"I love you."
He stops cleaning the barrel of his gun mid swipe. It is not the phrase that makes him pause, but rather the AI saying it.
"Excuse me?" He knows that he couldn't have misheard her at such a close range but there might be a problem with the auditory output system, or worse yet, her. He can't go on a mission with a malfunctioning AI.
"Interesting," she says. "You Spartans really are something else. Your neural response was very atypical."
"Was that a test?"
"Of course it was. What else could it be?" Her avatar sits at the edge of the table, swinging her legs slowly, arms spread behind as if giving support and looked up at him with her chest pushed out and a smile he had been taught to recognize as coy from Deja, the Spartan's teacher on human behaviour. "Were you expecting something else, Chief?"
He doesn't answer. Instead, he finishes cleaning his weapon and goes over the specs that Dr. Halsey sent on the new armour.