Kane wasn't sure how long he stood there, but at some point, something came down in his head, like a steel door slamming shut, like an emergency seal coming into place during an atmospheric breach. And just like that, everything seemed to snap into focus. He could feel his terror, his sense of loss, his almost suicidal hopelessness, his anger, but it was all at a distance, compartmentalized and hidden from sight for the moment. Right now, in this moment, there was only his responsibility, his job, his duty to stop this threat.

He was the last one.

The lone survivor, the only one capable of finishing it.

Kane turned his attention to the screen Lara had been monitoring the region from. He saw no more energy signatures around him. Moving in closer, he scrutinized the information. There were five energy sources left on the screen, not counting the huge energy signal pulsing near the center of the map. The portal. His destination. Although he didn't know if one of these signals was Lara or not yet. Don't think about it.

For a moment, he was stymied, unsure of how to get the information to himself to keep track of the signals, the Proxies, and where they were presently located, to hunt him down. But then he realized that it didn't matter, because they were now in the endgame. They were going to come to him, they were going to have to, because he was now going to make his way to the Covenant camp and set the bombs and blow everything to hell.

And hope that it would somehow work.

It wasn't like he had any alternatives.

Kane took one last look around the room, realized that Lara had left her SMG behind when she'd been...don't think about it. He knelt and grabbed the SMG, bringing it along, telling himself that it was for the extra firepower but knowing that it was because it was the only thing left that had once been hers. He turned and jogged out of the base, almost wishing that some of the Proxies would show up, because he could use an excuse to fight right now. But no, responsibilities. Emotions would come later, if at all.

As he reached the exit, Kane skidded to a halt. The Warthog was ruined, a huge hole smashed directly through the engine block, smoke drifting up and into the rainy night. Didn't matter. He ran around from the vehicle, across the asphalt, and through the security perimeter. He didn't even need a nav marker to help him find his destination. It was obvious now: a great, pulsing shaft of light that shot into the sky from somewhere ahead, like a malignant beacon. He could find his way there easily enough, and then he'd blow it all to hell.

One final time, Kane ran headlong into the dark forest.

The first attack came ten minutes into his run.

He heard the rustle of foliage somewhere above him right before he threw himself to the right. This one didn't scream. It was another Elite and it crashed into the ground like a force of nature. He raised his SMG and squeezed the trigger, rattling off rounds before it had a chance to take a step. For a couple of seconds, it went against the tide of bullets, but then he aimed up, into its face, and blew half of its head off, and it collapsed.

Kane reloaded, turned, and started running again.

There was nothing else in his head at the moment, or he tried to believe that, anyway. He felt that way, mostly. Still, distantly, he could feel his emotions, could feel the enormity of them, just barely begin to get the edges of his loss, his horror, his agony, but something was helping him keep focused, some survival trait that was fully aware of the fact that if he let it all come crashing down on him, there was a very, very good chance that he'd just put his pistol in his mouth and, as they said, 'fire and forget'.

And he just couldn't do it, not yet, not with so many lives riding on him.

So he ran on, sprinting through the forest, dodging around trees and leaping over fallen logs, pain in his leg be damned. His whole body was just pain, so much that it almost began to cancel itself out, becoming a background buzz that he could ignore. A wave of static rolled across what was left of his HUD and Kane looked around as he hurried on. Caught sight of the Slender Man, a ways off to his right, bigger now, and somehow glowing with a dark, dead light, and its tentacles...they were extending from its body, reaching out, ensnaring reality around it.

And then it was gone in a blink.

He ran on another thirty seconds, caught another roll of static, saw the Slender Man off to his left, closer this time.

It was coming for him.

The game was coming to a close, the endgame, everything else having led up to this confrontation. Kane had no idea if he could win, if winning was even a possibility, but he'd rather go down swinging, and would if he had anything to say about it.

A burst of static overrode his HUD and suddenly the Slender Man was there, in front of him, in all its awful malignant glory. Kane screamed in surprised fear and jerked to the right, dodging around it, and kept running.

Just keep running.

Because there was nothing else he could do, no other method of combat he could use. There was no stopping the Slender Man in conventional means, it was obvious now. In a way, he supposed, it had been obvious from that very first glimpse he'd caught of the tall, mysterious figure, standing atop the quarry, staring down at him with no eyes, briefly back-lit by a brilliant arc of lightning. He had been staring at death then.

And now it was chasing him.

A Proxy stepped out into his path, another human, and he blasted at it with his shotgun, shooting it right off its feet and not even bothering to slow down, to see if it was dead. He couldn't stop now. The light was brighter, closer. That awful, malevolent, cancerous light. What was it doing? What did it want? Kane no longer truly cared. He could feel the weight of his responsibility crushing down on him, hoping, praying to a God he knew didn't exist that he somehow had the strength to complete this task. Even if it meant his death.

At this point, he hoped it meant that.

The light was closer than ever now, and suddenly he was through the woods. The Slender Man was nowhere around, or at least nowhere within sight, perhaps still toying with him. Well, if that was the case, then he would take advantage of it. Kane could see the Covenant camp clearly now, the metal structures bathed in that dark purple light, which almost overwhelmed his vision. He kept going, almost there now, almost there-

A single figure stepped out of the doorway he had been intending to go through.

Kane skidded to a halt, immediately recognizing the figure.

"No, please..." he whispered, and his sanity slipped a notch, the dam of his willpower and endurance threatening to break open and unleash the full horror of his situation upon him as cracks began to appear. "Please, don't Lara..." he groaned.

The thing that had once been Lara snarled and charged for him. Her helmet was missing and he could clearly see her pale face and her black, flinty eyes, utterly devoid of humanity and kindness, the caring he had seen there before many times. There was only darkness now. And she was coming right for him.

"Lara, stop!" he begged.

He tried, once, to raise his gun, to defend himself, but he couldn't. He simply couldn't. The Proxy that had been Lara crashed into him like a truck and he was sent flying. She leaped on top of him and wrapped her hands around his helmet, picked it up and slammed it into the ground. An explosion of white-hot pain burst inside of his skull. She did it again, and again, and still he couldn't bring himself to fight back against her.

For a few lingering seconds, he wanted her to just end it.

To just kill him.

But something in him struggled, and fought back, and when he pulled out his pistol, put the barrel of it to her chin, and squeezed the trigger, it wasn't for him. It wasn't for the mission. It wasn't for anyone but Lara.

Because if she were somehow still alive in there, if there was even one iota of her personality, her being, her soul, still alive inside that hollow shell, then he knew she simply could not endure the horror of her body being used to kill Kane, to stop him from saving everyone else. And even if there was nothing left of her in there, if she was truly dead, (at that moment, he hoped she was for mercy's sake), then he owed to her, the memory of her, to do this. To see it through to the end. When the round punched through the Proxy's skull, it stopped moving immediately and fell forward onto him. Blood leaked onto his visor.

A little bit of it got in through the cracks and dripped onto his face.

Kane carefully rolled her body off of him, laid her on the ground, looked briefly at her. He realized that he was crying.

He hadn't cried in years.

But none of this mattered now. Kane struggled to his feet and stalked off, staring determinedly at the entrance. He knew exactly where he wanted to go. On his way in when he'd been captured, he'd seen a room packed with fusion coils. The fact that the base wasn't leveled was enough proof that they must still be there, still be intact. He got into the base and began moving through the wrecked, derelict interior, lurching silently through the haunted corridors. Death had been visited onto this place, and something worse, and he could feel it on the air itself.

Some kind of almost psychic toxicity, something that could not be experienced by any of the traditional senses, but could be sensed nonetheless, perhaps by the soul, or the psyche. It was heavy on the air, smothering almost, the whole base covered in it. Kane took a right, passed through some kind of control room, followed another corridor to its end, and finally found what he was looking for. And he was correct.

They were still there, still intact.

Not for long.

He planted every last explosive he'd pulled out of Ross's suit, glad that he hadn't used them. It didn't feel like enough and actually planting and priming them barely took a minute, but it would have to be enough. He looked at the dozens of fusion coils, humming and pulsing gently. It would at least be enough to destroy this base.

Pulling out the detonator, he almost just punched it.

It would be a pretty painless way to go.

But no. Not yet. He had to see, he had to know, one way or the other. So he turned and retraced his steps, his boots echoing hollowly off the walls of the Covenant base. He thought it might be the loneliest sound he'd ever heard. As he stepped back outside, he saw that it was raining harder than ever now, pouring down.

Kane began jogging across the clearing, making for the treeline.

His HUD turned to static and he jerked to a halt, turned left, found himself staring up at the Slender Man itself, looming over him, pulsing with anger, positively radiating it, some kind of alien malevolence.

Kane didn't say anything, he simply raised the detonator, practically shoving in the Slender Man's lack of a face.

And pushed the button.

Voices in the darkness.

Kane could hear voices, but where was he? And what were they saying? Was he dead? God, he hoped so. Then again, he'd always been under the impression, (and had hoped), that there would just be nothing after death, that he would simply cease to be. So maybe he wasn't dead. And it wasn't so dark anymore, but gray.

And the voices were getting louder, clearer.

"He's still alive. God."

"Get his helmet off."

"His leg's definitely broken."

Grayer now, lighter, brighter. Kane felt pain pulsing through him. He tried to move, felt a wave of agony roll through him.

On the verge of passing out again.

But he had to see, to know.

Kane opened his eyes.

"Oh shit, he's awake."

He saw a face hovering over him, a bald man, frowning in deep concentration. "Don't worry," he said, "we've got you."

"Make way! Move!" Another voice, this one familiar. And then another face appeared over him. It was the Captain of the Winter's Edge. He was crouching down, and haloing his lined face was clear blue sky.

Kane reached up, gripped his collar. "Did I do it?" he croaked. "Is it dead?"

"You did it," the Captain replied, making no move to disengage from Kane. "I'm afraid you're the only survivor, Corporal Kane, but you did it. Whatever it was you did worked. The energy signals, all of them, are gone. There's no trace of them. Someone from ONI has shown up, and they're going to want to ask you a lot of questions, but I told him he could wait."

Kane was nodding, and let his hand fall away. "We did it," he whispered.

And the world faded to black one more time.