What Remains

"I have always been interested in the “little people” who are caught up in big events and whose stories are not usually told. Evelyn was a character I created on Meridian to show some of those effects in game – you can find her in audio logs, as well as some level VO – and I wanted to tell more of her story."

- Morgan Lockhart

What Remains is one of several short stories in Halo: Fractures: Extraordinary Tales from the Halo Canon. It follows Evelyn Collins as she and others try to survive on Meridian's glassed surface after the Guardian disabled the majority of their technology. It was written by Morgan Lockhart, who also contributed to the supplementary fiction in the Meridian levels of Halo 5: Guardians.

Plot synopsis
On the night of October 25, 2558, after her desperate call for help following the awakening of the Meridian Guardian, Evelyn Collins gathers supplies as she remembers how Governor Sloan had abandoned them in the middle of the evacuation. Reuniting with other survivors at the medical building, including Doc Cale and a settler named Marquez, Collins is confronted with the reality that not a lot of people might have survived the disaster.

The next day, as Collins and Cale talk over what just happened, Marquez expresses hope that even though they have no way of communicating with anyone else, someone might come for them, but Collins—still shell-shocked from the previous day—rebukes that hope. Later, as she scours what is left of Meridian Station in the hope of finding more supplies, Cale notes that the attacking Prometheans all disappeared when the Guardian took off, thinking that they are related in some way.

On October 27, an impending glass storm convinces Collins that they need to get off the planet as soon as they can, and she approaches Marquez to see if he can scrape together a transmitter from whatever they can find lying around. When Cale expresses apprehension at whether or not the plan can work, wanting to focus on surviving day-by-day, Collins convinces her friend by telling her of her own experiences of living on a glassed planet, having been on Meridian when it was destroyed by the Covenant ten years ago.

With the parts the women are able to scavenge, Marquez works late into the night, pushing his own injured body to build the makeshift transmitter as the storm rattles the shelter. Finishing the next morning, the transmitter picks up Cortana’s message to the galaxy, and out of desperation, Collins tells Marquez to accept it as “it’s better than dying here”. The story ends with Cortana’s reply, “All will be dealt with in time”, and the survivors of Meridian waiting “as the galaxy reshaped itself around them”.