UNSC INFINITY, 2557

John-117 held his new helmet in his iridescent green gauntlets. He turned it over and looked at his reflection in the golden visor, feeling the memories of receiving the earlier models come rushing back. MJOLNIR Mark IV had changed him. He found a part of his identity in the suit. It made him stronger, faster, and more effective almost as if it was a dream come true for him. Sometimes, though, the few times he went without the armor he felt as empty as the suit was without him.

Mark V had marked the beginning of the end for his squadmates-his friends, he corrected himself-but had made it possible for him to survive the Halo event and carry Cortana. Curiously, his new Mark VII helmet closely resembled the earlier Mark V, which started a wave of nostalgia for the days with Cortana when he was the knight in shining armor. Funny connection. Not many knights can claim to have a shield made of energy. Maybe I'm just getting sentimental, John thought. Maybe I am getting old. Maybe I am breaking without her.

Cortana and John had formed a nearly unbreakable bond through a nearly symbiotic connection. Combined with the fact that they saved all life in the galaxy a handful of times, it wasn't a surprise they shared such a strong connection. Cortana had picked him as though it was for a Sadie Hawkins dance, although the survival of humanity was on the line and the thought of asking someone to a dance has a tendency to be a scarier thought than genocide for most. She picked him not because he was the best at anything statistically-which would be right up her alley seeing as she is a smart AI-but her inner bad girl chose him because he was the luckiest. Now she's gone. Remembering how it was isn't helpful. I need to move on. He blamed himself for her death. He sacrificed his queen to defeat the Didact. Sometimes he wished he had sacrificed the king instead. They had been apart before when he was forced to leave her behind on the High Charity. The Gravemind made her a puppet and used her to shake the rock-hard resolve of a SPARTAN-II. He vowed to himself after that day to protect her no matter the cost. In the end, she was afflicted by rampancy while he desperately tried anything to extend her lifetime. He knew he couldn't save her yet he refused to admit it. He stubbornly insisted on holding on to her even when she was already gone. The aging Spartan shook his head to clear his thoughts.

He clutched Cortana's dead chip in his newly armored hand and glanced at it before he put his new helmet back on. The eggheads had left him to test out his new gear in peace and discover its features himself; Lasky's orders, probably. So far, he noted that the shields were a good portion stronger than his Mark VI, approximately 30% higher damage threshold before failing. During live-fire training, he noticed a heavier focus on recoil-reduction and targeting systems. The visor received a cut-down version of the scanning systems he had picked up on Requiem and could paint targets through obstructions up to 20 meters away. He practiced diligently in the Combat Deck, the hologram room that could replicate any location known to man. This is where simulations took place. Often, he fought once more on Installation 04. The holograms he chose to engage were those of himself. Nobody on Infinity but John himself could give you a reason why. The team of scientists in charge of briefing him and orienting him before they turned him loose happened to mention that the suit contained a full Slipspace drive, not just de-insertion units that the earlier versions of Mark VII had. He was more interested in the fact that the suit utilized nanotechnology to repair itself and upgrade itself to adapt to combat conditions. However, he was curious about its capabilities now that he had tested the rest of the suit extensively. He decided to carry a sturdy MA5D with him and holster a standard-issue M6H as a precaution in case he ended up being dragged into another battle for the survival of all life in the galaxy as he had a habit of doing. He set a course to the control room of Infinity; he was only going to do a short run to test out the accuracy of the unit. John fired up the drive and prepared for a rough ride.