- Part Ten - "Well," said the Blighted Exo as he covered half his face with his hand, "There's no use concealing it now. The Blight... It needs Light to grow. Truly a remarkable weapon, do you not agree? To consume its only weakness, and then feed from the lack of it." The stranger cupped his hands around his eye, trying to contain the Darkness. "Take away that Light, however," he continued, as he removed his hands to show that the Blight had dissipated, "and the dark Flame gives way." He beckoned Mag to transmat him a new eyepatch, and then turned to Bardo-105: "I guess you've won yourself a few more answers, while I catch my breath." Bardo-105 looked around. The air was dark and damp, almost musty. The floor was littered with surgical disposables - blue drapes, tattered and torn, plastic bags ripped open, Mylar thermal blankets, radiation cover seam seals and several other instruments. Also blood. Darkened blood almost everywhere. A strong smell of ammonia lingered, probably for antiseptic purposes. The Hunter was also recovering from his wounds. Knowing himself, he knew he'd get more answers if he went straight to the point. Straight and personal. He groped for his jaw as he spoke. "So, you're clearly not just loitering here. What's in it for you?" "Ah," replied the stranger, as he let his head fall back slightly, "a cure. The Blight is more than a weapon. It's an epidemic." "A disease?" asked Bardo-105, with a genuine tone of curiosity. "A 'disease' is too broad a term. It's a plague and a scourge, but is not bacterial or a parasite - it's not alive." "So," asked the Hunter, "a virus?" "It doesn't exhibit any kind of replication cycle, or even a drive to do so... At first we thought it was sub-viral, like a viroid or a prion. I'm not entirely sure it's not the latter." "You mentioned 'we', who's 'we'?" Bardo-105 was sharp enough to know that slip was intentional. His doppelgnger was leading the interview. "We- I... I travel. A lot. From universe to universe, from timeline to timeline. My home no longer exists. It was Taken, and I almost went down with it. I've been doing this for ages, literally. I saw hundreds of universes die. Hundreds of times the Sun is Taken. Or the Traveler is, as makes no matter. We all die in the end. The more you chase the Light, the greater Shadow you cast. Living is merely bracing for your future - your unyielding doom, your inevitable death. That's why I run. A lot. It's ironic really." "Ironic that you can't save your universe?" "More than that," said the Blighted, "that I devote the rest of my life to find a cure for everyone and everything I have seen - and will keep seeing - dying in my arms. Over and over again, for millions of years. Even if I find a cure, what good is it, in a single universe? No. I must travel still, I must heal as many universes as I can." "Why not settle? Why not just cure one universe and live there forever?" The stranger sighed and looked to the floor. "Because you can't help but be enraptured by an universe. That's the [i]premise[/i]. You can't choose. Planescaping like this is hard. I only do it every century or so... You never know at which time a universe is. I've been to an Earth still boiling in methane. I've been to the Golden Age. I've seen the Sun die a thousand times. I want to go back to some. Others not so much. But I want to save them all from this dark Flame. That's the premise - Sadeski's dream." Bardo-105 caught another hint. "Sadeski, who is he?" "It's a she. Brilliant theorist. Awoken - one of the Queen's taps." "The Queen!?" The Hunter was surprised. The stranger simply nodded. "Mara Sov, Queen of the Reef!?" Bardo-105 just had to confirm one more time. "Yes," said the Blighted, "you see, there are some constants across all universes I've been to. War, madness, and death. The Traveler, the Queen, the Hive, you and me, Sadeski and her premise... Some things are [i]Destiny[/i], Guardian.." The Hunter took a moment to let it sink. It was all starting to make sense now - entropy is capable of forcing forks in spacetime... but only within bounded subsets. However infinite the possibilities were, no matter how big the multiverse was, everything that ever is, ever was, or ever will be can be traced back to a single point of origin, a genesiac singularity. "Did you ever meet Sadeski? Or... one of her?" Bardo-105 asked. "Yes," started the stranger, "it's thanks to her that my methods are increasingly accurate. I can now travel to the Dark Age more or less consistently, with some offsets. Sometimes I land in the City Age, sometimes half a century before. In this universe... I've seen it all. Mumbai overrun by Hive, London burned to the ground by the Devils, Germany besieged and ravaged... And likewise... I can never save her either. All I have to go on is her apprentice." "Who is she?" asked the Hunter. "It's a he. Svanur, he is called, a human. Oh, you've met him..." "That lunatic!?" Bardo-106 looked towards the door, as if he felt the men on the other side looking for him. "He... was not always like this," the stranger sighed again, "in every plane of existence he is eventually Taken. I've figured out how to capture him in varying degrees of infection. Sadeski and I perform our... studies on him. We have successfully removed all the pathogen from his body several times, but the mind... the mind never heals. Subjects are always catatonic at first. Docile, submissive even. But you can see it in their eyes. The madness, latent. While the madness is a constant, the trigger is unpredictable. I told her to not establish contact without me there... but Warlocks will be Warlocks." "So he was Taken and cured, but now a murderer... Why him of all people?" "Uh..." the Blighted Exo hesitated, "statistical validity. It's best if our subject remains as invariant as possible." Bardo-105 knew there was something he was hiding. So he decided to change the subject. "Why this of all places?" The stranger seemed to expect it, "Ever since Twilight Gap I have kept an eye on Lord Shaxx. I know he and Zavala have an history with this place... They had some illegal activity going on here. Someone tried to bribe Shaxx, so they demolished this place with an unsanctioned black op involving ten Titans, two of which were Shaxx and Zavala. They will deny all involvement, and try to coax Guardians into staying clear of the Western Frontier." It was harder to spot this time, because there was some truth to it, but the statement hid something as well. Bardo-105 was getting weary. "Fine. I believe you," the Guardian said, "what now?" "While we talked, Mag and your Ghost have been bonding - quantum entanglement, more precisely. It's entirely unobtrusive, you can check the code yourself. In fact, your Ghost agreed willingly. It's just some datamining, even if our paths diverge." "And what is this divergence?" "There's too many of us - of you and me - to know which will understand and which won't. I doubted you at first, but looking at your history... You've met her, the one you call the Exo Stranger, you shattered the Black Heart, and defeated Oryx. You are indeed interesting. You've gone a remarkable way on your own, I'll admit. But that only brings you closer to your doom. To Earthend." Bardo-105 crossed his arms. "What would you have me do, then?" "Join me," said the stranger as he made a fist with his left hand, "I know I'm close, but I need a bigger intellect, a bigger genius! The Vex hold the answer!" "The Vex?" The Hunter could tell the Blighted Exo was agitated, as he paced around the room. "Yes, the Vex. Why do the Vex thrive? Their minds, hiveminds! The processing power of a planet at their disposal. But they cannot cure themselves, can they? They lack the creativity to find an active countermeasure, and are eventually and consistently Taken. And we know what their solution is... Quarantine, on a massive supraspatial scale. You've seen it, the End of the Vex, where they go to die! Do you have any idea of what that means to us!? Husk-class Exos like us will be captured, memory-wiped and auctioned to humans in hopes of delaying their bodily decay to the dark Flame!" Bardo-105 thought the Exo had suddenly gone mad, but he let him go on. "Can't you see?" the stranger continued, walking towards him, "without a solid cure this plague will still destroy us. As it did the Vex, as it does, as it will do, as it will have done! Forever. Now imagine..." He now stood in front of Bardo-105, and his messer materialized in his hands, still in its scabbard. "...imagine the joint processing power of a thousand us! We would be the greatest intellect, we would find the cure!" The stranger went to his knees, and holding the sword by its scabbard, showed the hilt to Bardo-105. "I trust you Guardian," said the Blighted as he beckoned the Hunter, "pledge your mind to me. Let us form a hivemind as well! We are machines after all... We shall travel to more and more universes - assimilate more and more of us! Take this sword, Hunter. Take it and partake in union, or leave this place and face Earthend... [i]Your move, vagrant.[/i]"