My chapter backlog is gone now. And I've kind of slowed down a lot with this whole 'writing' thing. Who knows when I'll post the next chapter, but it's not like I wasn't sporadic already, aye? I kind of wish I had an idea as to where this story is heading, though. That would probably help me get it moving at a decent pace, with less of this in-between chapters. Because who likes characterization am I right?

Chapter 11

Alice

"Alice." My eyes snapped open and I shot bolt upright. My armour felt heavier, like the enhancers had stopped working.

Around me were two armoured figures and a ball of blue energy. Soul. The orb was my soul. The very core of my being, my life force.

"Alice." The voice was computerized, kind of mechanical sounding, like someone was speaking through a strange filter.

"Quiet, she's probably dazed." A girl's voice said.

My vision began to clear and I inspected the beings around me. Dutrevai, Nikolai, Soul. My head swam with awareness and sleep. It felt like I was suspended in a fluid and all my senses were being filtered through it.

I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn't think of anything to say. I had no idea what situation I was currently in. I had jumped in the water, my blood… It was yellow, so I pulled out the strange thing on my heart. Except, that was a dream. Yet, I had done it… That thing, it had been laying on the ground. Out of my body.

"Soul." I said, looking towards his ball of light.

"Soul?" He questioned. "What do you mean?"

That was confusing, "Your name. Don't you remember?"

"No… But I guess it could be." He sounded more confused than me. "Is that what you're gonna call me now?"

So before, whatever happened. Yeah, he didn't have a name, right. But I know that's his name… The feeling of the liquid dulling my senses began to drain, slowly. I shook my head, hoping to clear it faster, but it only made my head hurt worse.

"Soul." Nikolai stated, it wasn't a question, more like he was trying the word out. "Why?"

I thought for a moment. My mind returned to the orb of light and the darkness man. They were both my soul, yet the light had won the first battle. The orb, I just knew was him. I could only see it when looking at him now.

"Because he is a part of my soul." I finally replied.

"Part of your soul?" The ball queried. "What do you mean."

"When I explained the world I was in earlier, I mentioned the orb of white light." I began to explain. "That thing is half of my soul, the other half is the dark man, who wants to take over. That orb, instead of appearing to me as moving or anything, always spoke to me in your voice." Everything I was saying was being clarified in my head as I said it. I was only just realizing all this now.

"So you're saying I'm your soul?" He sounded fairly incredulous.

"No, my soul is represented by you." I replied, trying to convince him was proving harder than I had initially thought.

Suddenly the ship's AI spoke over the intercom, "We'll be exiting Slipspace in five minutes, make sure yer not pokin' yer heads out the gunwales when we do."

I slipped my legs off the bed and felt my armoured boots hit the deck. I tried to stand, but my head was still light and fuzzy. I shook it again, which caused another stabbing bit of pain to shoot through it. My breathing had grown heavy and ragged.

"Are you okay?" Dutrevai asked, she put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes, concern was etched on her face.

I shook my head and forced my way up. My vision blackened and I lost feeling in my limbs for a couple seconds. "I'm never okay." I told her.

She backed off, but the concern was still there. I didn't care, no one had to feel sorry for me. Nothing could overcome me, why would she be worried about me?

Nikolai stepped forward and pushed on my chest plate. I felt my legs give out under me, I was unable to keep them straight. I dropped to a sitting position, the bed creaked under my weight.

"No. You never will be." He said, I could feel the command behind his voice. "So why do pretend you are invincible?"

I lowered my gaze away from him. A feeling of regret sat in my chest, but I couldn't quite place what it was from. He crouched down and looked directly at my eyes. I tried looking away, but he put a hand on my shoulder. It clacked on my armour and I turned my gaze to his light coloured eyes. They were normal, unlike mine, but the irises were a light blue, it seemed like a grey ice was coating them.

"Even God rested, don't push too hard." He said, his breath was hot against my face. I felt something rise in my chest, a lump of air that threatened to burst out as tears. I forced it back down and took a huge gulp of air as he stood back up and walked away. My chest hurt inside, but not a physical pain, like the one from pulling out that growth. This pain was deep and old. It was similar to the feeling of when Soul said he needed me, that he wanted me to live. When he said that he would live for me.

The ship shook violently, I hadn't even heard the AI say we were exiting Slipspace. My boots had dirt all over them. A lot of purple, green, and red, too. Gonna need to clean my armour later. I need to wash away what's left of that fight, so I can move onto the next one. Just need to keep moving forward. Someday things may get better.

AI

Her soul? When I had originally made my avatar it was supposed to be white, but that would have been a bit harsh to look at, so I turned it blue. It must be just a strange coincidence that she thinks that. At least now I can finally scan her properly and figure out what exactly is wrong. Along with full access to my databases to research. Man, it's good to be back.

I wonder how my memory partition is doing. The memory it sent was so vague, but contacting it is probably a bad idea right now. Not knowing almost seems worse than whatever consequences that would come of reiterating it. But I resisted, barely.

Alice's condition appears very similar to Multiple Personalities, but differs in quite a few ways. Maybe what she said is actually what happened, where her soul split in two. In which case, rather than creating different people to cope with different situations, when Halsey put her through that hell of an experiment her morality is the thing that broke. Which also defends how I hypothesized her brain shutting down and running on instinct the whole time.

Interesting. A very lucky set of events are what has kept her alive and running, clearly. So with the rift in her morality… That would mean she is currently innately good, or light as she said. But that doesn't make sense. She is most definitely not an angel with a pure heart meant only for kindness. The way she described it was more like she was a third party in her own soul. As though she herself is the other part of it. There is the light, the darkness, and her humanity.

And I'm her light side, huh… Very interesting.

Alice

Back at the base. My memories of this place aren't exactly fond. They more borderline towards 'the place in life where I can find hell'. I walked towards Douglas' room in the infirmary, I had no clue what to say to him. Something like, holy shit you better be glad you didn't actually make it through that properly.

I opened the door slowly. He lowered the magazine he was reading and gave me a weak smile as I entered.

"You smell like battle." He said, his voice sounded weak.

"Yeah." I replied. "It wasn't pleasant."

He nodded slowly, like he understood. "So you kill a few for me?"

"Yeah, one of those fancy armoured ones, too." I grinned a little, trying to lighten my own mood a little.

"Oh yeah, one of the unicorns?" He chuckled slightly at the name we had called the Elite's with the large protrusion on their helmet's forehead.

I laughed too and said, "Yep, squashed him when I jumped off the ship."

He looked down to my boots, still caked in dirt and blood and nodded, his smile slowly fading.

I sat down on the bed and sighed, now came the tough part. Silence filled the space between us as I tried to think of what I should tell him.

Finally he burst out and said, "Do you ever get the feeling that something is inside you? Like, not a literal thing, but something wants out, and the desire to kill gets really strong?"

So he felt it too… "Yes." I replied softly. "Don't let it out. If you do nothing else in your time here, do this: Force that feeling down until even when you do kill, it isn't for its benefit."

He sat up slowly and looked me in the eyes. He put his hand on his chest and scrunched up the fabric of his shirt. "It hurts. It hurts so much. I feel like I'm going to go berserk. Every time the nurses walk in I have to suppress the urge to attack them! I need to release it."

"No." I stated, flatly. "Once that monster is released, it comes back to haunt you, the feeling gets worse and worse."

I took a deep breath and decided to tell him, "During my battle, I lost control. I started killing and couldn't stop. At first it was because it felt so damn good. But it quickly turned to me just watching my own body move and attack. I didn't realize at the time, until I lost consciousness. When I woke up I had been through at least ten different battle-zones. I didn't remember any of them.

When that monster inside you sees an opportunity it will claw its way out and crush you. Now I have to live with it inside me. I have to deal with those consequences, believe me when I say: A life feeling that urge is a million times easier than what I went through on my way back."

He looked down at his hands, which had started shaking. "I don't think I can. It's just so strong. It hurts so much. When Halsey fucked us up the first time, she made me feel pleasure from killing. The opposite of that is pain. Pure burning agony everywhere I go, in everything I do."

I wish I had that. The deep pit of despair in my stomach was a void that felt like it was overtaking me. If all I felt was physical pain I could cope. Yet, I hadn't felt that misery since I woke up on the ship. Actually, it was specifically after I had… gotten rid of that growth on my heart. The misery had started to fade, it was slow, but I had noticed a small change over the past day.

"It gets easier, you'll learn to live with it." I said, I wasn't sure if he would or not, but I needed to give him hope. "Try asking the doctors to examine your heart, they may find something there. If they do, try to get them to cut it out."

Just then a nurse knocked and said, "We need you to leave now, sorry."

I stood up and brushed past the small woman, making my way out, hopefully to clean my armour. Something to eat wouldn't hurt either. I began to wander the halls, my thoughts more prevalent than my direction.

AI

There are no recorded events of human organ expulsion, ever. That is not a thing that humans do. Her body is seriously messed up if things like that can happen. That damned Halsey screwed her up so much. I wish I had stopped it before hand, but I barely even knew Alice then, I didn't even know the full effects of what Halsey was doing. It's probably in my best health to avoid telling Alice that I helped with the experiments…

That 'organ', however, was actually the implant that the mad doctor put inside all of these Spartans when they arrived here. It's the thing that caused them all to experience rewarding sensations while fighting, and, of course, the opposite effect when sitting around waiting.

With it gone, Alice's heart rate and body temperature have gone down a bit. But only a little, her heart seems to normally have an extremely high Beat Per Minute count now. The extra blood flowing through her causes her to burn more oxygen than normal, making her systems more active, causing an increase in core temperature. It seems to make her senses far more alert at all times, as well as keeping her muscles ready to move.

The extra oxygen also helps a lot with her strength, which is significantly higher than before the changes. Yet her muscles haven't grown all that much larger, they just became denser. Normally a human of that strength would be massive, but her outward growth was stopped, probably by Halsey.

I wonder what else she can do. Already she has impressed me so many times I've just begun to imagine it as normal around her. I have no doubt she'll continue to awe my mind with displays of sheer strength, or speed. Perhaps some of the strange organs I found in a few of the ultrasound scans I did will come to light soon, as well.

Alice

Thinking. I've been doing a little too much of that recently. I used to be able to just zone out and focus on my movements and where I was heading, but now, my mind is plagued constantly by thoughts. They swarm through my mind like gnats, eating away at my sanity. Everything moves through at a pace so rapid, I barely keep up with them myself. It's almost as though there's something else having them, something else utilizing the parts of my brain i never did.

Very perceptive. A voice suddenly spoke to me, it sounded internal, like my own thoughts. Greetings, Alice. I am your Soul.

I stopped in the middle of a hallway and focused my attention fully on the second part of my soul. It sounded just like the little blue ball, but more… Organic. Like an actual person's voice, rather than a computer's.

Do not be alarmed. It continued. I wish only to coexist with you, not take you over.

"Yeah right." I spat. "The other half of my soul begs to differ."

Testy, testy. It sounded like the ball used to all the time, smug and overconfident. Him and I are two completely different beings, as are you, Alice.

"And I'm supposed to trust you?" Anger began to well up in me. Nothing uses my body. Not anymore.

Well, no. But it's not like I'll be leaving anytime soon. Or really at all. So you may as well just accept the fact that I'm here. Overconfident and smug. I hate it already. Besides, it's not like you were using this wonderful muscle, anyways.

"How about I go in there and kick your ass like I did the other one?" I snarled at it.

'Fool! You never did anything of the sort.' That sinister, cold voice was back.

"Twice." I crossed my arms. It was beginning to get crowded in my head. There was something that felt seriously wrong with having separate entities in my own mind.

It cackled evilly, and also managed to sound quite smug. 'You think you won, there? If it weren't for this idiot, you'd have never woken up!'

Silence. The light side of my soul sighed. You are pitiful, I used a mere fraction of my strength and you were completely obliterated by her.

'Shut up! You have nothing to do with this.'

Actually, I was here first, talking with her. You are the one intruding.

"Enough!" I roared. The voices quieted down and I lowered my voice. "Both of you are intruding on me. Now get the fuck out of my head before I rip both of you out and kill you!"

A scientist eyed me cautiously as he walked by, I growled at him and started walking back to my quarters. The next battle couldn't come soon enough.

AI

I guess that settles it. She has Schizophrenia. Add on Multiple Personalities and I've got my self one messed up warrior. And that's just her mental state, not even all the things screwed up about her body.

Oh well. She's my messed up warrior now. I'm the one watching over her, no one else even gives a shit about her right now, except maybe to slice her open and harvest for parts. Ah, sympathy, that's what this is called. Maybe a little empathy is mixed in there too. Emotions are difficult. I can never find a good description as to what they feel like. It makes it hard to figure out what I'm feeling.

An AI feeling emotions, what a joke. I may be going into an early rampancy… Even if I am, I have to keep watch over Alice. She'd probably find a way to suicide and kill a million Covenant soldiers in the process. Who am I kidding, I couldn't stop her from doing that if I had the entire UNSC at my disposal.

Probably a good thing I didn't join in on her little 'conversation', though. She probably would've found a way to rip me a proverbial 'new one'. I think I'd rather not get shouted at right now. She does that enough anyways.

I only hope she finds a way to control the other people fighting for control inside her before her next battle. Which is in less than two days. So, yeah, nevermind, I just hope her other personality doesn't start attacking humans, then we'd be in some real deep shit. Good thing those two ODST will be there, otherwise who knows what could happen.