Everything hurt. That was the first thing that John knew. He wasn't sure what didn't hurt. Slowly, he turned his head – nothing but light blue. It reminded him of something. Of someone.
The Chief looked up, pushing himself upwards so he was kneeling on one knee, his left arm resting on the other.
"Cortana." He waited for her to reply.
Hearing nothing, John stood, trying to see through the purple-blue walls that had familiar lines of code running all down them. There were hazy shapes hidden behind them, he felt, but he didn't take the time to examine them.
"Cortana, do you read?" John could hear the worry in his own voice as he relaxed his arms to his side. There were no enemies in this strange blue-purple room. Some of the hazy shapes in the lines of code looked like nebulae.
"Cortana, come in." Now John knew his voice was both worried and pleading. She had to be there.
But she didn't reply with anything – not even a sarcastic quip about his being worried for her. His shoulders dipped slightly and he took another quick look around. If she wasn't here, where was he – and where was she?
A faint ringing drew the Spartan's attention behind him. He turned, first his head, and then his body.
There she was. Or… He knew every line of Cortana's code. They'd fought together for years. So this… being… was definitely her. But she was now as tall as any female, walking slowly towards him from one of the blue walls. Her dark blue hair was the same as always, cut to just below her chin in a helmet-like shape, a few strands apparently out of place. Her shoulders were broad but strong, the two main dark blue lines running down her chest to join at her navel and continue into her groin.
Her arms turned the same dark blue half-way down the upper portion, as did her legs from the lower half of her thighs down. Lighter blue pulses of light traveled up her body, originating from her feet.
The Chief had seen her avatar thousands of times, but never in this detail – never this large. Except, perhaps, on the first Halo… But now she looked solid. He could even detect the movement of her chest where she seemed to be breathing.
"How…?" John was at a loss for words, unsure if he was hallucinating or merely dead.
Cortana's voice was quiet but humorous when she replied. "Oh, I'm the strangest thing you've seen all day?"
That brought back memories of the Forerunner Prometheans – of the Didact and the incredible Compiler, the Librarian and all those scientists who had been torn from physical flesh into intangible data.
There was a faint smile on Cortana's lips, but her eyes remained locked on John's visor, and the grin faded quickly.
"But if we're here…"
"It worked," Cortana interrupted, her voice breathy. "You did it. Just like you always do." She let out a short sigh – but whether of sorrow, contentment, or something else, John couldn't tell.
He looked up and then around – the walls were starting to show the same blips of light running through Cortana.
"So, how do we get out of here?" If this was death, there was no way out – but death wasn't supposed to hurt. And John hurt. Even if seeing a tall Cortana avatar had shocked his mind into forgetting that for a moment, his body was reminding him.
Cortana looked down and John looked back at her quickly. She smiled quickly at her feet and then raised her head again. "I'm not coming with you this time."
"What?" Cortana had never not come with him. She'd bully him into bringing her along on dangerous missions before she'd let him leave her behind. Maybe this wasn't Cortana…
She pointed her gaze at the floor. "Most of me is down there." There was a definite catch in Cortana's voice; she looked back at him. "I only held enough back to get you off the ship."
"No. That's not-" What? the Spartan asked himself. He shook his head forcefully, just once. "We go together." We always have.
Cortana smiled. "It's already done."
John shifted his stance, unconsciously, as though facing a physical threat. He put power behind his words, as though he could make it untrue by believing it hard enough. "I am not leaving you here." He could feel the emotion catch his voice but spoke bravely. Desperately.
"John…" Cortana breathed his name, stepping forward suddenly. She raised a hand to his chest plate as though she could feel his heart beating through it. Her breath caught in a soft sob and then she sighed, closing her eyes, her hard-light hand making John's green suit turn turquoise with her proximity. "I've waited so long to do that," the AI admitted, staring sadly at the scrapes and dents across the Spartan's armor. She let her hand fall.
John looked down to the side, unwilling to stare her in the eye even through the protective shield of his visor. Perhaps especially through it.
"It was my job to take care of you." To protect you, John wanted to add. To keep you safe.
Cortana leaned forward, her voice adamant. "We were supposed to take care of each other." Her blue eyes were startlingly clear. John looked at her in surprise.
"And we did." Cortana's voice was cracking with emotion. She blinked rapidly.
"Cortana…" It wasn't just a name to him. She wasn't just an AI. She was all he had – after years of war, of destruction, of death, Cortana kept him sane, kept him fighting. He believed in her, believed in their friendship. "Please…"
Please what? John asked himself. He knew the answer, though. Don't leave me. I don't want to be alone.
Loner by training, by choice… But John knew, with all his heart and mind, that there was a difference between being a loner and being alone. The one was tolerable – preferred, in fact, in the case of Spartans. The other… John looked back at the floor to Cortana's right.
Why can't I even look at her?
But she stepped back, her breath catching even as she stared intently at him, as though to commit every line of his armor to memory.
"Wait." Come with me. John reached out and then let his hand fall. Take me with you.
"Welcome home, John." Cortana's voice rang hollowly, as though she was fighting back tears of her own. She faded into the blue-purple walls, which quickly started to deteriorate.
John could only stare at where the AI had disappeared. They had been together for years. They had stopped the Flood together, battled through countless Covenant armies. She had kept him sane when news of another Spartan death, another planet lost, another billion humans vaporized, reached him. Her wit, her brilliance, her charming sarcasm… It was gone.
John heard a roaring in his ears. He wasn't sure where it was coming from. Unbidden, his arms floated away from his body, his head tilting back. He drifted, back in the 0 gee environment that told him he was in space. The soldier in his head told him to remain still and activated the suit's emergency beacon.
But the human in there was paralyzed. He felt like half of himself had gone missing. What was the Master Chief without Cortana? A fancy green suit full of muscle.
John couldn't hear the Pelican that approached him, but the searchlights penetrated his visor and he closed his eyes. He'd been found. He couldn't decide if he was glad.
~~SPARTAN~~
Earth rotated slowly. Really, it was the ship – but from an inertial reference frame, one felt immobile, so that all movement was relative.
John's mind kept running in that vein, examining the swirling white clouds over pristine blue ocean thousands of meters away. He couldn't bring himself to think beyond interpreting his surroundings.
A distant corner of his mind heard the soft footsteps of someone approaching but, as they were neither hurried nor sneaking, John dismissed them.
They came to a stop and it was a moment before a male voice asked, "Mind if I join you?"
John looked up and then turned, stiffening automatically into a pre-salute stance. "Of course not, Sir," he answered formally, letting absolutely no emotion through his voice.
"At ease, Chief." The commander approached – John knew his name, but his brain wasn't cooperating in finding it. He abandoned the search. "It feels kind of odd for you to call me 'Sir.'"
John turned back to the window. Blue oceans, white clouds.
"Beautiful, isn't she?" Earth was beautiful – they couldn't see the blazoned scar across the heart of Africa from the Flood invasion.
"I don't get to see her often enough." . John hadn't seen Earth before chasing the Flood to it, either, and he remembered the battle bitterly – but now, with longing. She had been there. Watching his back.
"I grew up on New Harmony. Attended Corbulo Military Academy. Never saw Earth in person until I was an adult, but… I still think of her as home." There was a long pause.
Home. To a Spartan, home was a suit of armor, a cryo tube… A battle field.
"You don't talk much, do you?" There was sympathy behind the commander's voice.
John had never been a big talker. Not as quiet as Linda, but also not as vocal as Will. But Cortana had broken that between them. He would have talked to her constantly if it meant she was there to listen.
"Chief… I won't pretend to know how you feel."
John wasn't sure himself how he felt.
"I've lost people I care about, but… Never anything like you're going through."
What was he going through? What was Cortana to him? At first, she had been an AI – a useful tool, one he had had doubts about at first. But he'd come to rely on her, trust her intrinsically. With her rampancy, he'd wanted to save her – and he would have done anything to do it. She'd been his friend, his confidant, his guiding star – she gave a human aspect to his life as the Master Chief.
"Our duty, as soldiers, is to protect humanity. Whatever the cost."
That lesson had been drilled into him since day one of boot camp. If the cost was one AI – his soldier half reminded him that, for all her apparent humanity, Cortana had been only one AI, albeit a brilliant one – it was light. But it hadn't been just one AI. Would it cost his sanity, too?
John knew he needed to find help. Speaking to a psychiatrist would be a good start. If they'd let him. But he really wanted to speak to someone who understood, and the only one he felt would even have an inkling of the power of his relationship with Cortana… He didn't know how to find Dr. Halsey, or even if she was still alive.
The commander shifted. "You say that… like soldiers and humanity are two different things. Soldiers aren't machines." John glanced at the man, moving his helmet automatically. "We're just people." The Spartan looked back at the planet below them.
People? he wondered to himself. Cortana was more human than I… And she was not a person, but I am. It seemed strikingly unfair – not that anything was fair, but in this, the Chief felt some sense of hatred towards circumstances. Why had Dr. Halsey thought it a good idea to match them up? Why couldn't Cortana have been dumb AI, or less… human?
Immediately, John regretted that line of thought and terminated it aggressively. He couldn't blame either woman for what had happened. He could only blame himself for becoming so attached, for letting down all those walls that years of training and war had built up.
"I'll let you have the deck to yourself." The commander walked away, his stride sure.
"She said that to me once. About being a machine," John told the window and the planet beyond it.
But who is the machine?