doesn’t. Unless the truth is scarier than the cover up. What if the whole Biko story was a dry run? If the Chief isn’t following orders anymore and he’s proving to be more trouble than he’s worth... you’d have to get rid of him, right? I was processing everything very slowly at that point. But what Mshak said had struck a chord. If the Chief wasn’t following the rules and the ONI AI bots’ statistical analysis pointed to his death being more valuable than his life... They wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. I should know, I’d just been the victim to the same analysis.

MAYA: So is there anything specifically about the anomalies?

MSHAK: I did find one theory, but it’s a little New, New, New Testament. You know the Triad?

MAYA: The religious cult?

MSHAK: Yeah, they’re popping up all over the place claiming that the anomalies aren’t random. That they’re part of the transcendence, and that their leader Dasc has returned, and that these anomalies… are basically the galactic end times. The Triad was a religion. Sort of. I’d run into small pockets of their members a few times while undercover. They were always preaching about multiple lives, transcendence, the end of the universe. Crazy ideas that didn’t sound so crazy if you were desperate enough. Lucky for them, there were a lot of desperate people in the Outer Colonies. Their leader, a man named Dasc Gevadim, had gained millions of followers across Waypoint, then suddenly disappeared. ONI was pretty sure he was dead or in hiding, but his followers were convinced he’d ascended into another realm.

MSHAK: ONI keeps blocking the posts, but word’s getting out. Here, take a look.

Mshak plays a video.

DASC GEVADIM (Recording): -for your struggles, I have willed myself back to this plane of causation and particle. So that I might illuminate the meaning of these events. Exquisite transcendence is yours for the taking. Oh children, we are now upon the rebirth! These so-called disasters... herald a new age. Of unification through disentanglement, a glorious unbecoming, freedom from the quivering vessels of self we've clung to for so long. Do not fear these events, do not fear their power. For as the worlds shake, we are inevitably arriving at the precipice of existence, the edge of a meta-verse that is awakening for us... as we, who have only known the night, are about to bear witness to the first dawn. That... is advent of the third life. And I find myself humbly bestowed with the genetic imperative to release your fear, to help you step lightly from the edge, into ascendance. For the spiritual genocide that awaits those who do not open their eyes, the abyss beneath them, I cannot bear. This is only the beginning-

MAYA: Could he possibly have any intel on these things?

MSHAK: I suppose... I mean anything is possible. We live in a galaxy where the human race was almost wiped out by an alien race that breathes farts.

BLACK BOX: Actually, it’s methane and I’m fairly certain that grunts were far from wiping out humanity single-handedly.

MSHAK: Okay, now we’re just splitting hairs.

BLACK BOX: Alright. Well on that note... Maya, I believe this detour has gone on long enough. It’s time to return to the realm of rational thought.

MAYA: I can’t go back. I can’t trust ONI anymore. Not after everything that’s happened. There’s no telling what they’d do with the intel we’ve gathered.

BLACK BOX: Maya, I wish ONI was run with the monstrous efficiency you and Mshak imagine.

MAYA: So tell me then, what’s really going on here?

BLACK BOX: What’s really going on Maya is that you’re walking a treacherous and narrow path. But if you return with me and the data to ONI, you may just avoid falling off.

MAYA: Is that an offer, or a threat?

(MAYA’s COM-PAD chirps.)

MAYA: What the hell?

BLACK BOX: Sounds like an incoming call.

MAYA: But I blocked all COM signals.

BLACK BOX: It would appear that you did not.

NOAH (Over Coms): Maya!

MAYA: Noah? What the hell? How did you get through? Why didn’t you warn me about the bombings?

NOAH (Over Coms): I tried to hold them off as long as I could, I was overruled. They decided taking out the target was worth losing the asset.

MAYA: Dammit, Noah...

NOAH (Over Coms): Maya, listen-

MAYA: I am not an asset! I’m a-

NOAH (Over Coms): Maya! There’s no time. Your location isn’t secure!

MAYA: What, but how- how do they even know-

NOAH (Over Coms): Why didn’t you check in? They think you’re on the run. There’s an extraction team inbound now right now. MAYA: What? But how do they-

NOAH (Over Coms): Listen to me, Maya. They just want to bring you in. Nothing bad is gonna happen.

MAYA: Nonononono…

NOAH (Over Coms): Maya, stop. Listen to me. Whatever you do-

MAYA: Goodbye, Noah.

NOAH (Over Coms): Maya! You’re making a terrible mist-

(MAYA disconnects the call.)

MAYA: We gotta move. Everybody. Now!

I understood what he was saying. Bring me in. That means Midnight Facility. When they bring you in, you don’t come out again. That wasn’t going to happen to me.

BOSTWICK: How did they find us?

MSHAK: It was Blue Cube! The little rat bastard sold us out!

BLACK BOX: My communications have been incapacitated by the Blackout Array since we arrived. Perhaps they tracked us from Conrad’s Point?

MAYA: No time! Help me flip the bed.

MSHAK: Okay, why are we… Holy crap, my bed is full of grenades.

MAYA: Bostwick, you okay?

BOSTWICK: Yeah.

MSHAK: Why is my bed full of grenades?

MAYA: Can you run?

BOSTWICK: I don’t need your help.

MAYA: I’m setting a ten second timer. That should give us enough time to get clear. There’s no cover out there, so once we get outside, run.

MSHAK: Oh, god... I should’ve paid more attention in P.E. class.

MAYA: Focus. The explosion should distract them long enough for us to get to the ship.

BOSTWICK: What about before the explosion goes off?

MAYA: Pray they miss.

MSHAK: Hey, Maya? Y’know, um, I don’t mean to keep harping on this, but WHY IS MY BED FULL OF GRENADES!?

BLACK BOX: Maya, you can still end this.

MAYA: No... I can’t… Everybody ready? Timers a go in 3...

BOSTWICK: Let’s do it.

MAYA: 2.

MSHAK: Oh god...

MAYA: 1. RUN!

Those ten seconds felt like eons. It took them five just to spot us.

ONI TROOP: WE’VE GOT RUNNERS!

The next five… were an eternity.

MAYA: GET ON THE SHIP!

(MAYA, BOSTWICK, AND MSHAK run toward the ship while bullets whiz by and ping off the ship.)

The next thing I can remember I was standing in the cargo bay, feeling the familiar tug of acceleration as the engines engaged. Bostwick was doubled over in pain.

MAYA: Are you-

BOSTWICK: I’m fine. I’m fine.

As we left the planet’s atmosphere, I didn’t know where I could go. My employer had just tried to light me up. Bostwick would out me to the rebels the first chance she got. FERO was gone. Commander Maya Sankar... was gone. And with the few memories I’d kept now burning up in that safe house below, whoever it was I used to be, was gone, too. All I had now was an AI that wanted to turn me in, a betrayed friend who wanted me dead, a hacker with a heart of lettuce, and a data chip filled with information that could get me killed. I had no idea what to do next. But then somebody made the decision for me.

(The ship’s alarm system sounds.)

MSHAK: What is that!? What did the zombie do now?

BLACK BOX: It’s not me. There’s a ship approaching fast off our starboard.

MAYA: Ughn, dammit, ONI. I’m moving to full thrust. I’ll evade.

BLACK BOX: I recommend securing your person instead... Now.

MAYA: You heard him! Strap in!

Normally, you can’t feel how fast you’re going in space. Unless of course someone grabs you by the tail.

(The ship comes to an abrupt halt.)

Forced deceleration is nasty. If we hadn’t been warned, it would have smashed us into a pile of guts on the bulkhead. But even strapped in, the G forces can be gut-wrenching.

By the time I unbuckled and fell out of my seat, all the ship’s systems were shutting down.

MAYA: Everybody okay?

They’d killed our power. We were helpless. I could hear them coming through the air lock door. An ONI Acquisitions Team. I tried to stand up and face them, but I was too dizzy and collapsed on the deck. There was a pneumatic hiss as the boarding tube bolted to our hull. The clink of their mag boots as they stepped across the gangway. Even the sound of their tac-COMs hacking our lock system. I’ve been on the other side of that door. I know what happens when they take you. I wish I could say I was brave. FERO would have been brave. But, I’d seen what happened to Ben. I was afraid of the pain. I was afraid to lose myself. I didn’t want to die.

I looked up as they came in. There were three of them, but my eyes were immediately drawn to their leader. I saw his razor-sharp beak first. Then the bright red quills spilling out over his neck, and finally, his talons gripping a Needler. Pointing it right at my chest. This wasn’t ONI. This was something worse. Something more unpredictable.

(The Jackals scream.)

Jackals.