Just remembered that I have a handful of followers to attend to every once and a while. Sorry guys.

This chapter will be in honor of 25k story views. It will be at least 4,000 words, and it will be the last section of the 343 Guilty Spark mission and of the mission that follows.

Oh yeah and I made this fanfic approximately five months ago so

ALMOST HALF YEAR ANNIVERSARY YEAH.

I'm such a loser.

Alrighty, guys and gals.

It is 1:14 AM

I am so lucid right now.

Let's write a goddamn fanfic.

~Husky

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open as Six attempted to get back on to his feet. The evil words that the voice had bellowed now echoed in his mind. Where did it come from? John hadn't heard anything out of the ordinary, but the crippling pain in Six's skull as the grotesque voice worked it's way into his head had unnerved and disturbed him.

Was he going insane?

"Six. We have to move." John said with an outstretched hand. Six grabbed it and pulled himself up. He cracked his neck loudly and raised his DMR from his side to his chest.

"You okay?" John asked.

"Oh yeah. Never been better." Six replied. He was lying, of course. What normal person ever heard evil voices in their head? "So I guess the only thing we can really do now is go down."

"Seems that way." John replied.

Six walked out of the elevator. The hallway outside of the enclosed space was dark. The power hadn't gone out for the entire station again, as the lights in the elevator were still operating. Six turned on his flashlight and, with John close behind him, proceeded to round the corner with his gun raised. So far, so good. It was unfortunate, nonetheless quite repetitive, that they needed to find a new way up. Six took a wild guess that there were no stairs on that floor either, meaning that, yet again, they were going to have to hunt for an elevator.

Suddenly, the hallway began to shake. It started light, but quickly moved to intense in mere seconds, shattering ceiling bulbs and knocking Six off balance. He toppled into the wall as he clutched his head, the sharp pain that he had felt in the elevator returning. Something wet dripped down his lip. His nose was bleeding.

"Six!" John said.

"YOU DIDN'T HEED MY WARNING. NOW, YOU WILL BREAK."

"AGHHHHHHH!" Six yelled. The pain in his head was mind splitting, increasing tenfold from when it was present in the elevator. Six clutched his head with both of his hands, screaming in pain as John tried to keep his balance on the shaking floor.

"PATHETIC, LIKE THE OTHERS. BUT... DIFFERENT. AN ALREADY BROKEN MIND. SCARS LEFT UNTREATED. YOUR LIFE IS SORROW.

LET ME END THAT SORROW."

Six ran out of breath seconds later, coughing heavily. The pain stabbed his mind. His nose bled profusely. He was in the most amount of pain that he had ever been in. Worse than any gunshot wound, worse than even when he lost his arm. He couldn't take it.

The pain heightened to its peak when Six blacked out.

Six lay there while the quaking subsided, motionless. John rushed to his side as soon as he regained his footing. The rise and fall of his chest told John that he was at least alive, but he didn't know exactly what was going on. First things first, figure out what the problem was. John had a little bit of medical training, and plenty of medical treatment, so he knew a few things. He grabbed Six's helmet and twisted it to the side, unlocking it, and pulled it off. There was blood still flowing from his nose, but there wasn't much around to stem the bleeding, so he let that be for now. He checked his pulse for an irregular heartbeat, but his heartbeat was normal. He put his two fingers to Six's temple, as he had been clutching his head.

John felt nothing, it was quite possibly a severe migraine, but as he was about to pull away, he felt something pulse. He figured that it was just Six's heartbeat, but something stopped him. It was heavier than a heartbeat. It was almost as if his brain itself was pulsing.

What in the hell had happened to him?

John knew that he had seen a few wall mounted med-kits earlier when they were in the upper floors. This must have been an active facility at some point, meaning that there probably was a med-kit not far from where he stood. He looked down the hallway for the telltale red glow, but there was nothing in sight. Damn.

"Alright. I hate that it's come to this, but you obviously can't move on your own..." John said softly as he reattached the helmet and hoisted Six over his shoulder. Despite the extremely heavy Mjolnir armor, he was surprisingly light. Well, probably not, but for John, he wasn't much. John walked down the hallway with his assault rifle in his free hand, Six held over him with the other, looking for a med-kit.

Hopefully Six would regain consciousness before anything bad happened. Knowing this place, however, that was going to be very near impossible.

Six sat floating in the middle of a void. Blackness was all that could be seen other than his own body. He realized where he was and looked at his hands. Both were made of flesh and blood. Six looked at his left arm in confusion. Six didn't know it at the time, but his perception of both of his arms as whole was simply a memory, nothing more. He thought about his prosthetic, his Mjolnir armor and himself at present. His fingers changed first, as did his feet, but the change spread and covered him. Now, he was wearing his suit. His arm was the way it was supposed to be. He realized that if thinking of himself changed what he looked like, then maybe if he closed his eyes and thought hard enough...

He opened his eyes. He had thought about home. The blackness had been becoming bright and white when he had opened his eyes. He needed to concentrate harder.

One... two...

The infinite void around him changed to a grassy field. He dropped from where he had been floating, just a few feet up, and landed on the ground. He looked around. He now knew that he was in his own mind, but it all felt extremely real. Almost as if It had happened before. It wasn't a dream.

It was a memory.

He turned to his left. There was a small child running towards him at full speed. Six noticed him at the last second, but he had no time to react. The kid ran right through him as if he didn't exist. Six raised his hand to a nearby plant and waved it at a branch. His hand phased through the stems and leaves. He couldn't interact with his surroundings, a bystander in his own memory. The small. Child turned and smiled. Six looked to where he was smiling. Close behind him was a young woman with dark hair. She was smiling, chasing the boy as the two of them laughed. Six recognized the woman, but he was not sure where he had seen her before.

"Slow down, honey! Mommy needs to catch her breath." The woman said laughing, her hands on her knees. The boy turned around and walked up to her.

"Mommy?" The boy asked.

"Yes, sweetie?" The mother replied.

"Where is dad?" He asked.

Her face froze. "Well, he's at work right now baby, don't worry." She said. A tear rolled down her cheek.

"Why are you crying?" The kid asked.

The mother didn't answer. "Here, why don't I take you to that ice cream place you really like? It'll be fun." She said instead.

"Okay." The boy said happily. They walked across the dandelion covered field holding hands. As they got further and further away, the memory faded. He was back in the void.

It didn't take very long for him to realize that the woman was his mother. He didn't remember that day, but he remembered everything they said, word for word, and that was most certainly his mom. He had gotten a double scoop of cookie dough ice cream after that, and regretted it when he got a brain freeze. And the reason that his mother had been crying was because his father had hit her. Hard. It had happened the night before, he remembered now. They were getting a divorce. It happened shortly before he was taken into the SPARTAN III program.

Meaning that the kid in the memory was definitely him.

If he could remember things in here that he never could out there, then maybe...

He now sat in the passenger seat of a car. He looked to his left. He recognized the driver to be his babysitter that day. She was on the phone with his mother.

"Yeah, they're doing good, him especially. They're very well behaved. Do you want to talk to him?" She said. "Hey, buddy." The babysitter said to his kid-self. Six looked in to the back seat. Himself from the memory sat in the middle seat, two other much smaller children in car seats flanking his left and right. He knew immediately that they were his baby brother and sister. He couldn't remember their names, a side effect of the intense mental conditioning that was the SPARTAN III program. His young self looked up at the babysitter.

"Telephone. Your mom wants to talk to you." The babysitter said to him. Young Six grabbed the phone and raised it to his ear.

"Hi, mommy." He said.

Six could hear her, clear as day, as if he were really on the phone himself. It isn't like he needed to, though.

He had the words of this particular conversation burned into his mind.

"Hello, sweetie. How are you doing?" She asked.

"Good." Young Six said.

"Hey, buddy?"

"Yes mommy?"

"Mommy loves you very very much, okay? Don't you ever forget that."

Young Six smiled. "Okay, mommy. I love you too." He said.

"Could you give the phone back to Roseanne, now, baby?" She asked.

"Okay." Young Six said. He handed the phone to the babysitter and looked out of the window. He looked up at the sky. He saw something. Six remembered what happened next. He really didn't need a visual aid.

He didn't stop the memory.

He looked out of the window with his young self and saw something falling from the sky nearby his house.

"Roseanne, what's that?" Young Six asked. "It looks like a shooting star."

"That's silly. It's daytime, no stars are out. Where do you see-" She stopped talking and looked at what was falling from the sky.

"Roseanne? Roseanne, what is-" Six mother said over the phone.

It was a mortar strike.

Bombs hit the neighborhood at fast speeds, blowing up entire blocks in less than a second houses collapsed inward upon themselves and bystanders were disintegrated. One mortar was less than one hundred feet from the car.

The call ended.

The memory faded from Six's view as he dropped to his knees and weeped like a child. He wasn't ready to go through losing his mother again. That day was what made him into what he now was, a weapon by the UNSC's design. If his mother was still alive, he never would have been chosen. His father had divorced his mother the year before, and he was nowhere to be found in the aftermath, so he had nowhere to go. They put him into foster care. Then, one day, a few weeks after, a pair of adults in uniform had picked him up and sent him to the UNSC.

The reason that he hated the Covenant as much as he did wasn't because of the savagery. Not the bloodlust. Not even the death of his mother, though all of these things added fire to the flame that was his empathy.

It was because they made him into who he was.

He heard something now, not in his head. It was faint, but it was there.

Wake up.

Six inhaled deeply, waking from the time he had spent in his own head. He sat up as fast as he could and backed into the wall, intense breaths coming from his lungs. He looked around. John was there next to him, and something was pounding in the distance. His ears were still ringing.

"He's awake!" A voice said. It came from somewhere in front of him. John crouched at his side.

"Hey, rise and shine." John said.

"What...?" Six asked.

"Whatever you heard in the hallway knocked you out cold. I've had to carry you for the past hour and a half." John answered. "It wasn't a smooth ride."

"But I was just... I..." Six muttered. It was a dream. It had to have been, but it had felt too real. He was right the first time. He had been inside of his own head. There wasn't time to dwell on it now, but he would address what had had happened later. Right now, he needed to find out what was going on.

"Where... are we? Are we still in the facility?" Six asked.

"No. No, we're out." John said. "But we still need a way off of this rock. I made contact with the pilot that flew us here, she said that she needed all of us to stay put and wait for her to find a suitable landing spot."

"Good. Good..." Six said. "...wait. What do you mean, all of us?"

"We ran into a few marines when we hit the surface. They've been holed up here for hours." John said, pointing at a pair of marines behind him. They were checking guns and loading them, getting ready in case they had to fight. "When they saw us, they dropped everything that they were doing to help. I called evacuation about a minute and a half before you woke up. It should be here soon."

"Oh, man..." Six said as he attempted to stand. He got up too fast and became dizzy, his head pulsing. Six fell forward and didn't break his fall. John grabbed his arm and lifted him up.

"You alright?" John asked Six.

"It... It was in my head..." Six muttered.

"What?"

"I heard a, a voice in my head, and there was this intense pain, I..." Six said. "You didn't hear it?"

"Are you sure you're not going to faint on me again?" John asked.

"I... forget it." Six said.

"Once we get back to base, we can worry about that." John said. "Right now, we need to keep an eye out for-"

"Monsters!" One of the marines shouted from behind John. He whipped around just in time to see dozens of the creatures pouring from the facility doors. As the marines and John opened fire on the door, Six looked for a weapon. He saw a battle-rifle just a few places to his left and reached for it. He grabbed the stock and pulled it towards himself, squeezing the trigger with his index finger. Six opened fire on the doorway, the burst-fire capability of his weapon killing several of the creatures. His clip ran dry. He slowly got up and reached for a full clip that lay on the ground next to him. As he inserted the magazine into the bottom of the rifle, John went on his radio.

"We're under attack. Where is extraction?" John asked.

"Make your way north, Chief. There's a large tower a few hundred meters away from your current position. If you can find your way to it and get above the fog and foliage canopy, I just might be able to pick you up safely." The pilot said.

"Understood." John said. He looked over to the marines. He caught a glimpse of one of their hands reaching out above the crowd of monsters, but aside from that, there was no sign of them. They were swallowed whole by the horde.

"Can you stand up all of the way?" John asked.

"Yeah, I'm good." Six said.

"Then start running!" John said.

Six and John ran to the north as fast as they could, dozens of the vile and hideous undead creatures not far behind. It would only take a minute for them to get to the tower, but the monsters were gaining on them fast. There was no time to turn and shoot, no time to stop moving. One wrong step meant painful death.

"Look! There! The tower!" Six said, pointing straight ahead. They were getting closer, but so were the creatures. Six heard something coming down from the sky and looked up, expecting the clouds to be raining more of the disgusting things. But instead, it was something else.

They looked like little floating machines.

John's have noticed them too, because he looked up as well. One of the machines was slightly different from the rest, spherical in shape with a glowing blue bulb in the middle of it. The other machines glowed blue as well, but that didn't last long. They suddenly flashed a violent shade of crimson and fired lasers from their fronts. The creatures that had been ruthlessly chasing the two Spartans mere moments before were now being cut down effortlessly by the robots, but the creatures countered the attack with sheer numbers.

The spherical one stooped down to Six and John. It flashed a brilliant golden light into their eyes, blinding them. Six covered his visor with his free hand.

When he took it away, they were standing somewhere else. Not on the ground, but on one of the legs of the tower, away from harm and from the battle.

"What the..." Six said, looking at the surface he was standing on. Six, pulled out his magnum from its holster and instinctively raised his gun at the machine, John following suit, but the robot caused them no harm. The light in its center grew brighter.

"Greetings." It said. "I am 343 Guilty Spark, the monitor of installation 04."

"What do you want?" Six asked forcibly, gun still raised.

"Only to keep the peace, Reclaimer." It said.

"...Reclaimer?" Six asked.

"Someone has released the Flood, a most dangerous enemy from the time of the Forerunners. I need your assistance. If you'll come with me, please."

"Wait a minute, where are you-" Six said, but was cut off by another blinding flash of light.

When he opened his eyes, the two Spartans and the floating robot known as 343 Guilty Spark were in a new place, this time inside. The area had many red lights, making the room and the Spartans appear as shades of crimson.

"Ah, yes! You're both still alive! Hahahahaha, I am a genius! Do you still have all of your body parts attached, Reclaimers?" Guilty Spark asked.

"No, my arm is gone." Six said, jokingly. He cut the jokes quickly. "What are you? Why did you bring us here?"

"Answers. Now." John said.

"We need to collect the Index in order to activate the installation, of course. Do you not know this? You are Reclaimers, are you not?"

Neither Six nor John could answer that question.

"Ill take your prolonged silence as a definite yes! Oh, you are silly humans, you two. You almost fooled me, but I cannot be fooled! Yes, right this way." Guilty Spark said gleefully. "Doodedodeedo..." It hummed as it flew across the room.

"You think we should follow him?" John asked.

"Do we really have much of a choice?" Six countered.

They followed the machine as it whirled and flew in little motions throughout the air above them. As they went into a nearby hallway, Guilty Spark crashed himself into a wall.

"Strange! Who put that wall there? I would have known if there was a wall there!" It said.

Six simply sighed and kept walking. "Hey, whatsyourface." Six said.

Guilty Spark turned. "My name is 343 Guilty Spark, Reclaimer." It said.

"Is there anything else I can call you? Maybe, oh, I don't know, shorter? Or more conversation friendly?" Six asked.

"You may call me anything that you like, as long as you find it convenient." Guilty Spark replied. "Whatsyourface, however, is disrespectful. My face is not an object."

Six thought for a minute.

"How about... Lightbulb?" Six said.

John chuckled. Guilty Spark stayed silent, however, focusing on a door that they had come across. He hacked it in less than a second and the doors swung open.

"Hmm? Oh yes, I will respond to that name as well, from now on. Lightbulb... it sounds rather..." Guilty Spark pondered, looking for the right word. "...nice. Yes, yes, come along now, Reclaimers. We must get to the Index!"

"What is this "Index" you keep talking about?" John said.

"The Index is a Forerunner device used to activate the installation. Surely you know-"

"What happens when the installation activates? Is it some kind of weapon?" John asked

"Tsk, tsk. 'Tis not a cudgel. It was once used to destroy the Flood by the Forerunners. It succeeded brilliantly. But..."

"What's the but?" Six asked.

"Oh, no no no, no but, forget it. It's nothing. It is a device used to combat the Flood invasion, nothing more. Now, onwards, Reclaimers! To the Index!" Guilty Spark said cheerfully, flying ahead once again.

"I don't trust it." John said.

"Me neither. First I have voices and screaming pain in my head, next, I-"

"What did you say?" Guilty Spark said, turning around and facing directly at Six. "Voices? Describe them. What voices? What pain?"

"Well, while I was in the facility, I-" Six looked up. Guilty Spark sat less than an inch in front of his face. They held a stare for a moment.

"Why did you stop, Reclaimer? Do go on." Guilty Spark said eagerly.

Six, weirded out, pushed Guilty Spark at least a foot further away before he began talking again. "I heard a deep, evil sounding voice. It sounded like someone was scraping a knife across stone. The more it spoke, the more the facility shook, and the more the facility shook, the sharper the pain in my head became."

"Oh. Oh dear... this isn't good." Guilty Spark said softly. "It was not supposed to awaken. Not this early..."

"What are you mumbling?" Six asked.

"What? Oh, nothing. Just a little song. Yes, a song! Sing it with me!" Guilty Spark said, flying off forward once again. "Da dada da dadada doo dee do day do..."

"Well, I've established one thing. It's a very bad liar." Six said.

"You're telling me." John replied.

They really didn't have much choice but to follow the self proclaimed monitor, but something was obviously amiss. This definitely was not a normal, cheery thing like the robot projected it to be, that much was clear. Whatever this mysterious Index was, and whatever happened when used with the installation, Six was going to find out.

Even if it killed him.

Muhahahahahahaha! I totally did it!

I mean, the 4,000+ words of this chapter may include the top and bottom sections that I leave in bold every once and a while, but I did it!

What am I crediting myself for? You guys are the real reason I could do it! That handful of you that read a new chapter every time it comes up immediately, the hundreds of people who stumble on to this story daily, and just kind people who comment on my story positively. You're all the best.

Keep reading, you wonderful people.

Keep reading, Wolfgang.

~Husky