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12 August / Case officer: Lieutenant Smith Shepard (UNSC Office of Naval Intelligence, Office of Investigation), Gladiator report continued

Thus far in the interviews I have conducted, we can see that all personal accounts correlate and have led up to this. After hearing Dr. Shi Kai's description of Tech officer Seth's symptoms and ultimate "transformation", we can agree that the unknown organism is of virulent nature.

The worst 48…

I sit in cafeteria three of the UNSC frigate Alexander. Opposite me is Sergeant Daniel Matos. He was a part of Colonel Heatherly's personal security detail as a communications tech. The Colonel was in charge of all Marine elements aboard the Gladiator. Shaved head, five o'clock shadow, a Saint Christopher around his neck, he wears a sleeveless T-shirt that exposes several tattoos that I can only imagine represent past campaigns. According to his CSV he was not allowed to get the name of the Gladiator (or those of his fallen comrades) inked onto his arm as the destroyer's fate is classified beyond top secret and any references of any sort to it were banned to "insure secrecy".

Matos, "The next forty-eight hours were the worst, hence the name given. I think more people died in that period of time than any other. We had just come out of the freezer, showered, shaved, and in jumpsuits when we got the report that people were being attacked in the cryo chambers. It's unfair if you think about it, tragic. How many people were killed and turned into those things, right when they stepped out of their tube, fresh out of a long sleep, never knew what hit them. No warning."

What did Heatherly do?

Matos, "Right after hearing about it he called up the captain to find out what exactly the hell was going on. We just got word that there was trouble, something going on. We thought it was a Covenant boarding party. He didn't get any reply from the bridge; so he ordered us to prepare to repel borders, defend the ship he said. There were four others with me in Heatherly's security detail and about fifty regular Marines. We went to the armory, locked and loaded, and headed down. Some of us had time to throw on armor vests, but most of us were in jumpsuits. All the way a Tech named Darrel was trying to access the battle net from a portable console, from there we could see who was where, what their status was, and have a major tactical advantage. For some reason it was down."

Did you try the COM?

Matos, "Every channel, the ship's COM line was filled with traffic, so much you couldn't hear or make out anything coherently, it was like every person aboard suddenly yelled into it at once. The Colonel wanted me to continue to monitor it. There were screams; I could hear growls, cries for help, gunshots, prayers, just chaos. At one point I made out someone saying giving their final testimony, right over the COM line. Shit man…how many people did we lose in those cryo chambers?"

"I didn't like hearing that."

"As we ran down these flights of stairs, me with my bulky COM pack on my back, I opened up the Marine channels. Our main channel had some traffic, a scattered cry for reinforcements here and there. The Colonel activated his headset and called for a ship wide threat assessment and report. One Marine, Strauss, radioed back, said he was with twenty others, Marines and crew. They had managed to get out of their respective cryo room and hide somewhere. Heatherly wanted to amass a counterattack on the Covenant. The guy says, 'these are no Covenant'. That threw us off. He went on to tell us what had happened, with the little pods scurrying around, attacking and killing people. People reanimating. He said forget trying a counterassault."

"We came to the cryo level, a bunch of connected hallways leading to all these cryo rooms, each one holds about a hundred people. The main hallway was dead, no screams, no gunfire, just silence. Someone came through a pressure door from cryo 2. Someone yelled something to him. The figure just stared for a moment. I could barely see him, he was in the shadows, but I could tell something wasn't right. At the time I was thinking he didn't look…normal. He charged us and jumped onto a guy near Heatherly. Someone let loose with their assault rifle, the guy stopped moving. I got a good look, he was yellow looking, his head bent at a weird angle, and he had these things sticking out of his arm. Then someone yelled look. There were tons of them ahead of us, all of a sudden, out of no where, these little pod things. We opened fire. Then came more people, running, making snarling noises, they all looked like the guy we had shot."

"They came from everywhere, a flood of them. Heatherly ordered us to knuckle up into a group, like ancient Romans used to do, a battle square so to speak. Each person had their angle with overlapping fields of fire, and we let them have it. I shot at everything. I was through maybe three clips when Corporal Banks yelled, 'I'm almost out". I realized I had grabbed only five clips and I was halfway through my fourth. I yelled to Heatherly we couldn't hold them all off. They just kept coming, wave after wave. He yelled to fallback to the stairs. We did a giant push pull tactic, keeping them back a little. When we got to the steps we bound up them. Fifty of us just running, I was sort of in the middle. I didn't look back but I think some people got taken down. I heard yells for help. We got to a mess hall about two decks up. We crammed in and slammed the pressure doors shut, thankfully Darrel was still alive and he locked them. Everyone was trying to catch our breath; you could here those things banging on the pressure door."

"We set up a sort of base in the mess. Darrel opened got the battle net up and went about figuring out the whole situation. He brought up a list of all the Marines and crew aboard."

With the health monitoring/identity chips implanted in every Marine and crewmember, you could see the status of everyone aboard?"

Matos, "Of course. Strange thing was, most of them were alive, but their bios indicated bodily activity that was way out of the realm of normal."

Like what?

Matos, "I only remember bits of what Darrel said. Stuff about irregular heartbeats, like they were unusually high, and something about metabolism, like it was through the roof. I remember him shooting off all this technical shit about the body and how no normall human could live with such bodily activity. He described it as being super human, like those with the weird activity had higher levels of energy, stamina, and he guessed strength. The only thing that was lacking was higher brain activity."

"Heatherly was a genius, he had Darrel pull up a 3D schematic of the whole ship and display everyone's location based on their chips. When he brought it up we could see the highest concentrations were still in the cryo levels, but a lot were moving out and away from there. Heatherly had Darrel put all those with normal functioning in green and all those with the crazy activity in red."

"There was a lot more red then green. We could only see maybe fifteen pockets of a lot of green, large concentrations of people. We identified ourselves, in the mess two decks above cryo. There were maybe thirty or forty little dots of green scattered throughout the ship, lone survivors who had managed to lock themselves away, but not in a group. Man, I can't imagine how much that must have sucked, to be alone in the midst of all this. I saw one dot that was in a closet in the middle of the cryo deck. In the middle of red."

"That was when an explosion destroyed the door to the mess and they breached our only protection. That was when we learned they could use guns."

Falcon Bay Military Prison, sixty minutes east of Reach City

I sit in the visitor's center of the minimal security wing. Lieutenant George Cyprus is currently serving a three-year sentence for assault of an officer (and incident not related to anyone involved with the Gladiator). He is one year in thus far and is up for a parole hearing in a few months. His psychological prognosis attributes his history of violent behavior with "some type of traumatic experience either in his childhood or more recently." I can assume it is connected with the Gladiator incident.

Cyprus, "Three days and I'm up for a hearing. I'd rather die at the hands of the Covenant or even those things than spend another night in my cold, dank six-by-eight."

"I had just come out of my fitful cryo sleep when the pod things attacked. They scurried around like spiders and took you down. I killed one, squeezed it until it popped and sprayed little alien guts all over me. Not the best smelling things. I ran and hid in a little closet. It was the housing for the automated janitorial bot. The thing was about the size of a mule and I just had enough room to stand, I could barely find a comfortable position. For five hours I stood crammed in there, watching as people started to reanimate. God, they looked…not human, yellow flesh, those sticks poking out of their arms and neck. I could smell them through the door."

What were they doing?

Cyprus, "The hell should I know? They just stood there for a while, not really doing anything. Some of them ran out of the room, but two or three just stood still, breathing heavily. After an hour or so I had nodded off and woke up to see they were dragging he bodies of dead crew to the hallway. The bodies didn't look transformed at all. But they still were dragging them. I saw one had the body of a dog, I think it was a Labrador. I thought what the hell is a dog doing aboard, and then I saw the red sash around the bodies' neck. It was the Marine's mascot dog."

"Even if I was in an awkward position I was able to fall asleep. I was slowly drifting off into REM when I heard an electric whine. I looked down at the bot and remembered that it was autonomous and would leave the closet to clean the floor. If the door opened I would be exposed, and I couldn't go further into the closet. It was too cramped. I remember thinking fuck their going to tackle me and eat me. My biggest fear was they were going to do some kind of harvest.

What gave you that idea?

Cyprus, "They were collecting dead bodies. And I don't just mean dragging them around, I mean taking them off somewhere. Collecting, like preserving them."

"I heard the bot switch on, it was starting to smell like cleaning chemicals, bleach. I got a spike shot of adrenaline, the door opened. I could feel the bot bump into me as it was heading out. I was just standing there, frozen; damn thing gave me a push, like 'wake up asshole'. I bolted it for the main entrance. Three, or four, I forget, but a couple were standing in front of me. They all turned around at once and started coming towards me. I felt like I was a running back in a football game, only the touchdown was my life. I dodged one; another jumped the highest jump I have ever seen. I could tell it was going to land in front of me so I dashed to the side and avoided it. I was just running, I could feel them on my heels. I got out of the cryo room, ran down the main hall. There were dozens of them in the hall. It was all a whirlwind; I didn't know where I was going. I was in adrenaline overdrive, I ran up a staircase, my legs were tree trunks, my veins pumping acid, I ran until I found a derelict kitchen to hide in. I locked myself in a storeroom. And I didn't have to worry; it was full of food supplies to sustain me."

Private Wyler is in her fifth week of ODST training at Camp Preston

According to her profile she felt she was "tough enough to face anything, even becoming a Helljumper" after surviving the Gladiator incident.

Wyler, "Ten of us were armed up as we say. We had MA5B's, full body armor, I had a shotgun. We were on out way down to the cryo level, to respond to the call to repel borders down there. We had taken the stairs, as the elevators were slow. One flight above the deck maybe twenty crewmembers ran past us, a woman was screaming, two people were holding someone. Some of them were covered in blood. They rushed past us in a giant crowd, up the staircase. One of them looked back and yelled 'get out of here' really hysterically, like it was the apocalypse. Roger, our Fireteam leader told five of us to go after the crewmembers who had just ran past and try and calm them the hell down, and the other half to continue on. We split up, half going up, half going down. I don't know why Roger wanted half the squad to go after them, it seemed a bit excessive to me. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard a noise and a scream. I don't know what the noise was but the scream, the scream sounded like Roger. We never saw anyone who went down the stairs again."

"We found the group a deck above, huddled in a corner of this hallway. They were under a light, the rest of the hall was all dark, just black, I mean like pitch. When the five of us got there we realized there were maybe half of them missing, they must have run off somewhere else, like they were scattering. Martinez asked one of them what happened, what they saw. No one answered; they all seemed dazed, in shock. I remember thinking these were a bunch of crew who had been in countless naval battles with the Covenant, why would they be scared out of their wits over something like a boarding party, a situation they more than likely had faced before."

"I saw a woman was holding someone in her arms. The person the two were holding when they ran past. He was in the darkness; I couldn't really get a good look. I leaned in closer and saw that the guy's skin was…I still don't know how to describe it, it was not flesh colored, it wasn't normal."

Was it yellow?

Wyler, "I guess, it was pretty dark, plus I didn't look long enough and I don't remember. Anyways, I saw what looked like a stick jutting out from his arm, and I could tell the guy's head was cocked to an odd angle; there was a large bulge on his neck. Later, after we had fought them off an were in contact with everyone over the battle net, Dr. Kai described it as a goiter-like growth underneath the skin, the subcutis I think he said. I remember Dr. Kai's medical analysis, creepy stuff."

"That was when he reanimated, literally jumped to his feet. One moment he's rigor mortis, the next he's more animated then a cartoon. He raised his arm, the one with the stick poking out of it, and brought it down on the woman who had just a second ago been holding him. I got covered in her blood. I drew down with my shotgun and squeezed, firing blindly. The magnum blew the guy down. I couldn't see from the woman's blood but I could tell because I got sprayed again, the smell was horrid."

"We heard a noise from somewhere ahead, in the black. It sounded wet and reminded me of insects for some odd reason. Two of the people in the group jumped to their feet screaming. I was still shocked from shooting the guy and I rubbed my eyes so I could see. Davis who was farthest away vanished; something pulled him in to the dark. Martinez threw a flare and we got illumination. That was when they attacked, first the little pods scurrying across the ground. The remaining four of us opened up. It was a good thing they popped when you hit them, that killed more of them. Then the big ones came, like the guy I had shot. Martinez was swearing, he would shoot one but they would get right back up. I would have to pump them a second time. The shotgun worked the best. As soon as I ran dry, I dropped the M90 and pulled my M6D, that damn thing, one shot to the head and I tell you those things went down, that really did the trick. Martinez said we couldn't fight them off forever, we could hear more of them coming. He pulled the pin on a frag and lobbed it down the hall, by now the flare was dying and we were losing light. When I turned around I realized the crewmembers were already running. We took off after them, doing a two man tug fallback. These things were right on our heels. A frag in close quarters, my ears ring to this day."

"We eventually found a storage room that we locked up in with three people from the group of crewmembers. What happened to the others, I don't know. In their panic they just ran without a destination. How many people on that ship ended up like that, before they got transformed? Fear struck, running through a hallway with what used to be your pals now trying to rip you apart…"

At this Wyler ends the interview.

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