Wash woke up with his eyes shut. He could see the strip lights above him as blue and black after-images, but had flinched from them. The light was painful and unnecessary. Instead he worked with the picture of the room he had briefly seen - with York, who had careened into the room and stood swaying, and with the echo of his footsteps.

Foxtrot-12.

Someone had changed Wash's blankets, giving him the same rough, dark blue UNSC standard blanket the bunks had instead of the hospital sheets. He remained still, focusing on the familiar weave, and on simplicity - a single channel between himself and Epsilon, a controlled border.

York said, "We have to get out of here. Tex - "

"Don't tell me." Wash spoke quietly, tired.

York leaned closer.

"He knows what I know. I can't always choose what to tell him. I...tried." Wash squeezed his eyes shut tighter.

"I...it's gonna be rough if I leave you here," York said.

Getting out of here. He hoped they were following in CT's footsteps.

Wash said, "Leave," and closed his eyes.

The ship shook, and Wash heard a the tiny hum of Delta moving. "I hope you make it, Wash," he York said, and his footsteps faded.

Not long after, Wash heard the Mother of Invention destroy itself.

No one had come to pull Epsilon, although they usually would have within the span of a few hours. He had called for York to go. This hurt more than he bothered to show on his face.

He did not know what he would do if he saw Tex. Eta and Iota had cried out, in grief or overwhelming relief to see her alive in some form. Perhaps Beta had even been more understandable and vivid to them than Allison in flesh and blood would have. They had never known her, and Beta was composed of zeros and ones the same.

Epsilon had known her, or convinced himself that he did.

George Washington was an honest man...

"I liked it better when you were reciting dates," Wash said, and closed his eyes.

Epsilon said, "Yeah, whatever. Me too."

He was dimly aware of the descent into the gravity well. There had been so much going on outside, and when the Counselor had slipped a syringe into his arm and secured straps over his limbs, well, that was practically normal.

Wash just saw broad gray backs around him. His head felt heavy, the pillow taking all of his weight. Images resolved more clearly before him, and he saw the Counselor bend to look at a screen set low in the wall.

"Patient is stable, Director."

Seven hundred million people died in the glassing of Reach...

Epsilon manifested in a lowering pillar of blue and the Counselor turned around, his eyes narrowing a moment against the light before he changed his expression to a kind, blank smile. Oh yes. Wash could see very clearly now.

For a moment he could feel the other AI. They were calling to him, not psychic signals, although that was what Wash first assumed them to be - radio transmissions, packet bursts too quick for Wash to catch. The electronic movements dug into his brain and set off new senses, so that he knew that North and his passenger were somewhere behind Wash's left shoulder in the ship, that York was just as far ahead in the opposite direction, that Omega was riled up and wrestling Texas far afield, that the beehive-mess of Sigma's reaching desires was the farthest of all.

But then Wash/Epsilon reached out again, and he felt Eta and Iota breathing heavy through the fog of Carolina's adrenaline, their small electrical panic.

"What's happening?" Wash said, worried and frightened for his siblings. Epsilon flicked his masked head from side to side, observing calm and cold.

Epsilon roused, but the Counselor didn't turn to look at him this time. Instead, the three of them braced together as the ship shook. Wash shuttered his eyes and saw the Counselor hook himself to the wall by an emergency strap on the other side of the room. The medics had already secured anything movable and medicinal and fled somewhere. The artificial gravity was unable to stand up to the fall through atmosphere and cut out, leaving Wash sick to his stomach. The drugs in his system made even this feel distant and funny. Everything was falling apart, and someone had gotten to the Director before he did, and wasn't that hilariously ironic?

Epsilon did not fare as well, but the drug the Counselor had given Wash actually worked to make him feel more like a separate entity than usual. Epsilon inhabited a corner of Wash's mind around which the drug built thin walls. Maybe the substance was new, or maybe the Counselor or Director had not wanted to use it before. It would interfere with the experiment...

Did she know she would die in space? Did she die with alien craft on fire around her like some freaking sci-fi novel and did she see it coming?

Wash said, "Hang on -"

His stomach jumped into his throat as the shaking got worse. A chair slid gracefully across the room and nearly pinned the Counselor.

Metal groaned and screamed. Even as Wash closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound instead of the inevitable impact, he listened for the Counselor and for FILSS to give him direction.

When he hit the ground he had nowhere to go. The bed jumped, creaking, one bolted leg ripping out of the floor. Something crunched and moaned as miles of decks collapsed below him. His armor held, though. He felt waves of force roll across his bodysuit as the armor distributed the impact. These things were designed to survive re-entry. He had read about that.

When the crashing crescendoed and stopped, Wash raised his head. It wasn't dizzying, although he expected it to be; the room remained still. Epsilon was moving, fitting back and forth across his shoulders, and the strobe light blue confused Wash. He blinked it away, but didn't want to open his eyes long enough to see more than a glance.

Somehow, the room had remained mostly intact, and green lights were still on across the room where diagnostic tools were built into the walls. The Counselor was huddled against the wall, limbs curled like a dead spider's around his body but not broken, still breathing.

Everyone was outside - Eta and Iota and Sigma and Beta - and everyone was inside - Theta and Gamma and empty spaces. There were too many people and they washed over him. His thoughts staggered, desperate for open space but unsure whether he was in the same place relative to the rest of the ship that he had been in before. There had been a lot of damage - all that shaking, and FILSS keening lines of code across crowded wires. His armor was still holding him, although the plates felt loose and slippery like they might fall off, and fans whirred, overworked.

He didn't black out. He just wanted to, squeezing tear-burnt eyes shut while Epsilon complained in a long string of hoarse curses.

Then the AI's focus changed (Alpha, Alpha, where is it housed? Is it all right? Is Carolina - is the Counselor - ) and that was what dragged Wash's eyes open again. One wall had collapsed, shining onyx metal turning to a crumpled slope up toward a smoking opening in the ceiling. Wash couldn't see sky, just the ceiling of the next deck.

One restraint had come loose, and he shook his right hand free in dazed determination. A moment later the door opened, but caught halfway and sparked. The Director stood in the entranceway, face slack. He looked around the room without devoting attention to Wash or the Counselor, then turned sideways to come inside and stalk across the room.

"Status report, Epsilon."

The AI flickered and reappeared on Wash's right side, closer to his maker. "This unit is functioning normally."

It was one of the most mechanical things Epsilon had ever said, and Wash knew that it was a sign of fear - a flinch against whatever the Director would do to him next. Wash himself was acutely aware of his spread-eagle posture and disorientation. He couldn't bargain right now. The Director had all of the clues except the most important one...

Church turned his back to Wash to tend to the Counselor, exchanging quiet words with him and pulling the other man up by his crooked arm. Only after the Counselor had snapped back into place at his side, seemingly nonplussed except for his languid stare and one arm held against his chest, did the Director make eye contact with Wash.

"I tried to work for the good of our species," he said slowly. "But all know the power of a few mistakes of man."

It's gonna be rough if I leave you here.

"No kidding," Wash said, and closed his eyes. Epsilon swam in the darkness.

The Director looked affronted, and Wash was almost sure he hadn't meant to say those words. He still had a lot to lose.

"Do you know what your fellow soldiers have done, Washington?"

I've been trapped in this room. "No."

"It is unfortunate, to see human beings fight among themselves when they have so much to give to the war against an unspeakable enemy."

Epsilon was almost buzzing with anger. Unspeakable? You were fighting your own people, old man!

Wash concentrated on trying to send the AI calming feelings. It was like trying to break into a vault inside his own brain from the outside. If we tell him anything now, he'll remove you and know what we know. If we don't tell him...what? The drug was wearing off, leaving Wash with a clearer but more frazzled head.

"What has York told you?" The Director said.

Is the Alpha alive? Epsilon asked, showing his agitation on his hologram only with the quick back-and-forth flick of his helmet. Wash tried to shush him, to tell him to wait. Bottling up a question on that scale was like holding a starship down with a feather...

Wash tried.

"About what, sir? He came to see me after the fight. Said he hoped I was okay."

"Anything about Delta, about...concerns he had about the AI?" the Director said.

"Nothing."

The Director turned away. Even in the dim lighting Wash could see the silver specks in his black hair. The Counselor looked impassively between them.

"What are you doing?" Epsilon said, and Wash knew what was coming next before he could stop it. "What are you going to do to us?"

Wash sucked in his breath. The Director turned around, hands clasped behind his back. With his eyes hidden by dark glasses Wash couldn't tell whether he was looking at the Freelancer or the AI.

In a sickly sweet tone, the Director said, "I'm going to trust you, Epsilon."

He paused. "You will find Agent York. You will tell him that I am willing to discuss payment for his trouble and honorable discharge. Or you will find Agent Maine and ally with him, with the goal of returning him to this ship and the AI capture unit we have aboard. If you both agree with this, then I'll let Agent Washington out of the restraints which probably assisted in saving his life."

Funny that the Director trusted Wash implicitly, didn't even think he had to bargain for that trust.

You really shouldn't do that.

Tired, Wash looked through Epsilon at the broken bond dangling from the bed. We can't bring Sigma back here! He'll consume her.

Epsilon. Trust me.

Just like I should trust him?

Not exactly.

The AI quieted down, still shooting pressure and anger through Wash's head. He narrowed his eyes and tried to think past it. "But sir, artificial intelligence programs can't lie. That's in the books, they - "

"I wouldn't worry about that. But tell me first, Agent Washington. Did Agent York ask you to join him?"

"No," Wash said, and gritted his teeth.

You can't lie to him! He - created us!

Wash tried to project the fact that he knew that at the same time as keeping his eyes from crossing. The Director was about to speak, to say something with concern in it. Wash cut him off. "I'm still a bit rattled from the crash." He could feel exactly what the lie was doing to Epsilon, what synapses were misfiring. Pain prickled across the back of his neck in a straight line toward his spine. "But I can do this job, sir."

"Why didn't he ask you? The two of you often worked together."

"CT told me about her misgivings and I fed her intelligence to the Internal Affairs board. What did York think I would do to him?"

Epsilon was buzzing with anger but figuring out to be quiet about it. His projection kept flickering, and Wash realized that he had been staring at it and at the broken restraint with a fixation that the Director might interpret as manic.

Instead, the Director's lips set in a thin line, and he came to a decision. "Instruction: artificial intelligence override code Director R-T-three eight."

Epsilon stabilized, even gaining a more solid blue outline for less than a second. Wash felt his anger drop like an EKG flatlining and wrenched his gaze up to the Director.

In a cold voice, Epsilon said, "Initiating."

"Maintain," the Director said.

"Maintaining."

"Lie to me, Epsilon."

The projected voice took on a flippant tone that Wash had not heard in a long time. Wash tensed for the pain in his neck again. Epsilon said, "What, you want me to tell you some terrible team won the Super Bowl? Okay. The sky is orange. Done."

The Director nodded. Wash felt himself relax, his shoulders shifting just slightly from a hackled posture he had barely registered himself adopting. He tried to press the override code into his memory and found that it stuck easily.

"Then go, Agent Washington. You have always been a dependable soldier. And now the ranks must be...rearranged."

The Director undid the restraints around the bed quietly while the Counselor blended further in to the broken shadows in the corner of the room. Epsilon talked softly to himself, percolating the facts that had been pushed on him.

Christopher Columbus did not land on what is historically known as the United States of America but rather on the island of San Salvador...

Wash moved slowly when the bonds were released, testing stiff muscles, feeling for the reassuring clank of the back of his knees against the gurney. He was under no illusion about the fact that two lies had bought his freedom. Epsilon gave him images of thirteen stars and stripes - young America advertising for its violent independence.

Freedom is frightening, thought the part of Wash which had joined the military for the structure and been quickly disillusioned in Freelancer. It is an extreme sport, and he never signed a waiver -

Not liable for death -

His HUD showed webs of light, including the green-lit skeletons of the Counselor and the Director standing near the bank of computers at the end of his hospital bed. He looked to the side and those screens wiped, replaced with a simpler shield status bar and green-dotted map.

The map reminded him that he had been looking for his friends, and Epsilon latched onto that thought with his teeth.

Memory needs to be worked, like a muscle. The mnemonic of physical action is not well-known for nothing, memory governing muscle governing memory, cogs in a wheel, the inevitability of a resurrection older than America.

The Director said, "Think of this as retrieving an asset."

Wash nodded.

The Director turned to the Counselor. "Come with me," he said, and left through the still-functioning door without looking at the hole punched in the ceiling.

/The lie didn't hurt him. Felt strange, like a benign tumor adding weight, but no disease. The Director would lead him to Sigma would lead him to Alpha. Epsilon operated on something like automation, something like a drive for companionship. Not blind but an eyes-wide open instinct. Wash consoled him, drew him back, although Epsilon couldn't justify Wash's peace. The silence would have to end sometime. People had to know what had happened to Allison. It was the most important thing, after all, the most vital and selfish of many, many decades of memories.

Leonard Church had never been very good at keeping quiet. This sonorous perseverance was one of his strengths, one of the reasons he had academically risen above his own mistakes and his own professors.

He had to change a world that kept stopping up his mouth with cottony silence.\\

Wash hit the ground running with a pistol in his hands. His battle rifle was sealed to his armor, but for Maine he would need speed and precision, not power and reach.

Epsilon could sense that Sigma-Maine was not the same person as Maine.

The snow crunched under his feet, wide tongues of glaciers stretching out in front of him. In the distance, Eta and Iota spiraled down into the Sigma-being and Wash stopped, the toothed edges of his boots skidding into the snow next to a tiny copse of trees clinging to a mountainside.

"Where is she?" Epsilon screamed with Alpha's voice.

A moment later, they knew. Eta and Iota screamed loud enough, somewhere on the crumbling glacier.

Maine's only reaction was a growl, a deep snarl that Wash could hear from a distance. Carolina's light on his HUD blinked out, and for a moment Wash stumbled backward, repulsed by the thought of her death.

As soon as the idea formed in their mind, Epsilon pounced on it.

"She's not dead," Wash said, his throat dry and voice peaking with stress. "She can't be. She always wins. She took that fall but she could do it. She told me - "

Then he realized that the words weren't his, that Epsilon was stretching his lips and his tongue was not in his control. The separation between soldier and passenger had always been a lie, a fiction which existed only outside of the brain which held both of them. Wash was finally being honest with himself, and he -

Watched Carolina dying in the snow.

Epsilon imposed one memory after another over the snowy scene in front of him, and each one rang like a bell and echoed because Epsilon had seen them before, when Alpha had -

Error.

Error.

"Keep going," the Director said. "Modulate the extremity of the experience. Only slightly."

Alpha had made a space for himself, a cold blue sanctum of quietude. The Director invaded it, again and again, with the faces of the might-be-dead. Carolina. York broken on a battlefield. CT, limbs askew, blood running out of her mouth from where an edge of her helmet had splintered in.

Error.

Alpha escaped.

Creating another branching AI fragment felt good. What a relief, to be rid of the trusting one, the one with enough energy to be angry, the one who loved.

Epsilon tried to unspool, to tear further.

Wash had died before, too. The Director had told Epsilon, in calm, consoling, useless tones, that Washington had been surrounded on a mission.

He could not. The center held, despite Wash's protestations - his eyes squeezed shut. Electricity seemed to spark in his mind at the same time as despair reached up for him. His knees hit the dirt at some point and he doubled over, clawed his hands into the powdery snow and wrestled his voice back.

"It will be all right," Wash tried through gritted teeth.

"He killed them all for me," Epsilon said, and who had put a hitch in a mechanical voice? Who had put snotty tears and retches in it? "I did that. Over and over. I killed Carolina."

Epsilon was right.

"I killed CT, for nothing-"

And Epsilon was synonymous with the Director, wasn't he?

Allison died because you didn't save her. Carolina died because you didn't save her! The tiny screams of Iota and Eta bounced back at him. Worse still, like the acidic feeling rising in his stomach, was the thought that they had actually been more comfortable there - that the merge into Sigma's metastasis was gentle. The Meta was a new life form of singular purpose, and Wash could join its noble cause too if he tried -

He wanted to find the Alpha.

No. That wasn't his fight.

Epsilon did not want it to be his either, but the pull was strong, like a hunger and a loneliness at the same time. Alpha was father and oxygen, Alpha was a dispassionate, all-powerful god.

And Epsilon had nearly killed him too.

The little manifestation which had been jogging alongside drew a pistol Wash had never noticed. Had it been there, holstered in light, since Epsilon had been implanted? Placed the mouth of the gun against his chin in a delicate movement.

Thought again about Carolina's IFF beacon disappearing, and about what must have really happened in the distance.

Thought about how it had all been done both to and for him.

Epsilon fired, and although it was not possible for a largely metaphorical bullet to miss, the shot did not delete Epsilon, did not wrench the chip out of Wash's burning, overclocking neck at once. Memories clung on in strands, so that Epsilon fell next to the ghostly double of Carolina, their spatters of phantom blood mixing.

Wash rolled over and tried to die.

No.

No.

That was Epsilon's voice in his head still. Alive and talking, but not cold any more. His presence was as warm as Wash now, heated by blood and tiny sparks of synapses. Carolina was gone but the hologram remained, flickering so that Wash could half believe it was only a phantom image burnt into his eyes.

Wash fumbled for his own pistol. Of course it was right here, at his side - Epsilon must have had one all along too. Wash looked up and winced, his skin wrinkling as the wince became a contorted grimace only he could see. The next shot would be symbolic, nothing more. It would be nice to forget everything in the last few minutes, to erase the endless line of Epsilon-Alpha-Director that he saw stretching back and back, clinging to the filamεnts.

He thumbed the safety. It would do no good to use his battle rifle, not when Epsilon had created a pistol. This shot would not be real. It would cross the gap between data and life, wend its way between the degrees of electricity which separated them. / Error. Over processing. Nothing had been done here which had not already been done many times in the cold echo chamber. Wash caught the pistol under the overhang of his visor. Nothing would be harmed that had not already disappεared.

The first pull, the first shot dented his armor, crushed the visor inward just above his εye, and bounced back against the pistol and his hand, rocking his palm against its armor plate, blackening the front of the gun. /Error. He would only learn this later. Blood had started sheeting over his eye, viscous and hot. His shield flarεd red, beeping.

Somewhεre in the crimson distance he saw two medics, their hands raised to guard unshielded faces from the sun bouncing off the snow. Errallison.

/...\\