Location: Outer Colony – Kleos Prime, Perseus Fringe
Date: August , 2221
Kleos Prime was a quiet colony—was.
No war, no rebellions, no insurgency. Just hard-working frontier families, domed mining towns, and a slowly growing orbital dock. It sat beyond the usual patrol arcs, far out on the Perseus Fringe. A place humanity had reached only a decade ago.
Which is why the signal caused immediate alarm.
It came in at 0413 Zulu. A high-priority burst, tagged by auto-AI with UNSC emergency authentication. But the transmission was corrupted, like it had been dragged across a magnetic storm or bent through a gravitational lens.
What came through was jagged, flickering, and terrifying.
[AUDIO—ERROR–REBUILD FAILED]
—to any UNSC vessel… Kleos Prime under… attack—no visual—no known signature—sky just—
[Screeching static and something like whispering, multiplied]
They're inside already—shapes—people walking wrong—eyes that don't blink—my wife—my kids—
DO NOT COME—DO NOT—
[Transmission cuts.]
Then silence.
No follow-up signal. No ping from the colony's orbital relay.
UNSC's outer surveillance grid detected one final anomalous energy flare—deep blue, cold-spectrum, layered with a tachyon ghost—before the Kleos system went dark.
Naval Command went into immediate lockdown.
A RED asset from the Enclave's far-flung reconnaissance probes submitted a chilling visual: a silhouette in the edge of space. It resembled a ship, or at least something ship-like, coasting without propulsion. Almost organic in form—like a skeleton of thought etched in alloy and void.
It wasn't moving fast.
It didn't need to.
It had arrived.
Across High Command, dread began to spread—not because of what was known, but because of what wasn't. This wasn't an invasion in the traditional sense.
It was a test.
And humanity just failed its first question.
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Location: UNSC Command Center, Sol System
Date: August 7, 2221
The room hummed with tension.
Admiral Weaver stared at the holographic map, his hands clasped behind his back. The room was dim, with only the blue glow of the projected star systems illuminating the faces of the assembled officers. The fringe of humanity's reach—the outer colonies—had gone dark. A single, jagged transmission from Kleos Prime, and then nothing. Not a whisper.
"We're being tested," muttered Captain Reynolds, his voice tight with the weight of the situation. He tapped the edge of the table with a clenched fist. "The Ceph are using their psy-ops to pick us apart. They want us distracted while they... prepare."
"How do you suggest we fight back if we don't even know what we're dealing with?" Admiral Weaver snapped, his voice crackling with frustration.
The officers exchanged glances. The presence of Halbek's betrayal still loomed large over them all. The Ceph had already infiltrated ONI; now they were moving through the colonies.
"We send a ship," Colonel Ingram said, standing up from the table. His voice was unwavering. "We don't sit here and wait for them to make the next move. We act. Fast. We need to hit them first, not just react."
Weaver met Ingram's gaze, his mind racing. The Ceph operative, if still alive, had the ability to manipulate minds, to twist and control. Halbek—now something else entirely—was still out there, hiding in the shadow of humanity's own operations. The attack on Kleos Prime wasn't just random; it was deliberate.
"Send the UNSC Vigilance," Weaver finally said. "Get them to Kleos Prime, have them investigate. But no one is going in unprepared. If they're hiding out there, we can't let them catch us by surprise again."
-----------------------------
Location: Outer Colonies - Near Kleos Prime
Date: August 8, 2221
The UNSC Vigilance made its way into the outer system, cutting through the thin veil of the fringe like a blade. Its sleek hull gleamed under the distant light of the stars, the pulse of its engines a steady hum in the deep silence of space.
Commander Sarah sat in the pilot's seat, eyes focused ahead. Her breath steady, but she couldn't shake the unease gnawing at her. The transmission from Kleos Prime had been too fragmented, too chaotic. And the Ceph had a way of hiding in plain sight. This wasn't going to be a simple recovery mission.
"Coordinates locked," Beck announced, as the Vigilance neared the edge of Kleos Prime's orbit.
"We're not expecting any survivors, are we?" Lieutenant Cole asked, his voice grim as he adjusted his scanner readings.
"Don't expect anything," Beck replied, her voice flat. "We're here to find answers. What happened to Kleos? Who's left? And why did the Ceph suddenly make their move?"
Before anyone could answer, the ship's sensors went wild.
"Multiple inbound signatures!" shouted Lieutenant Ramos, his fingers dancing across the control board. "Something's coming. We're not alone out here!"
"Deploy countermeasures!" Beck barked. "Ready all systems! Hold on tight!"
As the ship swerved to avoid an incoming barrage of projectiles—strange, organic, and almost like something trying to rewrite the ship's course—a chill ran through Beck. This was no random skirmish. The Ceph knew they were coming.
On the outside of the Vigilance, the stars seemed to shimmer and warp, as if reality itself was being pulled taut by some invisible force. An eerie, dark silhouette appeared in the distance—too massive, too ominous to be a ship, yet too structured to be an anomaly.
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Location: Inner Colonies
Date: August , 2221
Back at command center, they had their own problems.
Halbek and the Ceph operative had moved swiftly. Using ONI's own resources against them, they destabilized colony defenses from within. Their influence spread like an insidious virus, hacking into key communication relays, commandeering local military outposts.
"All systems are compromised," Lieutenant Jordan reported, watching the cascading errors appear across his console. "We've been too complacent. The Ceph have been in place for years, but now they're using Halbek's connections to mobilize against us."
ONI had long known how far the Ceph had infiltrated, but nothing could have prepared them for the sheer scale of their operations. Halbek, still alive but no longer the woman she had been, was the key.
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Location: ONI Black Site – Deep Vaults
Date: August , 2221
The air in the underground vault was thick with the scent of sterilized metal and the faint remnants of long-dead machinery. It had been years since anyone had truly entered this place. Few knew of its existence, and fewer still understood the extent of its purpose.
But now, it had become a weapon.
Halbek , stood before a sealed containment chamber. Her hands hovered over the touchpad, mind far from the body that once carried it. The Ceph had twisted her into something else entirely—something far more dangerous. Her body moved with the precision of ONI's finest operatives, yet her eyes had gone empty, clouded by the dark influence of the psy-operative.
Beside him, ONI loyalists—those who had resisted the leaks, those who believed in the twisted version of humanity Halbek now represented—stood silent. Their faces were masks of cold determination. They would see this through.
"It's time," Halbek whispered. Her voice was hollow. "Release the sample."
The containment chamber opened with a hiss, and inside was a vial. Inside that vial was a sample—something ONI had buried in the aftermath of the Caliban Incident. A virus, engineered to be more than just a biological weapon. It was designed to target the very heart of humanity's colonies, mutate and adapt with incredible speed, spread like wildfire, and make a host of human minds pliable to the Ceph's will.
The Caliban Incident, had created the perfect pathogen. Now, it was being unleashed, not on one colony, but on all of them.
One by one, the loyalists activated the systems, releasing the virus into the air supply. It spread quickly. No one was immune.
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Location: Inner Colonies – The First Outbreak
Date: August 11, 2221
The first reports came in hours later—sporadic at first, then more frequent as the virus spread across the colonies. Those who inhaled the contaminated air felt the effects almost immediately: dizziness, fever, disorientation. But there was more to it. Their eyes turned cloudy, their actions erratic. The virus had begun to rewrite their perceptions.
In a matter of hours, entire cities descended into chaos. Riots broke out. Mass hysteria gripped the public. But in the confusion, the true nature of the virus became clear. The infected did not just lose control of their bodies—they became conduits for something else.
The Ceph operative, now fully in control of Halbek, had triggered a cascade event. The virus mutated and adapted on the fly, its primary purpose to turn every infected human into an unwilling servant—an organic transmitter, capable of spreading the Ceph's will even further.
Location: UNSC Command Center, Sol System
Date: August , 2221
The news reached the UNSC faster than they could prepare for it. The transmission from the colonies was almost incomprehensible—distorted, fragmented signals peppered with static.
"Multiple cases of extreme disorientation, fatalities reported… civilians rioting… all inner colonies… lockdown protocol—too late… airborne contaminant—"
Commander Beck's voice cracked as she held the emergency transmission from one of the outer colonies.
"What in God's name is happening out there?" she muttered, trying to make sense of the garbled mess on the screen.
"Whatever it is, we need to stop it," Colonel Ingram responded, his expression grim. "The Ceph's psy-ops are back, and this time… it's more insidious. They've done something we can't undo."
"We need to mobilize," Beck ordered. "Now."
The virus had done what Halbek had intended. It had fractured the colonies. It had torn apart the fragile peace humanity had been clinging to.
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Location: The Assembly Safehouse
Date: August 12, 2221
Sobeck sat in front of a holo-table, her fingers tracing through the frantic streams of data. The virus was no coincidence. The outbreak, the riots, the chaos—it was all part of Halbek's twisted plan. A deliberate play by the Ceph operative to destabilize humanity from within. And it was working.
"We have to act now," Sobeck said, her voice sharp and commanding. "If we let this spread unchecked, it won't just break the colonies—it will break humanity itself."
Her team looked to her for direction. She had come too far, made too many dangerous moves, to allow ONI's machinations to be the end of everything.
"We need to find where the Ceph is hiding," she said. "We need to track the virus' source back to the point of origin, isolate the pathogen, and neutralize it before it spreads even further."