Dr. Krill sat in his office on board the ship. It was dark, and silent. He was sure, on the outside of the ship, where they were stationed on the Andromeda hub, that that was not the case, but here, inside the ship under his UV light, all was silent.

His office was immaculate as usual, perfectly organized for optimal efficiency as all of his tools and possessions were. Everything was in its place, and ever place was perfect. All except for one item.

The file folder.

It sat on his desk under the florescent lighting. There was nothing special about this particular file folder. Other than the fact that it was, in hard copy, like many things weren't these days.

It was a light cream in color, and much thicker than your average file folder. On the desk next to it sat a small stack of little back microdisks that held what amounted to thousands and thousands of hours of recordings.

Krill had never opened this file.

He had made a promise to himself never to give in to the temptation that was reading and researching what the crazy Gibb scientist had left behind.

He paused in his thought process for a moment.

Crazy.... Was he really crazy? Usually that was a word associated with people who are wrong, but it seems that..... Dr, Kedd had been onto soemthing.

Dr Krill glanced down at the file folder, and the small white label neatly pinned to the front.

Dr Kedd

It had been years since they had been involved with the little scientist, and from what little research Krill had managed to do, he had learned that Dr. Kedd had been on the original medical team that examined humans when they were first introduced into the galaxy. It was his work that adorned the pages of those first preliminary textbooks and scientific papers that Krill had read on humans when he first stepped foot aboard the harbinger. Ironically, in a strange twist of fate, that information was based primarily on the first ever human to allow himself to be fully examined.

Which just so happened to be the same human that Dr. Krill would base much of his own work off of later in his career.

Adam Vir.

It seemed as if their lives had been more intertwined than originally thought. Dr, Krill had admired Dr. Kedd's work at one point, and even corresponded with him on several occasions for advice regarding his research on humans. It was only later did they learn that the good doctor was actually preforming sadistic and unethical studies on humans after a psychotic break, wherein he had become obsessed with the idea of a human soul.

Finding it

Proving its reality

And who knew what else.

Dr. krill sighed as he reached a hand out for the folder.

How strange was it to think that..... now they knew the truth. That Dr. Kedd, in small part, had NOT been wrong.

There was indeed a soul.

Or the anima as it had come to be known. As right as Dr. kedd had been about humans, he didn't know the half of it. As it would seem every species In their known galaxy was some sort of constructed blueprint designed by beings that called themselves only the "makers" in order to house a soul at different power levels.

Ironically it was this fact that probably caused Dr. Kedd's psychological break, which was referred to within these alien documents and Locus degradation resulting from power erosion, or, from what doctor Krill could tell meant, the Anima was too powerful for the construct resulting in a failure of the locus (or cortical) structure.

This was apparently a quite common problem across most species.

Krill lead down and rubbed his head with his hands trying to message the thoughts that were running rampant in his mind.

So many things had changed over the past few days.

His entire understanding of the universe and his place in it had been upended. People like Adam had taken such a revelation in stride as just another mystery to be solved, but to people like Krill and Maverick, these things had defined a dogmatic shift in their perceptions of the world. Maverick was religious, krill was not, and both of them were finding these new revelations to be.... More than shocking.

When the UNSC had originally discovered aliens, they had been quick to alert the civilian population, but as the fact s of their universe, the facts of creation itself were coming to light, they had now chosen to keep that information under lock and key. Such a paradigm shift if their understanding of the universe would be catastrophic likely resulting in war as both scientific and religious minds were likely to rebel against proof that went against both versions of the story.

No one was right.

Everyone was wrong.

Everything was in question.

Dr Krill flipped open the first page of the folder and inside he found a short typed note that he had not read in years.

To Dr. krill

I hope you find this research useful now that I can no longer continue. And just remember, there is something in the eye of a human that should not be there.

Maybe one day you will find the answer.

Dr. Kedd

Dr krill shivered reading those words again, and almost shut the file before forcing himself to continue. It was hard to accept that the doctor had been right. Information that was slowly leaking in from the stenographers at the Polaris Archive had indicated that Ocular diffusion was common in certain in certain constructs, primarily those that used a structure reliant on some variation of the iris and the pupil, these primarily being Drev and humans.

Ocular diffusion came as a result of the Anima being reflected in the eye itself, and resulted in a phenomena that humans and Drev could claim to see. A phenomena that was so characteristic in humans that they had common phrases for it.

A twinkle in the eye.

Saw the light fade from his eyes.

Her eyes were bright.

The list could have gone on, but he was too overwhelmed at that moment to even consider what he was seeing. For once, in all his time aboard a human ship, it had come to light that he was not simply on the outside looking in. Dr. krill was not stupid, and listening to the transcripts he had recognized the Vrul, had recognized their speech about deus, the highest power Anima, and how it could cause isolation, aggression, and non species conformity in Vrul.

He knew what he was.

Deep down.

He was no different from a human, other than the container he came in.

He had to shake that thought away in order to focus, and turned the next page In the document, reading over lines and lines of crazed babbling as the Gibb claimed to be able to see spirits.

It was an interesting dive into the mind of a scientist who was slowly slipping into madness, or experiencing locus degradation, as they had come to know it as.

The writings started out relatively sane and quite interesting. The doctor had been as interested in humans as Krill had and so had hired a few of them on for paid experiments mostly focusing on anatomy in order to determine what made humans so special in comparison to their other alien counterparts.

Looking through his notes, he had done studies on hands and feet, and the ability to jump, and the contents of spit, and even the working of the eye.

It was within the contents of this last paper that krill noticed something strange, likely his first glimpse into the beginnings of Dr. kedd's psychological downfall.

On at least two different occasions, with two different subjects, he had noted a strange "quality about the iris." That he could not place and could not describe . The notes were simply there in passing, though it looked like he had come back during a later time and highlighted those particular passages.

Similar notes dotted the following papers, though, alone, they would have seemed pretty innocuous.

It was only after an unfortunate accident on the trade planet of A!-36 did Krill see a rapid deterioration in his psychological well being.

The catalyst for this sudden spike had been the death of one of Dr. Kedd's human assistants, who had fallen prey to an unfortunate issue with improper electrical wiring and had been electrocuted to death within Dr kedd's laboratory.

In his account of the event, Dr Kedd described the violent way in which the human had died, hand clamping around the offending wire, unable to remove his hand, twitching violently and smoking as the unbelievable amount of power had coursed through him. In this retelling Dr. Kedd swore that he had seen soemthing leave the human's body at some point, though his greatest emphasis was on the eyes, which he claimed, were "empty of that certain soemthing characterizing a live human which means that something was lost in death that cannot be accounted for by physical factors."

This had been the moment, Krill assumed, where the locus had snapped.

A traumatic even had triggered a psychological break in the doctor.

Or the traumatic even had triggered a surge in power through the Anima, which had sped up the slow degradation of the locus resulting in the psychological break. Either way you said it, that moment had been the catalyst for his research, which grew ever more disturbing as they went forward.

Enucleation (or the careful removal of eyes) was a common theme in his research.

It was a difficult account to read, as it detailed medical experiments that were little more than torture, and made krill's stomach churn. He had to put down the folders on more than one occasion to take a turn around his office and reset his mind for another look.

It was a very interesting read of course, but that was another thing that disturbed krill.

The fact that he could find soemthing like that interesting and not simply revolting.

There was, one passage of course, that he found very interesting.

A passage which talked about his work with the Moor, an alien species that had supposedly gone extinct thousands of years ago, but that he had found the last remaining survivor. The moor claimed the ability to see the Anima as it was leaving the body, and detailed that all of the Anima went in the same direction once their ties were severed with the construct.

It was at this revelation that brought Krill to a passage from the files on the Eden project.

"In an attempt to house the Deus, we created a prototype construct with a simple design idea. We tightened the housing restrictions on the motor hub and the vestiges, and allowed for higher power output from the locus. Originally, we saw no issue with the design and it was allowed into the trial period before being phased out as this power leak from the head resulted in them being able to detect anima on a semi-regular basis. This unfortunate fact leaving the Anima more vulnerable to detection than our other prototypes.

Eventually the trail period was over and the prototype was retired. Eventually the construct was phased out with targeted viral spiking intended to target the reproductive system.

Despite this, we are worried that this trial period may have been enough to alert unwanted parties to our research.

We are.... Unsure if the Anima are safe.

It is to early to be sure."

Dr Krill took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair before opening a star map and taking a look in the precise direction that the Anima were said to have traveled, as far as he saw there was nothing there that he might have considered special. They just vanished in a seemingly random direction, though the fact that all of them went in the same direction said something to Krill.

He stood from his desk, tucking the file under one arm and scuttled down the hallway towards the Admiral's office.

He found the man sitting at his desk, head resting in his hands as he rubbed his temples.

Krill would never have mentioned it, but despite his age, he was beginning to see a dusting of white hair at the young man's temples, likely as a result of the stress of his job turning him grey, or in this case white, early in life.

Adam lifted his head as soon as he heard Krill step inside and leaned back in his chair.

"Any news?" Krill wondered.

Adam barked a soft laugh, "Too much news. the..... specimen.... Has been reported on all of the major planets within the Polaris axis. Lord Celex, my father, Hijan, all reporting sightings of the object. The Leviathan is in, stable condition but almost completely comatose, they are trying to rig up gravity belts big enough to lift him out of the water, but for now they are having to work with what they have. Maverick has her hands full with.... Dealing with crisis of faith all over the crew, which is sort of to be expected. Then I have been trying to keep up on reports filtering in from the Polaris archive which is only adding more and more confusion to this entire thing."

"And the Behemoth?"

"Luckily they have seen no activity in the Void, but that doesn't mean that nothing happened, they are keeping a lookout for any sign of activity, as well as any sign of the second space dragon. I doubt that it will be a good thing when Smaug wakes up and notices her missing."

There was silence between them.

"if he wakes up." Krill said softly

Adam sighed and nodded, "If...." They sad awkwardly for a moment, "And you, have you found anything?"

Krill sighed, "Nothing new, just.... Just more of an explanation, and maybe.... Maybe one thing."

He showed Adam what he had found and Adam nodded, "So, we know the general direction to.... Where? Where people go when they are dead? To where the Makers are?"

Krill shrugged, "That I cannot say."

Adam continued to rub his temples and shook his head, finally looking up at Krill with an eye bloodshot with ack of sleep and ringed with bruise like purple blue bags, "I feel like I'm drowning krill. Everything seems like it's collapsing. My entire understanding of the universe just caving in, caving in on everyone and I have to hold it together."

Krill listened sympathetically to the man as he spoke.

"I understand..."

"I don't know what to do."

Dr Krill reached out a hand lying it over that of his friend, "You'll figure it out, but for now you should sleep. You aren't any use to anyone when you aren't thinking clearly."

He gave a soft smile, "Wouldn't want to ruin my construct."

The two of them laughed, though it was more out of discomfort than it was amusement.

"I suppose not."

Adam stood and walked to the door pausing with his hand on the doorframe, "Krill...."

"Yes sir?"

"Did it escape our notice that.... All of the people who have come in contact with the specimen.... Have been people I am directly involved with?"

It had crossed Krill's mind, but not seriously.

"I suppose I did notice."

He sighed.

"I can't help but be worried that all of this is my fault....."

Before Krill could offer an argument, Adam stepped from the room, leaving him to stand alone and stare at the wall of pictures and recommendations on the office wall.

Accomplishments that used to seem so big, were now so, very, very small.