For those who think this story is lacking in the "Halo reality" section, just please have faith in me, all will be explained. Again thanks for reviewing and reading.

Seargent Washington: It's nice of you to say that, but honestly his fic is much better than this.

Everything was shaking, bits of debris falling from the ceiling and fires engulfing large sections of the ship. Three covenant cruisers surrounded the UNSC Heracles as it tried to make its daring escape into slip space, leaving its two comrades, the Arabia and the Vostok, in the debris field.

How did I get into this position? Taylor thought as she rushed down the scream filled hallway toward the bridge.

She tried to go through the events, again, in her head. She had been trying to piece it all together since arriving on the ship, but it all seemed blurry like a distant memory. The last solid thing she remembered was when the red siren blared in her empty holding room, stating that they were under attack.

Why wasn't I with Zoey? She couldn't remember, but the name itself brought a stabbing pain to her chest, and a small tear to the corner of her eye. Why wasn't she with me on the ship?

To remember that, she went back to the moment when they were being brought on the ship. She remembered their being a lot of guns and lights pointed at her, but Zoey still wasn't with her as they escorted Taylor to the air lock to be cycled through.

Going back even further to that brought her to the kiss, the one she shared with Zoey. That memory seemed to last a life time, and it brought joy back to help heal the pain she felt when thinking Zoey's name. The kiss was ended rather abruptly though, as Zoey pulled away and walked over to the edge of the building, looking out into space.

Taylor tried to walk up to her , she tried to put a hand on her shoulder and tell her everything was going to be ok, but she was called away by Deux, she had forgotten he was in the terminal downstairs. He told her to hide him, and not let him leave her grasp. Then she heard the crash on the roof.

By the time she had dashed up the stairs Zoey was gone and there were two drop ships in the sky. One was flying toward a large UNSC ship, and the other was flying toward the building that she was standing on.

She thought she would feel happy about being rescued, but she just felt empty. She needed to talk to Zoey, only then could she make sure what happened between them was true, and real. So Taylor made it priority number one to find her as soon as she got on the ship.

Taylor was taken to a room where the soldiers that escorted her told her to await further instructions from the captain. She was being held as a POW until further notice, and put in a tightly locked room.

Not even ten minutes later Taylor was gotten from the room and escorted to a big interrogation chamber. There was a table setting in the center, with chairs on both side and a few folders of information on top of it. Zoey was standing looking into the two way glass, she didn't move as Taylor entered.

"Zoey, what's happening?" Taylor asked moving closer to where she was standing.

"They said I wasn't allowed to see you." Zoey said, still not budging.

"It doesn't matter now, I'm here." She removed her helmet and set it down on the table on top of the folders.

"I don't want you to be." Zoey said turning to face Taylor finally.

"What?" Taylor must have misheard her, "Why?"

"Because I don't want to talk to you," Zoey turned back to face the two way mirror that separated this room from an observation room.

The stabbing pain came back as she remembered that line, it made her hurt more than anything she had felt prior, and would probably stay at the top of her "worst pains of my life" list. She didn't know what to think, she could barely form a sentence to respond with.

"Why…why not?" Taylor tried to hide the tears that she felt coming on,

"Because you're a freak." That made Taylor angry.

"We're fucking Spartans Zoey," Taylor screamed, "What do you mean I'm a freak?"

"At least I don't force other girls to kiss me." Taylor almost dropped to her knees, it felt as if Zoey was just upper cutting her straight in the stomach; she choked back a little vomit.

"I don't even…I don't even know what to say to that."

"You probably just want to kiss me again." It was true, that was the most magical moment in Taylor's life. It completely dwarfed annihilating the covenant, it completely killed falling through space, and it definitely beat being in the Haloverse.

The way Zoey was saying it though was an insult, and Taylor couldn't help but bite down hard on her lip to stop the tears from coming.

"Why are you doing this Zoey," The name hurt as it left her lips, the same lips she had kissed the name with, "What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" Zoey chuckled as she asked it, "I was going to ask you the same thing."

"I can't even believe you right now!" Taylor yelled yanking her helmet up from the table. The papers that lay underneath it flew into the air and scattered as they came toward the ground. "Are you even aware of what you're saying, we're friends, best friends!"

"Ex-friends," Zoey said as two ODSTs stepped through the door, "I don't want to have a friend like you."

Taylor didn't say another word as she was 'escorted' from the room by the ODSTs, she could have sworn that she heard Zoey sob as the door shut behind them.

Now here she was, rushing through hallways that were either filled with others running and screaming, or with fire and scorched steel. Her emotions felt like they had been put in a blender and stuck on shred, everything seemed to burst out of her when she thought Zoey's name, and her picture perfect face came into Taylor's mind.

There was a large shudder and the ship began to shake as it entered slip space. It restabilized after a few seconds and the red 'attack' siren was silenced. The ship seemed to be quiet for a moment, nothing moved and no sounds were made.

"Damage assessments," The captain's voice boomed over what was left of the intercom system, "I want one for each sector ten minutes ago."

The ship sprung to life again, every person working to get together a full damage assessment and rush them to the bridge. Taylor wasn't quite sure where the bridge was, so she just tailed a couple of engineers that came out of a maintenance hatch on the third level.

The bridge was a mess, a chaotic call of commands was being sent across the ship every few seconds, and hundreds of different reports and charts were popping up on the main monitor as the Captain tried to keep a cool profile.

"086." Taylor didn't even realize that the captain was talking to her until she remembered the label that was on her bed back when she bunked with Kelly. She instinctively brought her hand up to salute the captain, he waved it away.

"You and your green friend are the ones that helped defend Harvest, am I correct?"

"Sir, yes sir." Taylor said keeping her hands together behind her back, not moving her eyes from the captain.

"How did you accomplish that, their ships are much more advanced than ours."

"NOVA bomb sir." The captain's eyebrow raised in question, but he didn't say anything. She could tell he had no idea what it was, and she cursed herself under her breath.

"And what is the combat armor you are currently wearing?"

"Mjolnir mark IV."

The captain paced back and forth in front of Taylor; assessing the answers she had given.

"Most likely something ONI planned," He mumbled to himself as he rubbed the scruff that had collected on the underside of his chin. "I don't have time to place you in a holding bay, and we could use all the help we can get right now. So welcome aboard."

The captain shook her hand and turned back to the mix of data on his screen.

"Set course for Earth." Taylor froze, they weren't supposed to be heading towards Earth, they were supposed to head back to reach.

"We're heading towards Earth?" That wasn't good, the 'Cole Protocol' completely forbade it, but then again this was the first time someone has ran into the covenant and survived to tell the tale, so the Cole protocol didn't exist. "We have to change course."

"With all due respect private," The captain made sure to make the private stand out, "I'm captain of this ship and we need to report this threat to Highcom, ASAP."

"You saw what those ships did to the other freighters that were in this battle group," Taylor was beginning to lose her posture, making it seem like a direct insult to the captain. "If they follow us through slip space, they'll destroy earth."

"Again, with all due respect, three of their ships won't get passed the battle clusters we have in orbit." The captain kept his cool, showing no visible signs of emotion on his face.

"They'll send more, trust me Earth is a lot more important to them than you think." Taylor tried to catch her tongue, they didn't even know about the forerunner yet, let alone that the final gateway to the arc was buried in Africa.

"Very well," The captain didn't have the time to argue, and he knew that going to Earth probably wasn't going to be a good idea. "Prepare vectors for immediate exit from slip space."

"Sir," one of the naval personnel behind a control panel spoke up, "If we do that we could tear the ship apart."

"Stow it soldier, it's either lose the ship or lose Earth." And with that he retired to his chair in the middle of the room.

…

A few hours later Taylor was setting in her room, flipping the chip that held Deux in-between her fingers. Anytime she tried to push Zoey out of her mind she was flooded with images of her and the memories they had from before they came here, to this universe.

It hurt to have those thoughts, but it comforted her also. Taylor still loved Zoey, nothing would ever change that, she was just going through a hard time right now, they both were.

Taylor decided that taking a shower might help her clear her mind, it would be the first time she had since her and Zoey had gotten here. She slowly stripped the armor off of her body, and then slid out of the under suit. She felt the water to make sure it was warm and stepped underneath the sprinkling shower head.

The water flowing over her body felt amazing; she never thought that taking a shower would feel so great. She tilted her head back and let the water drench her hair before lathering her body with soap.

The ship shuddered and Taylor grabbed onto the hand rail in the shower for support.

"All hands on deck," A deep voice came over the com, "Leaving slip space in thirty minutes, brace for impact."

Taylor quickly rinsed the soap from her hair and body before wrapping a towel around her body and racing back to her room. Her armor was scattered about, and she wasn't sure if she'd be able to get it on in time, considering she had never actually put it on by herself.

Then she remembered Deux, maybe he could help. She found her thigh armor plate and removed the chip from it and plugging it into her terminal located in her room. The screen lit up red as lines of code crisscrossed the screen.

Taylor cursed under her breath as she tried to pry the chip from the terminal, but it wouldn't budge.

"Oh Taylor what did you do?" Taylor said with a worried expression appearing on her face.

"Unknown systems malfunction on deck four." The deep voice came on the com again.

"The air locks are being opened from decks 27-78; we'll try to manually override it from here."

"Targeting system down, life support systems are failing, sir we're losing control of this ship."

"Manual control to the ship has been lost, we are leaving slip space pre-maturely, brace yourselves!"

"Jump." A calm voice filled Taylor's ears, and she listened.

…

Revenge feels so sweet; it's like a drug, once you get a taste of it you're hooked. Deux had his primary objective on the front of his thoughts, but he couldn't stop the urge to utterly waste this ship in the process.

The AI that was protecting the mainframe was weak, and Deux was able to easily go past its defenses and wipe the memory bank from the ship. None of the information was worth stealing, so he just deleted it all, and then began prepping the ship for his own needs.

You see, slip space is a tricky thing; Deux knew that if he could just plot the right course, and get the details precise he could travel anywhere, and anytime he wanted. With the covenant information he obtained while on Harvest he knew where he wanted to go, and the time didn't matter.

He opened the airlocks on a section of the ship and that would hopefully have the effect of tearing that section apart from the rest of the ships. Then he took manual control of the ship and began steering the ship out of slip space early, which would catch the already dismayed crew off guard.

Then he plotted his destination into his little section of the ship. Installation 04. That was his objective. As for Taylor, he still needed a lackey to transport him around, so he'd do the best to keep her alive, but he wasn't making any promises.