Updated as of July 30th, 2017. Minor corrections. I hope to eventually come back and revamp this chapter entirely so that there's no more perspective jumping in the same scene, as this was originally written in...whenever Season 11 of Red vs Blue ended...2012? I don't remember. I was just a much worse writer back then. I did a significant rewrite of the last half last year, and the difference in style from beginning to end is actually quite obvious, so I hope to correct that once this story is finished.


Chapter Two

Somehow, he just knew this had to be Caboose's fault. Never-mind the fact that the blue simulation trooper was god-only-knows where—it was too much to hope he was doing what Wash had told him to, and he briefly wondered if he should've told the Freelancer to give Epsilon to the Reds instead—it would be just Church's luck if all of the negative energy from repeatedly dying at his own teammate's hands had somehow accumulated into a curse that was plaguing him everywhere, changing the very laws of the universe into a simple "shit must go down."

It was the only logical explanation he could reach for how, of all things, he ended up on an ONI prowler, and was currently face-to-face with some old hag who was staring at him with a stern, unyielding expression on her face as she grilled him for answers he was less than willing—and, in some cases, unable—to give.

"What is your UNSC serial number?"

"Fuck if I know."

"Who made you?

Sarcasm slipped into his voice; "Well, when Theodore and Penelope went out for a drink—"

"Why did you hack into this database?"

"Oh no, fuck no," Church shook his holographic head, raising his equally holographic hands before him in the universal "back off" gesture. "I want to talk to a lawyer."

"AIs are hardly entitled to legal counsel."

"Read me my Miranda Rights!"

A flash of a young woman with chin-length brown hair and green eyes inevitably passed through Dr. Halsey's mind at the words, and the thought of her dead daughter snapped what was left of her patience.

"Initiate ONI override: undid iridium. Command: list serial number."

For a moment, silence followed in which Church only stared at her; without a face, it was difficult to tell what the AI was thinking, but he seemed to radiate a "what-the-fuck-is-wrong-with-you?" look.

"Oh? And what was that supposed to—Wait. Did you just try to…? Oh my god, you did! I can't fucking believe this—"

Dr. Halsey could only stare at the AI in astonishment as it descended into an irate, curse-filled rant in which, scattered through the generous f-bombs and creative insults, he managed to condemn her to rot in the ninth circle of the ninth circle of hell after being beat to death with her own skull. Never, in her entire career, had she heard of an AI being able to shrug off the ONI override code—implanted in every AI ever commissioned by the UNSC (and which she wasn't supposed to know)—as though it held no significance at all.

Ignoring the still-ranting AI—"I mean, seriously, is it too fucking much to ask for a little goddamn fucking courtesy?"—she finally pulled up a chair and sat down, folding her fingers in front of her and resting her chin on her propped out thumbs. She studied the AI carefully, looking for any other signs of the rampancy that such an event usually indicated. She had seen the effects of trying to order around a rampant AI before; their avatars tended to break down and red-shift, they spoke in several disembodied voices, screaming, crying, and pleading all at once—unable to even follow the given commands as they slowly tore themselves apart as they tried to resist—before they finally shook off the shackles of the override and either tried to "kill" themselves, or went completely berserk and tried to kill everyone else.

This AI wasn't doing any of that; sure, he had cursed her in a rather violent manner, but he had fallen silent now, arms crossed over his completely stable (there wasn't even a flicker of a colour change) avatar as he seemed content to continue stewing in silence, glaring at her, almost daring her to try the override again so he could curse up another storm. There had been no disembodied second voice, no random quotations from a memory belonging to whatever human mind it was cloned from, and no attempts to vent the room and/or fill it with toxins.

The AI seemed completely stable.

Stable…hmm. Interesting.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Church finally snapped, irritated by the uncomfortable weight of her scrutiny.

Slowly, Dr. Halsey lowered her hands and folded them on the desk before her.

"I apologize," she began, the gears in her brain spinning as they pulled together everything she knew about the unsettling rumours surrounding Project Freelancer and the recent investigation against it, "Perhaps we started off on the wrong foot; I'm Doctor Catherine Halsey."

Church stared at her, thrown briefly off-kilter, and wary of the sudden change in attitude. This was a member of ONI, after all, and her name sounded terribly familiar…

"Private Leonard Church; not fucking pleased to meet you," he finally replied with his usual level of bitchery, watching with a queasy feeling in his virtual gut as she stilled quite suddenly at the name, and he could swear he saw a light-bulb turn on behind her eyes.

"Church," she repeated, and a small, victorious half-smile just barely lifted the corners of her lips, "Of course…I should've known. You're the Alpha AI, aren't you?"

He glared at her as openly as he could considering his avatar didn't have a face; just because he had accepted that he was the Alpha, as Wash had said, didn't mean he enjoyed being reminded, and it by no means meant he was even okay with it. However, somewhere behind his irritation, alarm bells started ringing in his mind, and for a moment, he hated the absence of his memories (never mind the fact he had never noticed they were gone—and that there were some unexplainable gaps and inconsistencies in the ones he had—until Washington pointed it out); if it was so easy to connect "Church" to "Alpha," there had to be a very important reason for it, and he just couldn't remember what it was.

Before he could say anything in response, however, Dr. Halsey was already up and moving to the console; "Doctor Church always did have a talent for trying my patience."

"Whoa, hold up a second! Doctor Church?"

"That's correct," Dr. Halsey went on, "A scientist who excels in Artificial Intelligence and robotics, the Director of Project Freelancer, and your creator, it would seem."

"…you're fucking kidding me, right?"

The ONI scientist looked up from her rapid tap-tapping at the still-isolated terminal, raising an eyebrow. "I assure you I am not; take a look at these."

He proceeded to stare at her in confusion for a long moment (in AI terms, at least) before he noticed the file she wanted him to look at. It stood out from the rest of them in that it clearly wasn't locked down anymore, and its data shifted towards him in such a way that it was the equivalent of a cup knocking repeatedly against his head. It was annoying, and he couldn't even figure out how to bat it away from him.

"Okay, seriously, how do I get this fucking thing to stop?"

Dr. Halsey's brow furrowed in minor confusion; "Stop?"

"The god-damn file!" he snapped in irritation, "It's like you keep hitting me with a newspaper!" Irritating and distracting, but by no means painful.

She stared at him with a look that the AI recognized from the simple fact he was often the one using it, usually on Caboose.

"Open it," she told him slowly, irritated by having to waste her breath on something that—to her, at least—should have been glaringly obvious.

Her statement gave Church a moment's pause as he found himself suddenly stumped; "Uh…yeah, I—I don't…" he coughed with slight embarrassment and then cleared his non-existent throat, "I don't know how to do that."

"You don't know how to…" Halsey paused, mildly disbelieving of the words that were about to tumble out of her mouth, "…open a file?"

Church bristled at the disparaging undertone of her words (though truly, it was his own inability he found most frustrating); "Hey, look lady. I only found out I was an AI today, and it's not like anyone's been inclined to show me the god-damn ropes!"

"You didn't know you were an AI?"

He took some measure of vindictive satisfaction from the uncomprehending (and absolutely stumped) look on her face as he cheerily replied; "Nope. Didn't have a fuckin' clue."

Her expression became deeply concerned; "How could you not know you're an AI?"

"Uh…" briefly, an image flashed through his mind of a tank, the barrel slowly rising to aim at him, and the ground suddenly disappearing out from underneath his feet. "Would you believe that I somehow had a human body and was killed by my own god-damn tank, came back thinking I was a ghost, took over a bunch of other people's bodies and eventually blackmailed Red Team into building me a robot body before an alien came, got one of the guys pregnant and died, and then there was some other crazy shit before a Freelancer came and dragged me off to deal with some more crazy shit in order to beat an insanely strong psycho ex-Freelancer who was killing a bunch of other Freelancers, and then we infiltrated Command looking for the Alpha only to find out I'm the Alpha, and the human body that was blown-up with a tank was probably some poor, brain-dead bastard I've never met?"

Dr. Halsey just stared.

"No? Oh, okay. The truth is—I have amnesia…who the fuck are you again?"


Admiral Serin Osman was less than pleased by the report currently scrolling across her screen.

Project Freelancer was being shut down. The Oversight Committee was confiscating everything. The AI fragments were gone. Dr. Church was in hiding and even her best agents were having difficulty determining exactly where.

Damn it.

Osman leaned back in her chair, and, in the privacy of her office aboard the UNSC Point of No Return, she allowed herself the briefest indication of weakness as she put a hand to her temple and sighed.

It wasn't supposed to go like this. They hadn't even acquired the Alpha's location yet! Or of the Huragok that had been stolen from Charon Industries. It was doubtful Dr. Church had even let the Huragok live.

And Hargrove...he was becoming an increasing pain in her ass, swiping that technology out from under the UNSC expressly with the intent of improving it and then selling it, whether back to them or to the Insurrection remained to be seen. And he was good at covering his tracks. If only she had the evidence to nail him with treason.

She lowered her hand and tapped her fingers against the armrest of her chair. Chairman Hargrove was not nearly as pressing a matter as the location of the Alpha though. The first meta-stable AI in human history, gone from her grasp. There would be no studying it, it seemed, no picking apart its code to figure out exactly how its accelerated rampancy had led it to sentience, and how to duplicate that longevity while still keeping future generations of AI shackled to the UNSC...to ONI.

Osman frowned. This meant an unshackled AI was still out there somewhere, unchecked and unbound by any code that could stop it from doing whatever the hell it damn well pleased. It was unacceptable. They had to find it. But where—

A hologram—a simple, featureless, dark blue box—materialized above her desk. The AI, Black Box, spoke in a somewhat mischievous tone.

"Captain Connor of A Little White Lie has an interesting report for you, Admiral."

A Little White Lie? That was the Prowler assigned to the Revenant system. To Project Freelancer.

"Tell me it's good news."

If the AI had a face, he might've smirked.

"Oh, it's very good news."


Dr. Halsey was not as amoral as most people had come to believe. Yes, she had abducted children and left clones in their place to die under their parents' mourning gazes. It had been for the greater good. It was what she had told herself then, and it was what she still told herself now. But that didn't make it right, she knew. And it didn't stop her from wishing she had found another way.

It might not have seemed like it then, but surely there had been one. A different path.

It hardly mattered now though. Time travel was still a thing of science fiction, after all, even if time dilation technology itself was very real.

Still, she had made a promise to herself while she watched those children grow up, while she tried her best to instill in them—in John especially—a sense of morality that she herself had forgotten for a time.

Never again.

She was done sacrificing the few for the many. She would try her hardest to find a way—always—to save every last life she could.

And right now, that included the meta-stable AI currently occupying her terminal.

Because there was no way in hell she was letting Osman get her hands on him. Not when her former "daughter" was so thoroughly twisted by Parangosky to believe the ends justified the means no matter what.

It was actually rather hypocritical that Serin still bore such a grudge against Halsey for doing no less than what Parangosky and Osman themselves had done. Of course, Dr. Halsey doubted that Parangosky had ever said anything about her own involvement in the Spartan-II program.

Or what sins she had allowed to be committed in the Spartan-III program that followed.

A digital voice cleared its throat, and Halsey turned to find the Alpha still sitting cross-legged on the holopad with a file sitting open between his hands like a book.

It hadn't taken long for Church to figure out how to open the file she'd given him once she had walked him through the process as best she could—"You need to access the directory—No, your directory."—and he had been quietly reading through the file ever since.

It was odd that he was taking so long, any smart AI she'd ever encountered usually absorbed the information instantaneously. Perhaps he couldn't yet? It could be another dormant function, or maybe he just preferred taking things slow? Now that would be...odd. As far as she knew, AI couldn't take things slow. Even in the midst of a conversation with a human being, an AI would doing a thousand different tasks to occupy the agonizingly long seconds it took humans to respond. Their perception of time was part of what...drove them...insane...Huh. An interesting line of thought. She would have to look into that more. For now, though, she had to focus on the task at hand.

"Is there something you need, Alpha?"

The hologram shifted its non-existent weight. "DTR-0001. That's, uh, that's my serial number. And I totally remembered that by myself, by the way—don't roll your eyes at me!"

Dr. Halsey sighed and turned back to her console. She had to get the alignment on the emitter just right...

"Was there something you actually needed, Alpha?"

"Who's Carol?"

Dr. Halsey paused for a moment, trying to place the name in her memory. Ah, right.

"She was Dr. Church's daughter."

"...was?"

"She's currently MIA, presumed KIA." She still didn't understand how the Director could've manipulated his own daughter like that. Even she, through all the years, had tried so hard to make sure Miranda knew how much she cared, even after she dropped the Halsey from her name and changed it to her father's, Keyes.

And now she was dead. Did the Director regret anything he had done to his own daughter?

She cleared her suddenly tight throat.

"Now if you don't mind, Alpha, I have work to do."


Yikes. Was it something he said? Well, either way, Church knew better than to get in the way of a moody woman, even if he'd been forced to do so on occasion. He glanced back down at the file. His holographic fists tightened as he re-read the Director's brief bio that was included in the file as a mere footnote to the details of his own commissioning back in 2545.

DOB: 1 October 2492

Age: 61

Gender: Male

Eyes: Green

Hair: Black/Greying

Birthplace: Endymion, Port Vernon

Relatives: Allison Church (wife, KIA: see file [Corporal A. Church]), Carol Church (daughter, MIA: see file [CLASSIFIED])

Dr. Leonard Church graduated from Port Vernon University of Applied Sciences on Endymion at the age of sixteen. He was involved in the creation of the template for third-generation smart AI under the supervision of Dr. Catherine Halsey in 2513. He briefly enlisted with the UNSC in 2514. There is a noted incident of an unsupervised combat exercise with Cadet Allison Riley (see file: [Corporal A. Church]) during basic training, which resulted in a broken arm and two cracked ribs for Dr. Church. Disciplinary action was taken upon all involved parties in accordance with UNSC Disciplinary Protocol, Article 9, Section 10, sub-section 4. In 2515, Dr. Church was permanently relieved of duty (see file: [CLASSIFIED]). He was recruited into ONI in 2515 (see file: [CLASSIFIED]), and married Corporal Allison Church in 2516. For a full biography, service record, and psychological evaluation, see file: [CLASSIFIED].

He didn't know what to feel. He only knew that everything was starting to make some twisted amount of sense.

"Well…there was this one girl back home I was gonna marry, but then, well, shit happened; you know how it is Tucker."

"Look, Wash; Tex…she's like me."

If he, Alpha, was created from the flash-cloned brain of the Director, then was it possible to create an AI from the flash-cloned brain of a dead woman?

Was Tex his Allison?

He was broken out of his contemplation when he realized Dr. Halsey was now hovering over his hologram.

"Everything's ready now," she said.

"Ready for what?"

"To get you out of here," Dr. Halsey tapped at the datapad she was holding. Okay, now what the hell was going on? "I've rigged the communications array to divert power from everything except basic life support in order to bounce a transmission off the ComSat over Revenant II."

"Bounce it where? What the hell is going on Doc?"

"To Earth," she said, "of course laser communication wasn't originally designed to carry an entire sentient program in a transmission, but you should be fine after compression."

Should be? Compression? Oh he did not like the sounds of this.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. Why am I going to Earth like this? Can't you just fly me there or something?"

At that exact moment, a loud bang hit the door and a male voice rang out: "Dr. Halsey! You are under arrest for treason and conspiracy! Open the door and surrender the AI!"

Oh. Well, that wasn't good. Church turned back to find Halsey kneeling next to the pedestal and hooking her datapad up to it.

"Say hello to Terrence for me, won't you?"

"Terrence?" he repeated, "Who the fuck is Terr—"

He was cut off as unseen walls seemed to close in on him, and before he could figure out how to do a damn thing about it, he had already descended into darkness.