Remnants

by General Rage

From Halo's ashes, a mismatched Alliance is born. UNSC soldiers now serve alongside both Batarian deserters and shifty Jackal Space Pirates. Now Shepard and Master Chief have to keep these strange bedfellows from killing one another before they can stop an emergent new threat to the galaxy. The Next Swashbuckling Chapter of the Wormhole Chronicles.

31. Cognitive Cages

Chapter 30: Cognitive Cages

You either Control your Mind, or it Controls You

-Napoleon Hill

The corridors of this strange prison were rapidly changing now, paths shifting, colors altering from one extreme to the next, visions blinking in and out. Zek could only imagine they were flashes of someone's else's memories, a birthday, a vacation, a first kiss or some other pivotal day in some random person's lives. He had no idea why it was happening. He could only imagine it was because whatever this place was it was starting to get a bit out of control. He also couldn't explain why the visions down certain corridors stayed for mere brief seconds whereas others had lasted longer. Jacob and Garrus weren't much help either on that front.

"I don't really deal with this sort of weird crap," Jacob explained.

"This is precisely why I prefer calibrating weapons systems, math is math," Garrus insisted. "It never gets this weird no matter how much it might change."

"That does nothing for us right now, Vakarian," Zek informed him. "All I know is we're even more lost now than before and we're getting sneak peaks into everyone's private history. I feel like a creep, more so than usual."

"Perhaps we do not possess as strong enough a connection with these other memories for us to form a link between us," Retz offered. "Whatever this place is, it's struggling to find a match for us."

It was as good a theory as any. Really Zek was just about done with trying to figure this out. He had already been forced to confront one shitty aspect of his life. How much longer was this place going to play shrink with all of them?

"Ok, what if we try to focus on someone we know?" Zek offered. "Maybe the weird magic lights will pick up on that and we'll find them or whatever."

"Well who do we focus on?" Jacob asked. "Shepard?"

"I've been thinking of finding Shepard since we broke out of our trances," Garrus said. "Nothing happened so far."

"Maybe it doesn't work like that then," Jacob said. "Maybe it's more than just wish fulfillment of who's memories you want to see. This place seems to pick and choose a lot for us."

The implications of which did not sit well with Zek. If this damn place was being controlled by some kind of freaky AI, then he wanted out even more. Last time there was an intelligent entity in one of these relics, it tried to make Tali strangle him to death. He did not want to be in the clutches of one of them, no matter how much it tried to make him come to terms with his shitty past.

"Well maybe we all gotta sync up or something," Zek offered in desperation. "Everyone like, empty their heads or whatever, think of the first person that comes to mind and see if that-"

"Ms. Goto." Retz said.

"Yeah, yeah, maybe her," Zek said frantically. "But first empty-"

"No, Zek, I mean she's right there," Retz corrected him, directing his captain's head by hand.

Indeed, Kasumi was there in front of them, in what looked to be a small bedroom. It was broken off, floating in a dark void, but it seemed stable enough despite appearing like it had been wrenched free of the building it was previously attached to. She was not alone either, there was another person with her. A man of clear Asian descent, dancing with the hooded thief. She was resting her head on his shoulder, looking far more content than usual.

"Oh, I know what this is," Garrus said aloud.

"What? That her boyfriend or something?" Zek asked.

"Keiji," Garrus informed him. "And yeah... he was."

"Was?" Zek questioned, getting the implication seconds later. "Oh. Ohhhhhh."

"He got killed on a job," Jacob stated impatiently to the Jackal. "Kasumi hasn't... ever really gotten over it. Every now and then, someone catches her with that greybox of hers replaying memories of him over and over."

And now she was here, floating in space with her memory of him. She looked happy, very much so. And Zek had the horrible suspicion they were supposed to ruin that. Great, as if they didn't have enough crap piled onto their plate. If the looks on everyone's faces were any indication, Zek wasn't the only person who realized that either.

"We can't just... leave her like that," Garrus insisted, probably sensing the other's apprehension. "I mean you saw us, trapped in those memories."

"You two were horribly miserable." Zek reminded them.

"A trap is a trap." Retz declared. "No matter what it's baited with."

Retz didn't wait for the others at that point. He jumped to a broken piece of the apartment floating in space and then another, heading towards Kasumi directly along a broken path memory path. He eventually ended up on the main island, where Kasumi and Keiji were. Still dancing together, softly, silently. Although the Thief momentarily raised her head to look at the kig-yar as he stared up at them.

"Hey, Retz," she said warmly. "Nice to see you here."

"Yes, you realize there's no way I can be here, right?" Retz asked. "That I'm not a part of this memory."

Kasumi seemed to nod. That was odd, usually that had been enough to at least pause the memory or break them out of their stupor. It worked for Zek and Retz, it worked for Garrus and Jacob. Kasumi was NOT broken from her memory. She kept dancing with Keiji.

"I know," she said. "I've played this memory over a dozen times."

"This... isn't your greybox," Retz tentatively informed her. "You're not replaying the memory."

"I know," Kasumi confessed softly. "I figured that out."

That was when Zek realized something, Kasumi's tone of voice was normal. It wasn't distant or monotone or detached like Garrus and Jacob's had been. She was in full control of her faculties. She wasn't trapped at all. Not by the memory anyway.

"This isn't real," Retz continued, unsure of what he was about to say next. "Keiji... Keiji's still dead, Ms. Goto. I'm sorry."

Kasumi's smile faded, and she finally pulled away from Keiji. The dancing stopped, but the apparition of her dead love remained. He was unfrozen, just staring at Kasumi longingly.

"I know," Kasumi admitted. "I knew from the second I saw him. I knew what this was. I didn't care."

"You weren't trapped at all?" Retz questioned, not sounding surprised but obviously a little confused. "You welcomed this? This whole... reality?"

"Memories are a part of our reality, this isn't like a dream," Kasumi pointed out. "It's what really happened. It's what I recall from my life. It's as real as anything, even if it isn't tangible."

She looked to Keiji, smiling at her now.

"It's before he died," she claimed. "It's him, as real as anything else because it's from me. Not even from a greybox, but my own head. It's more real than any other memory I've ever stored."

"But it isn't really," Retz insisted. "He's not actually there. The real Keiji is dead, Kasumi."

"How is HE any less real?" Kasumi pointed out. "He's not even an idealized version I created, he's as he was. The man I loved... the man I lost. But he's back now and we can-"

"What? Dance forever in blissful ignorance?" Retz pressed upon her. "Just let the rest of the world melt away and remain within this fantasy?"

"How is it a fantasy if it's a part of my real history?" Kasumi asked, sounding a bit perturbed. "He has all his flaws! He's stepped on my toes a few times, he's burped in front of me and all his weird quirks in the bedroom..."

She stopped herself, they did not need to hear that. Thank the ocean, thought Zek, the last thing he needed was hearing about human mating habits. Kasumi quickly recomposed herself.

"My point is, he's as real as the real Keiji ever was," she insisted. "I have him back."

"And all it takes is just forgetting what actually happened to him," Retz scolded somewhat. "Kasumi... you can't just... live here forever. This moment passed, you can preserve it in amber in your mind, but that's where it belongs."

"And what would you know about that?" Kasumi demanded. "I still barely know anything about you, Retz. I'm ok with your secrets, I've come to terms with that. That's just who you are, but you don't pretend there isn't a moment in your past that you would like to live in forever if you could."

Retz looked contemplative for a moment. Zek had no idea what his friend was thinking, but he imagined the T'vaoan was giving the question actual consideration. Retz was always more thoughtful than him, more learned, and this was just the sort of discussion Retz was more than keen to confront if given the chance.

"I do have moments I wish I could live in," he confessed. "I do have... times, however brief where I wish they lasted forever... but they couldn't. They won't. If I tried to make it so, then nothing new would ever come. Nothing different, it would be the same experience. Not like repeating the same day over and over, but it would be a state of stagnation, of who I am."

Zek knew all to well how that felt. Somehow, it seemed to reach Kasumi too, as she lessened her defensive posture.

"I won't claim to know what you had with Keiji,' Retz continued. "But I can see it was special. The fact you wish this could last forever is clear. But it's still nothing new, you'll just be replaying the same moments over and over. I won't say you'll get bored, but it's not a life. You're deliberately shutting off any new experiences, any new memories you could forge outside of this place. Do you think that's what Keiji would want for you?"

Kasumi shuffled a bit in her place. She didn't seem to know how to answer.

"Why don't you ask him?" Retz questioned. "If he's as real as the version you lost, then he won't lie to you."

Kasumi took the words to heart, she turned to the apparition of Keiji. Taking his hands in hers, she tried to speak to him. After a few tries, she finally got it out.

"I just... this is perfect for me," she said. "This is what I want. At least I think it is. What would you have wanted for me? Would you have wanted this?"

Keiji took her hands appreciatively.

"I wanted you to have life," he said. "With or without me, I knew you could have an amazing one. I wanted to be a part of it, but I never wanted to drag you down with me."

"You never did," Kasumi insisted, beginning to sob. "I wanted you in my life forever, Keiji.'

"But I can't be," he reminded her. "I would never want to entrap you. Do not entrap yourself. You're the greatest thief in the galaxy. I never wanted to see you caged. Do not make me your warden."

That touched a nerve that caused Kasumi to break down. She quickly hugged Keiji, sobbing deeply. Retz said nothing, only stepping back to give her space. After a while, Kasumi managed to quiet her tears, just enough to pull away.

"I love you, Keiji..." she whispered. "Good... goodbye.'

With that she pulled away and the image of the bedroom faded along with Keiji. Kasumi fell to her knees as Retz moved in to comfort her. The others joined him as the thief tried to compose herself.

"That was not easy," Retz assured her. "I can tell."

"No," she admitted. "But... thank you. You're right, Keiji wouldn't want me to trap myself because of him. It would be worse than forgetting him... but I just don't want to forget him."

"You don't have to forget him, Ms. Goto," Retz insisted. "You were right about memory being reality. You just need to know it doesn't end just because you lose someone you care about. Because... well, they're not gone, not really. Memory preserves them and you don't need to trap yourself in it to know that."

"It still hurts," she told him. "But I guess it's good to know leaving the past where it is doesn't mean forgetting it. It's just when you focus your life through a greybox so much, you tend to lose sight of that I guess."

"It's just good to see you back in this reality at least," Garrus told her.

"Same here," Jacob agreed.

"We're still no closer to getting out of all this it seems," Zek cautioned. "I mean, great that we could help Ms. Goto, but we're all still trapped and there's no guarantee that we're going to not fall into these memories again somehow."

"No, but maybe I can help," Kasumi informed them hopefully. "I was able to break my trance early on and while I may have been more focused on my memories of Keiji, I did see a lot of other images in the background. Last thing I... heard, so to speak, before you showed up was music. It kinda got me in the mood to dance."

"Music?" Garrus curiously asked. "What kind?"

"The rock and roll power ballad kind," Kasumi clarified. "I'll give you two guesses who that could be."

No one guessed, because they suddenly all heard the music. Distorted and weird, but it very distinctly sounded like guitar solos backed by powerful bass strings and banging drum beats. That could only be one person and they all knew who.

"Boz!" Zek shouted out. "He's close!"

"And he has a long range radio on his back!" Garrus remembered. "Maybe he can cut through all this... whatever it is!"

"It's worth a shot," Jacob said exictedly. "Come on, let's find that music loving bird brain!"

"We resemble that remark, but we will let it slide," Retz stated. "Follow the sound of electric screeching strings!"

They headed off in the direction of the music, the echoes bouncing off the walls as they raced through the corridors. They finally had a direction, a plan. Hopefully it would bear fruit and lead them out of this place.

---

The screaming was all too real for it to be a dream, the blood on her knuckles and faces, the glare of the lights flickering in the air. How was she back here? Had she ever really left? Jack couldn't say, but it all certainly felt real. The dead guard at her feet should've been all the evidence she needed, but it made no sense. Everything else she lived through, all the pain and suffering and death, was that the best she could hope for? Was that her dream of her escape?

Waking back up here, in the middle of this hellhole she blew up, it couldn't be real. Yet it felt so real. So she acted on instinct, she attacked. If her freedom had all been a dream, she'd claw her way back to it atop the broken bodies of the assholes in her way. She screamed aloud as she barreled down the corridor, smashing another guard away her biotics, busting his skull against the ceiling. Another labcoat tried to run, only for her biotics to break him in two with a single strike. She would not be trapped here again.

She ran out into the main courtyard, the one her room overlooked. There, chaos was already reigning. She had started the riot, the other kids had. That had been true. Why did her dream tell her that? It didn't matter, the kids reacted to her with fear.

"Oh God!'

"Run! She'll kill us!"

"Get her! Get her now!"

"She's the reason we're here!"

"Take her down!"

Jack screamed in anguish as she charged at the other kids that were already converging on her with makeshift weapons and their own fists. She was about to slam into them with full biotic force, when a hand grabbed her arm and swung her around. She thought it was a guard, but when she turned she saw it wasn't. The helmet didn't match, and she was taller than any guard at this place.

"Jack! Stop! It's not real!"

Jack felt a pain in her head as her memories unfogged. This was Linda, right? Yes, Linda, the Spartan, from her dream. No, wait, that wasn't a dream it was real. And these kids attacking her, the ones now frozen in place, they weren't real either. She was back at Pragia, yes, but also not. She had been right before, this was all fake, an illusion. She felt relieved, but also disgusted.

"Fucking Christ!" She screamed. "I'm back here again! I blew this shithole up so I would stop coming back here! Fuck!"

"It's alright," Linda insisted. "You're not back here. We're still in the colony. Something happened to it though, we think the Relic got activated."

"We?" Jack questioned.

She gave herself another minute to look around and spotted Varvok off to the side.

"Oh, great," grumbled. "Now everyone's seeing my nightmares."

"Not entirely by choice," Varvok assured her. "But we need your help, Jack. Well, someone needs your help."

"Someone? Who?" Jack questioned. "Look I'm glad to be out that shitty situation and everything but I need a fucking minute here. Can you please explain what the hell is happening?"

Linda's explanation didn't do much to really ease Jack's headache. All it did was make her more confused. It was nice to know that she hadn't been living a dream for most of her life. That was good to know. Not so good to have all that shit dragged up again for bullshit reasons. Being stuck back in this hole again was not helping her state of mind at all.

"Fucking relics," she snarled. "Always fucking up something. Fucking hell."

"Yes, its terrible, we all get it," Varvok grumbled. "You're hardly the first person to deal with it. I was stuck as a kid for a while until we showed up here. We barely know how this crap works ourselves."

"Yeah, how shit was your childhood, Batarian?" Jack asked. "Were you forced to fight other children to survive? Did you get poked and prodded with scalpels and needles and shit every fucking waking second?"

Varvok shrugged, ceding his point to her. That gave Jack some much needed satisfaction, especially after what she had been through.

"Yeah, see, not everyone has a glut of good memories like you all have," Jack informed them. "Some are garbage fires of pain I'd have rather forgotten."

"I can see that," Linda assured her, looking over her shoulder at the frozen children. "What happened to them?"

Jack looked at the children now herself, scowling as she did.

"What happens to everyone who attacks me," she stated. "What else?'

Linda stared at the frozen kids, Jack wasn't sure what she was feeling though. She expected maybe she'd get lectured about how it was wrong to kill them. How she could've tried something else. Like she never thought about that in her head a million times over. There wasn't shit she could've done different. It was kill or be killed. Although, now that she was looking at the freeze frame... some of the kids had been trying to run. No, no, she reacted, that's just how she survived. That's what she did and she survived. She wasn't going to question that now.

Strangely, neither did Linda.

"They made you their enemy, didn't they?" She asked.

"Cerberus, yeah, they did," Jack answered. "Made me fight them, test my powers on them. Guess they blamed me for a lot of the shit that happened to them. Can't say I blame them... but they were in my way. I did what I had to.'

"They did the same to us, but with ODSTs," Linda claimed. "Only, they were the expendable ones... not us. Either way, I can sympathize."

She supposed the Spartan would. Jack had often thought of how similar their situations were to one another. There was also the uncomfortable thought of how the Spartans were akin to what Cerberus planned for her. And they succeeded with them.

"You can, huh?" Jack questioned. "Well, couldn't have been that bad. You stayed in the end."

"ONI clearly had a greater sense of retaining their investments by not making them antagonistic," Linda presumed. "Not that it was much better than Cerberus' methods honestly. At least we had each other though."

"I was alone since I was a baby," Jack growled. "No real friends, just enemies. Been that way forever really."

"But you're with Shepard and the others now," Varvok noted. "You're not alone anymore. You have a crew."

Jack just huffed at the remark.

"Sure, that's what you call that fucking ship of people," she glowered. "Look, I fight for Shepard, that doesn't mean I'm not alone of that little tour bus. Sooner or later, they'll break apart. Probably as soon as we figure out a way home. We were just together for a dumb suicide mission, that's over now. Not even sure why we all stayed on."

"But you did stay on," Linda told her. "You were a part of the crew and one of those crewmembers is in trouble now."

That got Jack's attention. Someone from the Normandy was in trouble? Like now? Then why weren't they with them now? The fuck were they bothering with her for?

"Who?" She asked.

"Thane," Varvok informed her. "He's slipped into an extreme state of total recall. What happens to Drell when-"

"Yeah, I know about that," Jack growled cutting him off. "It's a nostalgia loop, he's stuck in his happy thoughts. The fuck is wrong with you? Help him snap out of it? Why are you here?"

"We tried to help him, but whatever this place is has made it worse than him being trapped in a memory," Linda explained. "We tried to get close, we almost got stuck in it ourselves. We think we need someone who knows him better. And that's you."

"Me?" Jack snorted, rather upset by the implication. "You're joking. You need me to break him out of some weird memory trap? There's like a dozen other people who you could ask on that front."

"But none know him like you, do they?" Varok asked.

Jack turned to the batarian with a deadly glare.

"The fuck you mean, Wrinkle Nose?" She demanded to know. "You wanna say something to me? Fucking say it.'

"I'll overlook the racial slur for expedience," Varvok glowered back. "You're not as subtle as you think, Jack. Literally everyone has seen you hanging off the Drell for a while now."

"Bullshit," Jack insantly denied. "You don't know nothing!"

"That's a double negative and it's not just him," Linda claimed.

"Don't you start either," Jack snarled back at the Spartan. "Neither of you are even acquaintances, let alone friends. So don't you go acting like you know everything."

"We don't, but the way you're reacting to all of this is kinda confirming some suspicions," Varvok informed her.

"The hell it is!" Jack shot back.

"Why are you being so defensive over this?" Linda asked. "Thane needs your help! You don't have to-"

"Thane doesn't need me!" Jack shouted in anger. "No one needs me! I don't need that complication! Don't fucking make this complicated!"

Jack rushed a bit aways from the pair, but only got so far before she slammed her fists down on a table. She kept her head down, fuming in anger as she did. Why couldn't they leave her alone with this. Why couldn't they just drop this? Why did they keep doing this? How could she shut them up?

"You wanna know? You want to fucking know why this is hard? Fine!" She relented. "Here it fucking is! I knew someone, a long time ago. A partner, went through a lot of shit together. We were... important."

The surroundings started changing as she spoke, but Jack didn't seem to notice them that much. The facility of Pragia broke away, fading into darkness, before being replaced with the insides of a ship. Jack's appearance changed as well, she looked flustered, scratched, dirty. Like she had been through the ringer just now.

"One day, we had a job that went south fast," Jack continued, shaking as she did. "He could've gotten out, but he went back for me. Made sure I got on the ship and escaped, but he didn't. He... he died back there. And then a day later."

She looked over to a nearby screen and soon enough a video message began to play on it. There was a young man, had to be in his early twenties. He was a scruffy looking punk type, clothes to match his colored hair.

"Hey... Jack," He began speaking slowly. "If uh, if this is playing then its because I haven't reset the timer on it. And that's... probably because I'm dead. Yeah, I know what you're thinking right now. Idiot, you got sloppy. You got soft."

"You did," Jack stated.

"I just want you to know, that I didn't want it to go this way," the man continued. "I was hoping for more, settling down, finding a home... kids maybe. I... I don't know if you wanted that, I just was hoping maybe, some day, when we had enough money, you'd want to."

"Fucking idiot," Jack scowled.

"I loved you, Jack," the man said. "I loved you so much and I wanted to be with you. I... I can only hope that if I did die... it was keeping you safe. I know its a dog eat dog world out there, you've said as much. But I cared, Jack. I did. I hope you know that. And while I can't be there for you anymore, I need you to know that you mattered to me enough that I'd have given anything for you. And... I guess I did. It's not much, it's not what I wanted... probably not what you wanted. But at least it's something. And I just hope you can find someone else who can give you what I never could."

Jack had enough, she had heard this slop a thousand times before and it had gotten old. She shut the damn screen up by slamming on the stop button. She was done with this.

"He was sloppy and stupid and soft," she declared. "He got too close, he got too damn wrapped up in stupid shit and he died! Served him fucking right."

"But he saved you," Varvok said astonished. "What would you have preferred? Him leaving you to die?"

"He made me a bunch of promises he could only tell me in a fucking death video," Jack spat back in anger, tears growing in her eyes. "This is the way he tells me he loves me? Fuck him! If he had been smarter, he'd be alive. He taught me only one worthwhile lesson, never get attached. Never get soft over fucking anything. The second you do, is the second you fucking die."

"It sounds like you're deflecting to me," Varvok informed her. "You blame yourself for his death, so that's why you don't want anyone close. It's not to protect yourself, you think you're protecting others by-"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Jack screamed, her biotic aura blaring loudly. "You know nothing! NOTHING! I will never be that stupid! I will never get that close! I will never... I will never be hurt like that again! EVER!"

Varvok backed off, Jack breathing heavily through her nose in a rage. Linda approached, however and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"I get what you're trying to do," The Spartan told her. "I do, it's easier this way. It would be easier if we could just turn it off, pretend we don't care. That they beat it out of you a long time ago and you don't give crap anymore. I tried to do it myself. But you can't, none of us can, it's what makes us human."

Jack shuffled around, scrubbing the tears from her eyes.

"I can't help him," she sniffed. "No one can really. He's just gonna die. You know about his damn disease. There's nothing I can do. There's no point in getting involved because I will only get hurt again. He will leave me, he has no control over that. So why bother?"

"Because you already have bothered, even against your better judgement," Linda informed her. "You care about Thane, as much as I care about the other Spartans. I know just as well that they might not be around forever."

"Why ever let yourself get close then?" Jack asked incredulously. "You had to know you'd likely die, you had to see them die more often than not."

"I did," Linda confessed stoically. "I saw more than a few friends die. But... the idea of never knowing them hurts more than watching them die. They were family to me. My only family."

Jack looked down, unsure of how to answer that. So the Spartan continued unabated.

"You might not be able to save Thane," she said calmly. "Not in the long term, but would you prefer to not feel these things? Would you prefer to deny yourself something that makes you happy now to avoid pain later? Because, that's not much of a life."

"Keeps me alive," Jack claimed. "I survive by not getting close."

"Then maybe it's time you start living instead of just surviving," Linda claimed. "Otherwise, what was the point of breaking out of Pragia to begin with?"

Jack thought on that a moment. What was the point of escaping that shit hole if all she was going to do was deny herself things she wanted? She might as well have remained in chains. Then she thought of the pain, how torturous it would be. When Thane left her, and he would sooner or later, it would dredge up all that pain again. Could she handle that? Would she be ok with that if it meant feeling... cared for, wanted, loved.

Was it worth it?

"I don't know," Jack sighed. "I just... I don't know."

"Would you be at least willing to try," Linda asked. "Thane needs help, he needs someone."

Jack nodded softly. Whether or not it was worth it, she couldn't abandon him. She couldn't deny she cared. Maybe that made her soft, but whatever. If she was Thane's best shot, she'd try for him. He deserved whatever time he had left. She wouldn't let him waste it stuck in memories, like she had been.

"Alright, alright," she relented. "Take me to him. I'll... do what I can."

"I think you have to take yourself to him," Varvok informed her. "Just focus on Thane and the path should open."

Jack did so, she thought of Thane. His damn charming attitude, those eyes of his, the silky voice, how he kept trying to understand her, how he listened, how he didn't judge. How he was... there. When she opened her eyes, the ship interior was gone, replaced by a path forward. In the distance, she could see something shimmering, and she knew. It was him.

"Hold on, Lizard Lips, I'm coming."

---

Even the atmosphere outside the office space felt no different. It still felt like the entire building was overcast in gloom. Maisey had expected more stuffy looks, more glaring angry uncaring faces. All she saw were sad depressed people. In every hall she passed, in every room she got a peek into, the entire facility was just full of despondent looking souls. The decor probably didn't help, but it was evident that no one liked being here. If she were being fed a constant stream of death upon death of countless millions, she supposed she'd feel depressed too.

That didn't change anything about how she ultimately felt about ONI though. So they felt bad. Good, they should feel bad. People were dying after all. They felt like they failed. they were right. Maybe that was cruel to think, but that was the case. So they weren't the heartless monsters she built up in her head, that didn't make them the good guys. Same way her actions didn't make her a hero. She at least never claimed to be one. They were as human as her. That took the edge off her anger, but it didn't extinguish it.

It did shed light on who Haverson was, where he worked. He wasn't high level, he wasn't making big decisions. He wasn't powerful. He was a grunt, doing what he was told to do. Even Gantry didn't seem to be that powerful, although the clear sense of loss over his family was no doubt part of that. Regardless, he was just trying to form a strategy, a plan, a means of determining risk and reward. At least that's what she gathered from her short time with him. She doubted the same was true of the higher ups, the people running this place. Haverson and Gantry and most of these people were on the bottom rungs of the ladder here. Or at least they weren't as high up as other officers. They didn't direct policy, but they carried it out all the same. They were still a part of this machine, even if they weren't running it.

Still, seeing through Haverson's eyes the inner workings of this place, it was impossible not to feel a little empathetic. Again, these people felt responsible for a lot of things, they were trying to help win a war. The fact that currently they weren't accomplishing that task was wearing on them all. Whether it was only out of a desire to keep their jobs or a very real fear of humanity being wiped out, they still cared. More than she thought they did. Now she wasn't sure what to think.

Gantry eventually led her to a small meeting room, with a number of other ONI agents. From the look of their uniforms, they didn't look like high-ranking officials, more analysts and tech people as before. She supposed it made sense, Haverson was only a Lieutenant, his clearance level couldn't be that high. He likely had more affinity with the lower ranks. She just thought that they were going to meet with higher officials to give a report. Why the stop here?

"Hey everyone," Gantry greeted. "We got the reports, did they tell any of you when the briefing is scheduled?"

"You know the people running this place," one of the agents said. "Everything is need to know, even scheduling."

"It feels like it's gotten worse," another of the agents claimed. "When it was Insurrectionists and terrorism, everything was simple. Politics you could grasp, motivations you could correlate. Now it's aliens and everyone is panicking. With good reason, but still, this is no environment for old school intelligence gathering. I'm this close to taking up smoking again."

"Easy, Lewis," Gantry tried to calm him. "You're not the only one going through this. Point is we need to get things straight. We can't go in there with half-hearted theories and prayers anymore. You've seen what happened, we... we failed. We did our best and we failed."

"We didn't fail," one of the female analysts claimed. "We got everything about the attack, time, troop consistency, even elements of their strategy. The infiltration program got into their systems through the satellite field-"

"And it still wasn't enough, Brenda," Gantry informed. "In my mind that constitutes a failure. And the department heads will feel the same. What we need is a more comprehensive strategy. We need a way to get the warning out to colonies faster. So we can react faster."

"The Covenant move faster than us, Gantry," Lewis claimed. "We can seed AI into every early warning net, make them infiltrate their ships and command structures, but it's a tech issue. Their slipspace drives are faster than ours. We get a warning they're moving in a colony's direction, we scramble the closest ships we can, they'll arrive forty-eight hours after the first of them makes landfall. That is the average consistent timeframe, I've run the numbers. We all have."

"You're saying it's out of your... our hands?" Maisey asked, speaking as Haverson would.

"I'm saying the UNSC needs a leapfrog in technology," Lewis claimed. "I'm not the only one pushing that, Doctor Halsey has been making the rounds on that too."

"Well until we get that we need to mitigate the damage somehow," Gantry insisted. "People are dying out there and we need a better answer than... than just hoping we get it right for once."

Gantry went over to a white board and picked up a marker beginning to write down a complex string of numbers and code fragments that Maisey had trouble following. She wondered if that meant Haverson had had difficulty too. She couldn't say, she didn't know how this memory sharing worked.

"Alright, this is our fastest timeframe on average for response," Gantry said. "As well as our AI's intelligence gathering capabilities. Now, we know the Covenant have a battlenet that consistently feeds information to their commanders in the field and off it. What would we need to do to expand our time table window?"

"Get an infiltrator into the battlenet and stay there consistently," Brenda claimed. "The problem is the Covenant finding the thing. And then, if they don't self-terminate, we risk the AI becoming forced to serve them. While preliminary intelligence suggests the aliens don't like AI, they will potentially use them, mostly by abusing them."

"Well it's not like we can implant one of our guys into their ranks like the Innies," Lewis noted. "AI infiltration is the only option we have right now. We can make them harder to track down, capture or contain, but timeframes are difficult. Maybe if we instruct them on what kind of information they should gather, we can increase our search window or discover a technological edge we can apply to our own systems."

Gantry seemed approving, but he still looked anxious and hesitant.

"We need a more concrete strategy," he confessed. "I didn't want to tell you this, but Haverson has hit upon a potential plan they're floating."

Maisey looked at attention.

"I... I have?" She asked, sweating a bit.

Again, she didn't know how this worked. If she didn't maintain consistency with the memory what would happen? Would she get kicked out? Would her brain get fried? What was she supposed to say here?

"It was in your notes from a few weeks ago," Gantry reminded her. "You brought them right?"

Maisey took a look through the stack of papers she had in her arms. She laid them out on the table and tried searching through them. Haverson clearly had a meticulous filing system, but she was not familiar with it. However, she believed she found what she was looking for. A memo sent to him to consider a new strategy. One she was familiar with. All too familiar with. She had lived it after all.

"Prioritization," she said dreadfully slowly. "They... are considering what planets to leave behind."

"Wait, what?" Lewis asked.

Maisey kept talking as she read over the document.

"It's a plan for the outer colonies," she explained, scanning the paper. "Um, what resources they have, their strategic importance, In... Insurrectionist loyalty... overall value to the UNSC war effort. They want to see what's... worth saving."

The room was silent for a good minute.

"My God," Brenda finally said. "It's really come to this, hasn't it? We're losing so bad they're considering abandoning colonies altogether."

"It works in triage," Lewis said, morbidly but clearly not liking his words as he spoke them.

"This is not a damn plague, Lewis! It's genocide!" Brenda angrily retorted. "Whole worlds getting glassed and they're considering just leaving them to die! Cause they're the Outer Colonies? Because they might have had Innie sympathies in the past? Cause they don't have enough food surplus or a steel mill for ships or a dockyard? These are people's lives, damn it!"

"I didn't say I liked it!" Lewis shot back. "But clearly the folks in charge are running scared and that's probably the logic they're using! What can we do about it anyway? You know what happens when they send out memos like that. They've practically made up their minds already."

"Which is why we need alternatives," Gantry insisted. "We might not be able stop this, but its possible we can prevent at least a few worlds from getting amputated like this if we can get another solution on hand."

Maisey couldn't believe this. Haverson was part of a group trying to stop what had happened to her people? Or at the very least lessen the impact? Clearly he had failed, but he was against the plan at one point. It just felt so at odds with her picture of him. Haverson was ONI, he was the company man, he believed in the UNSC's mission, he had said as much to her. She had the impression he didn't like the prioritization of colonies, but that he had fought against it was an entirely different thing altogether.

Perhaps he softened on the strategy at some point, accepted it as necessary, but he sought alternatives. He tried to find another way with the help of his colleagues. Even going over the files, she saw possible solutions he outlined within the notes he carried to this very meeting. More automated defenses for the Outer Colonies, personalized early warning systems, rotating fleet patrols, civil defense training, streamlined evacuation plans, everything that Haverson would try to push in the hopes something would take.

Haverson was a company man, yes. But he was trying to change things, trying to make them not forget why they fought. At least at some point he did. Maisey had to wonder if something changed or if it was just something he buried. All she knew for certain was that Haverson was not the man she built up in her head. He was not the stooge she believed him to be.

---

It felt like he had been here longer than was feasible. Just watching the city burn on the horizon as they ran from house to house. Every now and then he looked up at the sky to see if there was a Phantom over their heads hunting them down for sport. Haverson had seen worlds glassed before, he had been there on Reach after all. He had never felt this helpless though, this alone. Was that Maisey's influence on him? Maybe, but it didn't make it any less real a feeling. There was no military muscle in his corner, no one to call in for help. He wasn't in an HQ, surrounded by officers, being fed information on every detail as it came in. He had no idea where to go, what to do and who was doing it.

All he could do, was make sure that a Ghost didn't spot him or they ran into a random patrol of grunts looting a house. It was nerve wracking, wondering if every move would be your last and not having any time to think it through. When he saw the coast was clear, he, Mattias and Asha just ran. They hunkered down behind one house after another, or a shed or an overturned car. Whatever kept them out of the open they ran to and hid behind. Fighting back simply wasn't an option, even with Mattias' service rifle and pistol. There was just no viable means of taking this threat on for them, and they had to think of Asha's safety first and foremost.

Correction, Maisey had to think like that. It was getting hard for Haverson to separate himself from these events, being forced to live through did that to you. He didn't lose track of who he was, but he could feel Maisey's thoughts bleeding into his own. Whatever this place was, it was seriously messing with his head.

To be honest, he always expected it would be like this. In the early days of the war, this was all he could think about. He knew how little a chance the colonists had alone against the Covenant. It was why he had tried to argue for giving them better defenses. Then he realized that wasn't going to happen, no matter how much he asked. He allowed his fanciful dreams of heroism fade into practicality. He didn't like it, but he accepted it. He let himself give in to the painful choices of war, because there was no choice in the end. You either made the call to choose who lived and died or it was made for you by the enemy. That's what he told himself anyway.

Imagining what that complacency cost in lives was one thing though. It was another thing entirely to live it. It was hard to deny the reality before him, this Colony was woefully underprepared for the Covenant. He didn't see a single Marine unit anywhere out here. There should've at least been a rear guard to assist in evacuation. Some guns to draw fire or ships. A standard evacuation protocol plan of some sort. It was clear though, from the chaos around him Apekis V had none of that. And he recalled what they had told him to justify that. Why nothing could be done.

"It's a waste of resources for a bunch of mudballs."

He cringed at that line. A long time ago he was angered by it, enraged even. Then, as fleet after fleet, planet after planet was swallowed by the Covenant, whole words glassed and armadas decimated, he quietly accepted the logic. Now, he was living the results of that line of thinking and he couldn't help but ask, shouldn't they have done something? Anything? Wouldn't it have been better than nothing? Maybe it wouldn't have saved the planet, but they could've saved at least a few people. If they had tried, maybe Maisey would be off this rock by now with her family.

That didn't change things though, he knew what was coming after all. While he had a greater sense of sympathy for Maisey's experiences, the conclusion to this story was inescapable. Maisey had played a role in the deaths of several Marines and UNSC officers. Maybe she didn't pull the trigger, maybe it was all Mattias' doing, but again, it changed nothing. She had stolen UNSC property and profited from the murders all the same. Even now, reliving her memories beat for beat, Haverson couldn't shake the feeling Maisey was hiding something about this day. That there was a truth she had buried to protect someone. If nothing else, that was reason enough to keep on this track. To see what was at the end of the line and hope the truth would finally be illuminated to him.

He just had to make it through reliving the utter destruction of a human colony to get to it, a situation he was not enjoying in the slightest. Already there were burning homes, near incinerated by the Covenant's bombardment. He suspected there were more than a few families inside the scorching domiciles they were running past. Almost without thinking he moved to cover Asha's eyes as they went past, sensing that the young girl would ask questions if she took too long a look. They couldn't avoid getting a view of the carnage for long though, as they were forced to stop upon slipping into the backyard of one house.

Just beyond the fence, through a break in the panels, Haverson spotted it. A throng of dead bodies, riddled with plasma burns laying in the yard just beyond. Possibly other civilians fleeing the attack through here. They had met with the other thing Haverson could see, a squad of Covenant soldiers. This was the standard grouping, two Elites and a small number of Grunts. They were scrounging around the area, poking at bodies, making sure they were dead.

This was probably an advance unit, sent to cut off stragglers from escaping the main thrust of the assault on the colony proper. It was standard procedure for them as far as the after-action reports were concerned. The Covenant came, they burned the center of the city to glass and they sent their death squads out into the outlying area to make sure no one got away while the ships continued cleansing. It was methodical, clinical, disturbingly quick. It was why there were so few survivors of planet glassings, especially if there wasn't a sufficient force to protect it.

"What do we do?" Mattias asked in a hushed whisper.

"Uh, double back?" Haverson offered.

He didn't suggest shooting their way through. Probably because Maisey didn't either, but he doubted it would've been a good idea himself. Mattias' rifle was a decent firearm, but it would be little good against the Elites' shields. They'd kill a few of their little waddling gas sucking minions, but the Elites would rally quickly. A lone man, no matter how much security training he had, was no match against the Covenant in a firefight. Besides, Asha complicated things. It was well known how the Covies tended to go after children once they were spotted.

"There are Covenant everywhere," Mattias warned. "Chances are we're just gonna run into another squad of them."

"Well we can't stay here," Haverson reminded him. "Let's... cut through the houses, keep out of the open."

It was really the best plan, the only plan honestly that he could think up on the fly. He imagined it was Maisey's too, just trying to keep ahead of things in a situation where everything was falling apart. So they headed inside the house, what was left of it anyway. It felt at least a bit safer than being out where any genocidal alien could see you, even with the overturned furniture, broken keepsakes and the blare of the emergency warning alert on the TV. It all drove home the point that he was closer to the action during a glassing than he had ever been. Even on Reach, he was mostly on and around the Pillar of Autumn. He wasn't in one of the many cities where the destruction and death rampaged everywhere around the civies.

Now he was and it was as terrifying as he had always thought it was, maybe more so now that he was stuck playing caretaker to Maisey's family. He knew he couldn't change anything for better or worse, he was in a memory of events after all, as far as he could tell. That didn't make him any less nervous about every action and decision he made. He felt like Asha's life was in his hands, even if he knew it wasn't.

That feeling was more pronounced as they tried to round the corner into the kitchen and quickly pulled back. He put his hand over Asha's mouth as the jabbering sinister growls of the Jackal and Elite language were soon heard. The Elite entered, flanked by two Jackals. The Covie officer knocked over a center piece on the counter top as he grunted in disgust. One of the Jackals checked the open fridge, looking for food no doubt. The Elite looked annoyed at him, shouting something unintelligible, but no doubt angry. The warrior was probably none too happy about being put on this detail and was taking it out on his subordinates. That kept him distracted from finding them for the moment, but it wouldn't last long.

"Now what?" Mattias asked.

Good question, if they made too much noise, other Covenant would come rushing in. If they went back they'd run into that patrol again. They seemed stuck, there was no right way, go left go right, you'd end up dead. Haverson struggled to think, as he imagined Maisey struggled. What to do? Where to go? The thought of distracting the covies while Asha and Mattias ran suddenly crossed his mind, as he imagined Maisey had thought. A pang of fear rose up his spine as he wondered how'd he get out of this, how any of them would, even knowing that they would given how history played out. That was forgotten, all he could think about, in this moment, of this memory, was that his life was likely over and Asha and Mattias were going to die and there was nothing he could do.

That was when a sound came from up ahead in the next room over, catching the attention of the Covie squad. The rearguard Jackal moved towards the sound at the Elite's insistence. He moved into the next room... but nothing came of it. The alien in fact did not return. The Elite called for him, but no one came. The Elite stomped over, either demanding the Jackal follow his orders or declaring for whoever had prevented him from returning to show themselves.

That was when he got jumped, a club smashing the side of his head, followed by a knife being shoved into his eye. The third Jackal watched and moved to intercept, only for a second assailant to rush out of the corner and shoot him in the head. No sound came from the pistol though, at least nothing very loud, as it had a homemade silencer over the barrel, made out of what looked to be an old soda bottle wrapped in duct tape. The Jackal went down in a single hit.

The Elite and his jackals had been killed by what appeared to be two Colony Security Officers. They stepped out into the open, as the one who killed the Elite stood up, flicking the blood off the knife he was using. As Haverson looked on, it was Mattias who recognized the man before he did.

"Brant?"

It was indeed Brant, a bit young of course, but still recognizably him. He and his partner jumped a bit, but they soon recognized Mattias, and of course his family. They both lowered their weapon in a sigh of relief.

"Holy crap, Mattias," he said, trying not to speak too loud even now. "I was starting to think... with the Covenant everywhere we didn't think we'd find you. We were headed to your house, but..."

"We're just glad we found you, Brant," Mattias said relieved. "It's hell out there."

"Yeah, don't I know it," Brant agreed. "Are you guys alright?"

"Alive at least," Haverson said, leading Asha out towards the others. "We... we're lucky you showed up."

He honestly felt that, even knowing that Maisey had to have gotten out of this alive. He was of two minds on this experience, what he knew would happen and what Maisey's thoughts were in this precise moment. It was like living a book you had already read; you knew the ending but that didn't seem to matter. He was living Maisey's life, this wasn't just a replay of events, the emotions he felt weren't his alone. From moments ago when they thought they were about to die to right now when relief was overflowing through him, these were real feelings. This was what Maisey had felt.

"You're here to kill the monsters, Brant?" Asha asked.

"Sorry, kid," Brant aid shaking his head. "I'm just here to get as many people out as we can. Killing monsters is... kinda only if we have to."

"Are there other survivors?" Mattias asked hopefully. "With everything going on... the whole neighborhood..."

"There are survivors, more than you'd think," Brant assured him. "We've been gathering them up where we can. Central was coordinating a sort of makeshift evacuation... at least... until it wasn't."

"Until it wasn't?" Mattias asked. "You... you don't mean..."

Brant just gave another shake of his head, as did his partner with the makeshift silencer. The implication was clear. They were on their own now.

"Well, where are the others?" Haverson asked.

"We've gotten as many as we can to an evac tunnel," Brant explained. "We head through there, it's a straight shot to the spaceport and a way off this rock."

"Are we sure?" Mattias asked. "There are ships there, waiting for us? The UNSC is actually evacuating everyone?"

Mattias looked a bit shaky as Mattias asked the question.

"Well, there's no formal evacuation that we know of," He admitted. "Central was just following the plan as the UNSC laid down for us in advance. We... we suspect that's where any evac is taking place. Even if it's gone to hell, there have to be some shuttles we can use to get out of here. It's a spaceport, there's like more ships there than they know what to do with."

"So we're supposed to just assume they're there?" Mattias asked skeptically. "We're working off this based on what we expect of them."

"Mattias, it's our best shot right now," Haverson insisted. "We don't have many other options. Whatever issues we have with the UNSC, they can't abandon us like this, they wouldn't."

He looked down at Asha, looking up at her with scared, frightened eyes.

"They would not leave us behind," he said insistently. "Not if they know there are people still here."

That calmed the girl, and it convinced Mattias to let go of his skepticism.

"I suppose there isn't much choice," he confessed. "We have to get out of here. If what they say about the Covenant is true, and it looks like it is, we know they don't leave much left in their wake."

"Follow us back the way we came then," Brant told them. "We can get to the evac tunnel quickly, meet up with everyone else and get the hell out of here."

"Alright, lead the way," Mattias relented.

So they followed Brant, but something gnawed at Haverson all the same. Part of him imagined he was just repeating what Maisey said... but he could sense doubt in her thoughts as he spoke the words. More importantly though, he knew it was a lie. He knew that it wasn't true. That the UNSC would abandon them. He knew because he was aware of the contingency plans, because he knew what the procedure was in these circumstances, cause he had seen it one too many times at ONI. Of course, he also knew because this was a memory, Maisey's memory, and he knew what was coming. What was about to happen.

Maisey had told him that the worst thing the UNSC had done in her mind was make her a liar to Asha. That she had told them they would be safe, that the UNSC would help them. Now, he was a liar to Asha too. Even if only through the memory and words of another, it was still his voice. He had lied knowing full well what was about to happen. For as much as he felt Maisey was in the wrong, he could finally see her side of the story. It was hard now not to see her anger as justified.

He did his best to push the thoughts back. Whatever empathy he felt for Maisey and her family in this moment had to be pushed aside. The facts remained clear, what Maisey had done was wrong. She had profited from the deaths of Marines and he would soon see for himself what else she was hiding about the event. These feelings were not his own, they were hers. He had to push them down, remain objective. He had to find out the truth.

But he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that he'd regret discovering it.

---

Chief had figured out something was wrong not long after he watched himself get taken away from his childhood bed all over again. He would've thought it was one of his cryo dreams, but he knew it wasn't, this one wasn't nearly as bizarre or foreign. There was nothing out of place or random in the sequence of events. From his bed he soon found himself back in training as a child and then as a younger man. He was beside his team, the whole time, never isolated as he used to be in his dreams. They were all here, running through the drills their instructors had put them through so long ago.

He felt like he was on rails the whole time, he kept trying to escape the pull, break from what he knew was the original path, but failed each time. Something was forcing him to stay on course, he couldn't break from it even though he wanted to. He tried to reach out to the other Spartans with him, even just over the radio, but all he got was static in return. Either they were unable to hear him or they couldn't respond.

So he ran through the drills of his youth, looking for an out, a means to escape from whatever this was. He could feel the pull on his feet, dragging him towards his next destination. He would repeat actions he recalled from so long ago down to the slightest detail. Stepping on a large root to get more air for a jump, picking up the best weighted rock beforehand, using it to bash the helmet of the ODST instructor with the tranq gun blocking them from their target. After that he'd be a few years older, armed with a rifle and taking shots down range. He'd pick out targets down range, hitting each one in succession. He was never quite as accurate as Linda, but he was still very good.

The drills were always from different days, they ran so many they could probably have bled into each other. It was all they did for years, training, learning, adapting to the challenges thrown their way. Yet he could tell these weren't all the same drills because they were different each time, nothing was exactly the same. It was that focal point, as well as the incredibly accurate details, that assured him what he was experiencing was not a dream. It's what kept him from slipping back into the daze he felt when he first woke up in this place, wherever it was.

The only thing that shook him from this certainty was when something odd happened down the range. As he shot one target, it went down and revealed something behind it. The glowing translucent form of Cortana. She wasn't her normal size, small enough to stand in the palm of his hand. She was about as tall as a human and she did not look well. The AI was clutching her head, babbling about something. He couldn't make it out until she got closer.

"Let me pick... shield... sword... works better alone... greatest achievement... called upon... called upon to defend... Earth and her colonies..."

For the first time, Chief was able to break away from his rails and force his hands to put the gun down. He jumped across the divider and rushed onto the range itself. When he was close enough, Cortana seemed to notice him.

"Chief?" She asked hopefully, her eyes locking onto him.

"Cortana, what's happening?" He asked worriedly. "What's going on here?"

If anyone would have answers it would be her. While Cortana was a bit full of herself concerning her intelligence, there was no denying the AI knew more than he did most of the time. If anyone knew what was happening, it was her, assuming she could tell him.

"Too much..." the AI insisted. "Too many thoughts... all at once... pulling in... in so many directions. Two of us in here... Can't... think... have to... have to try..."

"Cortana, I don't know what's happening but whatever it is has trapped the other Spartans and who knows how many others," Chief told her.

"I... know..." Cortana grunted out, still holding her temple. "Memories... mine and... Halsey's.. bouncing off each other. Hard to... think. Always... been faster..."

"What do you need me to do?" Chief asked her frantically. "How can I help?"

Cortana looked pained for a moment, struggling to speak.

"Enough... enough dead heroes... Re... rest... restart," she managed to speak. "Have to restart... neural connection... please."

Chief understood, he reached up to his neural link and ejected Cortana's chip. Cortana vanished from sight. As quick as he had pulled her, Chief placed her back in. This reset the neural link between them. While her form didn't re-appear in front of him, her voice returned in his ear all the same.

"Ooooh, that's a relief," she said, sounding more relaxed and at ease than before. "Thank you, Chief. That was like being split apart at the seams."

"Are you alright?" the Spartan asked her. "What was happening to you?"

"What's happening to everyone, Chief," she explained. "We're experiencing some kind of psychic intrusion. It's replaying our memories for us in vivid detail. Apparently it is not... well, designed for AI like myself. My matrix is based on Halsey's mind and her memories, she's somewhere in this place too, which only exacerbated my problem. I was pinballing between her thoughts and mine. I wasn't able to break free until a little while ago. Even then, as you saw, I was split in focus. The best I could do was try to re-establish some sort of link."

"Because you're in my head," Chief reasoned. "You figured if I restarted the link it would flush the intrusion out entirely."

"And as always, I was right," Cortana stated smugly.

Chief replied with a gruff "hmph" and headed back to where he had laid down his weapon from before.

"We need to wake up the rest of the team," Chief insisted. "Regroup and figure a way out of this. Whatever this is."

"I can only imagine it has something to do with the relic," Cortana stated. "The data inside the Forerunner structure kept going on and on about information, knowledge, the mind. That must be the function for this one."

"If we find the relic, can we stop this?" Chief asked astutely.

"It stands to reason we can," Cortana confirmed. "But, Chief, this relic has an impressive hold on anyone captured by it. I could feel it myself. I'm worried what might happen if we force a shutdown while so many people are connected to it."

A good reason to be cautious about just shutting the thing down. That didn't change the fact they had to get everyone out of here. He couldn't just leave his team trapped on Reach replaying drills from their childhood in random sequences. He had to get them out of here, he could already see Fred in the booth just to his right. He could move freely now, maybe he could reach him?

He headed over and shook Fred's shoulder just as he fired a shot. Fred missed the target and that seemed to be enough to break him from his stupor. He shook off the malaise that had trapped him, breaking his own rails just as Chief had his. Fred moved his limbs about, making sure he was free, before finally turning to Chief himself.

"Chief, finally," he said relieved. "I kept trying to pull away from the drills but I was stuck on repeat."

"Same," Chief confirmed. "Cortana helped break me out. Looks like deviating from the memory wakes up the victim."

"Agreed," Cortana confirmed. "But doing this to everyone trapped one by one is going to take too much time. We need a way to get everyone out of their malaise together."

"How?" Chief asked her.

"Finding the relic is a start, locating the rest of the team who worked on it would also be a big help," Cortana insisted. "They probably know more about this and, assuming they've somehow broken free themselves, they'll be more ahead of us on solving this to begin with."

"It's the best plan we have," Chief stated in agreement. "Fred, wake up the others, we need to get situated before we head out."

Fred looked at the other booths to see Kelly and Anton, but there was no Linda.

"She should be here," Fred said. "Linda isn't here. What's going on?"

"She wasn't with us," Chief recalled. trying to suss out the mechanics of this. "She was running sabotage behind enemy lines. Noble Two was providing security to the Relic team, but she wouldn't be a part of this memory. She wasn't a Spartan yet..."

That's when he looked out onto the shooting range as he thought he heard a breeze running through. The range was no longer full of targets, but was a small UNSC encampment. Now this was finally starting to feel like a Cryo Sleep dream.

"Okay, that's not right," Fred voiced out of concern.

"If everyone is sharing this collective memory space, chances are they'll bleed into each other," Cortana hypothesized.

"Fred, get Kelly and Anton off their rails," Chief ordered. "I'll check this out."

"Ok, but don't go too far," Fred warned. "Who knows what this place does when it shifts landscapes."

Chief headed into the encampment, a general idea of what he'd find but not entirely certain. It had a lot of Marines running about, but they weren't as in focus as the central barracks. That seemed to be the centerpiece this memory, the rest was just periphery. He could tell because the Marines seemed to float in and out of the scene, they weren't as focused on as the barracks themselves.

Entering the barracks, he found Kat there. She didn't have her helmet on, she also had her arm. Her real arm, this memory was before she had lost it. The exact time and place of this memory became more apparent when another Spartan walked over. From what Chief remembered from Kat's personal files, this was Noble One, Carter.

"Reports on the last incursion just got filed," Carter told Kat. "Made sure to mention your work on getting the generator back up."

"You didn't have to," she told him. "I was just doing the job they told me to."

"Command deserves to know about your exceptional work," Carter explained to her. "More importantly, you deserve to have it known."

Kat gave a polite nod at that.

"Thank you... Carter," she told him.

Noble One sat down beside her.

"How you holding up?" He asked.

"As best as I can," she admitted. "It's not getting better though."

"I don't think if they wanted us to get better they'd be putting us here," Carter confessed. "And honestly, I doubt anything would make it better."

"I keep thinking, this is the Covie that's going to make it right," Kat declared. "It isn't, it never is. It's not enough. Won't be, not until we win. And... even then I wonder."

"I know, I feel the same," Carter agreed. "Hard to believe you're making a difference when everything keeps going wrong. When they say you're still losing even after you saved a whole colony."

"We got a MAC grid back online," Kat reminded him. "That doesn't mean this place is saved."

"No, but it will live for another day," Carter stated. "That's gotta be enough for now, even if it doesn't feel like much. We save even just one human life, we've paid back the Covenant for what they took from us."

Kat seemed to agree, and in that moment, she finally looked at Chief. She looked resigned, even a bit disappointed, to see him there. As if it had confirmed a suspicion she had hoped wasn't true.

"So I guess you want me to come with you?" She asked.

Her statement made her state of mind clearer to the Spartan Leader.

"Wait, you're awake?" Chief asked. "You're not trapped on rails?"

"For a while I was," she admitted. "I watched my arm get blown off, before that my family getting slaughtered. Then it stuck me with Carter and... that's when I realized what was happening."

"So you know it's not real?" Chief asked.

Kat nodded briefly.

"Just a memory, cause I remember it all so vividly," she confessed. "I think about them a lot... but... Carter the most."

She looked briefly at Carter, now frozen in place.

"So I knew what this was when he showed up," she confessed. "I knew it wasn't real. But I didn't want to leave."

Chief could understand that and he didn't judge, how could he? He felt the same about many Spartans he lost. As Kat turned back, a sullen look in her eyes, she fully explained her motive.

"I just... I just wanted a chance to say goodbye," she explained. "I didn't get my chance before."

Chief gave a nod and stepped back a bit. Kat turned to Carter one last time.

"You were the one who understood me more than anyone," she told the memory. "Always did. And when I feel like it's crashing down... I keep thinking of you and that keeps me from crumbling. Wherever you are now, I hope you know that at least."

She placed a hand on the memory's shoulder.

"Goodbye, Carter," she told him. "Thanks for being there... even now."

Kat got up and placed her helmet back on. She then walked over to Chief and in the next moment, the vision faded. Along with the Encampment, the Range went away too. In its place, was some kind of glowing, resonating tunnel system that stretched out in various directions. Kelly, Anton and Fred joined Chief and Noble Two at this time, looking as ready for action as anyone else.

"Alright, we understand the situation?" He asked.

"Fred explained best he could. Some kind of memory trap," Kelly said aloud. "We have to find the source and figure out a way to unplug it from everyone."

"Right," Chief confirmed. "First order of business, we try to locate Commander Shepard. If he's on top of this, he's probably already located the Relic Research Team. That would include Halsey. We find them, we find a way to get everyone out of this."

"Then let's move," Kat concluded. "We've wallowed in the past long enough."

Kat took point down one of the corridors. They all kept close to each other, unsure if there would be a sudden shift in the landscape again. They weren't going to take chances with this many unknowns. They'd find Shepard, they'd find the Research Team, they'd find the Relic and then they'd get out of this. That was the mission and they had to stay on task for it.

---

Halsey appreciated being brought out of her memories. More so that they didn't ask further questions about what they had seen. Given the circumstances that was the last thing any of them really needed to focus on. After going over everyone's stories about what had happened to them, piecing together the various strings, she offered a possible theory. It was obvious enough that the relic was doing this, everyone had already concluded that. The question was how this worked and how to stop it.

"Near as I can tell from everything you've experienced, this is some sort of collective meditative state," Halsey concluded. "Similar to an AI Matrix, a weaving of memory and code. However, this is on a mass scale and involving multiple subjects, not just one. Somehow, this Relic is reading our minds and reproducing our memories. Specifically, major events that defined or altered our lives. It is then connecting those various strands together, events that are similar enough to one another or to people we know."

Halsey pointed to the strange tunnel system they were in, the flashing lights still resonating above them.

"This... mindspace if you will, is a representation of our brain synapses," she further explained. "The closest thing I can equate it to is some sort of shared subconscious that has been created by the relic's energy field. It has connected all of our minds together in order for it to share these vivid recreations with one another."

"To what end?" Shepard asked. "And how does it choose what to show?"

"I surmise it isn't choosing, not entirely," Halsey claimed. "We are picking the memories to a degree, on a deep subconscious level. Although I wouldn't rule out that there isn't some kind of intelligence organizing the visions and their parameters to a degree. Given how our memories themselves are inherently imperfect, the ability of the relic to reconstruct them to such an accurate degree also suggests a highly sophisticated intelligence capable of doing so. As to the purpose, perhaps a means of learning about us? Making us learn about each other? Maybe some sort of therapy device? We'd have to know what the Forerunners were trying to use it for."

"Taq would probably have an idea," Tali suggested. "She has a different perspective on the Forerunners than us after all. She knows things we don't."

"Yes, my thoughts exactly," Halsey concurred. "That's why I've been thinking about her, hoping the mindspace will trigger something that will allow us to see her."

As if reacting to her admission, the lights in the tunnel began to resonate in a particular direction. It led their eyes down one path. The group followed the opened road forward without saying a word, there didn't seem to be much to add to the development after all. Halsey took point of course, considering she was the likely reason the corridor had materialized. Unlike before though, it didn't take them long to actually find out where it ended.

The tunnel opened up onto a large beach, a sunlit sky and breezy tropical air. On the far end of beach was an old shipwreck, covered in sand, rotting away against the ravages of time and sea salt erosion. However, it was most certainly not of human design. The construction was far removed from typical human aesthetics. Surrounding the wreck were various tools and a large dig site search grid. Sitting at its edge, counting some coins from an unearthed chest, was a small kig-yar child. Everyone knew who it was instantly, mainly because she didn't give them a chance to ask.

"Bout time someone else showed up?" Taq asked, still eyeing her coins. "What have you all been doing? Waxing nostalgia?"

"Taq?" Tali spoke up first in astonishment. "Wait... you're awake? You know-"

"This is a memory brought to life by the relic, yes," Taq grumbled, almost bored. "I figured it out when it forced me to replay my whole relationship with Zek from the start. Ugh, I'm going to need so many showers after this."

"Well good, we don't have to retell the whole story again," Grunt snorted.

"But that doesn't explain why you're still in the memory," Shepard quickly added. "Most of us got out once we realized it wasn't real."

"I'm not one to ignore an opportunity to study a Relic of Power," Taq claimed. "Even if it is a very weird form of study. Zek and Grunt got to experience repeating the same damn day over and over, you got to go to the future, Commander. This was my chance to actually study the effects of a relic up close and personal, as well as discover a way to get us out of this."

Taq's clear sense of resentment was self-evident in her tone, yet it was balanced by her fervent curiosity. At least she had been working the problem from her angle. To Shepard, that meant she probably had a few ideas on how to fix this by now. He hoped she did anyway, otherwise they were no closer to getting out of here.

"How exactly have you been studying the relic?" Halsey asked.

"Me being awake and out of that haze has given me a degree of control," Taq explained, finally looking at the group. "Not total, but enough I can force it to bring me to a specific memory if I think hard enough."

"Like when the relic first went off?" Tali asked.

"No," Taq grumbled, again sounding annoyed. "I tried that, it won't let me access anything short term. Either it is incapable or it is deliberately blocking that. I hoped it could tell me how to deactivate all this. When that became a no-go, I decided to dig deeper. It wanted me to explore my past, so I did. I dug up the memory of the one person I knew best who could help me sort this."

Taq looked off to the right, to the side of the shipwreck. There was another kig-yar, much older than Taq's current appearance, dragging a large chest out of the massive hole. She had a much larger head plate and very long drooping blue-colored feathers.

"Taq! I just hit the jackpot! Come over here!"

"Yes, mother," Taq called back, getting up from the sand.

She ushered the group to follow her, which they did with little fuss. It was her memory after all. When Taq hustled over to her mother's side, the older Kig-Yar handed her a large bar. With a simple direction of her mother's hand, Taq shoved the bar in and forced the chest open wide. Within were a number of shiny artifacts, priceless gems and various coins.

"Ha! I knew it, everything led here!" Taq's mother declared as she clutched at the items. "The Cobalt Corsair made her ship crash here to hide it all. Part of her retirement fund, if she hadn't been killed the following year she would've been the richest pirate of her day."

"Never doubted you, mom," Taq replied.

Her mother continued to look over the fruits of her labor, picking up and looking at the various pieces of pirate loot. Taq returned her eyes to her compatriots, holding her arms crossed until she moved one over to her mother.

"May I present, Bez Yeth," the younger kig-yar declared. "Foremost authority on Pirate Queens of yore, Head of Yeth Expeditions Enterprises and, of course, my mother. Don't bother greeting her of course, she's not real.'

"Taq, could you start cataloguing the specific gem stones," Bez requested. "We need to determine exact value."

"Of course mother," Taq called back. "It takes a minute for her to get over the allure of the shiny after a big score, she's all business until after a few minutes, but by then I can actually talk to her."

Bez indeed seemed very into the artifacts she had uncovered. She was giddy with anticipation as she looked over each one. There was a clear rush in her eyes as she placed each one in careful order and began jotting down her notes on each.

"You mentioned your mother was an archeologist before," Tali recalled. "But the way I heard it, she wasn't professional."

"She wasn't," Taq explained. "Her Expeditions Company only had one other employee, myself. She preferred to keep the paychecks in the family. She also didn't have a doctorate, for all that's worth when it comes from the Covenant's state sponsored education system. But if you wanted to be good at anything she knew you had to study. She couldn't afford a big pricey school, but she learned enough to become really good at tracking down old valuables. It paid for my way into higher education at least."

"And you somehow managed to make the mindscape activate this memory?" Halsey asked.

"Oh it wasn't easy," Taq insisted. "Trust me, it took a lot of tries to get specific memories. The Relic is finicky it seems when you try to wrest control from it. The thing has its own ideas about where you need to go and what you need to see."

"So how'd you manage to get it to see your mother?" Shepard asked.

Taq shrugged a bit.

"Well, I suppose I had to open some... wounds, if you will," she answered, fidgeting about as she did. "I have obvious unresolved business with her. Namely..."

"Taq, come on," Bez ordered loudly. "This is a credit windfall, it won't sort itself!"

Taq groaned and headed on over to the chest and began sorting the gems by color, size and type. She growled incessantly as she did, muttering a bit as she obeyed the memory's whims.

"If I don't do it, the damn thing is just going to stall any progress," Taq said, seemingly apologizing to the others. "Just, keep asking questions while I work."

"I remember now," Tali sighed. "Your mother and you weren't of the same mind on this job, were you?"

"She came from a poor upbringing and saw archeology as an easy way to make credits," Taq answered bluntly. "She wasn't particularly interested in these things beyond that. It was a get-rich-quick scheme to her. All kig-yar understand the value of profit, but for my mother it was especially telling. I, however, wanted to know more about this stuff than just how much it would net us on the collector's market. I wanted to learn, she just wanted a payday. So yes, there was a lot of clashing on that front."

As if to give an example, Taq grabbed a book from within the chest. She flipped through it a bit before looking to Bez directly. The older kig-yar was still eyeing various ornate jars and silverware.

"Mom, I think I found something interesting," Taq called out. "This is a book of oceanic myths and legends, but there's notes on certain passages. I think the Cobalt Corsair highlighted them herself, they could have significance to her."

"Oh good, her own handwriting," Bez replied, barely looking away from her work. "That should boost the market value. Nice find, sweetie, just set it aside and get back to the gems."

Taq rolled her eyes and glared back at the group.

"See what I mean?" She said in a low growl. "That was every day. I found something interesting that shed light on the history of what we were hunting, she only cared about how much more money she'd make. It was always the same. Always. She never changed. Ever. She was only interested in the value of things material."

"If that's so, why come to her now?" Halsey asked. "She doesn't sound like she'd be interested in helping you with this predicament."

"No, but she's not stupid, just credit hungry," Taq explained. "She knows things, she was smart, I got that from her. I know it because I saw it in her, she found these scores because she knew where to look. Her only problem was that she never applied herself beyond that. For all her faults, she introduced me to archeology and I've never regretted it. Even after all the trouble it's gotten me into, I never second guessed taking up the family business."

"I sense a but of some kind," Shepard noted.

"But," Taq answered after a very long sigh. "I always wished she'd have done more. That she didn't sell herself short. Maybe... maybe then we wouldn't have split like we did."

Taq put down the gems and headed over to her mother directly. The others stood back as she talked to her. This was a moment to be respectful.

"Mom, can we talk a bit more about the Forerunners?" She asked.

"Hmm, sure, sure," Bez said waving with a slight wave of her hand. "I suppose we can set up a client next time. Plenty of Sangheili warlords who want trinkets of their gods after all."

"I mean about them directly, mom," Taq said, trying to hide her annoyance. "Not as a job, I know you studied them. Specifically their tech, help me out here on something, please?"

Bez looked a bit peeved, but she relented, tearing her eyes away from the relics.

"Alright, what exactly do you want to know?" She asked. "I'll try to help. But only because you've been so good today."

"I recall reading about Forerunner mental acuity," Taq stated. "About the power of their minds."

"That's a bit advanced for you, isn't it?" Bez asked.

"Yeah, I know," Taq sighed greatly. "I think I talked to you about this years later when I was studying. I was stumped on an essay for my class."

In an instant the beach partially transformed into a different location. The Shipwreck was still there, but the immediate area around Taq and Bez transformed into a small desk with a video uplink. Bez was on the other end, while Taq, now a young adult, was sitting at the desk.

"These classes were always going to be hard, you knew that going in," Bez claimed. "You can't expect me to have all the answers."

"I just need something to get me started, mom," Taq insisted. "Please, you're the only one I can really turn to now."

Bez sighed and brought up a pad to her face. After briefing looking through it, she nodded and turned back to her daughter.

"Ok, there is some information on Forerunner meditation practices," the older kig-yar stated. "They were very secretive about it. Best I can gather, it was a way to purge themselves of any faults. Flaws if you will, perfect their minds into... well perfection, I guess. Of course, that was probably what they did to ascend to an even higher plane, at least it's one theory concerning the Great Journey."

"Ok, but what if it's not part of that?" Taq asked. "What if it's a different thing? A means to see into themselves and others and gain greater understanding. Not everything has to relate back to the Journey."

"Well unfortunately, you won't get good grades suggesting otherwise, dear," Bez warned. "Look, I'm with you that a lot of that Forerunner God stuff is nonsense, but if you're at a Covenant school-"

"I have to play by Covenant rules," Taq finished for her. "It's fine mom, I get it."

Taq turned away from the memory, and the desk as well as the room reverted back to the beach.

"So... that's what I'm gathering," Taq explained to the group first hand. "What if this relic was seen as a way to speed up the process? They found it in some Precursor stash, figured out what it could do and used it for themselves. To tap into the knowledge locked within their minds and others. What if it's a way to channel their psychic power and connect it in ways even their science couldn't?"

"The data files we pulled, the puzzles we solved," Halsey determined. "It was all about unlocking the potential for greater cosmic knowledge by first finding it within ourselves. This little science cult couldn't stop going on about it."

"But how would that help them in fighting the Flood?" Tali asked. "Everything we read suggested that they were trying to turn this research into a weapon against them."

"Perhaps it has something to do with the Flood Hive Mind," Taq offered. "If they could obtain their own version of the very force that drives those parasites, then they could be their equals in battle. Maybe even find a means to damage the hive mind itself... or usurp it."

"So what you're suggesting is, we're in some sort of artificial hive mind," Shepard concluded. "Imperfect though, because we're all still individuals. Clearly."

"It lines up so far with what we've experienced," Halsey presumed. "The question is, how do we shut it off? If the connection is powerful enough to trap us all within our memories, shutting the relic down might damage those afflicted even more."

That was a thought Shepard hadn't considered until now. The implications were horrifying all the same. They could end up rendering who knows how many people traumatized, braindead or worse.

"So how do we get people out?" Shepard asked. "By breaking them out of their trances one by one? That could take forever."

"It might be the right direction though," Tali offered. "We've seen it ourselves, people are breaking out of this on their own or it doesn't take nearly as much to force them out of their daze. The imperfect connection is unravelling the more minds we partially unplug from the web. The more people wake up, the weaker the hold gets."

"So if enough people wake up from the daze we can shut this down with little to no consequences," Halsey declared. "We just need to weaken the field enough somehow. However, even if we do succeed in that, it likely still won't shut down on its own. The connection could still reassert itself, it's still in our heads after all, that's how we found each other. We need to find the relic within all this. It's likely at the center of this artificial subconscious maze."

"And we're going to need people tech savvy enough to help us out," Tali insisted. "We need to find Rowan, we'll need her help."

"I suggest you start thinking hard then," Taq informed her. "The fact I've been prevented from returning to the memory of where all this started suggests something is blocking me from doing so, remember? We must accept the possibility the relic does not want to be shut off."

Given how touchy these relics were and all the problems they encountered, Shepard didn't doubt that. Regardless of whether or not there was an intelligence behind this event, as had been suggested before, they now had a plan to deal with it. Find Rowan, find the Relic and find a means to wake people up from their daze. They had to act fast though, in case the potential mind behind this collective subconscious forced them all back into their memories once more.

"Alright, let's all concentrate on Rowan," Shepard ordered. "We can force this place to work for us for a change. Just concentrate on her and..."

In that moment, the beach began to shake and the vision itself began to fluctuate. Shepard paused for a moment and wondered, was the field resisting? Was it fighting them? Was it trying to reassert the hive mind? He was sure, but he was sure that there was an ocean off to their right. Not what looked to be New Teteocan floating in the water, breaking through the very horizon.

---

When Jack finally saw Thane, she realized how bad this was. The Drell seemed to be in pain, clutching his head, speaking a mile a minute, bashing himself against the walls of the weird tunnel. She suddenly hated herself for not coming the second Linda had explained what was going on. Jack knew how bad this had to be for Thane, how dangerous getting trapped in memories was for Drell. The way he described it though, it just sounded like getting caught in a nostalgia loop, Jack didn't think it could hurt him this bad.

She should've though, she should've known because she knew how bad Thane was doing keeping his thoughts together and to himself. His perfect memory leaked out now and then with recollections of both bad and good times. Now this place was picking up on how perfect that memory was and it was fucking with him. Jack wanted to help, but she had no idea how.

She could see flashes of the memories dancing around Thane. His expression changing from relaxed to fearful, from angry to despondent. All the while he was clearly in pain. Whatever the relic was trying to do with all of them was mixing with his Drell biology rather badly. She wondered what it was like in there, what he was experiencing. She could only guess it was worse than what had happened to her.

"Shit, he's getting fucked over in there," Jack grimaced. "And when you tried to talk to him..."

"I got a taste of what he's seeing," Linda stated. "All his memories at once from the looks of it. I'm not sure how this place works, but it seems like it's too much for him to take."

"Yeah, yeah, I get that, sure," Jack agreed. "Question is, how do I get in there and bring him out?"

"Best strategy I can think of is to just go inside," Varvok stated. "Maybe you being in there... it could help focus his memories on something. And if not, well, we'll pull you out."

"That's a lot of assumptions," Jack told him plainly.

"Well unfortunately that's all we have," Linda informed her. "Look, I know we're asking you to trust us and that's not easy for you, but if we don't help Thane now, this might get worse."

Jack knew she was right, she just didn't like taking this much of a leap of faith. For Thane's sake though, she had to try, she couldn't abandon him. Lord knew if she was in this position, he'd do same for her. Hell, he had, plenty of times. She took a breath, steeled herself and walked towards the drell.

At first everything appeared normal, the closer she got though the more the images came at her. Kills at first, a few flashes of a dessert world, some hanar swimming about, rain clouds, the bright lights of the Citadel's lower wards. Everything came at her fast, it was hard to focus on singular images. She worried about losing herself, but even in the haze of images, she kept her eyes locked on Thane.

Gritting her teeth, she powered through the wave of emotions each image came with. The joy, the rage, the sadness, it all hit her hard, but she knew they weren't her thoughts. She knew because it wasn't the same kind of emotions, they didn't stem from the same place. They came from elsewhere, from things that weren't Pragia, Cerberus or any of the people who wronged her. Thane's thoughts felt different and she was able to separate them enough from her own to keep her head together.

She closed in on Thane now, the images and memories coalescing to a degree. They were still shifting at a rapid pace, but Jack could tell they were starting to focus in on her. She could see the bog where they fought off the Flood, some of the missions they ran alongside Shepard, moments aboard the Normandy together. These were all recent, less jumbled than before, all related to her.

She tried calling out to him.

"Thane," she spoke aloud. "Lizard lips? You hearing me?"

Thane groaned, but the images shifted less frequently. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement.

"Thane, come on, talk to me here," she insisted. "I get you're going through some shit, but I have to believe you can hear me."

There was a silence for a moment, then the image held on the bog from the Halo ring for a moment longer.

"Ja...Jack?"

"Yeah, dude, it's me," she told him. "I'm here. I'm getting you the fuck out of this."

"So many..." Thane said distantly. "So much... can't... think. Head hurts... so much pain."

"They're just memories, Thane," Jack assured him. "They can't hurt you. This is all some stupid relic thing. Just raise your head up and look at me man."

The Drell tried, but tore his eyes away at the last second.

"No! No... can't... not... not right," he claimed.

"No, look, it's me," Jack urged him. "You can look."

"Get... trapped," the Drell claimed. "Lost in memory. Over... and over... over again. So many... so many memories. All at once."

That was when Jack realized. Thane was fighting whatever this was. He was trying to keep from falling into a memory and losing himself completely. However, it seemed like that was exacerbating the problem he was facing, the relic kept pushing his buttons. Kept trying to pull something out of his head and it was ripping his mind apart.

"You gotta look at me, Thane," Jack insisted. "You gotta look at me, take my hand and walk out of this."

"Can't... can't see you," Thane claimed.

"But you can," Jack assured him. "I'm right here, man. I can lead you out."

"Can't see you," Thane told her, sounding like he was in pain. "Can't see you."

"Can you hear me at least?" Jack asked desperately. "Can you walk towards me?"

"No," Thane said, but it was not a negative statement, but a corrective one. "I hear you... but don't see you... voice does not match... face... different."

"What do you mean?" Jack asked in confusion. "Who do you see? It's me, Jack."

"Don't see, Jack... see her," Thane explained. "See her. See her... Si... siha"

Siha? Thane had called her Siha once before. What did that mean? What was he trying to explain? What did he see? WHO was he seeing?

"Who is Siha?" Jack asked. "What is siha?"

"Irikah," Thane spat out suddenly. "She was... she was my siha. Warrior angel... goddess Arashu. She was everything. She stood... stood in my way... sunset-colored eyes... telling me how dare I. She made me rethink... everything."

The images around Jack changed to a stage that she stood on, in front of some politician's podium. She wasn't sure how this place worked, but it felt like she had taken a role in someone else's memories. Her thoughts were still her own, Jack reasoned that much at least. Didn't change how odd and out of place she felt.

"She prevented me from shooting... that day," Thane said, sounding more lucid now. "She... she stopped me. Not just then... but entirely. After that, I couldn't do... what I did anymore. I stopped, I couldn't... kill like I did."

That was when Jack realized, the person Thane was seeing in her place right now, she knew who it was. She hadn't talked much about it, but Thane had a kid, she knew that. He had talked to Jack about him and about what had happened to his mother, Thane's wife. About how enemies of his, of Thane's former life as an assassin, tracked him down and made his wife pay for the things he had done. And then how he had killed them in kind. He hadn't really talked about his wife outside of that context before to her.

He was now talking about how they met. How she had changed his life. About how he fell in love with her. And now, she was in Irikah's place, in this specific memory. Jack felt a bit uneasy about that.

"Thane... look," she tried to explain. "I don't know how this shit works, but I'm not her. I'm Jack. You know me, you can hear my voice, you know it's me."

"So many memories mixed up," Thane said. "Can't be sure. Can't be sure of anything."

The memories started to flash a bit more again and Jack reacted quickly. She ran up to him, trying to break him out of his trance again. There had to be something she could do to convince him she was real. Or that she wasn't Irikah. Something, anything, she'd deal with why he was seeing her in his dead wife's place later.

"Ok, you need proof I'm here?" Jack asked him. "Uh, remember the Suicide Mission? Huh, remember that? Fighting off all those fucking Collectors while Shepard did his big hero thing. We did that together, right? Or... when were down in that glacier beneath the ONI base on Reach? You saved my ass a few times from shit down there? I never really said thank you, but I should've."

"Jack, I hear you," he said. "But I..."

He looked up briefly, but his eyes looked like they were in a haze. Just as quickly he tore them away in fear.

"No, no, sunset-colored... can't... can't fall!" He rattled on. "Too many... too many memories..."

"Just focus on me!" Jack told him desperately, taking his hands. "I'm not Irikah, I'm Jack. Think about me."

"No, can't... can't abandon... can't forget," Thane claimed. "Can't replace."

"You aren't," Jack insisted. "Nothing could replace her. I know I can't. I accept that. That's why I..."

She stopped herself, saying more would make it real.

"I know she's important to you," Jack told him. "I know I could never be her."

"Don't... want you to be," Thane said. "But don't want to... make another... put another at risk. Bring someone else down."

"You don't have to," Jack told him, trying to pull him over. "You can just... you can just ignore it. You don't have to replace her. I don't want to replace her."

"What... do you... want?" Thane asked unexpectantly.

"I want to help you get out of this," Jack informed him again.

"Not... what I meant," Thane corrected him. "What do YOU... want?"

She knew what he meant. She didn't want to confront it. She didn't want to go there. Jack knew that she had to keep him talking. She had to help him out of this. That meant she had to.

"I want... I want to know, I'm important to someone," she confessed. "That I matter more than... more than just some disposable fun or a tool. I want to know I'm not gonna be used. And I want to know I'm safe for once. That for just once I'm ok. I can stop looking over my shoulder and worrying. But..."

The moment she said the words, she knew. That was it, she started it. She let the dam break. As the images swirled around Jack, her own thoughts kept coming out. She couldn't stop it. She knew this would happen, it always did. There was no holding back, and she didn't want to, she really didn't. She needed to get him out of this and it sounded like this was the way.

"But I know I can't really, because that's not how I work. I want it to work that way, but I know better, because I'm a hyper damaged freak of nature, alright? I know I will only ever hurt people and I know they'll leave me..."

She moved Thane's head up to look at her.

"You'll leave me," she admitted, her panic growing as she let her secrets spill out. "Like he did. And it's not your fault it's happening, I can't pretend it is. Not this time, because you don't control this. I did, I made this happen. I got close, I started caring and now I want something I know is going to go away. That is impermanent, that I know is only going to make me feel hurt and angry and in pain and I'll hate myself. I can't let that happen and I... I can't..."

She tried biting her lip to stop herself, she couldn't do this. She couldn't do this to him. It wasn't fair. This wasn't fair. But the memories... she could tell they were slowing down, that they were loosening their grip. This was helping. She was helping him. Jack had to continue, even if it meant more pain.

"I can't let you waste what time you have left on me, okay?" She confessed in anguish. "I can't let you waste everything on me! I'm no good, alright? I know I'm not. I'm a fucking walking disaster. All my life I've just stumbled from one train wreck to another, fucking up my own life or others. I'm not doing it to you, I can't... hurt you like that. Not... with how little you have left. You got... bigger problems to deal with than me, ok? So just... you can keep your wife, okay? You don't have to replace her. Just... just come out of this with me."

Thane's haze in his eyes fluctuated a little, but it remained all the same. As it did though, he said something.

"You're... not... burden," he claimed.

"Fuck I'm not," Jack said, almost starting to cry. "You know I fucking am. Always have been. I'm a wreck. No matter what I do, I will always be a problem. I have no idea why I stuck around with you all so long, I knew I was going to either get into worse trouble or make you all hate me. Damn it, why didn't I cut and run? Why did I start to fucking care?"

"Cause you're not... as bad... as you think," Thane insisted, sounding like he was fighting the haze more and more. "Never were. You care. You do care. And... we care. I... care."

"You shouldn't," Jack told him, shaking her head. "None of you should."

"You made us stronger," Thane claimed. "All of us. You... you were there... when we needed you. When I needed you."

The bog came back and it remained this time. No more fluctuating, no more rapid changes, just one image, one memory. Jack could work with this, she could lead him out. She just needed to keep going down this road. But she really did not want to.

"I... I did what anyone would expect me to," Jack tried to claim. "You needed help and I... I..."

"You don't have... to explain yourself," Thane assured her. "I know you care. I know you're strong. You don't... have to prove to me you are. You can let it down... let the wall down. You already... have."

The Normandy came back, this time they were inside the life support room.

"Alright," she admitted. "I feel safe around you, but I... I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to be hurt by this. I... I can't do this. I want it... but I can't."

"There are things... we want that we think... we can't have," Thane told her. "Really, it's that we won't let ourselves... have it. But Jack... Siha... you can have anything you want. All you have to do... is ask."

Jack looked at him nervously.

"It will hurt," Jack said, sniffling as she did.

"Everyone... hurts," Thane told her. "But it helps... when you have someone... to share it. It hurts more... to force yourself... to be alone. That's what Irikah... taught me. I don't want... to replace... her. I am afraid."

"Just like I am then," Jack reasoned aloud. "We're both afraid."

She hated admitting that. Jack never wanted to admit she was afraid. She was over that. At least she believed she was. Jack never wanted to be afraid. She couldn't be, fear made you do stupid things that got you killed. At least that's what she believed for a long time. She hated being afraid, she hated feeling like that scared little child hiding under that desk, weeping like a baby. She hated feeling that pathetic again. But this time, she was doing it to herself.

"Fuck that," she declared. "I'm done being afraid."

Without even thinking a second longer, Jack grabbed Thane by his collar and pulled him into a kiss. She closed her eyes as she let go, all the fear, anger and doubt. She let it slip away as she held him and embraced him. Thane did not return anything at first, but as the moment continued, as she kept her lips pressed to his, the drell's arms slowly closed around her. Before long, he was holding her tightly and returned her level of passion with his own kiss. And with that, Jack began to cry, finally letting everything else fall away. She was safe, she knew what she wanted and she was not letting herself be held back anymore. For once in a very long time... she was happy. At long last, she was happy.

The memories vanished around them, the tunnel returning to normal. As normal as this place was anyway, not that Jack noticed. She didn't care. She just let herself melt into Thane, there was nothing else in this moment. She had him, that was what mattered. The only thing that broke it was when they needed air. Even then she just rested her forehead on his. It took a while before they said anything to each other, but they didn't really need to.

"This will hurt you know," Jack said sweetly.

"I've hurt before," Thane assured her. "I can handle it."

Jack laughed.

"Yeah... yeah me too," she replied. "I'm okay with this. I really am."

The moment was finally interrupted when someone's throat was cleared behind them. Both of them looked to Linda and Varvok, staring at them.

"I don't mean to intrude on your private moment here, but we are kinda in the middle of a crisis that must be resolved," Varvok reminded them.

"Ugh, you're a shit romantic, Four Eyes," Jack snarled.

"Oh good, you're still you," the batarian commented briskly. "Now then, let's get to work here. We need to find Shepard."

"Fine, fine," Jack growled, looking briefly to Thane. "We are so not done, okay?"

Thane agreed and stood back up with her.

"Ok, so we need to find Shepard," Varvok reiterated. "Or anyone who can actually lead us to the relic."

"Well if anyone is ahead on that front it's definitely Shepard," Jack agreed.

"I briefly remember trying to reach him when we got through the energy field," Thane explained. "I think I picked up music on the radio and then I drifted off into... well what you saw."

"What kind of music?" Linda asked.

Thane tried to reset his omni-tool to make the radio work. He got music, some kind of guitar, but it was garbled. However, it didn't take much to figure out the source. There was only one source of electric guitar music around this place.

"Boz," Varvok deduced. "He's still transmitting."

"If we find him we might be able to contact the outside," Linda suggested.

"Well, it's not like we got another plan," Jack stated. "Let's zero on this signal then. Assuming we can."

Thane played around with the omni-tool a little more to pick up the signal's strength. Once he did, he was able to figure out the exact direction they needed to go. It was unclear how much it mattered, but following the music was the most they had to go on right now. If finding Boz and his transmitter meant they could actually talk to someone outside this energy field, maybe they could get out of here. Or at least figure out where everyone else was.

---

AN: I don't know how many of you all were invested in this one, but... yep, here it is! Jack and Thane, a couple. I admit, this is mostly just an idea I came up with after reading another fanfic a long, LONG time ago. Sometimes an idea for a pairing sticks in your head and you can't let it go. Rest assured, if you're wondering about my thought process on this, wait for the blog post, I'll cover this when I put it up. Sadly that's all the chapters for now. The last two will be up before long, I promise, just be patient with us a little longer. We'll be off this colony and sailing to our next adventure soon. Again, I appreciate your patience and thank you for your continued readership. As always, leave a review if possible. They are always appreciated.