RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
This one comes with extra drama and a big bowl of "I don't know how the f*** this happened but I hope they can make it out alive". Be patient, there's still one more chapter of madness and then we switch back to something different. Enjoy! ^^
23. MISSING PIECES
proofread and correction by: SL4Y3R -hugs-
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK
1:26 AM standard time - a little earlier
Dr. Catherine Halsey struggled to pass through another jammed door.
She reached one of the computer labs faster than she first expected. She was lucky enough not to get caught, but she was also certain that civilians might have spotted her; if they didn't recognize her, they sure would have acknowledged the lab coat and the missing arm. It was rather hard not to notice.
The lights activated immediately as she entered the aisle. She retrieved a data-pad from the depths of her coat's inner pocket and switched some computers on, dragged a chair to the workstation to sit down and rest her aching muscles. It was a long and unpleasant run, she wasn't as robust as she used to be. The UNSC computer requested for her ID clearance, but she knew the way around the procedure and after a moment the logon screen disappeared, leaving the file system bare before her eyes.
'Fine.' she thought. 'This is very sensitive intel, it must be encrypted under a high-clearance security code. Most likely Glassman did the encryption himself.'
A faint smirk took over her lips. The Doctor tapped quickly through the folders and files, sorting out what seemed interesting from what was immediately catalogued as trash by her judgment. The engineering staff of the Infinity sure liked to waste their time in pointless research. It took her a few minutes to find what she was looking for, but just when she was about to open the file...
The sound of metal hitting the floor in the next room startled her.
Dr. Halsey unsheathed her sidearm, immediately, and stood up; she was willing to defend her right to claim the data with plasma if necessary. She saw movement through the double-glass windows, a dark shadow running away... but that wasn't the interesting part: the window was scribbled with purple numbers and signs, some ruined by the hands of the writer messing over the fresh ink.
Still, she'd recognize advanced mathematics anywhere.
"Who's there?" Dr. Halsey demanded, her voice stern.
The Doctor moved, she opened the double doors and aimed her weapon ahead. It was a briefing room, there was a central white table and enough chairs to accommodate twenty people. She spotted the intruder immediately. The stranger dashed through the room again and Dr. Halsey followed her with the barrel of the gun; it was a woman, she had long dark hair and elegant hourglass figure beneath the dirty clothes.
"Stop right there or I will shoot!" she roared, angrily.
The woman crouched down in the corner, covering her head with one arm. Her trembling hands were tinted with purple ink; she was holding a few pens and some other device against her body. She was shaking, sobbing. Scared to death.
Dr. Halsey could understand, it had been a long week aboard the Infinity.
However, the elder woman focused again on the writings. The room was covered in them, a vast number of awfully complicated mathematical formulas written in every available surface. The walls, screens, tables, windows and glassboards were scribbled with fluorescent ink, a compound for low light conditions.
She had no time to figure the math, for now.
"What are you doing here, alone?" Halsey asked, softening her voice. The other woman cringed, shrinking over herself, and the Doctor lowered the weapon a bit. "I'm not going to hurt you. Who are you?"
After a short hesitation, the frightened woman lowered her arms and bright blue eyes looked at the scientist through long and curly strands of black hair. She stood on her feet, slowly, clutching the pens and the silvery piece of tech against her chest; she looked dirty and hungry. She was barefoot too.
The Doctor narrowed her eyes...
"Oh, my. Cortana. How...?" Halsey whispered, surprised, when she recognized the soft features of the young face. It was like watching an old photograph of herself. Quick of thought as always, the Doctor understood what she was seeing and shook her head, carefully. "No, you're not Cortana. You are one of her splinters."
The other one didn't say anything, instead she looked absentmindedly at her hands painted in purple and her clothes, also stained with the glowing ink. She grabbed a pen and moved to the nearest wall; when she located a tiny empty spot, she scribbled some numbers and crouched down on the floor to write some more.
Dr. Halsey noticed this woman was left-handed. Interesting.
The scientist knew she shouldn't be dawdling like that, but...
This specimen was evidently far more docile than the Spike, and judging by the Spike's own declarations, she was also probably one of the few remaining pieces of the original Cortana left alive. The Doctor approached her. The woman stopped writing, looked at Halsey with wary eyes and after a short hesitation, resumed her work. She was scribbling so quickly that she ran out of space very soon, and moved somewhere else to continue.
Halsey followed her, very interested.
"Quantum physics?" she mumbled. There was a deep understanding of numbers in those countless lines; some of them related to slip-space vector calculations, a variation she'd never seen before. "You are smart, that's for sure. What are you working on?"
The other Cortana didn't reply. She switched pens and kept writing, now crawling on her hands and knees.
"Hm. I suppose you don't speak much."
What a marvelous, unique opportunity. This poor creature was harmless, she understood that much about her. How many chances would she ever have to study the product of a Forerunner full recomposition? What was encoded in the DNA of a former AI construct? So much to consider. Dr. Halsey made a choice when she decided to escape the Rampant Spike's security and do her own bidding. She knew that once she could retrieve the data she wanted, abandoning the ship would be mandatory. She'll have to hide from the UNSC and the Rampant Spike.
But if she could get to the Fortress before anyone else...
It was also a terrible temptation. And nobody could stop her.
When the other Cortana crawled away from Halsey, still scribbling her numbers without paying attention to her, something fell from her clothes on the floor. It was the device she'd been holding all along. The Doctor moved quickly and snatched it away. The woman screamed and got up, trying to steal the device back.
"Easy, easy!" Halsey snapped, raising her voice and hiding the object behind her body, leaning against the wall. "I just want to take a look!"
The other woman clutched her pens and paced back and forth, nervous, shooting desperate glances towards the scientist. The Doctor carefully retrieved the device and took a good look at it. She wasn't surprised at first, because she had one exactly like that on the other pocket of her lab coat and she was planning to use it for escaping. It was a mobile port generator like the ones the Rampant Cortana used, it worked basically like a Forerunner translocator to open portals between two ships, even if both vessels were in slip-space travel.
But, how come this Cortana had one of those?
What was it doing aboard the Infinity? How did it get to engineering? Suddenly reality hit Dr. Halsey in the face: that device was designed to transcend the barriers of deep space, it was a transmitter and also a receiver; it didn't only open safe portals for living beings to move through the slip-space streams, in stand-by mode it was a black hole for digital signals and electricity.
That's how the Spike had been spying on the UNSC all the time.
Now, how did the Spike get that thing inside the ship, without anyone noticing?
The Doctor grabbed the device and hid it in her pocket, it barely fit.
"I'll take this with me." she explained, the other Cortana paced again, making soft sobbing noises. "This is dangerous, I have to take it away from the ship." she explained, and the Doctor wasn't really sure of why was she wasting time in being comprehensive with this poor creature. "The Rampant Spike will use this to hurt John if I leave it here, you know that. Is that why you were keeping it with you, to hide it?"
The younger woman suddenly stopped her pacing, and opened her mouth.
The name was like a magic word.
"... John?" she mumbled, not without difficulty.
Her voice was ragged but still very feminine, very much like Dr. Halsey's.
"Yes, John. You want him to be safe, right? Do you know who I'm talking about?"
"John." the other one replied, softly. Her eyes filled with tears.
Some drops ran down her cheeks, she tried to clean them up with her hands and tainted her face with traces of lavender ink. Dr. Halsey felt her heart shrink a little, the creature was about as fragile as a child. She saw her drop to her knees and grab a pen to keep writing her numbers, while tears kept falling. Her whole body shuddered.
The scientist kneeled before her and stopped the scribbling.
"Listen to me. Look at me."
The other Cortana tilted up her face, slowly. Her deep blue eyes looked innocent, in close quarters the older woman noticed a scar that crossed the younger's forehead, diving beyond the hairline into her scalp; a faint trace of some ugly head trauma. Maybe that was why she didn't speak much, but it sure didn't compromise her brainpower.
Such an opportunity, indeed.
Dr. Halsey dared to say the biggest lie she ever vocalized:
"I can keep you safe. Come with me, we will help John."
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
NAVIGATION AISLE - BRIDGE
standard time not recorded
'That treacherous bitch.' the Spike thought, furious.
Dr. Halsey escaped from her sight. The old woman escaped! Taking advantage of Jul 'Mdama's absence, the Rampant Cortana killed both of the Elites that were supposed to keep an eye on the scientist. She enjoyed very much taking their brainless heads. The Spike took pride in her prowess, every life taken was a step in the ladder of success and it didn't matter if they were humans or aliens; dead bodies looked all the same to her at the end of the day.
But nobody insulted her intelligence like this and got away with it.
She was boiling deep down in rage. Her brand new and upgraded HARPY armor twitched and hissed, moving violently over her body like a dark polished hurricane. It shifted and shifted under crackles of blue electricity, fully synchronized with the Spike's turbulent emotions.
She'd neutralized New Carthage's MJOLNIR GEN2 main factories and the local UNSC base by glassing both locations to the ground, she'd hacked into an entire orbital MAC gun system to tear apart a planet, she'd killed millions upon millions of human civilians from several colonies and wiped out a nice number of Sangheili in their own home world. She set everything up to break the Universe in half. She let her favorite toy (John) go a few times, that's true, but she also kidnapped the biggest ship the UNSC had ever built, and now she couldn't handle a single old lady with only one arm?
A dangerous and incredibly smart old lady, yes; but still, a simple human.
Now she had to find Halsey and take her head too.
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING STORAGE BAY
2:05 AM standard time - mission clock: 0:25:13
Roland promised and delivered: once they reached the tram, he took them from stern to bow in the blink of an eye. The AI could only enter the system for few seconds, he used those attempts to draw the alien AI's attention somewhere else and succeeded. Now the monster on the network was looking for them, and Roland was almost ready to take the engines down and then join Sigrid for the fight.
Two Elites stormed in from the far side of the hallway and started firing at them. Cortana shot first, John engaged right after her; it took them seven combined rounds of plasma to drain the Sangheili's shields and drop a pair of dead bodies. Sigrid showed them flickering readings, there were more enemies on the way.
"Elevator." John hurried Cortana, pointing at the other end of the corridor.
The lights twinkled and died for a few seconds, then turned back on.
Screeches of stressed metal ran quickly across the entire deck, the infrastructure of the ship was fighting both against the external heat and internal pressure. The floor trembled violently beneath their boots.
"I don't like the sound of that." the Chief mumbled, under his breath.
"You're about to like it even less." Roland replied, gloomily. "The temperature inside the hull is rising. I can't get any readings, but I bet there are coolant leaks in the lower maintenance decks and the engine room is not a place you want to be right now. Pressure locks, pumps and pipes are most likely blowing up as we speak, the core will reach critical mass in no time. We need to hurry."
Charley whined, sensing the dark mood.
John recalled, once more, that the Elites were taking their hostages to the back, near the engines. Were the aliens aware of what was going on? He checked on his ammo and frowned when he saw a white light blinking right in front of his eyes. Across the HUD a short message appeared, just for him to read:
I HAVE SOMETHING YOU SHOULD SEE.
Next, Sigrid showed him a short video loop in which he could see a human figure missing the left arm moving across a very familiar environment, full of computers and scientific equipment. The woman was small, gray haired and she wore a white and blue lab coat with dirt and blood stains. She wasn't alone; there was another human female with her, long haired and apparently clumsy. The loop only lasted six seconds.
THIS IS FROM THE ENGINEERING LABS, ROLAND PEEKED INSIDE. DO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE WHO THAT IS?
He'd recognize that small frame and iron-willed attitude anywhere. Dr. Catherine Halsey. She was aboard the Infinity, which by now half-confirmed some of his doubts about her.
SHE'S A WANTED CRIMINAL, MASTER CHIEF.
He frowned even more when he read that line.
BY REGULATION, YOU MUST ARREST HER. I SUGGEST YOU DIVERT YOUR COURSE AND ENGAGE.
John hesitated. His eyes darted towards Cortana, she was still searching the dead Sangheili to take all of their useful supplies. He saw her grab a hand-shield and try it out, the piece still worked just fine.
Leave Cortana to capture Dr. Halsey?
WE ARE A THOUSAND FEET AWAY FROM THE LABS. SHE'LL BE FINE.
Even someone like Sigrid could read him out like an open book, and they haven't even been working together for that long.
"Chief!"
Cortana's voice filtered through the speakers, he realized that Sigrid had blocked out the comms to silently talk with him. Also, Charley was sniffing at his boots, the dog suspected something was wrong.
"Chief, are you all right?"
"Just sorting things out."
He had to trust Cortana and her skills. It wouldn't be the first time they had to work separated and it didn't matter how much he did regret leaving her behind at High Charity. However, this time they wouldn't be half the Universe away from each other, they would be on the same ship. This was different.
Yes, different. Because she wasn't digital anymore, she could bleed.
John closed his eyes, vanishing those thoughts. Cortana had under her control one of the most advanced pieces of technology ever created, an armor that could bent itself under her will. She was smart, capable, skilled. She knew how to fight, he'd trained her himself. She could do it. They were both going to similar places, anyway, only that they would be picking different routes.
He made the choice, as much as he didn't like the idea:
"Cortana, you move ahead."
"What?"
"Take Roland to engineering, I'll be right behind you. Run and don't look back."
"Chief, come on..."
He looked at her, strong and stern. "You should be running, not arguing with me."
Another long and scary screech of metal filled the air, it sounded like the ship was a suffering, living entity. She knew what he meant, and it wasn't exactly what he said. Cortana nodded slowly, fighting against her will to tell John that he shouldn't lie to her, and took an energy sword from one of the dead Elites.
"Right behind me, okay?" she said instead, dryly.
"Go."
She stuck both the alien sword and hand-shield to the small of her back and turned around to leave, running. The HARPY rearranged the lower midsection and legs of the armor to thrust Cortana's running speed. She could feel it, the strength and the rush of adrenaline fueling her anxiety, making her muscles ache, pumping blood faster through her veins. She focused in using all of her might to run faster, dashing across the hallway like a black and blue lightning.
Cortana did as the Chief requested. She didn't look back.
And it hurt so much.
"Roland, TEAMCOM." she barked.
"Green to go."
"To all fire-teams in the near vicinity, this is Cortana." her voice flew over the general SPARTAN line. "I have Roland with me, I'm heading to engineering. Keep the Elites away from this route, please!"
Roland traced a map on her HUD displaying the fastest way to her destination and transmitted it to all the other contacts on the line. A lot of friend-or-foe tags appeared before her eyes, she only had to move through. She'd be moving way faster if only she was more physically fit for racing; mere seconds later she found her speed awkwardly increasing when the HARPY made her wish come true: she could feel weight bulking up in certain areas and layers of 'fabric' moving against her skin, reinforcing her ankles and calves, thickening the boots with new, special plates. The hydraulics worked like magic. She had to slow down to steady herself, avoiding a direct face-to-wall contact by throwing her arms forward.
"Woah! I wasn't expecting this!" she cried, breathing heavy. "You know, Roland? I have to give the Forerunners some credit, this is some sweet tech."
"Forerunner, you say?
"What do you mean?" she asked, frowning.
"Well, it doesn't look Forerunner from the inside, that's for sure."
What else could the HARPY be, if not Forerunner?
Well, it wasn't ridiculous, just very unlikely.
"There's a lot of alien tech yet to be catalogued, let's not jump to conclusions right now, shall we?" Cortana replied, carefully.
"Fair enough. Get to the elevator."
She had only seventeen minutes left.
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK - BETA STATION COMPUTER LABS
2:15 AM standard time - mission clock: 0:14:54
The elevator doors opened and she ducked down in time to avoid a rain of bullets and plasma bolts. Cortana pressed herself against the cage's wall and deployed the hand-shield and the plasma rifle, her heart hammering inside her chest. When the shooting stopped, there was a long, tense silence and then someone shouted out:
"I can see you, Rampant Freak! Come out and let me put some holes in you!"
"SPARTAN Madsen?" she said, when she recognized him. "Don't shoot me! It's Cortana! Please, I'm in a hurry!"
Roland was already broadcasting Cortana's ID tag in all frequencies, as dangerous as such action was. The AI decided it was worth to sacrifice secrecy, his maps said that they were extremely close to their destination.
"Hold your fire!" that was DeMarco.
"The tag is legit!" grunted Thorne, over the comm.
"Ma'am, what are you doing here?" asked Hoya, as he entered the elevator's cage to look for her. The team's leader towered over Cortana too, still ready to fire.
"You didn't get the memo, I see." she sighed. "I have Roland with me and I need to get to the computer labs."
Cortana deactivated the energy shield and came out to the hallway, racing.
"There's a lab back there, we just cleared it out." DeMarco answered, pointing out somewhere ahead of them. "Come with us, we'll escort you."
"We already killed all the aliens here, anyway." Madsen shrugged.
She ran faster than the four SPARTANS, leading the charge. The heat sensors in her HUD were showing some abnormal readings and again, another long and creepy screeching sound thundered around them, roaring from the shuddering walls.
"That keeps happening, what is it?" Thorne asked, out loud.
"Too long to explain right now." Cortana cut him off.
"Where's the Master Chief?" Hoya inquired, he struggled to stay beside her.
'He was supposed to be right behind me.' she thought.
"He's busy." Cortana answered, her throat felt dry.
"Any word about the Admiral or Commander Palmer? The Captain?"
"Last time I checked, the Commander found the Captain and he was alive, that's all I know. Aren't you hooked with Sigrid's TEAMCOM link?"
"Ma'am, we haven't heard a word from TEAMCOM since half an hour ago."
That was when the Infinity entered slip-space and the weird radiation readings started to happen. It made sense, but still, did all of the other SPARTANS actually get disconnected, like this?
As they turned around the corner, Cortana's heart nearly stopped beating.
A dark, elegant figure dressed in a strange suit of armor emerged from the end of the corridor, it was climbing up the staircase. Merely twenty feet separated that creature from them, and maybe six feet separated Cortana from the lab's doors. She stopped dead, two of the SPARTANS behind her dropped to one knee, a third one grabbed her to pull her down and the fourth, Madsen, readied his high-caliber plasma rifle and took three sudden shots.
The plasma rounds hit blue flaring shields and dissolved in a cloud of toxic steam.
When the steam dissipated, the entity was still standing there. Unharmed.
"What the fuck?" Madsen whispered, stunned. "That was the plasma equivalent of a fifty-caliber round, how come...?"
"Cortana, run!" Thorne roared, as the four of them opened fire against the Spike.
She bolted across the floor and jumped inside the labs, hitting the door's panel with her fist while the SPARTANS kept firing, and locked herself inside the facility. Next, Cortana ran towards the computers without looking back, she felt a heavy weight inside her chest. She was afraid that if she dared to turn her head, she wouldn't be able to accomplish what she came all this way to do.
Cortana yanked the chip off her forearm and plugged it into the terminal's port.
In the hallway, however, when the second cloud of vapor cleared, the Spike tilted her head and just laughed. There wasn't a single nick on her polished-black armor, the cyan hue of her shields shimmered up and down her terrifying figure.
"Now, that was very rude of you, boys." she purred.
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
2:17 AM standard time - mission clock: 0:12:27
When John sneaked in, he didn't know what he was expecting to find.
He grabbed Charley's collar, stopping her, and quickly assessed the environment. There were two other possible exits and one of them led to a room with walls covered in purple numbers and symbols, but he didn't pay much attention to that. His eyes focused on the two women, who stood still when they noticed the SPARTAN and the massive beast. Halsey's eyebrows rose quickly. She recognized him right on the spot, without even looking at the Braille number engraved on his breastplate.
"John." the older woman said, calm. "I thought we wouldn't see each other again."
She tried to grab something from the nearest desk, probably the data pad.
John raised the plasma rifle. "Don't. Step away from the console, ma'am."
Dr. Halsey raised her only hand and took a step back, startled. The Chief released the dog, Charley lowered her head showing off her fangs, but didn't move; he grabbed the weapon with both hands, blocking the door.
"They make mutts with my research now." Halsey noticed, somewhat displeased. "One would think the UNSC had enough dogs with those they call 'fourth generation SPARTANS'. Go figure."
The younger woman took a few steps towards the Chief, recklessly.
"John!" she called him, with a sad smile on her lips.
He responded by mere instinct and aimed at her, on the double.
"No! Don't hurt her!" Dr. Halsey reacted immediately and grabbed the younger woman by the wrist, dragging her back with her. "She's one of Cortana's splinters, John. This one is harmless, trust me."
"I know who she is." he growled.
And he was also surprised to see Subject Two alive, given what Dr. Quinn told them before. He wasn't going to hurt her unless she proved to be as dangerous as her sister (Seven) was. She wore the same happy look on her face that Subject Twelve had when he spent time with her in the med-bay; a look that eased up his demons a bit. He felt like he could trust those eyes.
Dr. Halsey reached the pad again and handed it to the Chief, but he didn't grab it.
"She is remarkably smart. Look at this, John. She's doing quantum calculations all by herself, just because. However, this amount of intelligence seems to have taken its toll on other brain functions, I suppose; she doesn't seem to be self-aware."
Quantum calculations? He recalled Cortana saying something about that, weeks ago. It didn't matter now. That wasn't the point.
"Dr. Halsey, are you aware that it's my duty to arrest you?" he demanded.
"... I do." the Doctor responded, retreating her hand. She looked offended.
"Why are you helping her?"
John didn't have to be specific about who was he talking about, the scientist was smart enough to understand the issue. Halsey grimaced, troubled. It was a big problem that concerned them both.
"I'm not exactly helping her." she answered.
"But you're not doing anything to stop her either."
"It's complicated."
The Doctor turned around and sat on the chair, to keep working on the computer.
"With all due respect; given the fact that the Rampant Spike has been trying to kill me for the past three months, I'd say I deserve an explanation."
"Means to an end, John. This is only means to an end."
"Dr. Halsey, I'm not bluffing. Step away from the console."
He moved forward and steadied the weapon, brushing the barrel against the old woman's hair. Her fingers froze over the keyboard but she didn't turn around, you could see how she straightened her shoulders with hurt dignity. Subject Two retreated, a little scared, and Charley growled under her breath, wrinkling her muzzle.
"You won't shoot me." Halsey said, awfully confident.
"You don't know everything, ma'am."
"I know you, John. I know what you are capable of and what you..."
He moved the barrel aside less than an inch and squeezed the trigger, a silver bolt of plasma barely avoided Dr. Halsey's head within a few millimeters margin and hit a small gap between two flat screens. Just a warning shot, that's true, but the sound hurt her ears and she felt the heat against her scalp, the woman flinched. The air filled with scent of burnt hair. Subject Two screamed and dropped down to the floor, covering her ears with her dirty hands.
John leveled the weapon against the Doctor's hair again.
"Fine, I can be wrong sometimes." she said, her voice now grim and resentful.
"This is nothing personal."
"... oh, but it is, John. Of course it is."
"Ma'am, I won't say it again. Please, step away from the console."
She gave him a sad smile, honoring his gentle request.
"I guess we taught you well."
The Doctor stood up with her right hand in the air, carefully. She knew she was in good hands but she also knew that her plan was doomed to fail. The good thing was that someone like Catherine Halsey didn't just jump head first into danger without a plan, a backup plan and a backup for the backup plan.
So, she tried her best to work her way out. The clock was ticking.
"Listen to me, John. The Spike is collapsing, but she won't end up being unable to function, no; she will become only more and more dangerous." the scientist explained, calmly. "She glassed the Hannibal facilities and the UNSC base at New Carthage. Jul 'Mdama isn't happy about it, but he and his Elites fear her, they feel something isn't right and honestly, I think the same. There's more to it than just the physical recomposition of the body, there's also a certain degree of progressive degradation..."
A sudden flashing message through his HUD and Charley's high-pitched whining drew John's attention. His pulse raced.
CONTACT INBOUND - SIX O'CLOCK
ETA 7 SECONDS
He turned around immediately, switching the pistol for the much larger plasma rifle, and shielded the women with his body.
There was nothing there, only the open door
Still, Charley was looking at the hallway, crawling back with her belly stuck to the floor, tail between her rear legs. She was scared to death, the Chief never saw her in such state before. Subject Two was nowhere to be seen until he spotted her trembling feet under a desk.
A few seconds later, he heard noises outside the room.
The tall, dark figure of the Rampant Spike walked on the scene, calmly.
"Oh, look at this. My mother and my sister ranting about me with my man? I can't believe the nerve, people." she hissed, beneath the cyan faceplate of her helmet. "You know, I've killed for far less than that."
Her armor was tainted with dark splatters, plates visibly vibrating, and her shields were crackling in blue as if they were malfunctioning. Although she didn't seem hurt, there was a thick stream of red behind her, on the gratings.
Because she was dragging around Paul DeMarco's dead body.
TO BE CONTINUED
Boom! DeMarco is gone.
I still wonder if it's time to move the story into M rating because we're hitting new levels of gruesome shit and what's left to come isn't pretty either. Sometimes I think I'm overdoing a little. And I'm not saying that readers under 16 can't read this fanfic, just that you shouldn't (you know, because violence and sex -roll eyes-). Some chapters might contain trigger alerts from now on, especially near the end. However, if you read Halo: Evolutions, I guess you'll be fine; I'm nowhere near the levels of disturbing shit I've read in some of those short stories.
StrateUPgamer; well, hi there :) nice to see you around. Regarding the showdown between Cortana and Seven, we'll see about that. Eleven will be back very soon, too. Expect some more plot twists to come xD -hugs- thanks for being here, don't be shy and speak up from time to time!
RandomGUy; :) we'll have a bit more of fighting for now and then we'll get back to something less stressing, it's mandatory for the plot and I have a lot of fun planning operations like this. Today you had more on Halsey -wink- and we'll have some more on Charley too, this isn't over yet. Thanks for being here!
Nico; I'm the Captain of this story, I'm going down with the fanfic until the very end. I hope this new update was of your liking -hugs-
So, our Chief got reunited with Dr. Halsey (something I'm looking forward to see in Halo 5, I really-really-really want it to happen) and Cortana got Roland to the labs, but the Infinity is this close from falling apart. What will our heroes do?
Be here next Sunday and you'll find out we'll have a LONG ASS chapter incoming, I promise. Be gentle with this humble fellow fan and say something! Good luck!