If it is Endurance, I do not know—the machine is silent, cold. A dark fate, but one that will serve the purpose well.

From deep within Requiem, I hear hollow, echoing grinds and thumps that vibrate my boots, followed by, from all directions, a confusion of smoothly rushing sounds. I quickly depart, crossing the dock toward my ship, refusing to look at what I leave behind.

Audacity seals its hatch. Catalog and I take our positions in the command center. My ship ascends the long cylinder, levels closing off behind as we pass.

Sentinels escort us through the exterior gateway, and that also closes. Requiem is ready for its long wait. I have done all I can—short of destroying my husband, which I could never bring myself to do. I hope.

Audacity expresses relief that we were even allowed to leave. “This is a troubling construct,” it confides. “Are we on schedule for our next jump? Slipspace budget appears to be generous out here. Curious, how much capacity is available now.”

“Not at all curious,” Catalog says. “Slipspace reconciles across a number of years, forward and back. So say legal judgments on commercial usage. The greater Ark no longer exists, and nearly all the Forerunner transits and communications have stopped. As well, there are no star roads locally to complicate matters.”

Space-time is quiet, for Forerunners. But that openness may also mean that the lesser Ark has yet to position its new Halos. We may yet lose this race with the Flood. The IsoDidact may or may not have survived; there may or may not be a command presence on the last Ark.

I do not yet know the situation on Erde-Tyrene. Has Chant-to-Green recovered enough humans to fulfill Lifeworker plans? If Audacity diverts to the lesser Ark, humanity may come to an end. An affront to all my millennia of planning.

I am sunk in miserable indecision. My brain races with excuses. And then my course is very clear. It’s as if, without benefit of Cryptum or Haruspis or any other intermediary, I feel the touch of the Domain … calling me, directing me.

The Didact is not the only one to have a vision of the future.

“I’d like to send a message,” I tell Audacity.

“To the lesser Ark, to prepare for your arrival?”

“No. To all Forerunner vessels.”

“All—even those infected by the Flood?”

“Especially those,” I say. “Tell them I am on my way to Erde-Tyrene. Tell all our ships that we have at long last found a cure for the Flood, but must assemble one last component on Erde-Tyrene.”

“I do not understand your purpose, Lifeshaper.”

One desperate maneuver stacked upon another. For centuries, the false notion of a cure for the Flood cure had driven Forerunners—myself included—to depraved behavior. Perhaps now it can be used against the very evil that conceived it.