My mind races. I can expect no assistance from the Didact, that much is obvious. The Ark is far too large to move. The Halo might be able to escape. But there are not nearly enough functional vessels to rapidly shift our Forerunners there. They could have been moved if we had begun shuttling them weeks ago! Or if we had put them on the Halo in the first place.

Our mistakes have finally compounded.

The trap is closing.

“How can we save them all? How can we ever get free?” I ask. “And where do we go?”

“There is no way out, only through,” he says, his eyes narrowing. “If you wish to survive, you must leave now. When the Flood is finished, there will be nothing left of this place.”

The Didact stretches a long arm in the direction of Path Kethona. “The star roads will keep clear of Halo’s firing path. That will open an escape route,” he says. “But it will not remain that way for long. You must escape in Audacity while you have a chance.” He sucks in his breath, staring at the Ark’s surface. “Traitors. And yet … even in the midst of our most monumental failure, I will seize another solution.”

The Didact locks his helmet and leaves with hardly a backward glance. He does not even offer to escort me to Audacity.

I am lost in a sink of misery and confusion. If the Ark is destroyed, and all my specimens, what is the point of my own existence?

And then I know. We must move everything—as much as we can—to safety. It is our only solution. I send the briefest of messages to Chant-to-Green who is hidden within a keyship on the far side of the Burn. If her vessel is capable, she will obey. She cannot fail.

I then contact the only presence on the Ark that I know can help.

String 31

STRING 31

MONITOR CHAKAS

SENTINELS AND ATTACK harriers rise in swirling clouds around the Ark, like flocking birds over the plains of my birth. I make inquiries, but the Ark’s channels are consumed with preparations for evacuation as well as for combat. Yet how can so many different species be evacuated? And to where? There are not nearly enough transports.

I have not been kept fully informed. I only know that the Ark has been handed over to the Master Builder, and of course, given his luck and skill, is now under immediate threat.

My new mandate is to protect the Lifeshaper and her work. Once I was a human, but received such wounds that the Bornstellar Didact stored me in a machine. The Lifeshaper allowed me, after their gathering on the Ark, to look after her human populations. She saw it as part of my recovery, and part of my reward for serving them so well. And I have done my very best.