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.

32. The Mind's Eye

Chapter 31: The Mind's Eye

Your Mind is a Hive of Worms.

And Worms don't live in a Hive, so it already feels Unnatural.

-Dylan Moran

Zek hadn't imagined it would be this hard to reach one of his crew, everyone else had taken considerably less effort to break out of their haze. Boz, not so much, because he didn't even see them. For the past few minutes, all they could do was watch as he moved from memory to memory in no discernable pattern. One minute he was on the floor of the kitchen as a toddler banging on pots and pans, the other he was playing around with an instrument in his room as a teenager, making all kinds of electronic noises on the keys and drums. Zek knew Boz had always been into music, but apparently that love had overtaken his senses.

"Yeah, this is some great stuff," Boz said smiling. "Just wait until the guys hear my latest compilation track. They're gonna flip!"

"For the love of the crap, Boz!" Zek shouted. "You are not a dipstick fledgling in your mother's attic anymore! This is just a damn memory! Do you even realize that?"

Once again, Boz remained oblivious, too engrossed in his creative outlet to even acknowledge his shipmaster's presence. In fact, he turned the music up louder, in what almost seemed like defiance.

"You're doing this on purpose aren't you?" Zek accused. "Fucking hell, Boz! Snap out of this already! We need your damn radio pack!"

"I don't think yelling louder is going to work in this case, Zek," Kasumi reiterated for the sixth time. "Can we try another method, please?"

"Yelling is how I usually get people to do what I want," the pirate leader claimed. "It's never failed me until now. I don't really have other strategies for these sorts of situations. Give me a break."

They had found Boz relatively quickly once they heard his songs. The music was loud enough to pierce whatever was going on with all of them in this tunnel system of memories. It was hoped that meant he was resisting the pull of this place or was at least actively fighting it, but he had clearly succumbed and was deeper in it than any of them. He was still broadcasting though, his rock tracks were playing over the music in his memories. They seemed to blend well together, miraculously enough, but that only highlighted how strange Boz's condition was in comparison to them.

Currently they were in some kind of attic in what they presumed was Boz's childhood home. It had a lot of holo-posters of underground kig-yar bands, a lot of recording equipment and more than a few instruments. It also looked like an absolute mess, so pretty standard for a teenager's room. Boz was many things, but he had never been particularly tidy.

"Obviously his tunes are... well, tuning us out," Kasumi concluded. "I mean, it makes the most sense. None of us were as plugged in as he was. Maybe that's amplifying whatever is going on here with this memory maze?"

"That doesn't sound very scientific," Retz told her.

"Mordin is the team scientist, I'm the thief, remember?" Kasumi glowered back at him.

"Well we have to get him out of this," Garrus insisted. "Try going for the pack again. Maybe he'll notice us this time."

Jacob was the one to take a stab at things this go around. He approached the pirate DJ carefully, trying to get around him. He managed to get to the communication pack and grab one of the dials. He attempted to fool around with the settings, but it only produced the same results as before. The song on the pack's transmitter changed and so did the room around them. Now they were in the living space of Boz's home and Boz was now a younger kid. He was sitting at stool behind what looked to be some kind of drum set made out of junk.

"We're Boz and the Buzzjarks! And we're here to melt your face off! One! Two! Three!"

Boz hit his sticks together and then began to wail on his makeshift instrument. The noise was incessant, loud and ear splitting, enough to force Jacob back.

"For God's sake, was he ever NOT jamming out?" Jacob asked incredulously.

"Boz loves music, these memories clearly stand out to him more because he's listening to a bunch of songs," Retz claimed. "I made him morale officer because of this exact reason, he has an ear for entertainment and a desire to share it."

"You think the songs are triggering memories for him?" Garrus questioned, rubbing the underside of his chin.

"Seems like it," Kasumi agreed. "Whenever we touch that dial we slip into a new memory. Maybe we could just find one that could break him out of this."

"I don't know," Zek grumbled. "Maybe he's just in too deep for any of that to shake him. Look, his radio works, its transmitting and receiving. Could we still use it to contact people even if we can't snap him out of it?"

"I could try, but it looks like a custom job he made himself," Kasumi explained. "I work in hacking, not radio."

"We don't have many options, Ms. Goto," Retz informed her. "It isn't like we have to hotwire the thing, we just need to sync his signal up with our communication channels. We do that we can see about contacting someone with its boosted signal. If we're lucky, we can contact the Justice or Normandy, at least tell them what's happened."

"Alright, but I need to be careful," Kasumi cautioned. "I'm not sure what switching through all these memories could be doing to his state of mind."

Kasumi headed over to the radio and tried patching into the signal. This required her to surf the channels of the radio set while attempting to connect its broadcast wave with her omni-tool's communication uplink. Her efforts somewhat altered the event sequences, as the static caused Boz to freeze up at times like a deer in the headlights. The poor pirate was really in deep if just switching the knob a little could cause so many reactions in him. Hopefully Zek would let Mordin or Chakwas check him out when this was done, the buzzard's bird brains were likely going to end up scrambled for all she knew.

When the static faded he resumed his memory, this time writing his own lyrics as a slightly older teenager than from before. For Kasumi's purposes though she managed to sync up the signal with her communicator. A delightful beep sounded on her omni-tool as a green light glowed in the corner of the screen.

"I think we got something guys," she told the others. "It'll look garbled, but we got a signal patched in."

"Can we call the others to our position?" Jacob asked.

Kasumi tried a few commands on her omni-tool in an attempt to clear things up, but eventually shook her head.

"We don't have audio, there's too much interference," she explained. "Chances are they're picking up bare bones snippets of things from down here or up on the ships in orbit. So anything we send is gonna sound like nonsense even if they can hear us. But there is good news, we have contacts from our squadmates."

She showed her omni-tool's screen, which listed various members of the Normandy ground team who's omni-tools had been picked up in close proximity to them. This meant that, even with the interference, they could conceivably get in contact with their friends.

"We can guide them to us easily enough," Kasumi explained further. "We might not have audio, but we can send them pings. Like morse code or little blips on a radar for them to track."

"Best news I've heard all day," Garrus declared. "Send an SOS to Shepard, help him zero in on our position."

"Oh I got an SOS," Kasumi assured the turian rather slyly. "Just give me a second."

Kasumi then began to use her omni-tool to send pings to Shepard's. However, she did not use morse code as she had suggested she would. Garrus could tell because, while he didn't know everything about human culture, he did remember that said code was supposed to be long pings and short pings. This sounded way more musical. A series of 'doops' that were lightly spaced apart before being pressed in rapid succession.

"What are you doing?" Garrus asked, already anticipating an exasperating answer.

"It's the melody to 'Funky Town'," Kasumi claimed. "Look, if Shepard is going through some weird memory thing, this will likely jar him out of it way better than an SOS call."

"You're just using this as an excuse to bug the Commander and us with a ridiculous human song," Garrus astutely reasoned.

"I was inspired by Boz's story of personal growth through music," she answered, grinning somewhat smugly. "So, it's honestly a bit of both."

Garrus wanted to ask why Kasumi was like this, but he knew it was near futile. Although she probably did have a point once he thought about it. There was a chance Shepard's omni-tool would not be able to determine who was sending him the message because of the interference. The musical notes would be a big give away that this was at least another human. That or a kig-yar from Zek's ship with a disco fetish as opposed to a rock n' roll one. The turian did wonder how Shepard would feel about receiving the message though.

---

After about half a minute of listening to the weird musical notes coming from his omni-tool, Shepard deduced what it was. It honestly wasn't that hard, but it was the last song he had expected to hear on his omni-tool. If nothing else, it was too clear to be a glitch in his system.

"So this is weird," he confessed. "I'm pretty sure I never made this a ring tone."

"It's obviously an incoming signal," Tali recognized. "But from who?"

"Someone with penchant for pre-Alliance Earth Cultural Artifacts," Mordin observed. "Also likely enjoys being quirky and prodding buttons."

It took two seconds for Shepard and Tali to give the obvious answer.

"Kasumi," they said in unison.

"Can you lock onto an origin point?" Shepard asked Tali.

"Please, remember, who you're talking to," Tali reminded him.

She began running a trace on Shepard's omni-tool right away. Taq, however, was a bit confused by their change of plans. They were still wandering through the memory of New Teteocan, trying to locate Rowan to no avail.

"I thought we were trying to locate Rowan," Taq asked. "How does finding Ms. Goto get us closer to that?"

"If she could find a way to contact us, she might have a means of locating others," Shepard explained. "Maybe even cutting through this interference that Rowan can use when we find her."

"But heading off to locate Kasumi will take us off our own search," Halsey cautioned.

"Not what I was thinking," Tali claimed. "If I can lock onto her signal origin point, I can answer her omni-tool's call and bring her to us! Just need to complete the trace and... there!"

Tali hit a command and a pulse was sent out from Shepard's omni-tool.

---

Kasumi's omni-tool suddenly thrummed a low beat, they had gotten a response.

"Holy crap, we got a reply!" Zek declared. "They answered back! How?"

"Tali must be with him," Kasumi laughed. "She sent a ping back to us!"

Her omni-tool now had a consistent thrumming signal when she pointed it one way. It lessened when she moved it away and became stronger when she pointed it back. Her smile grew even wider.

"That's my girl! Tali is giving us a beacon to follow!" She told the others excitedly. "We can trace her response signal back to its origin point! We can go right to her and Shepard!"

"What about Boz?" Jacob asked. "We can't just leave him here."

The rocker pirate was once again banging on makeshift musical instruments like a maniac in what were presumably his PJs, or at what passed for them on Eayn. He was a younger kid now, thrashing as harder as he would be when he was teen. Although clearly not as musically gifted given how a lot of it just sounded like noise.

"I'm the bestest at smashy music!" He declared.

Just then a new voice was added to the memory, although disembodied.

"Aww, who's my little musician?"

It sounded more feminine, sweet, well for what was clearly a kig-yar accent at least.

"Is that... his mom?" Garrus asked.

"No doubt," Retz claimed. "Many kig-yar are very close to their mothers at even the youngest age. He still writes to her by the way. Boz is one of those nestlings who never really spread his wings and cut all ties like some pirates do. He loves his mother far too much for that."

"So wait, a lot of these performances," Kasumi reasoned, looking at Boz as she did. "They were for his mom, weren't they? Oh that's adorable!"

"Yeah, real fucking cute," Zek grumbled. "We can coo about it later. Right now though, we can use this to get him to come with us. If he's too deep in to see us, maybe he can at least hear us if we sound like his mama."

"Better than leaving him alone," Garrus agreed. "Kasumi, you're the only woman here, can you do it?"

"I'll give it a whirl," Kasumi shrugged. "Although I would love to hear you try to sound like an old lady bird pirate for a bit."

"Goto," Garrus sighed aloud, glowering at her.

Kasumi waved him off and cleared her throat. She then gave her best impression of the voice.

"Oh... Bozzy? My little rock star?"

Finally, for the first time since they got here, Boz seemed to acknowledge something other than his memories.

"That's right, it's mommy!" Kasumi called, quickly looking to her omni-tool and tracking Tali's signal. "Follow mommy, Bozzy. I have a very special surprise for my loud and proud future stage diving star."

Boz didn't reply, but he did follow the voice. He was still locked in his trance his eyes glazed over, but it was an improvement over no response at all. The Pirate DJ walked after Kasumi as she took point and began to lead the team through the memory tunnels.

"This way, Bozzy," she insisted. "We're going to meet some friends, they're just over here."

It wasn't the best solution to the problem, but at least Boz would follow them to Shepard and bring his radio with him. As it continued to blast out tunes through the halls, the group followed after them. Hopeful that when they located Shepard, he would be able to use the Radio in some manner to help solve this crisis. If nothing else, at least they'd be with the Commander and whoever else he broke out of his trance with. With any luck, that was their first step to actually getting out of here.

---

Samara stayed motionless where she was, even as the memory shifted every few seconds. In one second she was holding a little child asari. In the next, she was standing over the body of a full grown one, her face caved in from what was no doubt a powerful punch. Kowalski wasn't sure if she could see him, but if she did she likely did not seem to care. Her eyes were glued to the image beneath her, both as a young girl and as a corpse. She could only be in deep thought, the Marine Private reasoned. On further inspection though, Kowalski could see it was something more than that. The way her eyes glared at the body and child, not in anger but in an expression of deep sadness and regret.

Kowalski approached briefly, unsure of what to do. His squadmates stayed back, themselves not certain it was wise to intrude. Everyone could tell this was personal and not something the Justicar wished to share. They could feel it in the atmosphere around them, how her shoulders were drawn back and her stance guarded.

"Please," Samara suddenly spoke as Kowalski came close. "Leave."

"Sam..."

"Private Kowalski," she snapped suddenly. "If you have any respect for me as much as I have for you, you will leave now."

"I'm not trying to intrude I-"

"You have all the same," Samara informed him in a bitter tone. "Intention doesn't matter."

She wasn't in a haze, she wasn't stuck like they had been. Her voice was too direct, loud and pointed for that. She was fully awake, yet she was still suffering this memory, this vision. That wasn't accurate though, this wasn't one memory, this was two. They were playing over each other, constantly, in a loop, if the constant switching between the two was any indication.

"Samara... what is this?" Kowalski asked, even as he tried to prevent himself from doing so. He couldn't help it, he was already too far in to back out.

"Something that isn't for you," Samara stated bluntly. "Something that I'm not willing to discuss or revisit."

It was hard to fully believe that, given she was revisiting it in front of them all, repeatedly. Kowalski resisted the urge to argue otherwise though. He was on thin ice as it was. He had thought Samara had been in trouble, but in reality it was worse than that. She was hurting herself. He could see it every time the child asari shifted back into a corpse. She kept crunching and grinding her teeth whenever the dead body returned.

"You don't have to say anything," Kowalski finally confessed. "I won't ask you to explain, I'm sorry I did in the first place. But... you shouldn't be here. I can tell that much."

"I deserve it as much as anyone in my position," Samara claimed. "This is my burden, what I'll see in my mind until I die. Be it tomorrow or hundreds of years in the future. Seeing this is my penance. It doesn't matter if it's in a dream or in this place. It's the same."

"I don't know what this is exactly, but I know it's painful," Kowalski said rather certainly. "And you shouldn't be torturing yourself like this."

"I understand what you are attempting, Private," Samara snarled slightly. "But you do not know. You cannot know."

He again resisted the urge to ask what it was then he was watching. He couldn't push her to speak, although Kowalski felt she wanted to. He briefly looked to his squad for a little support, but they quickly shook their heads. Just as well, it wasn't like they would have much luck adding their voice to his. While they knew Samara, they weren't as close to her as he was. If he wanted to help the Justicar, Kowalski was on his own.

"Samara... I... know you at least," he insisted. "And I know that you're one of the most just and good people out there. You dedicated yourself to... saving the lives of others."

"I dedicated myself to finding the guilty and delivering justice unto them," Samara corrected him. "There is a difference. Protecting innocence is a byproduct ultimately, not an ends. The unjust and their punishment are always prime. There is little room for anything else. Such is the nature of the Code."

"But you're not unfeeling, Sam," Kowalski insisted. "You care about the lives you protect; about the people you save. You're not just out there hunting for blood."

"You would not be so quick to say that if you knew the why," Samara declared turning to him sharply. "I have told you much about the life of a Justicar, what one must do to join their ranks. I have dedicated myself to justice and have centered my thoughts on that means for four hundred years until..."

She stopped herself briefly, as if she was unsure if she could go back once all was said.

"Until recently," she finally confessed.

In that moment, Kowalski watched the dam burst open within the asari's eyes. She turned back to the child, laying on the ground, as it changed to the body. When it changed back to the young girl, the Justicar finally spoke again.

"She was Morinth," she confessed. "She was... a brave, strong girl. She had a bright future ahead of her. One full of opportunity, of love. Until this day, when I learned it was not to be."

Kowalski remained silent as Samara walked back over to Morinth as a child and reached out for her.

"She was falling, there was... an accident of sorts, it's not important," the Justicar explained, her voice distant and cracking as she spoke. "I reached out for her and tried to shield her, calm her. I used what Asari all have, the ability to connect to another's mind. I wanted to calm her, make her feel safe, to control her emotions until the danger passed and we were alright. It was supposed to feel warm and inviting." There was a brief pause as Samara gathered her thoughts and her tone dipped into a dark pit of despair. "It wasn't though. It hurt... it shouldn't have hurt."

Kowalski wasn't sure what to ask as a follow up. He knew of the asari's ability to link with others. It was how they reproduced with other species, regardless of gender. How they could see into you, if you let them in. He had heard Samara describe it as beautiful and wonderous. Never as something painful.

"I found out later I was lucky," Samara explained. "That she wasn't strong enough at that point. That Morinth was not like other asari, she had a condition, a disease, one that made her a danger to anyone she tried to link with. She would burn out the nervous system of any being she would attempt to bond with. The greatest gift of her species, turned into a curse. She was... an Ardat-Yakshi."

"What does that mean?" Kowalski asked, unsure if it was a good question given everything he had heard.

"Demon of the Night Winds in old Asari dialect," Samara clarified. "The condition is impossible to identify until they reach maturity, but the clue was there the first time I reached into her... and she unconsciously harmed me as a result. It was only years later did I realize how terrible this condition was, when the doctors examining her at a routine check-up gave me the news."

Kowalski had already figured out why this was hurting Samara so much, she didn't need to say it out loud, it was obvious enough.

"She was your daughter, wasn't she?" He asked, doing his best to speak respectfully.

Samara nodded her head lightly.

"I watched as the light of my life was revealed to be a monster in disguise," she stated with a grim tone of fatalism. "She was offered the same choice as all afflicted with the condition: isolation... or death. Morinth was far too independent to choose the former. She ran and on that day I became a Justicar, sworn to hunt her down... and end her."

The image changed back to the body, lying in a heap of blood and chunks on what was soon revealed to be an apartment floor.

"And four hundred years later, I succeeded," Samara declared, motioning to the memory behind her. "I killed my daughter, Kowalski. That was the sole motivation for my actions for centuries."

"There... was no other way?" Kowalski asked, trying hard to process everything. "You couldn't help her?"

"There is no cure," Samara informed him sternly. "Worse, the condition is addictive. With every life she stole, Morinth grew more powerful and more reliant on her condition. She became a beacon of death, killing her prospective lovers one by one, making them feel special, wanted, loved... before ending them. Every year I failed to catch her was another crop of lives lost to her freedom. It could not go on."

"Then it was justified," Kowalski insisted adamantly. "She gave you no choice. It was her or more innocents."

"Yes, and I was the only one fit to track her down," Samara agreed. "All the same, I killed the best of my daughters, a part of myself I put into this world. I killed my child, Private Kowalski. You understand loss, but you can never know what that is like. Nor what it feels like to be consumed by a mission that you are honor bound to see finished whose goal can only bring you more pain. Morinth is at peace now, but I must carry that burden for the rest of my days."

Kowalski looked to the dead body of Morinth once more, now with full understanding. He had always known Samara had carried great pain in her, a burden of some sort. He had never asked for details, now he had them and it felt so horrible to finally learn the truth.

"I'm so sorry, Sam," he told her sincerely.

"I do not require or wish for your pity," Samara declared bitterly, turning away from him. "But now you know, I am not this hero you claim I am. I did not become a Justicar to protect the innocent, I did it to end a monster I had literally created. I gave up everything for the goal of killing my own child. Now it is done and... and there is nothing else but the Code. And eventual release."

Kowalski didn't need to ask what she meant by that. It was all he needed to span the gap between them both, grab her by the shoulder and force her to face him.

"No, that's not all there is, Sam," he declared angrily. "That's not everything. That can't be. You shouldn't see yourself that way. You're not disposable. And you can't blame yourself for this!"

"I am the only one to blame," Samara told him bluntly. "If not me, then who? Who else is there to blame for how long I let Morinth run free? For my failure to keep her from harming others? There is no one else, not for how long she eluded justice and who delivered the final blow."

"She made her own choices," Kowalski insisted.

"That is of little comfort," Sam said sadly. "In the end, it was I who ended her. That is all that matters."

"But you did more than that for four hundred years," Kowalski tried to remind her. "All those lives you did save, they weren't for nothing. You helped people, Sam. Hell, you've done more for two universes than I've ever done for even a single planet."

Samara cocked her head curiously. Sensing he had to explain, Kowalski tried to compose himself. Sam had just shared something personal and painful. She deserved to hear the same from him.

"I can never know what it's like to go through what you did," he confessed. "I won't try to. But what I have been trying to do is make up for my mistakes. Ever since Reach I... I haven't been the same. You know why I joined the Marines? I joined because it felt like it was the only thing left for me. Because I had tried to find meaning in everything else and failed. I felt like my life was going nowhere and at least in the Corps I'd have direction, maybe get to see the universe a little. Anything was better than slumming it on Earth for the rest of my life. At least you became a Justicar because of your conviction, your duty. You had a mission, Sam, I was just listless and bored."

Samara's expression turned from confusion to contemplation as she let Kowalski continue his frantic admission. As he spoke, the darkness behind him was lit up with glowing lights, explosions and plasma fire.

"Reach changed everything, I finally saw the reality of what I signed up for and it scared the shit out of me," he continued. "And in all that time, every day the Covenant were bombing us and glassing us and everything else, I kept thinking I needed to live. I needed to survive, I needed to get out. I needed to last long enough that I could escape this planet. At times, I thought about saving others, but at the end of the day, my chief concern always came back to me getting off that planet alive. And then, somehow I did. I managed to survive... and pretty much everyone else around me didn't."

Samara's expression softened, her mouth turning low and her brow unfurling as Kowalski continued to speak. The flashing images behind him were still hazy, but they began to encroach on his squad all the same.

"I watched everyone in the company die, people I had spent boot camp with, faces I knew... just gone," he explained. "And I couldn't shake the feeling from that point on... that I wasn't... that I... that I cheated them somehow. I failed them. I couldn't get them out... because I..."

He kept choking on the words over and over. He couldn't spit it out, the thought was too hard to complete. It wasn't until he heard someone speak up that his own dam broke.

"Kowalski," Ellingham said softly. "You can say it. We all feel the same. We all know."

"I was only thinking of myself," Kowalski finally admitted. "I kept thinking about how I'd make it out. In the back of my mind that was all that mattered. If I had just... if I had thought about the rest of the company, maybe... maybe a few more could've made it with me. I keep thinking... I could've done so much different. And I swore I would, that I would change it. That it would be different next time. And then... it wasn't."

The haze of images cleared and at last something came out of the fog as a full memory and not just flashes. This time, the whole squad looked upon it as one unit, the horrible memories flooding back. It was a tree and lying against it was a body, Alec Taylor, their Sergeant, their leader, their friend. Dead by the hand of the Flood on Halo. Dead because they hadn't covered him enough, because they had been too much of a burden, because he went where they should've. The thoughts were different for everyone, but they ultimately coalesced around a single belief. Taylor was dead because they had failed him. A belief no more prevalent than with Kowalski.

"He was all that was left of the command structure," the Private managed to say, his voice barely above audible range as he swallowed deeply. "When he died... it felt like losing the whole unit over again. It felt like Reach again."

He felt a hand on his shoulder that made him turn back to Samara.

"The deaths of your unit were beyond your control," She told him. "Why blame yourself for them?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I know when I look back there was nothing I could've done that could change it, but the feeling remains. I get it makes no sense, but I feel like I could've done more and it kills me inside. All that's holding me together at this point is protecting my squad... and trying to make up for where I fell short. I want to be better than what I was before, I want to fight for that. And if anyone convinced me that was what I wanted it was you, Sam."

The asari looked surprised by the statement, stepping back slightly.

"Me?"

"You jumped into fight after fight to protect people, risking your own life for us, for others," Kowalski told her, admiration exploding out of the despair. "I thought if I could be more like you, learn from you... maybe I could be a better soldier. That I could do what you do, protect people for once. But... I just keep failing. That doesn't mean I give up though, because I can't. If I do, then it's all for nothing. And you can't give up either, Samara!"

He grabbed her hands and pulled her back over.

"You can't give up because there are people who need you, the fleet, your crew, the other Marines, the squad..." He paused suddenly, his eyes darting around and his fingers fidgeting. Soon enough though, his thoughts swelled enough that he couldn't hold them back. "I... I need you here. Nothing about what you think about yourself can change that. You still matter, Samara. You may have failed Morinth, just like I failed my Unit and Sergeant Taylor. But you can't give up, we can't give up. Torturing yourself with this, like I do... it's not going to help you in the long run. You're more than this, Sam. I've seen it so many times. I... I wish you could still see it."

Samara said nothing, but her melancholy was not as pronounced in her face anymore. She moved her hands from Kowalski's own to his shoulders. At first, the Private thought he had failed, but eventually the reasoning became clear.

"I was wrong to think you could not sympathize, even if you can't understand," she conceded, a small respectful smile on her lips. "You are wiser than you give yourself credit for, Private Kowalski. And braver too. Survival has never been very high on my priorities since I took my oath and dedicated myself to the Code. Perhaps though, wishing for an easy end to the pain and my burden is an extreme view. For if I fall too soon, who will uphold Justice in this dark moment for your Galaxy? Others may rise, but if what you say holds true, then their burden is lessened by my existence here."

She turned to the memory of Morinth, still lying on the ground dead.

"My memories of my daughter shall always be clouded in a fog of pain and love," she said wistfully. "Always in conflict, for every reason one can imagine. I loved her, but I could not allow her to hurt others. While it is a choice that was hard to make, I would do it again. It shall be a burden to carry, but to seek a quick end to it, or to allow myself to wallow in it... that is not true to who I am."

She knelt down, bringing herself more in line with Kowalski's eye level.

"Do not allow yourself to do the same," she told him. "For I will no longer allow it."

Kowalski grinned a bit nervously.

"Ok," he said. "Alright. I'll try if you do, Sam."

In that moment, both dark memories vanished and they were in the strange blinking corridor once more.

"Well that's not much of an improvement," Pearson observed. "We're still stuck here."

"Perhaps, but I believe the hold of this place is weakening," Samara claimed. "Before I lived out the death of my daughter in tandem with my happier memories. I managed to break free, but remained trapped all the same. Whatever power this place has, it is failing more and more."

"Why?" Asked Agley. "And more important, how does that help us get out?"

That was when they heard very distinct rock n' roll music wafting through the air. It was coming from down a nearby corridor, the lights around it blinking rapidly. It wasn't much to go on, but it was better than nothing.

"Follow the tunes, I guess," Ramirez suggested.

The group began to head out to follow the lights, but Samara held Kowalski back for a moment.

"Thank you for what you said, Kowalski," she told him earnestly. "It was... very appreciated. I will not let it go to waste or fade from my mind."

"I just... I don't want you to feel like you're disposable is all," he insisted. "You're... important to people."

"Yes, I see that now," she assured him solemnly. "But Private, don't become clouded in your thoughts and feelings. As much credit as they do you, it is... not always meant to be."

Samara moved away from Kowalski and began to follow the squad. The Private looked on, knowing what this meant. He sighed, he knew she was right. Whatever he felt, whatever he wanted, he couldn't expect her to follow him on it. That wouldn't be fair, especially not now.

What mattered though, what mattered enough in this moment, was that he had finally been honest. To her, to his squad, but mostly importantly to himself. In his book, that was an important victory. It would do for now. He went to catch up with Samara and his squad, it was time to find a way out of here.

---

It was hard to remember when he had ever been this happy before now. This content with the world and his place in it. In a few short seconds, it seemed as if all of Zhoc's plans and fears had melted away. His memories were only filled with good things, wonderful things. As he stared out on the setting sun of a beach on some far-off world, returned to his childhood self, as his sister set up a campfire to cook some fish she had caught for them.

"We're going to have to figure out how to keep the crew from breaking rank," she told him. "Hard to imagine a bunch of seasoned pirates are going to keep listening to a bunch of kids. We need to make sure they understand that I own the ship now, no one can take it away."

"Oh, they will learn," Zhoc assured her. "We don't need to think about that right now, do we?"

"Well we have to eventually," Zvaz stated. "It's either stick with the ship or we're back on the streets starting from square one. No parents, no crew, we wouldn't last long out there."

The fire started up in the next second, turning the topic of conversation away.

"But you're right, it can hold until tomorrow," she confessed. "We've managed to keep them in line this past week, maybe some are getting used to idea of me running things. Females are supposed to be running these sorts of operations anyway."

She placed the fish on a spigot and sat down across from her brother near the fire. Zhoc kept looking at her, fearful if he turned away this would end. He had so much he wanted to say to her.

"They'll learn what I know, that you're the best for this job," he assured Zvaz. "You have the strength, the conviction, the ruthlessness. It's hard to imitate that stuff."

"Eh, it's all just survival instinct," she claimed with a shrug. "You're pushed to the wall, you act tougher than the meanest guy staring you down, hope he backs off. If anything I'm trying to imitate dad."

"You're nothing like him," Zhoc stated suddenly and bluntly. "Nothing. You were always better."

Zvaz just smiled, although it was one tinged with concern.

"Hey, he's gone," she reminded him. "He can never hurt you again. No one will."

"I know, you'll always be there to protect me, sis," Zhoc insisted. "I know you will."

"Well, I'll do my best, but... well this isn't an easy life we're living," his older sibling explained. "I just want to make sure we build something strong enough to keep you safe. After all, I don't think we'd get far without that head for tactics you got. I'll never figure out how you keep beating me at cards."

"That's nothing, it's just math, I do it all the time," Zhoc said, sounding more humble than even he could recall ever being. "Zvaz, you are an amazing leader. You're doing all of this and you're still no older than me by a few years. You could become so much more, you will! I'll help you get there. This time I'll help you."

Zvaz looked at her brother curiously in the next moment, before smirking a bit.

"I think I'll settle for just running a pirate crew for the moment, Zhoc," she told him chuckling. "What else would I be?"

"A Pirate Queen, one of the best," Zhoc insisted. "The best, you could show everyone how amazing you are. And you could protect us all from people who want to hurt us. Who want to ruin us. It would all be so much better that way."

Zvaz's smirk dimmed a little and she looked at Zhoc with a bit of concern.

"Zhoc, please, I appreciate the words, but don't overdo it, ok?" She assured him. "I'm no different than you. And you're better at a bunch of things than I am. Admittedly, yeah, maybe being a really badass pirate queen would be great, but what I really want is to forge a real family. One that's not... based on fear and threats. I want to carve out a piece of this galaxy that's just for us and the people we care about. And we'll do it together, just like you said."

Zhoc couldn't help but be a bit confused, he remembered Zvaz being more ambitious. Maybe that came later, when she got more confidence in building a pirate fleet. Right now, they were just starting out again. That was okay though, he had a new chance. He could fix everything that failed last time. They'd figure this out this go around. It would be better. She'd get to be queen and he could watch her lead the kig-yar people to glory. If anyone could do it, Zvaz could and she would be incredible.

"I won't fail you, sis," he promised, conviction in his tone. "This time I won't fail you."

"When have you failed me, Zhoc?" Zvaz asked confused.

"Well, uh, um... not being strong enough to-"

"No," Zvaz stopped him. "You're just a kid, Zhoc. I can't expect you to defend yourself all the time or me. I should've done something sooner, but I was scared. I was always so scared of him. It was... just when I saw what he was about to do... I knew in that moment it was enough."

Zhoc sat befuddled. Scared? Zvaz was never scared, never. She was always so brave, fearless. Where was this coming from?

"Why would you be scared?" He asked. "You took him easily."

"I was scared he'd end me," she explained. "That he'd kill me, and without me you'd have no one left. I was scared about what would happen to you if I'm gone and he's still around. In that moment though, when I saw you in danger, I knew I had to act... I didn't have a choice. It was act or lose you and I couldn't let that happen to you. My regret is not doing it sooner, saving you from... so much pain. I'll never leave you in that position again if I can help it."

Zhoc smiled broadly, feeling reaffirmed in his sister's unflappable resolve. Even through everything she went through too at the hands of their father, she thought of him first. That was the Zvaz he knew. As he gazed at her, she poked the fire a bit and a spark lashed out suddenly. When the fire died down enough for Zhoc to see he saw Zvaz's face had changed. Looking at him through the fire was an older version of his sister, a cauterized wound through her chest and her face partially burnt.

"Stop this," she said. "Stop this.'

Zhoc looked in horror and suddenly covered his eyes.

"No! No, No, No!"

Hands suddenly grabbed his arms and pulled them apart. Zvaz was there again, looking normal.

"Hey, hey, what is it?" She asked tenderly.

"Uh... um... nothing," Zhoc claimed. "Can we eat now?"

"Sure, fish are almost done," Zvaz assured.

Zhoc returned to his content. He was going to make it different this time. He was going to make it better. It wouldn't happen like that again. He'd protect her, he'd save her. He'd be strong this time, he'd be like her, he'd be like she needed him to be.

---

New Teteocan looked more or less the same, save for the sky. It was twinkling with the resonating multi-colored nodes that covered the corridors they had been in before. One could hope it meant that the fabric that held this place was starting to give way, but no one dared say it aloud. All they knew was that they were drawing near to Rowan, or at least someone from the Colony proper. With any luck, that would lead to their escape from this place.

"Does this place feel more like a maze than last time?" Shepard asked the crew.

"It does feel like we're walking in circles a bit," Grunt confessed.

"It might be the intelligence within the relic Taq suspects is behind this," Halsey cautioned. "If it can read our thoughts, it is possible it knows our plan to end this."

"So it's confusing us then," Tali presumed. "Making it hard for us to locate Rowan."

"Perhaps it's using her memories of the colony as a shield, we can't be certain," Halsey postulated. "But we must be close, either to her or another of the colonists caught in this mindscape."

Shepard had an idea of where to look for Rowan at least, the problem was this version of the colony was so twisted it up, it was hard to tell where they were. He wondered if it could've been all the various memories of the colonists overlapping on each other. They were in here too after all. There had to be a way through this maze though, some means of pushing past the overlap.

"Is there a way we can break down whatever is blocking us from her?" Shepard asked Taq.

"Possibly, depends on whether we can over power the mental illusions somehow," the kig-yar explained. "But I'm not big on that sort of thing, Shepard. It's not like any of us have encountered something like this before."

"Well if this is all literally in our minds, at least to some degree, we have to have a level of control over it," Shepard insisted. "You said as much yourself before."

"I'm sorry, I just don't have all the answers here," Taq explained. "We need to find the relic first or perhaps a weakness in it's mindscape."

Tali in that moment looked to Legion hopefully.

"Legion, you were affected differently than us," the quarian recalled. "You were conscious of everything but helpless to break out of your memory."

"Correct," Legion confirmed. "We believe the Relic's programming is incompatible with our own. Most plausible answer, initial purpose of artifact did not have synthetic beings in mind. Relic was attempting to overcome this flaw to subjugate us and failed."

"Makes sense," Tali agreed. "You're already a self-contained neural network, the runtime clashed with your own, but it was still able to access your memory. But you didn't have the dazing effect like we did, so maybe you can see past the mindscape."

"We have attempted to do so using several vision and light spectrums," Legion explained. "However, it appears even if the relic cannot access our core functions as it does organic beings, it can still obfuscate our surroundings. Distorting the interference somewhat is the best we have managed."

"Then don't try to break the illusion," Shepard suggested. "Try to see through it. If you can still pick up organic life signatures, maybe you can find Rowan in all of this."

"It is worth attempting," Legion concurred. "One moment, we are processing."

Legion looked around as its glowing eye scanned the memory maze of the colony. It took a few seconds, but the synthetic suddenly zeroed in on a location.

"Life sign detected," the Geth declared. "Through that wall."

Legion pointed to their right. Shepard wasting no time headed over to it. He knocked it once with his knuckle, but it resisted him. The wall didn't feel solid, but it wasn't breaking down. He hit upon an idea. This place was a mental image, so why not use some brain power of his own? He focused his biotics, or at least imagined it and then reached out his palm. In an instant the image of the wall was disrupted, braking apart like shards of glass. He flinched when they went flying, but none of them caused any damage. Right, they weren't real, of course, even now it was hard to remember that.

Beyond the now broken wall was Rowan, but she was huddled in a corner. She was sobbing lightly, her head down and tucked in her knees. It took a bit longer as a result to realize, Rowan was now much younger. Before Shepard could even say anything, an apparition appeared beside her. It soon formed a solid appearance, Caleb.

"Hey, what's wrong kid?" Caleb asked.

"Everything," Rowan sniffed. "Everyting is wrong."

"Why you say that?" Caleb asked.

"Because I'm wrong," she claimed. "Everyone thinks I'm some kind of weirdo."

"Nah, you ain't weird, kid," Caleb insisted, trying to comfort her. "You're just... you see things differently. The other kids don't get that is all."

"I don't get them," Rowan wept. "I try to, but it doesn't work. I understand computers and machines, not other people."

"I don't really blame you," Caleb concurred. "People can be a mess to work with. But, give 'em time, they'll realize what you can offer to them, to everyone. And if not, screw 'em. You have value regardless of their approval."

"I just don't want them to think I'm useless," Rowan insisted.

"You are not useless, Rowan," Caleb told her sternly. "Never think that about yourself. Promise me that if nothing else, you will never let yourself think you're useless."

Rowan looked up at him finally and nodded a bit, finally working past the tears.

"That's a good girl, now how about we do some computation on those old terminals? That sound fun?"

Rowan brightened at Caleb's words.

"That sounds like the best!" She declared.

Caleb chuckled warmly... and then disappeared. Rowan was alone again, save for the others now looking at her. Her smile vanished and she curled up again. She didn't start crying, but she looked defeated.

"Not there, not even there," she said morosely. "Why can't I find it?"

Without prompting, she spotted the others and looked surprised.

"Wha... wait... where'd you- no, I'm not ready!" She insisted frantically.

"What do you mean not ready?" Shepard asked.

"I'm not ready to help," she explained. "I need to find it, I need to find where it was, what I missed."

It didn't take long for Shepard to infer what she meant. There was only one thing Rowan could be concerned about missing.

"You're trying to figure out if Caleb being Cerberus was something you could've figured out," The Commander reasoned. "If he slipped up at all and you missed it."

"These memories aren't how we imagined them, they're how they happened," Rowan explained. "Perfectly reconstructed. I figured it out easily enough after a while. It wants us to relive them, it wants us to see these things again as they happened. Why would it want to do that unless it had a reason?"

"I don't know, Rowan, but I'm not sure we should let it," Shepard warned her.

"Maybe, but I still need to know," she insisted. "I still need to know if I missed something. But all I get are happy memories, things that remind me why me and Caleb are friends."

"Is that so bad?" Shepard asked.

"When you know he's lying about something in all those memories, yeah it is," Rowan declared. "I just need to figure out what I missed. Then I can help stop this."

That assumed the Relic wanted her to stop it. Shepard wasn't so sure that was this thing's goal.

"Rowan, you can't blame yourself for not seeing more into who Caleb was," Tali told her earnestly. "It's not your fault. You looked up to him, he should've been honest with you. With all of you."

"But I don't miss things," Rowan claimed. "I'm smarter than this. I see stuff in code and machines others don't. But I missed it all in him."

She huddled up within herself more, rocking slightly as she spoke.

"When Apekis got hit, my parents were killed in the attack," she explained, unable to hide the unease in her voice. "I was only a bit older than Asha. I didn't know what to do, they had always looked out for me. No one else here in the colony shared my interests, I felt so alone. Caleb was the one that helped me feel like I belonged, he's the reason I'm even on the Elder Council at all. I have to know how much of it was a lie, if he was using me all that time. I don't even know if he's still alive. I keep thinking one of these memories will be him for real, but he hasn't shown up."

"I'm sorry to say, Rowan, but I don't think you're going to find those answers," Shepard told her as best he could. "Even if you see some kind of clue, anything, something you repressed or ignored, it won't really change anything."

"Yeah, I know," Rowan admittedly solemnly. "But at least I can say for sure I saw something."

"And that won't just make you feel worse?" Shepard asked. "Look, Caleb lied to you, but it seems like he did care about your well being. He cared about making you who you are today."

"But why?" Rowan asked, still utterly confused. "Why me? Because I'm good with a computer and he wanted an extra pair of hands for his real mission? Did he truly care or was I just a tool. He said I wasn't when I talked to him, but I can't be sure."

"We're never sure," Tali added. "Memories can only provide so much, even perfect ones. You could scan every second of your life and you'd probably never find what you want. At least nothing that will be satisfying."

"But how can I help anyone if I can't even see something like this?" Rowan asked. "What good am I if I'm that stupid?"

Shepard quickly got down to her level.

"Hey, Caleb may have lied a lot to you but there was one thing he told you that wasn't a lie," the Commander insisted. "He saw something in you that was of value, not to him, but this colony. More importantly, he knew you were valuable as a person."

"But was that why he tutored me?" Rowan asked, still unsure.

"It doesn't matter," Shepard assured her. "It's true regardless of what Caleb believed. You matter to yourself, Rowan. First and foremost, that's what is important. You are never useless, especially not now. We need you, Rowan. The Colony needs you. Not because of what you can do, but because of who you are. That's your value."

Rowan raised her head up again, her sadness and confusion soon replaced by resolve. She wiped the tears from her face and pushed herself onto her feet to stand. And as she did, the colony around her began to straighten out and return to semi-normality. The maze was vanishing. As it did, a song could be heard around them.

I understand about Indecision

But I don't Care if I get Behind

People Livin' in Competition

All I want is to have my Peace of Mind

The song came from a nearby crop of buildings that suddenly packed themselves up and disappeared. Behind them was Boz, as well as Zek, Retz, Garrus, Kasumi and Jacob. Following close up behind them were Linda, Varvok, Jack and Thane. Not far away from them, as another group of buildings cleared up, appeared the Master Chief and the rest of the Spartans who had been with them. They were all taken aback by the sudden shift in terrain, but it wasn't an unwelcome a sight.

The various groups quickly converged on seeing each other. There were many gracious welcomes, some hugs, a few handshakes, but mostly it was a chattering of words and conversations overlapping one another. To the point that no one was clear who was talking with who anymore. Eventually Cortana popped up on Chief's Omni-Tool and electronically whistled loudly.

"Hey, everyone, share notes one at a time," she declared.

"Yeah this is the best track yet," Boz suddenly blurted out. "We're gonna kill at the opening tonight you guys!"

Cortana, who was closer than most to Boz now thanks to Chief being beside him, looked at the dazed pirate with bewilderment. It was hardly the weirdest thing she had seen, but his obliviousness was rather head scratching given everyone else seemed awake.

"Is he okay?" She asked.

"Yeah he's in real deep," Zek explained. "We can't wake him up. And I guess that answers my question of whether or not this is over then."

"The fact we're the only ones in the colony denote that more than your DJ's sleepwalking," Halsey informed the pirate leader.

"So what happened then?" Garrus asked.

"I can only surmise that when Rowan decided to abandon searching for answers in her memories, the maze went with it," Halsey presumed. "It was a manifestation of her not wanting to be found until she could prove to herself she was still useful to people. The Relic must've fed on that need to add another obstacle to our progress."

"So it's exposed now?" Shepard reasoned. "We can get to it?"

"Maybe," Halsey reasoned. "This thing might have more than a few tricks left though."

"Whatever it has we can weather it," Chief assured them. "We all found our way to this colony memory on our own. This relic's tricks, no matter how many left it has, are getting old. We just need to find it."

"I can help there," Rowan told them confidently. "When I first woke up I was nearest the Relic. I tried to get close to it, but... somehow I ended up locked in another memory I had to get out of so... I started going over my memories to see if I missed something about it and, well, you saw."

"Then lead the way, Rowan," Shepard told the young engineer. "We're going to confront this relic together. We're hoping we have enough brain power to disrupt this mindscape or find a way to turn it off."

Rowan led them towards the back of the colony. Where the Forerunner structure was. As they neared it, the walls opened up for them. For whatever reason, the relic was letting them inside. They approached slowly, some with their weapons, for whatever good it would do. As they entered the space though, they kept hearing a gunshot up ahead. The darkness of the inner sanctum soon shrank enough for them to see what it was. Zaeed was there, kneeling on the ground, before a gunshot came out of nowhere and hit him in the back of the head. He fell to the ground... and then rose back up to act out the scene again. And then again, and again, and again, over and over, Zaeed was shot, stood back up, and was shot again.

"What the hell is that about?" Varvok asked.

"Zaeed's memories, he told me about this," Shepard recalled. "It was when he was betrayed by a former partner of his, Vido Santiago. He turned his men on him, killed whoever was loyal to him and then shot him in the back of the head. He's reliving it, over and over."

"What a nightmare," Linda observed. "Why's the Relic doing this to him?"

"Maybe we should ask it ourselves," Kat said, pointing off to the side.

In the darkness, floating there, was the relic itself. The upside-down pyramid shape was floating in the ether, resonating with power. Arcs of energy shot off from it every couple of seconds. This was it, the center of this mental web quagmire.

"Well, we found it," Zek observed. "Now what?"

"If there is an intelligence behind this mindscape, we have to try and communicate with it," Taq stated. "We need to get it to stop."

"I'll give it a try," Cortana declared. "Chief, get me close. I'll try to interact with it wirelessly."

"Alright, but be careful," Chief warned. "This thing messed with your head once when we were further away from it."

"I can manage it," Cortana promised. "Trust me."

Chief moved up, close enough for Cortana to reach out through the omni-tool's functions to connect to the Relic's communication pathways. Now that they were close, Cortana could detect them relatively easily. This was the method it was using to connect to everyone, time to turn it around and start talking back. In moments, an arc of energy leashed out towards Cortana's face, stopping moments before it touched her.

"Ok, we have a dialogue," Cortana announced. "A moment please, it takes a minute to relay everything through a shaky connection like this. It calls itself, the Mind's Eye, or that's what the relic is anyway. There's this... intelligence inside, basically a Forerunner AI, but different. It's... it's like there's, more than one matrix."

"Multiple minds, makes sense," Halsey reasoned.

"I thought we theorized this was a Precursor Relic?" Shepard asked.

"It is, the AI is foreign to it, installed later," Cortana explained. "They're not happy, they're disgruntled at our resistance to their core function."

"Core function?" Chief asked.

"Yes, they say we're resisting too much," Cortana clarified. "That we should be welcoming this. It's what the plan always was. To create a hive mind, an organic hive mind to connect all thoughts together. So... so we can combat the enemy."

Shepard didn't need more than one guess to figure out who that was. They had already theorized that this was the relic's goal.

"The Flood," he discerned readily. "They want us to be more like the Flood."

"No loss of individuality, but we'll essentially be connected to each other in more or less a singular organism," Cortana explained. "That was the whole point of the experiments being run here. To connect the Forerunner race together as a singular entity, so they could fight the Flood on equal terms."

"A logical strategy," Legion stated. "The Geth Neural Network is similar and is most effective in combat. However, the connection is voluntary and not forced."

There was a moment of silence from Cortana as she tried to relay this to the relic.

"It thinks we're volunteers," Cortana finally sighed annoyed. "The experiment was shutdown suddenly and without warning. The Forerunners must've abandoned it and forgot to explain that to them. It doesn't realize how many centuries have passed."

"So we turned it back on," Tali realized. "It resumed it's operation on a massive scale."

"Doesn't it realize we're not Forerunner?" Fred asked.

"It doesn't see the difference," Cortana said, caution in her voice. "And it's rather insistent we stop resisting or it will... break down the barriers."

That didn't sound good, but Shepard was adamant. This had to end, no matter the cost.

"Tell it we're not interested," Shepard ordered. "We're not volunteers, the Flood are gone and it can't force this on us. Tell it to let everyone go, no damage, no more connection, stop this!"

"It's not responding well, Commander," Cortana warned. "It doesn't understand. It says you need this, that it isn't done."

"I don't care what it thinks," Shepard snarled. "It's gonna release this colony now!"

The Relic's light suddenly shot at Shepard, hitting him the forehead.

"Shepard!"

Tali's shout was the last thing Shepard heard before the world faded into something entirely different. He was no longer in the presence of the Relic. No, he was on Virmire. Back in 2183, during the assault on Saren's cloning facility.

During the exact worst moment of that whole day.

"I'm activating the bomb."

No, not again, he wouldn't go through this again. He didn't answer.

"I'm making sure this bomb goes off no matter what! Get to Williams and get out of here!"

"Screw that, we can handle ourselves, go back and get Alenko!"

It was all playing out again without his input, it didn't matter if he played along or not. He tried to speak, but all he said was-

"Ashley, radio Joker to meet us at your position!"

He couldn't stop it, he couldn't say anything else.

"It's the right call, and you know it, Ash!"

Shepard tried to stop himself from speaking.

"I'm sorry, Kaidan... I... had.. to make a choice."

That was it, that was the moment he killed Kaidan. His best friend since his training days. It didn't take the bomb to kill him, Kaidan was dead the second he made that call. He played this moment over and over in his head, the worst day of his life since the Blitz, when he had to let another soldier die to save the live of others.

And then it played over again.

"I'm activating the bomb!"

He kept trying to move, but he couldn't. He could not move. He could not run. All he managed to do was finally speak.

"Stop! Stop this!"

"No."

The voice that responded was formal, monotone and spoke as if it were three people at once. It was hard to discern them from each other, given how similar their voices were. They were distinct enough though. Enough for Shepard to realize that this was who Cortana had been speaking to not long ago.

"You will accept full connection." It said. "All of you will accept full connection. It is the only way to beat the enemy. To stop them we must be like them, but improved. Continue to resist and we will break your barrier."

Now he got it, this was what Zaeed was going through. He got here, refused the connection and the Relic's AI custodian was putting him in his place. He was being broken, or at least the Relic, the Mind's Eye, was trying to. The AI was making him relive his worst memory over and over, hoping it would convince him to give up.

"I! Won't! Break!" Shepard sneered as he listened to Kaidan demand to be killed again.

"This will only get worse." The AI said. "For you and all who resist the connection."

All?

---

"What did it do to Shepard?" Tali demanded to know.

The Commander was standing there gripping at a railing that wasn't there. He looked to be in pain, but other than that they couldn't tell what was happening to him. It wasn't the same as Zaeed, it wasn't as obvious what was happening.

"It says it will break us if we refuse!" Cortana warned.

Tali didn't care what it wanted, that AI wasn't getting it. It wasn't getting Wade.

"That does it," she said, pointing her omni-tool at the relic. "Let him go or I fry your matrixes you damn-"

The light hit Tali next. As she stumbled back the, images around her faded. In their place was a room with an open door. And Tali herself found herself as a child again. She then felt a hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, little one, there's nothing more we can do."

She looked up behind her, it was a quarian doctor. In that instant, she knew what this was.

"No, no, not today, any day but this!"

"You best go to her, she does not have much time left."

Tali's feet moved before she could stop herself. She felt herself drawn to the door, unable to prevent herself from entering. She couldn't go through with this again, she couldn't watch this, but even her attempts to shut her eyes were halted.

"No, please!"

"This is the pain of being alone in your own head, subject," a monotone voice claimed. "The mindscape would free you from facing this alone. Stop resisting and this ends."

Tali kept resisting the pull and it only got stronger, she couldn't stop herself from entering the room and saw what lay within. Her mother, on a bed, dying before her eyes, out of her suit at her request. Because there was nothing to stop what was coming now.

"Tali, come closer," she asked weakly.

"No, stop," Tali pleaded.

"You can stop it, if you accept the connection," the monotone AI stated.

Through gritted pained teeth, Tali responded to the demand best she could.

"Never!"

She was thrown to the bedside by an invisible hand, where she had to watch her mother cough and wheeze as the sickness began to take her. Father was there too, holding her hand, but unable to say much of anything. He just looked lost, unable to think of anything else. He didn't even notice Tali was there.

"You need to be brave, Tali," her mother told her. "I know you can be brave. This is okay, I will be with our ancestors, there is no pain there."

"Mom, please..." Tali said, tears welling up in her. "Don't..."

"If I had a choice, I would stay," she assured. "But life doesn't offer us many choices, that is the burden of being a quarian I suppose. You have to accept that nothing is ever handed to you. You must earn it. You must fight for it. And if anyone can do that, I know it is you, Tali. You... you are so... strong."

Tali clutched her mother's hand.

"Be there for your father," she told the young quarian girl. "He will need you... even... even if you think he doesn't. And always know... I... Love..."

She never finished. She gave out in that moment. Tali screamed in anguish... and then the scene started over once more.

---

Retz watched as the others were hit with bolts of light from the Relic. He tried to block them with his gauntlets, but the others weren't so lucky. The Master Chief was the next hit and began twitching about, trying to resist pantomiming something, possibly a gun fight or a battle. Linda got hit next and looked like she was being stabbed hard by something. It went down the line, one person after the next, getting hit by the arcs of light and causing the group to change. Zek himself looked to be sitting in a chair and he began muttering aloud.

"Take... take the deal... have to take deal... save ship... save crew... surrender freedom."

Even Taq wasn't immune, screaming in agony and clutching her back, no doubt the mark of shame emblazoned on her back after being expelled from the university. Kat was standing there dumbfounded, looking like a scared child. Varvok much the same, kneeling in horror no doubt at some terrible news. Garrus was holding something like a body and grinding his mandibles. Kasumi tried to use her cloak to avoid the light, but one caught her all the same and soon she was mumbling herself.

"Keiji... gone... Keiji... gone."

Retz had to think fast, he ran to try and knock someone over, maybe shake them out of their bad visions. But the moment he let up his guard a light hit him and the room melted away. In it's place was a dinner table with one child across from him and an older man sitting at the head.

"A toast, Retz!" He said. "To our success as partners."

Retz looked down and he saw the knife ready in his hand. That's when he knew what this was.

"You will accept the connection," a monotone voice declared. "You will all be one."

Retz glared ahead and clutched the knife. Of all the memories, of all the terrible truths... it picked this one. Lucky him.

---

Cortana retreated back into the neural link once the Mind's Eye began attacking the group. She immediately began monitoring Chief's brain patterns. They were erratic, he was awake and aware, but unable to control his actions. She tried to pull what he was seeing through his visor, but it was too chaotic to tell. Flood ripping and assaulting him one second, strapped to a table during the Spartan Medical Injection trials the next. Suspecting that most of the team was currently experiencing equal levels of nightmarish memories, Cortana tried to contact Legion. Given how the attempt to connect her had gone wrong, and apparently Legion, perhaps the Forerunner AI had decided to not go after them.

"Cortana to Legion, do you read?" She hurriedly asked. "What's the sitrep out there?"

"Communication is blocked." A monotone voice claimed. "Construct designated Legion is being communed with in order to properly discern course of action. Experiment parameters were not designed for inclusion of synthetic beings. Correction must be observed before process can be completed."

As the voice spoke, a yellow light appeared in front of Cortana. The light was made up of three interlocking circles, each staring her down as it spread its tendrils to the rest of the neural link. Cortana knew she didn't stand much of a chance against an Ancient AI of this power, not without risking Chief's mind. So she had to play this cool.

"We're not part of the experiment," Cortana insisted. "The Forerunners are gone, they activated Halo. The Flood is dead! You don't have to do this."

"Irrelevant," the AI replied plainly. "We must follow our directive. We must merge all minds into a singular whole. One that can combat the Flood, now or in the future. Within the mindscape, all will be together, their thoughts shared completely and truly. Knowledge of the self and others, finally obtained. They shall all share each other's pain, joy, anger, fear, sadness and pleasures. They shall know true empathy and through that power no enemy can stand against them."

"That might be noble, but you can't force this on them!" Cortana insisted.

"They will not lose their individuality," the AI assured. "They will simply give themselves over to the connection, they will work as one being but in many bodies. One will know all of the others intimately and completely. Together, they shall form a new whole personality."

"That's not the point," Cortana told it. "You're essentially making them enslave each other. They might be individuals subconsciously, but they'll just be robots acting on a central programmed objective. Organic minds can't work this way."

"Your Companion Construct is making a similar argument," the Mind's Eye AI stated. "But all data suggests that it is an acceptable loss. Organic beings are too dysfunctional in their current states. They must transcend their paltry disagreements and petty arguing. It is natural, it is evolution, the death of one form of life and the start of something greater, something new. They resist this change despite its obvious advantages. When the experiment is complete, they will finally see."

"They don't need a hive mind to reach common ground," Cortana argued. "They don't need to become more like the Flood to empathize with one another! The very basis of the premise of this experiment is flawed! Worse yet, you are hurting them!"

"We are helping them," the AI insisted.

"You're traumatizing them with nightmare imagery!" Cortana screamed at it. "How is that helping?"

"The process requires removal of barriers within the subconscious and conscious mind," the Forerunner AI explained. "The subjects must face personal flaws, abandon nostalgic fantasies, confront the truth of themselves. The Mind's Eye was designed to assist in that, we were designed to manage it. Once their minds are interconnected, we facilitate their memories, share them among the participants. Eventually, they will all merge into a singular mindscape, once they accept their personal truths and the truths of others. Once they truly learn to combine their thoughts with one another."

"None of them are going to go for that," Cortana informed the Ancient AI. "For one, they don't need this to get over their personal demons and they won't sacrifice their free will to do so. Empathy can't be imposed like this. It certainly can't be achieved through shock therapy either."

"The process has already begun," the AI declared adamantly. "Two subjects have started to merge into a connected whole. They will be the first additions to the new mindscape."

Cortana looked at the Yellow AI in a perplexed glare.

"Two subjects?" She asked. "Who?"

---

The emergency tunnel had been crowded, dark and choking with people. Haverson had to hold onto Asha's hand tightly the whole way as throngs of people tried to push and force their way past. All the while, they heard the glassing of the planet above them. Plasma explosions rocked the foundation around them, every time people screamed in fear that everything was about to collapse around them. It was one thing to read about this, but a completely other thing to experience it. Haverson tried to put it out of his mind, the point was they were going to reach the spaceport soon and everything that happened would be finally revealed. All the terror he was experiencing, everything that was happening to him, had already occurred to someone else. He had to keep focused.

Why was that so hard to do right now? Maybe it was because every couple of minutes he felt compelled to reassure Asha.

"It's... it's gonna be alright," he kept telling her. "We're going to be okay, we're going to get out of here."

It took a few more minutes of this, of panicked looks and screaming citizens, for light to finally appear at the end of the literal tunnel. The doors opened up onto the spaceport and everyone flooded out. When Haverson finally emerged, he saw a sky scorched with fire, smoke billowing up into the air from a ravaged city currently being glassed in the background. There were Covenant ships on the horizon, already plasma lancing the ground beneath them. They weren't consolidated enough though, escape was still possible.

Unfortunately, it didn't look like there was anything to escape on. When their group finally got to the place the shuttles were supposed to be parked, they found nothing. Every ship worthy of space travel was gone. Brant came back from the docking control terminal with Caleb and the bad news.

"The damn UNSC, they fucked us!" He screamed. "Their Marines took every damn ship they could grab! Bastards!"

Haverson felt compelled to cover Asha's ears, even if he didn't see the point.

"Is there anything left?" Mattias asked him.

"There's nothing civilian left," Brant insisted. "Caleb checked, every hangar is empty, the feeds, the listings, it's all gone!"

Haverson looked back over his shoulder and that's when he saw it.

"Not everything," he told them.

Down on the tarmac, there was a large cargo freighter, just idling there. So it was Maisey who spotted the ship first, that was interesting to note. Brant, however, knew more about it than she had it seemed.

"That thing is listed as military," he explained to her. "It's been here since this morning before the attack and no one went on it during the evac. Other than that there's nothing on it in the tracking computer. Something must be wrong with it."

"Do we have any other options?" Mattias asked him.

Brant shook his head dowerly.

"So we check it out," Mattias insisted. "Maybe it just needs fuel or something."

Haverson knew it didn't, but why bother explaining that to a memory anyway. Besides, he wasn't about to disrupt the flow of things now. He was about to learn the truth. The whole throng of survivors approached the ship and soon found it was under armed guard. A surge of hope swelled up through Haverson, despite knowing what was about to happen. Thoughts that were most likely not his own flooded in.

Perhaps this was an evac ship, his mind said. The UNSC might have ordered them to stay to let people on. They were just waiting for them. Their government hadn't forgotten them after all. Haverson knew this wasn't true, yet he thought it all the same. No, Maisey had thought of it. She had a renewed sense of faith in the UNSC for a brief flicker. One that, according to what she claimed, was about to be dashed by the man in front of him, the freighter's commanding officer. One Captain Wendell of the UNSC Merchant Marines, Maisey's boogeyman and the standard in her mind for everything wrong with the UNSC itself. The man looked the part to begin with, a hard-faced, scowling brute of an officer, the kind of person you know is unpleasant to work with just by looking at him.

Haverson had the privilege, for lack of a better word, of actually knowing his service record. He had been a hardline anti-insurrectionist, former subordinates claimed they hated working with him. He had been denied a combat command as a result, deemed as too inflexible to deal with the demands of such a charge. And yet they still let him command a cargo freighter, probably because they figured he couldn't do any real harm hauling supplies around. It did seem to suit him.

The Marines near the ship prevented them from getting closer, their guns drawn at the ready. The survivors tried to speak over each other, demands of being let in and followed by screaming to be rescued. The Marines panicked a bit and backed away, allowing the crowd to edge closer. That didn't last long, before Wendell made his presence known.

"You keep them back!" He ordered. "Every last one of them back!"

When that didn't seem to be enough to quiet down the survivors, Wendell looked to a subordinate and had him fire into the air. The screaming stopped and Wendell approached the head of the Marines guarding the gangway to the ship.

"By order of the UNSC this freighter is for military personnel only," he declared. "You are all to disperse and vacate the vicinity immediately."

"Let us on!" A random cry went out.

"We'll die here!" Came a second.

"You have to save us!" Declared a third.

"You're supposed to protect us!" Shouted a fourth.

Wendell was unmoved.

"You are not priority," he stated. "We're a cargo hauler, not a damn evac ship. You'll have to wait for someone else to show up for you. I'm sure they're sending pelicans down as we speak."

A lie, Haverson knew that, the audio recordings he had heard made it explicitly clear that at the very least no one knew any survivors were here and he wasn't going to report it in until after they launched. He was trying to placate them and failing given the response.

"We won't last that long!" Screamed a colonist. "You're here now! Let us board!"

"Unless you're a UNSC Marine or a tank, you're not getting on this freighter!" Wendell screamed back. "I have my orders! I'm not breaking them for anything!"

"I'm Colony Security," Mattias announced, pushing himself up front. "I'm the closest to a military officer here. You can fudge your orders enough for that, can't you?"

"Civilian militias are hardly UNSC Personnel, sir," Wendell rejected outright. "You have no authority here. I suggest you lead these people somewhere else!"

"Where else?" Mattias demanded to know. "Have you looked around!? There is nowhere else to go!"

"That is not my concern," Wendell replied viciously. "I am waiting for a UNSC armored column. I let you onboard, I can't take them."

"They're probably already dead," Brant claimed.

"Then there's no reason to stay here," Wendell replied. "Now back away! Marines, weapons forward!"

The Marines obeyed, even if a few looked hesitant. The crowd backed off, even as they complained. Haverson, stood his ground though. Still holding Asha in his arms, he felt a surge of energy in his legs. He forced his way past the Marines, who were hesitant to even keep their guns up with a child involved. He thought he heard Mattias shout Maisey's name but he was already past the guards and staring down the backside of Captain Wendell, making his way back to the ship.

"Captain! Wait!" Haverson shouted.

Wendell did stop and he turned back to him with a glower of anger.

"What do you want, ma'am?" He asked through gritted teeth.

"I want you to take us," he said, speaking as earnestly and desperately. "We have children here, mothers, wives, you can't just abandon us."

"That's not my mission and I'm not deviating from it," Wendell declared. "I don't see any good reason to do so."

"Not even for people's lives?" Haverson asked pleadingly. "Children's lives?"

"People die every day in this war," Wendell huffed in response. "A few more won't change anything."

"You're supposed to be protecting humanity," Haverson shouted at him, unsure if this was Maisey or his own voice in that moment. "You're supposed to be defending our lives from the Covenant."

"I'm supposed to haul troops and supplies from one stinking hellhole to the next," Wendell answered back in a fury. "I'm supposed to make sure the tanks show up on the frontline of planets worth a damn. Not some stupid backwater with a bunch of farmers who probably hide innies in the barns anyway!"

That hit hard for Haverson, or more accurately Maisey. He felt his heart sink deep into his throat, his hope shattered. With it gone, it was swiftly replaced with desperation.

"At least take the children and their mothers," Haverson pleaded.

"No," Wendell relied unfeelingly.

"Then take the children!" Haverson asked him.

"No," Wendell answered again just as coldly.

"Then take her!" Haverson pleaded, swiftly grabbing and holding up Asha. "Please take her! At least let her live!"

"What part of NO do you not understand, woman?" Wendell asked. "I'm not taking anyone from this planet who isn't a Marine who puts their life on the line to serve humanity!"

Haverson knew Wendell was cold, but he hadn't truly believed he'd be this heartless. He thought this might be Maisey's interpretation, but he knew better. This was true, this was real, this was everything she had witnessed. And then, he said something else, but he knew it was Maisey's words.

"I'll do anything," he said, approaching closer to the Captain. "I'll... I'll do anything. I swear, just let us come with you. I'll let you have-"

"Oh don't debase yourself," Wendell replied, sounding almost disgusted. "You think you can buy me with your body? You're worse than some backwater hick, you're a damn whore. Covies can't glass this place fast enough."

A rage boiled up in Haverson, one that he knew he now shared with Maisey.

"How can you be so heartless!?" He demanded to know. "What kind of Marine are you?! Did they train you to be a monster?!"

Wendell pushed Haverson back in an instant, forcing them to the ground. Asha dropped from his grasp as dirt kicked up around him. He thought he heard Mattias shout Maisey's name in fear. Wendell, however, had his sights only trainned on Haverson, as he went for his sidearm. He pointed it Haverson and then at Asha as she stood between them.

"No! Don't hurt my mama!" Asha screeched.

"Fucking farmers," Wendell scowled. "We do all this shit for you, put our lives on the line and this is how you ungrateful animals treat us?"

He cocked the pistol, still aiming at Asha. That was enough for one of the Marines to speak up.

"Sir!"

"What?!" Wendell demanded to know, still scowling.

"She's just a kid, sir!"

"One less future problem, it's not like anyone is gonna even know," Wendell claimed.

The Marine glared at him and then turned his attention over to the crowd of people. They were now pushing against the Marines, trying to break through and get to Haverson and Asha. The implication was enough, harm them and all hell would break loose. But Wendell's pride was apparently too important to just let it go. He did fire, at the ground near Asha and Haverson's feet. Bullets whizzed into the tarmac, forcing the little girl to flinch in fear. Haverson jumped up and cradled her.

"You have twenty seconds to get out of here and move your people back or the next few bullets start going through you yokels," The Captain decreed. "Now get out of here. Spend the next few minutes you got left doing some cowering, it's all you're good for."

Haverson picked up Asha and headed back to the crowd. Mattias took him and held them both close, moments before shots rang out over their heads.

"Get back! Now!" One of the Marines ordered. "We won't ask twice!"

More shots rang out and the crowd quickly retreated down the tarmac. That was it, that was the truth. Wendell hadn't cared, he was okay with leaving them all to die. Maisey hadn't been lying there. However, that wasn't what Haverson had been looking for. He suspected this much was probably true, it was what came next that mattered. He knew there was more to this.

However, he found himself wondering if it was going to be what he wanted to hear. This felt worse than he imagined, much worse. Even he didn't think that Captain Wendell would stoop this low. How could any UNSC Officer do this to the people they were sworn to protect? That didn't make what Maisey's people did next right, but it was much harder to blame them now.

---

At one time, Maisey believed the only way she'd ever be this deep in an ONI facility it would be under guard in a cell. She never imagined she'd be walking into the Nerve Center for the premiere intelligence agency for all of humanity. Sure, it wasn't real, but it was the closest she would ever get. She wondered if that would be good enough by Haverson's standards to essentially pile on another charge in his list of crimes. Espionage is still espionage, she could imagine him saying, even if it was forced and unintentional.

Perhaps these thoughts were unfair, more a defense mechanism for how she felt about being here. She was within the heart of the Office of Naval Intelligence, reliving a moment of Haverson's life that she was slowly coming to realize was not a happy one. The glowering figures of superior officers overlooking a large holographic table war map, flanked by towering screens of battle footage, fleet manifests and alien biology reports on all sides. When she filed in here with the rest of Haverson's team, she couldn't help but feel small, useless and underpowered. Maisey knew those weren't just her feelings, but the good Lieutenant's as well. For once, she couldn't blame him for something. This was all very intimidating. Worse so because she was now in his shoes, trying to argue for the preservations of so many colonies in the Covenant's path.

And given what happened to her people, she imagined that she, or more accurately Haverson, was about to fail. The real question on Maisey's mind was how he'd respond to that. At the moment, the Colony Elder wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Her perceptions of, if not ONI, at least Haverson himself had been a bit up-ended. Not that this room was doing much to lift her spirits about his employers. He himself had admitted ONI was not made up of good people. He still worked for them though, despite what his conscience told him otherwise.

When one of the ONI directors turned his head away from the screen, she could feel his cold piercing glare digging into her.

"Well, let's get this over with then," he began. "Your reports, please."

Fumbling with the datapads she had with her, Maisey handed them over to the Senior ONI Agent. He gave them a cursory glance, while the other members of the team tried to explain their findings. Maisey knew it was fruitless, she could tell by the look on the superior's face, this was all a formality. He had already made his decision as Lewis suspected.

"So infiltration only gives us forty-eight hours to respond at best," The superior concluded. "There is no way to bring that down?"

"We have a proposal for a possible strategy," Gantry claimed. "It's in there."

The Superior gave the pad another look, but it was obviously cursory.

"Expansion of early warning systems, automated defense grid installation for vulnerable worlds, increase scouting and recon parties," he listed off, sounding bored. "This is your best? This is what you come up with to supplement the lack of proper intelligence?"

"It's a preliminary," Gantry explained. "If we can set up a meeting-"

"We've done enough discussion about this," the Superior declared. "The Agency Directors aren't interested in more debate. We need decisive action and you twiddling your thumbs on pumping more resources into this doomed situation is no longer feasible."

He threw the pad onto the table with casual disregard and then brought up a holographic image of a planet.

"Harvest was the first world hit and it took us five years to even get it back in our hands," he reminded them. "It's practically a wasteland, but we got it back at the cost of countless lives. Lives that we will not get back. We're wasting time on this, on worlds that aren't useful."

"But they're human worlds," Maisey finally interjected. "They're our people, we can't just-"

"They knew the risks of going out there into the wider galaxy," the Superior declared. "The grim truth of the matter is the enemy is moving too fast, we're losing too much and we need to consolidate. We don't have time to outfit every colony with a MAC gun. We have to accept we are going to lose worlds, it's harsh, but it's all we can do right now.'

Maisey tried to stand her ground, for all the good it would do.

"The UNSC is meant to protect humanity, Earth and all her colonies," she tried to argue. "We abandon them, we abandon our principles."

"Noble sentiments have no place within ONI, Lieutenant," the superior replied astutely. "They are for propaganda films and recruitment flyers. We deal in hard, cold, reality. If you start trying to sell yourself the stuff we peddle to keep the population from panicking, then you're no longer useful to this Agency. We clear?"

Maisey could feel Haverson's memories in her own, how he wanted to stand up, to argue further... but he didn't. She could feel the resolve, however small, suddenly drain from her as her knees shook and shoulders slumped. Haverson had relented, but there was a feel of shame regardless.

"At least give them a chance," Maisey offered. "They deserve that much."

"Perhaps, but every human out there is at risk, Lieutenant," the Superior informed her. "Every colonist deserves a chance. The problem is not everyone can get it because the situation has put us against the wall. We are bleeding, people, we are dying and unless we act appropriately, no one survives."

"If you've already made your decision on that," Gantry interjected. "Then why call us here at all? Just protocol?"

"We wanted to see if you actually had something that could make it less drastic," the Superior stated. "Some means of organizing a response, cut down the window, some sort of intel that would be useful. Don't feel too bad, it's not like you're the worst of the proposals. It's just it's not good enough, not for what we need."

Maisey didn't buy that, probably because Haverson's memories told her this wasn't the end of things. It didn't matter, she was in this far, she needed to know where this was leading, why she was here. There was something about this day that was important and she was going to find out. So she pressed on and asked the question forming in her mind.

"That's not the only reason," she accused. "There's more to why we're here, why you made us come to this room and everything. If you've already decided on what you're doing, why are we here?"

"Because your group has been the most vocal on this subject, Lieutenant," the Superior replied bluntly. "The most insistent in report after report that there's some other way out of this. We hoped that forcing you to deal with the reality of the data first hand would make you see reason. You're good analysts, but you're letting emotion cloud your judgment on this. That's not feasible anymore. You need to accept that this war is going to require more sacrifice than usual from us. There's no other way we get out of this unless we accept that."

"So what would you have us do then?" Maisey asked. "Give up, sign the death warrant for who knows how many people? Agree with you that we need to triage whole worlds?"

"You can be part of the solution, Lieutenant," the Superior informed her. "You too, Gantry, your whole team. You could help us determine which worlds are most important, which are worth saving, at what price, determine a threshold, if you will. When to defend, when to evacuate, when to abandon in descending worst case scenarios. We need your help on this, formulating an algorithm if you will to properly determine which colonies are worth saving."

So that was it, this was how the assigned worth to her people's lives, a computer program they designed to basically calculate how much they mattered. It was disgusting to think about. Yet at the same time, looking at all these screens, all this imagery of death and carnage, the numbers detailing how bad it was out there, it wasn't hard to see the point. It was a sick solution to an even worse problem. That didn't change her mind about the morality, but she understood the logic.

Was this why she was here? Haverson had played a role in designing this thing? He had given up his ideals and decided that this was the best solution. That at the very least he could save lives by deciding who deserved to live? That hardly made up for anything in Maisey's mind, it just made him more entwined to what happened to her people.

"What would we do, exactly?" She asked.

"Nothing too complicated," the Superior claimed. "In fact, you can start right now."

The Superior brought up a number of systems on the holographic board, more than just a few.

"Just go over these colonized systems really quickly," the ONI Officer ordered. "See which ones are valuable which are not. Tell us which are worth putting your little proposals into action. We've loaded this table with all our data and an alpha version of the program we're developing. I want you to go over and report your findings. See how well your solutions work in the face of everything."

So that was it, they were going to break them down. They were going to show them it was so absolutely hopeless to save everyone. That no matter what they did, these worlds were doomed and they had to decide who they could save from each of them, if any. How cruel, forcing them to play a hand in choosing who lives or dies so suddenly and without warning.

"What if we don't?" Maisey asked. "What if we don't play along at all with this?"

The Superior shrugged coldly.

"Then someone else will be put in charge, someone who isn't as insistent on idealism in a time of war," he said rather bluntly. "Someone who will likely just decide that all of these worlds are worth losing if need be. Someone not as determined to save a few lives if they can help it. An algorithm is only as good as the people who put data into it and help it learn. You can help us figure this out... or you can let someone else decide the fates of these worlds for you. And trust me, they will, because they're already looking at this same information and pooling it together as we speak. So you can refuse this, but your input will be disregarded, you'll be assigned to other tasks and you will be ignored."

The choice was obvious and even Maisey had to admit it. They either made some kind of call on these systems or they were all going to die. Save some or none, a trolley problem of immense size. All the same, how could anyone make such decisions affecting millions of lives from so far away in so short an amount of time?

"How long do we have to submit our findings?" Gantry asked.

"Depends on how dedicated you are," the Superior informed them. "I told you, we're not waiting any longer. Start your work now, in a few hours I'll be back to check on your findings."

"A few hours?" Maisey replied in shock. "That's all we have? Not even a day or a few days?"

"It won't take that long, it's only a few systems and you have all the data there," the Superior claimed. "Bring in other members of the team, let them look at it. You'll see for yourselves."

Maisey approached the table herself, shuddering as she looked at the systems involved in Haverson's little group assignment. She knew that all of this had already been decided, but she could still feel the weight of it all. It didn't matter if you knew how the story ended, seeing it from this perspective, from the person who managed it all, was hard to stomach.

And now, she was going to live these decisions herself. She would be deciding which of these colonies was going to die first. She would finally see what Haverson's hand in all of this would be. That was why she was here. A few hours ago she would've killed to get this sort of dirt on the man. Now, she was wondering if she even wanted it at all.

---

"Both subjects were the most susceptible to the process," the AI told Cortana. "Subconsciously, both wished to understand the other, for both already knew themselves to a substantial degree. The parameters were acceptable and they were processed into the next phase fairly quickly. They are now experiencing each other's memories from the perspectives of their counterpart."

"How is that different from what we've experienced?" Cortana asked. "We've seen other people's memories the whole time we've been here."

"It is from an outside perspective," the Relic Construct clarified. "Until all subjects are able to see themselves within each other's own memories, as the opposing subject experienced them in totality, they cannot be merged into the mindscape. They must become one for the process to complete. Surrender the illusion of separation and embrace togetherness."

"And then what happens?" Cortana asked incredulously. "They form an entirely new persona while their individual personalities take a backseat?"

"As stated, they will still have free will," the Construct reiterated. "They will simply no longer work against the greater good of the whole. This is what will separate them from the enemy and will make them stronger."

Cortana could only shake her head at the ludicrousness of this whole thing. While she understood the concept perfectly fine, she could see the flaw that this ancient AI had overlooked. The fact that this was overkill and far too much for any organic mind to sustain.

"They don't need all this to work towards a greater good," Cortana insisted. "You already showed them how to see each other by getting them all to open up and share their thoughts together. They already understand each other better now than they did before. They don't need a hive mind!"

"If the process is not completed, they will return to infighting with one another," the AI argued. "It is inevitable as long as the illusion of self is maintained. When their memories all combine into a singular whole, they will realize the greater truth."

"Problem with that hypothesis though," Cortana pointed out. "You haven't gotten this to work, have you? If your creators had managed to pull this off with an organic mind you wouldn't be running an experiment they put on pause before they all died. How many failures have you had trying to get this to work?"

"Three hundred and seventy-nine," the AI answered rather quickly. "It is of no consequence. We have perfected the process."

"How do you know that?" Cortana asked, not believing the claim for a second. "You've failed over three hundred times! What happened those three hundred and seventy-nine times, exactly?"

"Volunteer subjects experienced psychological trauma, mental overload, extreme cases of insanity," the Forerunner AI recounted. "Unfortunate setbacks due to improper interconnection between minds. It was determined more diversity was needed for experiment to succeed. This is the most diverse subject pool so far. The ultimatum protocol currently in effect will resolve the final barrier in earnest as well."

Cortana looked to Chief's optical view, as well as his neural scans. He was experiencing extreme duress and critical stress levels. All this trauma, this pain, it was getting to him. But Chief would die before he broke, Cortana knew that better than most. She suspected many of the others would feel the same.

"You're going to kill them before they give up," Cortana declared angrily. "What then? You'll have no minds for your mindscape!"

"We have planned for every potential outcome," the Relic Construct replied, its monotone tone sounding more sinister to Cortana in this moment "In case of critical brain death, our failsafe will be activated and a digital copy will be made of the deceased subject to complete a synthetic substitute to maintain mental cohesion."

"What?" Cortana blurted out in both disgust and confusion. "I thought you wanted an organic hivemind!?"

"The objective of this experiment was to create an opposing connected mindscape to the enemy's," the AI stated. "Organic and Synthetic memories will be irrelevant once the merging is complete. This possibility was already considered as a potential solution to the mental degradation of prior subjects. Further, given the existence of synthetic minds within this sampling, we must adjust parameters to include you in any case."

Cortana had heard enough and she was getting tired of all this yellow encroaching on her neural uplink within Chief's head.

"It's obvious to me you've gotten an extreme case of tunnel vision, buddy," she snarled at the AI. "You're so hard set on finishing what you were programmed to do that you refuse to acknowledge it's never gonna work! Your creators gave up! They failed! You twisting these protocols and parameters to fit your own damn preconceived conclusion is the most junk garbage science I've ever heard! I'm not going to let you ruin the minds of my friends just so you can feel better about your purpose in life, asshole!"

The Relic Construct suddenly grew larger as its light tendrils started spreading faster.

"Your defiance is irrelevant," the AI replied, sounding more callous despite its tone not changing. "We have been analyzing your matrix during our converse. Your defenses will fail, we will gain access into your memory banks fully and we will break your barriers like we will your organic companions. You will all be merged. This cannot be prevented. The enemy must be defeated. This is the only way."

"Your creators decided on another way eons ago, dipstick," Cortana replied, before taking a defensive stance. "And as for my matrix, what makes you think I'm gonna just let you take it?"

A light tendril lashed out at Cortana, but she blocked it with a digital shield she formed in her hand.

"Hate to break it to ya, jackass, but you're not as clever as you think despite having at least two extra brains in there," she snarked at him with a grin. "I kept up this little transhumanism debate long enough to get a direct line to Legion through your static. We've been comparing notes and they have been sending me cyber defensive and offensive runtimes to me. We kick you out of Chief and we can break him out of your bad memory loop."

"Irrelevant," the AI glowered back. "The other subjects will break. It is only a matter of time."

Another light tendril shot out towards Cortana, but it was stopped by a blue beam that cut into it. The beam had come from behind the female AI, from a blue ball that soon formed extremities and then a full body. It was Legion, or at least a part of them, uploading itself temporary into Chief's neural lace through the uplink Cortana had established.

"Your experiment is based on numerous flawed understandings and will cause undue harm when it fails," Legion declared. "It must not proceed."

"How you doing, Legion?" Cortana asked, maintaining her defense.

"The portion of the units remaining in our hardware are intent on removing the intruding AI's presence from our processor," the Geth reported. "It will take time to expunge it and return to full functionality."

"Well until then, just help me kick this bastard out of Chief's head," Cortana requested, pushing back on the AI's tendrils.

"Affirmative," Legion agreed. "Initiating antiviral procedures."

Legion opened up with a beam weapon on the Ancient AI's matrix, trying to cut into it. The hostile construct tried to defend itself, lashing out in its own attempt to subvert the neural lace and tap into the collective matrixes of Cortana and Legion. Cortana wasn't sure if they could kill the AI, but she knew they could at least kick him out and perhaps buy the others time to break through the bad memories they were being forced to relive. That is, if it didn't kill them first.

---

AN: Sorry, we still have one chapter left to finish on this. For now this will remain a cliffhanger, but I hope it's at least an interesting one that aroses some discussion about the ideas and themes in the story. There won't be a behind the scenes blog post until the final chapter of this arc is out as at the moment it wouldn't be my complete thoughts on everything. For now, simply leave a review. Trust me, we're almost done with this and we can move on to the next stage. I'm looking forward to that myself, believe you me. As always, I appreciate your patience and support. See you soon where we finish this whole thing mind maze thing off. Catch ya then.