Binary

It has been said that "in space, no one can hear you scream". And though it was said as a tagline to an old sci-fi/horror film, it was very apt. And it would be true, if only on a technical level. In the cold vacuum of space, sound has no place. But such a simplistic vision of what a scream can be cannot persist, if only because if someone were exposed to space in such a way that they could scream they very quickly wouldn't be able to.

But besides that, there are so many other ways to scream.

The inhabitants of a space-station, for example, would certainly scream out desperate pleas for rescue from silent ruins across every wavelength they could transmit even as their oxygen ran out and they slowly suffocated to death.

Ancient, decrepit satellites would endlessly scream a mantra of propaganda to a nation that no longer existed until their orbit decayed and they slowly fell to earth, where they would instead scream for maintenance.

Men and women would scream is horror as they witnessed a blinding light in the distance before being ripped apart by a blast of burning air.

All across the scarred face of Earth, radio towers would briefly scream out terrified accounts of what was happening before they were snuffed out by the thunderous roar of shockwaves and nuclear fire.

When Armageddon rains down from the skies, there is most assuredly a great deal of screaming involved. It continued long after the irradiated dust had settled, in fact.

Further, these screams would reach far further than anything that the mundane variety could ever hope for. They would echo across they smooth, icy surfaces of Europa, bounce through the rings of Saturn, or disappear into the vast void beyond the solar system. They would ripple outwards in all directions until their coherence was destroyed by the light of a thousand suns.

That is, if they weren't snuffed out by the flare of a nuclear explosion. Or maybe a few hundred, applied liberally across a planet's surface.

But still, imagine it: long after your death, your voice might still be heard a thousand years later. Even if it was only as static, a small part of your terror would live on as a scream echoing amongst the stars.

Forever.

Those of a morbidly philosophical nature might then take it upon themselves to build upon that most ancient of sage musings: if a world falls in the middle of nowhere, does anyone ever hear it?

And because the screams of whole civilizations never really die, the answer is 'yes'.

What was important, then, was how long it would take.

Because war...

...War never changes.

"Oh keelah," the communications officer of the Idenna whispered in mute horror at the readings that appeared on his terminal.

"What is it, Han?" the captain, Lien'Vael, asked with some concern.

"T, this planet isn't dead," Han'Mani stuttered, sounding mortified at the prospect.

This was enough to cause everyone on the bridge to stop what their analysis and look over at the pilot in alarm.

It had been a week since they had entered the system in search of new resources for the main fleet to take advantage of

"What do you mean, "It isn't dead"?" Lien repeated slowly. "The radiation on this rock is worse than that of Tuchanka, and Sae tells me that there has been at least a century's worth of decay! I find it hard to believe that there are two species with such a ridiculous resilience."

"Oh, the radiation is still there, captain," Han'Mani agreed. "But- well, there's too much radio chatter across too many wavelengths going on for the planet to be dormant. Primitive, certainly. But not dead."

Lien'Vael frowned thoughtfully as she reluctantly considered implications of this.

It had been a few weeks since the Idenna had found the small probe drifting out in the middle of nowhere blaring radio signals without regard for who might pick them up. And, after lengthy inspection from the ship's rather modest science division, a set of coordinates had been divined that handily matched up with that of a nearby, if disused, mass relay.

A few jumps later, and they'd happened upon a planet that had long ago been ravaged by nuclear fire. Which wasn't an altogether disappointing development: while they had hoped to find potential trade partners, picking through the ruins of a dead civilization would likely prove to be much more valuable than a fledgling space society: the dead seldom minded when their riches were taken.

"Yes?" she said doubtfully. "And can you decipher any of it? Can you tell if it's not just a recording on repeat, or just a malfunction of some kind?"

"Of course not, captain," Han'Mani shook his head and shrugged. "But it doesn't sound like any recording I've ever heard. It's too... well, animated. Here, listen for yourself."

"Welcome back to Galaxy News Radio, and this is Thuuurrrrrrrrr-reeeeee Daa-awg! And I'm here to give you the latest and greatest about the wasteland, boys and ghouls! And it's a glorious new day in the capitol wasteland, let me tell you! Clean water, green trees and peace on Earth! What could be better? Oh, I know! Stories about the wild, wild west!"

The chatter was incomprehensible, but there was no mistaking the sound of speech. There were far too many structured modulations of sound, and a kind of melodic quality that belied itself as such.

But this was not enough to be certain.

"..." Lien said, nonplussed at what she was hearing. "This is gibberish, and proves nothing. There's no guarantee that the signal isn't on loop from a broadcast station that didn't get hit."

"More and more, we've been hearing rumours of war from traders and refugees: apparently the biggest battle since the Big One has taken place at the Hoover Dam, whatever that is. Word from our friends in the Brotherhood of Steel is that we can expect refugees and mercenaries to start leaving the region soon. If they're desperate enough, they might even make their way over here. So people: let's all be sensible, but try to follow 101's example. Be careful, but if you see someone with dire need, don't be afraid to do the right th-"

"Would you turn that nonsense off when I'm talking to you, please?" Lien snapped at Han severely, and behind her faceplate she glowered at Han. "I am your captain, not some random passerby!"

"Apologies, captain," Han'Mani said, embarrassed to be called out like that. He pushed a button on the display, and the signal was silenced. "But the transmission at least merits further investigation, does it not?"

The captain of the Idenna stood motionless, but her silence was telling. It was quite possible that they hadn't come across a dead world, but merely a dying one. Or maybe not even that, if Han was right and the transmission wasn't a recording. Whatever had ravaged this world might still be there, living in the ruins of their own creation.

She wondered briefly what kind of creature would be able to manage surviving through a nuclear holocaust. Or even an even more disturbing thought: that they had actively prepared for it. It was one thing to bring about the end of the world, and quite another to plan on it.

But a whole planet, scarred as it was by the legacy of its inhabitants, was a potential resource that could not be ignored.

"We'll have to make planetfall eventually," she said at last. "If only to send out a ground team to confirm the surface conditions and what to expect if the admiralty choose to take advantage of the planet."

She tapped her foot against the ground in irritation as she considered what to do.

"I suppose we could do it sooner rather than later," she turned to address the bridge as a whole. "Prepare a ground team to look for a likely landing sight. Tell them to keep a lookout for settlements, and that they are to report anything they find the moment they find it. This planet might be a ruin, but there might still be something living in it. Let's be quick about this! And someone tell Sae to get the labs and med-bay ready for anything!"

As the captain of the ship continued barking out orders, Han'Mani quietly returned to listening in on the radio transmission.

"- Mae West you like, or me undressed you like, why nobody will oppose-"

"I really hope this isn't some kind of weird propaganda," Han mumbled, and began tapping his fingers in time to the beat of the song. "The music is kind of catchy."

"-truding in nudist parties in studios, anything goes!"

John Shepard was eleven years old, and he was dying.

There was no way around it.

Not with a bullet in his side and a limp in his leg that he wouldn't be able to walk off.

Not with the feral but cowardly dogs baying at the moon behind him as they followed the scent of his blood, or the quiet scittering of chitinous segments that he hoped were ants and not the terrifying scorpions, or the hundreds of other sounds that would make his death an imminent reality if he did not keep ahead of or away from.

Not with the chill of night sinking into his body, though thankfully that brought with it a soothing numbness against the agony he was in. Better to be cold than to feel the full extent of his pain.

Not with everyone in he had ever known long gone, dead or wearing a collar.

But at least he wouldn't starve. That much, at least, was something to treasure.

He'd seen a starving man, once. It was inevitable, really: living the nomadic life of the caravan, he spent a lot of time on the broken roads of America. Corpses, both new and old, were not uncommon sights. And every so often they come across whose luck had just about run out. Most of the times they simply hadn't prepared well enough. After all, it was one thing to survive in the ruins of a city or even in the nearby wilderness, and quite another to walk hundreds of miles across hostile terrain.

They'd found him sitting in the middle of the road, propped up by his bulging pack of supplies. Hollow eyes stared at them without an ounce of recognition as they approached. In his hands he clutched a plastic bottle of the clearest water John had ever seen, and many other such bottles scattered all around the man, both full and empty.

And more in his pack.

He'd likely stocked up on clean water for the trip, but thought he could forage enough food on his own. A foolishly dangerous notion: every time he strayed from the road into the wilderness he'd risk getting lost or attacked.

The man tried to drink from it, but his hands and arms were too weak and withered to lift it all the way to his lips. It had fallen from his grasp and rolled away, spilling its contents on the ground.

John's father had whispered a quiet prayer to a nameless god before he'd slit the man's throat.

And then he'd taken the water from the man's pack.

"There was no saving him," his father had rationalized afterwards. "Even if we could spare enough supplies to feed him. He'd been out in the sun too long. It was a mercy we were there to stop his suffering."

That was the part that stuck with him the longest.

He'd had nightmares about it for weeks afterwards, imagining himself as an emaciated husk of his former self, his ruined body too weak to do anything but pant for breath and hope that someone more charitable but less merciful than his father would find him.

It was his greatest fear

No, he wasn't going to starve. From this knowledge, he drew strength.

He'd die and be eaten long before that ever became a danger. And hopefully it would happen in that order.

But until then, he moved away from the rising sun.

West, towards the ocean.

He didn't quite certain why he was going there of all places, but it was best to always have a destination in mind in times of desperation. Something to look forward, a point in the future that was distinct from the present in that he wouldn't be dying. And his mother had shown him a map once, a picture of the whole world. That had been an eye-opening experience: to see that everywhere he knew, every place he had ever been or seen on the horizon, was such of small part of that map when compared to its entirety. A world that consisted mainly of places he could never even dream of seeing. And when he had asked what the huge blue parts were, he'd been told that it was all water. Miles upon miles of water. Water without end.

At the time, his mother had laughed and made an offhand comment about that being something worth seeing before she died.

John, eleven years old with a bullet in his side and limp in his leg, had decided she was right and that now was probably better than later.

He blinked hard in an effort to stop them burning from the fatigue that was growing with each passing moment. He had been moving through the wasteland for days without any rest, so great had his terror of the raiders been. But his fear of them had long ago left him. Now the only thing that was driving him forward was his frail hope that somehow the cruel mechanics of fate and chance would now work in his favour.

So.

Focus.

One foot in front of the other, again. And again, ignoring the jolt of pain that surged through his leg as he put his weight on it. Again.

The dogs cried out again, closer this time. Much closer. They couldn't be very far away, now.

Faster.

He forced himself to lurch forward with renewed vigour that came from terror-infused focus.

It was a bad mix, which became readily apparent as soon as his burning eyes missed a particularly resilient root that tripped him up and caused him to tumble forward into an undignified heap. The sudden spill sent fresh waves of pain through him so severe that he cried out.

Much to his dismay, something heard him.

With a low growl a dog charged out of the gloom, and in the light of the moon John saw only a dark shape as it clamped down on one of his feet, and it was only through sheer dumb luck that the boy had been wearing his too-big boots when he had fled that saved him from having his ankle torn apart. Instead, it worried at the thick leather uselessly, growling ferociously as it grew more excited at the prospect of an easy meal.

He lashed out with his other foot, kicking it had in the side of its muzzle. It squealed sharply with surprise and pain, letting go of him in order to do so.

The moment he was free he scrambled to get his feet back under him, the vulnerability of his situation lending him a desperate haste. Starving was bad, but being eaten alive by wild dogs was a maybe a close second.

He rolled onto his belly, and just as he got to his knees the snarling dog leaped at him yet again. It bit into his thigh, and this time Shepard wasn't so lucky: the dog's teeth, dull though they might have been, easily tore through the worn cloth of Shepard's ancient pants and deep into his thigh.

The boy cried out in pain yet again, but wasted no time in throwing himself heavily backwards towards the dog, twisting around to aim an elbow at its neck. The movement tore deep gouges into his thigh as he wrenched it out the dog's maw, and though his intended blow didn't seem to do much he did hear a very satisfying snap as he fell on top of the beast. It yelped with pain yet again, and realized that Shepard was putting up too much of a fight for its tastes. It rolled out from underneath Shepard and loped out into the night, noticeably off-cadence.

But before he could savour this minor victory there came another growl from behind him, and then he felt teeth biting deep into his shoulder. It twisted and tugged and tore, pulling his arm from its socket as it did. The exquisite pain surging through him pierced through the haze of his adrenaline rush, and it maddened him. He'd been living with pain for days now, and that had been enough to dull it a bit. But all of the sudden movements caused the bullet in his side to move. The relatively old wound was torn open once again.

Without full awareness of what he was doing he tried to slap the beast away with his free hand. But somehow in the brief not-even seconds it took for him to do so his fingers rebelled, and instead of striking the dog's head they found their way into its eye.

It was a lot more tougher going than he'd ever expected it to be, and though his own revulsion at the concept of maiming a creature's sight initially stopped him from putting all his weight into it he quickly abandoned all empathy for the dog when it merely scrunched its eyes closed and began tearing at him ever more fiercely. He forced his fingers through its eyelids, and tried not to think about what it might feel like for someone to reach into his eye-socket with the intent of tearing something out.

The dog clenched down harder as its eye was destroyed, and Shepard's mind went blank. It was as if the pain had pressed all rational thought out of him, leaving only a desperate need to survive.

He was aware that his body was moving, certainly. He was aware of the struggle against the dog's attack even as another's teeth found some new vulnerable spot. He was aware of screaming, of warm wetness in his hands, of cracking bone and tearing flesh and then terrible silence.

But he was mostly aware of pain.

It remained with him as he slowly regained his senses and found himself hunched over the prone body of a dog, pounding at its ruined skull with a hand that had been cut by shattered bone as blood rushed in his ears. His breath was coming out heavy and ragged, seemingly hampered by the hammering of his own heart.

But he could still hear growling. He could still see slowly moving shapes, dim reflections of the moonlight.

But in that moment, he was still alive. A strange euphoria passed over him, and despite knowing that his survival was only temporary he found himself laughing. A wild, savage laughter that shattered the silence of the darkened wasteland.

Without warning, the wild dogs fled back into the night. Shepard heard their retreating stride over his own laughter, which only caused him to laugh harder despite the pain it caused him.

As he basked in the glow of survival, with blood seeming to ooze from every part of him, Shepard thought that the dogs had fled from him. That somehow, in his perfect berserker madness, he had become more of a beast than they were willing to contend with. But as the roar of blood in his ears faded, he became aware of a different kind of roar: that of engines and rushing air.

Light flooded down from above, and instinctively Shepard turned to look at the source. He immediately regretted it, as the searchlights from a Quarian surface vehicle nearly blinded him. With a yelp of surprise he averted his gaze and covered his eyes with his one good arm.

Already unbalanced, he quickly fell onto his rump.

He heard the roar grow closer and louder by the second, and he half-expected the sound to be abruptly cut off as the strange ship landed on him. It would certainly suit his luck so far.

But no, it touched ground some distance away, kicking up wind and dust as its thrusters flared suddenly in order to ensure a soft landing.

It was only when the roaring finally stopped that he felt it safe to try and look again. This time, however, he gave his eyes time to adjust.

The ship didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. He'd seen vertibird's once, many years ago: his parents had been conducting a trading mission to a New California Republic outpost, and it had taken him by surprise to see something so huge zipping through the air. But even so, they had had a certain... grace to them, as if flying were the most natural thing in the world for them to do.

The thing in front of him looked like nothing so much as a brick. A flying brick with bits sticking out on the bottom and the back. A flying brick with extra bits and what looked like a series of patchwork repairs along all of it. If Frankenstein's monster could have been an aircraft, that was what it would look like.

A panel slid back, and in the dark of night it seemed as if blinding light issued forth from it

They looked human. Human-ish. Mostly. They seemed too slender, too thin. And though he couldn't tell very well with the bad lighting, he thought that he could see a few unnatural curves in them. Limbs in the wrong shape.

They seemed to spot him, and after a quick discussion between themselves that he couldn't hear they trotted up to him. More half-seen details became apparent to him as he watched them with mounting alarm. He could see no features where their faces should be: only the dull, smooth surface of plastic. Strange feet that were completely alien from any human's. Alien hands.

Fear tore into him, and even though he was freezing and weak and half-dead, Shepard forced himself to rise to his feet and try to run. He made it only a few lurching steps before what little strength he had left failed him

"No!" he cried out through the pain, and with one hand he tried desperately to drag himself away from the alien creatures.

As gentle but firm hands steadied him and soothing but incomprehensible words were spoken, John Shepard couldn't stand it any longer.

He laughed again, a wild and desperate bray that would eventually change to sobs as he realized that they weren't hurting him.

As they gently picked him up and carried him to their strange, alien ship, the fatigue of his long journey finally caught up to him. He welcomed darkness.

AN: Hello there, thralls. Hope you enjoyed the beginning of this story, as there will be maybe 2-3 more chapters. And then it's done. Unless someone else wants to run with it. Which they are welcome to do. When I'm done.

If you're a fan of Rogue Nation and you're wondering wtf I'm doing starting another ME story while I'm months late on that, consider this to be me getting back into a sci-fi groove. The next chapter is coming.

That said, do tell me what you thought! Give me your reviews, your favourites and your follows!