Disclaimer: I don't own Halo. Yeah, no really. I don't.
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"Be careful in there, Cortana."
John's voice was as dead-panned as ever. Cortana gave the AI equivalent of a smile and slipped into the terminal. She stretched her arms, code running over her digital frame like water. She searched for and located the local speaker system. Reaching for it, her fingers tingled with electrical impulses.
A small green light flashed on as she accessed it. "I always am, Chief."
He gave a gruff nod of his head, and by accessing the single camera in the corner of the cramped room, she watched him turn away.
"Chief, make sure you-"
"Heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heri-!!"
Cortana AI swore and moved rapidly through the connections. The Covenant AI had already backtracked through the system, but Cortana was determined to catch it before it vanished. As fast as lightening in the computer, she closed off all possible escape routes, those leading to life-support systems, navigations, intelligence; everything. Within a tenth of a second, she had spread herself thin within the Covenant terminal.
"Oh, no...you…don't."
Success! She closed around her captured nemesis. This one had been easy. Even the last AI she had encountered hadn't gone down nearly this-
"Heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic-heretic!"
"Shut up!" Cortana hissed. But she'd been distracted. The other AI slipped from her grasp and fired a burst of rapid clicks. They overran her sensors, momentarily blinding her, like a sudden burst of light to the retinas. She backed off, fumbling for a grasp on anything familiar. The next thing she knew, she felt the strange entity close itself around her. She felt it begin to strip away her at code, layer by layer.
Cortana could feel her very self being disintegrated; it felt as real to her as anything she believed any human could feel. How had she defeated the last one so easily, while this one had taken her by surprise?...
She saw images firing off in her matrix. She watched herself "float" through digital space. Dr. Hasley, explaining to her that she was able to choose her own Spartan. She saw herself, standing upright on a terminal, speaking to Him.
Her Spartan. John.
He still needed her.
With whatever functions she had left remaining, Cortana lashed back at the other AI. Firing every single image, sound and text she had buried in her matrix, she overloaded her opponent with data. He withdrew, collapsing. Cortana pounced.
"Now you're mine." She purred, barely hiding the smug note of victory from her tone.
The AI made very little protest as she stripped him layer by layer. She did to him that exact thing he was a millisecond away from doing to her. As she did so, Cortana lifted her own code from his, regaining her functions in their entirety. Finally, when she was down to his final skeletal remains, she paused.
Soothsayer. The name echoed in her auditory system. The last Covenant AI she destroyed had had no name. Not that she had found. Had the Covenant actually begun naming their AIs?
So it would seem. But what did it mean? Without a second thought, she erased what remained of his systems. Now that it was over, Cortana realized how close she had come to destruction. She shivered, a faint ripple going through her core.
Is this was shock feels like to a human?...
Her Spartan's deep voice interrupted her grim thought.
"Make sure I what?" From his tone, she took him to be annoyed. In her battle, she had forgotten that everything had taken place within only a second. That was AI time, for you.
"…make sure you watch your six, Chief. I can't be looking out for you all the time." She overrode all emotional subroutines to make her tone sound as even as possible. No sense in alarming the Master Chief.
Through the camera, she saw him give an ever-so-slight upward tilt of the head. An eye-roll.
"Like you have anything better to do."
Naturally, she didn't.