Halo Lighting System First Strike Games - Manual (Page 149)

ERIC NYLUND 145
circles and bars and triangles. If the symbols were a language,
Fred stood upon a million words; he wished he'd been issued a
dictionary.
Dr. Halsey paused to examine the tiles as well. "If only we had
the time," she muttered, and then walked toward the light gleam-
ing in the center of the chamber.
The Spartans formed up around the doctor again, but Fred's
instincts warned him that this wasn't a good idea. He couldn't
get his bearings straight. The room was big, large enough that it
felt as if they were outside. It threw him off. He had an odd sense of
vertigo, almost as if the floor was tilting and he was now walking
on the roof.
Dr. Halsey increased her pace, but the distance to the center of
the room didn't seem any closer; in fact, they seemed more dis-
tant from the center than when they had started out from the
edge of the room.
Fred turned down the gain on his display until everything was
a faint black-and-white blur. He focused on his motion tracker
and saw that the Spartans and Dr. Halsey were now separated
across two dozen meters.
"Everyone stop," he said. "Regroup. We're getting scattered."
They halted and edged back into formation.
"There must be another way," Dr. Halsey said. She reached
into her lab coat pocket and removed a ball bearing. "The floor
slopes toward the center," she observed. She set the bearing on
the floor and gave it a gentle push. The bearing rolled, then
curved, and spiraled back to a stop.
"This is getting too weird," Fred muttered. "Kelly, you have
the best aim. Close your eyes, pick a direction, and we'll follow."
"... Affirmative," she whispered.
The Spartans set their hands on each other's shoulders and
marched, not toward the center of the room but to a spot that
Kelly picked, apparently back the way they had come.
Fred turned off his display and watched his motion tracker.
They were all together and another blip appeared, one that Kelly
was leading them straight to.
Another twenty meters and she halted. "Look."
Fred snapped on his heads-up display, and sapphire-blue light
filled his vision. They stood before the source of the glow in the