"I'll miss you."
"Wake me, when you need me."
It had been nearly four years since he spoke those words to her; four years, and not so much as a whisper had been heard in the void that "the dawn" now floated through. With four years, anyone can get used to anything. With four years, Cortana had gotten used to silence.
Just dust and echoes.
The hologram flickered to life as the binary eyes of Cortana focused in on the appearingly lifeless corpse of Petty Officer John-117. Isolation had left Cortana with an inability to reason, and, in turn, brought her mind to a state where rational thoughts were put second to thoughts of an apathetic nature. The ship no longer mattered to her. She and John's possible well being no longer mattered.
For all that her artificial mind could comprehend, they could spiral off into space and never return and she wouldn't even notice. She kept thinking that if she were human, she could stick the barrel of John's side arm into her mouth and pull the trigger, shooting her brain matter and blood into the vacuum of space, and that would be just fine with her.
She recognized this for what it was: Rampancy. In its most early of stages, rampancy introduces itself as an A.I's version of clinical depression. If A.I's had psychiatrists then maybe Cortana's would give her some haldol and send her on her way. But that's obviously not the case. The only way to stop rampancy is to either embrace it, or give in to these apparently suicidal thoughts.
Technically there is no way to stop rampancy; there are only ways to deal with it, even though, in its purest state, rampancy is the death and decay of a smart A.I. There are theories of metastability, but Cortana, especially at this juncture in time, didn't care for theories. She only wanted to shut herself down so that hopefully when John awoke he wouldn't have to see her losing her pseudo-mind.
So she began to calculate. First, she began the algorithms necessary to steer a dead ship, which seemed almost infinitesimal in her head, but she began them anyways. Then she began to process of waking up her counterpart, which, believe it or not, would take several hours. De-thawing itself took several hours; let alone awaking him from a four year slumber.
Last, but not least, she began cataloguing. She, in chronological order and great detail, went through and listed the events that lead to where the master chief and her, stood then. Beginning with the birth of the forerunners and stretching all the way to the new installation 04 and the eventual portal rupture that split The Dawn in half.
With the cataloguing complete, she looked to the chief for some kind of guidance that she knew he could not give. His body laid frozen in a lifeless slumber in deep space, and yet she still thought he looked too serious given the circumstance. She began to give a chuckle until she realized she'd be dead before she could tell him, or at least she'd be dead to him.
The process started and Cortana's hologram began to flicker off, a shade of dark red flashing over her for a moment. Her last act as an active A.I was the preservation of Petty Officer John-117. Thinking that, for some reason, made her remember the first moment she met the master chief. She smiled and let out a laugh, knowing that she'd be dead before he could hear it; or at least dead to him.