RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
Okay, this chapter is a little messy and a little bloody, so please, be careful. We're moving into "M" rating because of this. Also, it will be presented differently from previous episodes, I think that what I did here helps to keep a fast pacing between the switching scenes since most of it happens around the same time :) sorry if you get confused or something. This is also the longest chapter until date. Enjoy!
24. WAR GODS
proofread and corrections: special thanks to SL4Y3R for being so supportive!
SEPTEMBER 8TH 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
2:27 PM standard time - mission clock: 0:02:13
"I had to come all this way to find you, John, because you keep ignoring me." the Spike said, angrily, then she pointed at Dr. Halsey with her index finger. "You stay right there, I'll deal with this beefcake first and then, we will finish our little business."
"Charley." John called, out loud; the dog barked in response. "Beschützen."
The dog was trained to recognize her duty: she was ordered to keep the civilians alive, so she showed her fangs and stood before Dr. Halsey, guarding the woman with her thick, armored body. She still had her tail between her legs, but the instinct to obey and protect kicked in.
The Rampant Cortana tilted her head, annoyed; the armor over her body shifted and hissed according to her emotions, the gleaming cyan lines across the joints flared brighter for a second or two.
"You think your furry replacement of me is scary? You're so naive."
John didn't even bother to answer; he just opened fire.
The first plasma bolts hit the Rampant Cortana's shields and exploded in a cloud of steam, becoming a dense miasma inside the room. She didn't even tried to duck or cover. Once the last shots impacted on her, visibility was barely at ten percent. Sigrid read venomous levels of carbon dioxide in that mist. Behind the Chief, Dr. Halsey and Subject Two coughed, covering their mouths and noses with the sleeves of their clothes; the cloud was toxic.
The scientist crawled out of the hideout to find an emergency medical cabinet, in dire need of oxygen masks and a better place to find some cover.
John took advantage of the dense fog and rammed forward, using the butt of the rifle to strike a single blow to the Spike's armored head, intended to crack her neck or at least, destabilize her. She took the hit, yes, but her head snapped backwards and bluish shields flared across her body. She didn't fall, only took a step aback.
He attacked again, brutally knocking their faceplates together.
She gasped and fell to her knees.
When John was about to lay a third, devastating blow hammering his fist down on her, the Spike raised her arms and threw herself against him, lightning quick, grabbing him by the waist in an iron grip. Their shields crackled together, draining each other: he saw the status bar drop dramatically fast. John stomped a foot on the gratings and worked his way against her strength, but noticed that the HARPY armor was shifting, rearranging itself... and the Spike was becoming a lot stronger. She pushed him back, no matter how hard he slammed the rifle's butt on her armored spine or how much he resisted.
His magnetic boots suddenly were slipping, screeching against the gratings.
Then, she activated the thrusters. They flew backwards together, violently, busting computers, cabinets, desks and thin fake walls along the way, until a thick metallic blast wall stopped John's back. The wall dented inwards, perfectly nesting the SPARTAN's herculean figure. He hit the back of his head so hard that something cold pierced through his brain, a bolt of pain that seized his arms and legs in throbbing paralysis for a few milliseconds. The MJOLNIR's lockdown protocol failed, so he recovered his senses and movement instantly.
The Spike landed on her feet, she had let him go a second before impact. John's HUD flickered like crazy, something was deeply damaged. No shields, sensors busted and the comms antenna offline, probably broken. He had lost the rifle somewhere along the flight, too.
Sigrid projected a message, repeating the same erratic line over and over:
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
He knew what she meant, he was supposed to plug her in a safe terminal and she would help Roland to take down the alien AI and recover the Infinity. His mind raced, trying to find a way to accomplish that without getting killed or disabled.
The Rampant Cortana tilted her head to the side, curious.
"I thought you would last a little longer, but seems that my upgrades were just too much for you." she sighed, posing her hands on her hips. "Such a shame, John. I guess you are too old to play with me."
He didn't say anything. The Chief elbowed the wall trying to detach himself from the cavity, but she was faster and before he could lay his feet on the floor, the Rampant Cortana threw her hands up to his neck, strangling him with immeasurable strength. He actually started choking.
"What will you do with me, John?" she said, hissing between her clenched teeth. "Have you not killed me enough times already?!"
His honed instincts responded lightning-fast: a single powerful kick on the gut and she flew backwards, crashing against two awkwardly bent aluminum desks.
John fell from the wall, dropping a knee to the floor. He yanked off Sigrid's chip from the back of his helmet and safeguarded it inside his fist, carefully. Every computer on that sector was busted or in pieces. There were other ports in the hallway that could be useful, he just had to pass through the Rampant Spike and get there, quickly. Once the AI was inside the system, it would be all set.
The Chief scanned the floor, looking for anything he could use as a weapon.
"I'm getting tired of this. It's not funny anymore." she groaned, upset.
The Spike jumped to stand up and grabbed a twisted chair, wielding it like a club. She attempted to hit, he ducked the blow rolling away, then stood up and rammed again, crashing into her shoulder first. The Chief was fast enough to get away from her grasp and throw a punch to her head, then John proceeded to take hold of her and knock the wall with the woman's upper midsection until a deep dent and his own heavy breathing was all that there was to think about. He was used to keep his head cool under pressure, that was his way of life, but this whole situation was unraveling thirsty demons inside of him. It was all or nothing.
No man, no machine. Only rage.
Animal instinct, vengeance.
He never felt so alive, so aware of his own strength, so...
Somehow she managed to twist her body under his grasp and turn around, shoving a dangerously sharp black spike towards his head. John ducked again, blocking it with his forearm and bending her arm down, but kept his hold on her, and threw the woman to the other side of the room again. He ran behind her and released a brutal kick on her gut, lifting her from the floor to the ceiling. Then he spun on his heels and back-kicked her again in mid-air, stamping the limp body against another wall. She was as light as a feather and as hard as diamond, but crazy beyond measure.
He didn't feel any kind of restrain or remorse.
His mind was clear now. Oh, so clear.
John's pulse was racing fast, he could sense the blood throbbing in his temples, he never felt so comfortable with the familiar weight of the MJOLNIR before. He was on fire, she would burn until there was nothing left.
The Rampant Cortana used her armor's thrusters to detach herself from the wall and landed dropping one knee, a long and thin spike sprouting out from her right hand. She stood up slowly, enjoying the moment. Her shields had failed and crashed, just like his. It was metal against metal now.
"We're not talking much today, are we?"
"I'm done talking to you." John growled, and walked towards her.
"Oh, what is this, now? Will I be congratulated with a slice of the Master Chief's renowned cold rage?" she laughed and spread her arms wide, presenting her armored chest while she walked backwards into the adjacent, destroyed room, where it all started only minutes before. "Fine, we can all go down together. Bring it on, bitch."
John railed against her, expecting to set up his plan in the next forty seconds.
ENGINEERING DECK - BETA STATION COMPUTER LABS
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
It was a mess. A nasty mess. She felt the tears running down her cheeks.
She should have done something, anything!
"Cortana! Cortana, answer me!"
"I'm busy, Roland!" she snapped, her voice ragged. The heat was rising inside the ship, her HUD read air quality down to sixty-percent, toxic gasses were flowing through the ventilation. "C'mon, Gabriel! Hang in there!"
She tucked the last remaining biofoam canister through the breach on SPARTAN Thorne's exo-suit and filled the wound.
"Talk to me!" she demanded. "Don't fall asleep!"
"It hurts!" he groaned.
"That's a good thing. Stay with me, I'm almost done."
He was bleeding out in Cortana's arms, the only member of fire-team Majestic still conscious and struggling to survive. Hoya and Madsen were unconscious but stabilized, their armors were battered and they were heavily wounded too, but Thorne endured the biggest fight along with the team leader, DeMarco.
Except that DeMarco didn't make it.
She saw everything through the lab's shielded windows, and there was nothing she could do to stop it because Thorne himself had busted the outside door panel and had her trapped inside the lab. She had to watch Seven go through all of them and take them down one by one. Plasma rounds didn't seem to have any effect on her armor or shields, Seven attacked right away using the toxic mist as a diversion. Her smaller frame and the absolute stealth of her moves helped, the thin corridor was a death trap in every sense of the word. The entire team engaged in a brutal but extremely short fight that ended when nobody could get up again. She punched Hoya unconscious, dragged Madsen around by the neck until he fainted, stabbed Thorne on the side after a short battle and then turned to DeMarco. He fought bravely using his knife and his speed. But she Spike was faster than him and ambushed the SPARTAN from below, shoving two sharp spikes through his stomach and up, perforating all the organs on the way straight to the heart.
She lift him up a few feet from the floor, effortlessly...
And then, just like that, the fight stopped.
Seven stood very still holding the dying SPARTAN in the air while he bled on her breastplate, but her attention wasn't exactly there.
Then, the Spike dropped the heavy body to the floor and grabbed it by the boot. She hauled DeMarco across the gratings like the man was just a rag doll, leaving a red trail behind.
She didn't even pay attention to Cortana. Cortana had to bust the door with the plasma sword to get out, as fast as she could.
"We have a problem! Sigrid is nowhere around and I'm running out of time! The ship is in pretty bad shape, I have to enter the system now!"
Cortana's heart skipped a beat. So that's why the Spike left without turning back to even look at her. She went after John. Sigrid's delay clearly meant that the crazy bitch had found him.
"Chief!" she shouted through TEAMCOM. "Chief, do you hear me?"
Nothing came back. She took off the canister from Thorne's wound and grabbed his heavy hand, pressing the gauntleted palm against the suit's breach. Then, she moved him to rest his back against the wall and didn't realize that she had just pulled half a ton of man and armor as easy as the Spike did.
"Chief, come in! Please, answer me!" she kept calling.
Nothing.
Nothing, not even static. Nothing.
"Roland, I think he's in danger." she whispered, her voice trembling.
Maybe there was still a chance to level the stakes, even if it was a very small one. Cortana grabbed the plasma sword and fired it up along with the hand-shield, each in one hand. She closed her eyes. Her mind focused on both devices, on her own armored gloves. The HARPY hissed, small beads of dark alloy started crawling against the skin of her arms, the gauntlets themselves were shifting again.
She needed shields. She needed a much more powerful weapon.
And the HARPY was hungry, she could feel something building inside.
"Cortana, I have to go in. I'm afraid I can't wait any longer."
"Do it, hang on as much as you can. I'll get you Sigrid's backup."
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
The muscles on his lower back ached, but he kept going because he had to win.
He spotted Dr. Halsey, the woman was with Subject Two and both of them hidden under the only table still standing with oxygen masks over their faces. The scientist was working on the data pad, extremely focused. What the hell was she doing? Why Halsey didn't take Two and run away? John pushed the noisy thoughts aside, he had more important things to pay attention to.
Like the third time the Spike tried to make him lose his step and fall.
He was certain that if she pinned him down, that monster would kill him.
She kept blocking the door, maybe she already knew what he was trying to do. John was careful not to bust Sigrid's chip, which meant that he had to fight with only one hand. John avoided her side-kick and grabbed her ankle, then immediately smashed the Rampant Cortana against another wall and retreated before she could use one of those dangerous sword-like spikes on him. The HARPY suffered some damage and it made him think that maybe the armor's system was starting to fail, but it regenerated itself quickly vanishing all of his hopes.
The Spike's devious laughter filled the contaminated air.
"Don't you just get tired of trying, John?" she snorted, confidently.
John grinned inside the helmet. He had her exactly where he wanted, back at the main computer station. He made a quick hand sign.
The Spike probably saw it coming but couldn't stop it anyway: Charley rammed against her from the left side and clashed against her body, clasping her huge mandibles around the woman's neck. The Rampant Cortana made it to circle the dog's neck with her arms, they fell down together; Charley's weight crushed her on the gratings (almost nine hundred pounds of animal plus armored harness). The battle dog furiously chewed on the hardened material protecting her neck until it cracked under the pressure of the huge fangs, growling aggressively.
Charley shook her head with violence, the ultimate annihilation maneuver.
John expected to hear bones snapping. It didn't happen.
He had to move. Now. Now!
The Rampant Spike roared in anger. Dozens of razor-sharp jags sprouted across the surface of her armor, at least five spikes stabbed Charley on the neck and the nuzzle, forcing the animal to cry out in pain and release her. The dog fought to free herself from the painful embrace, crying in high-pitched whines.
The woman lifted up Charley's body and violently pushed the wounded animal away, discarding it like a bloodied rag. It didn't stand up again.
"Oh, John. What do you think you're doing?" she hissed, angrily.
The Chief was nowhere to be seen, but the Spike found him in the blink of an eye, a silhouette flaring on her HUD outside the labs.
He was up to something, she had to stop him. Human whimpering noises called out her attention and she staggered, the infernal dog's fangs managed to pierce through the armor somehow. She felt a bit dizzy, rattled. She could feel blood dripping between her skin and the inner layers of the HARPY. Her neck hurt. How was it possible? That damn mutt. It would bleed out on the floor like the filthy monster it was; nothing but a sad, imperfect replacement of her...
The Spike turned around to find Dr. Catherine Halsey and Subject Two aiming at her, together, with John's lost plasma rifle.
UNSC INFINITY'S MAIN NETWORK
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
Roland tapped into the Infinity's system and copied himself quickly, filling cluster after cluster with the indispensable sub-routines, waking up as many sub-systems as he could grasp. He entered a digital field of red flaring messages. He missed the HARPY's buffers right away, with the main server station off limits and the majority of the space occupied by corrupted lines of code, he had not much space to move and his memory was limited. It was a huge setback, Roland wasn't expecting to find the network in such hideous condition.
Which meant that the ship was doing even worse than he had first calculated.
There were fragments of dumb AIs everywhere, floating in the cyberspace like stranded boats. Roland performed a quick, careful search and couldn't find any kind of threatening activity near him. Good. His modified ID tag was working just fine for now, but that didn't mean it would last forever.
The AI pushed away the broken strands of code and the red alerts to clear memory space, and tapped here and there linking himself with every available camera feed he could access. Soon, he was watching the bridge, the med-bay, the mess hall and part of the main hangar; but when he tried to access the lower maintenance decks, he couldn't find any feeds. Roland assumed that the cameras were fried. He took a look at the read-only data from the life support firmware, most of the scanners and graphics were flaring red in alert, failing already or very close to.
He found the Captain, the Commander and several other officers and sent them quick messages, but they didn't seem to receive anything. Roland also found a lot of warzones, SPARTANS and Marines still fighting against the Elites. One particular Elite armored with a bright helmet captured his attention: Jul 'Mdama. The so-called Didact's Hand was moving alone through the corridors of the engineering deck.
Where was he going?
No time to figure it out, the AI prepared every major sub-routine for the attack.
'Let's see if I can grab the nav systems.' he thought.
Roland diverted a big portion of his processing power towards the bridge and split the rest between keeping himself hidden and accessing the engine room controls. With his clearance codes, the AI accessed quickly through the firewalls and kept moving. He came close to the navs but retreated instantly when his code overlapped with something strange, somewhat sticky. A guard dog? No, it was bigger, more monstrous.
He realized too late that he made a foolish mistake: the clearance codes gave him away and startled the alien AI.
Then, he felt it coming.
Suddenly his memory space became tighter and tighter.
It was behind him; no, it was above. At his left, below him. It was everywhere. A digital monster of many tentacles, layer over layer of vicious code ready to absorb every piece of his delicious data. He'd never forget how that creature felt like. A few days ago, his emergency shutdown routines kicked in automatically the first time they brushed each other, to prevent data corruption.
If he had a physical body, Roland was sure that he would be trembling by now.
"I'm so screwed..." he muttered, to the empty digital space.
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
John found a service terminal and shoved Sigrid's chip in the port. A loud bang sounded across the hallway and he turned around to see the Dr. Halsey and Subject Two collapse against the wall, the scientist wasn't moving but the other woman screamed in pain, clutching her right arm.
He unclasped the plasma sword and fired it up, immediately.
Wielding twin blades, the Rampant Spike stepped into the hallway, faint traces of smoke followed her around but her armor seemed to be intact. She dropped two large pieces of the destroyed plasma rifle and turned her head slowly to mind the SPARTAN charging at full speed. They were maybe thirty feet away from each other but you could still smell the crazy. He had a millisecond to think of Charley, but tried not to. Not now. Subject Two was still screaming, her right arm twisted in a strange position; there was blood out of Dr. Halsey's mouth as well, but they were both alive. The elder woman was still breathing.
John leveled the sword and braced for impact, it was his last chance to terminate that monster and he was gladly taking it.
The blue lightings on the HARPY's joints flared again, showing her discomfort.
Still, she didn't attack. She didn't even try to use the Doctor or the other woman as human shields.
Instead, she waited and ducked his first strike, the second and the third.
She was staggering, but still had optimum control of her body and senses.
Something exploded deep down below deck, sending a violent shudder through the inner walls of the Infinity along with a concert of screeching sounds. This time it was violent, an earthquake inside the vessel; John felt it rumbling through his own body and he struggled to stay on his feet, again. The lights on the corridor faltered, blinking in and out and finally out. John's HUD shifted to night-vision but he switched it off, his own eyes were best against an enemy his sensors couldn't see. The power died in that entire section of the ship, and John cursed under his breath.
Did Sigrid made it to copy herself before the shutdown?
The sound of a devious laughter brushed his senses. The plasma blade was bright enough to see, but she was fast. The Spike knocked him down shoulder first and pain washed over him, so intense that he actually screamed. Thin blades pierced through the flesh below his shoulder joints severing half of the major nerves. With both arms now rendered useless, the Chief fell flat on his back.
The plasma sword flickered and died when it hit the floor.
Instinct kicked in and John tried to fight back, but he could only feel three fingers on each hand, maybe an arm twitching, nothing more. No response.
"Do you hear it, John?" the Spike crackled. She backed away to a sitting pose, straddling his waist. He would have used his legs to strangle her if it wasn't for the blade aiming directly at his vulnerable throat. "That's how your failure sounds. The pressure pumps are exploding. Deck after deck, people are asphyxiating. Maybe the unknown depths of slip-space will swallow us, who knows? Isn't it exciting?"
His HUD was as dead as it could get, only Sigrid's last message kept flaring.
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
RolaND is WAIting fOr mE
It couldn't be the end. He tried again, desperately, but his hands didn't move.
The Spike cocked her head, amused.
"If this piece of shit holds enough to make it to Earth and my calculations were correct, we will exit slip-space over the UNSC's FLEETCOM airspace and given how fast we're moving, I'd say the crash will erase Australia and all of the small artificial islands around it, the big Polynesian States will be history too. With a little bit of luck, we might become an extinction level event."
Her armor reabsorbed one of the swords and the now free hand caressed John's faceplate, lovingly, as she ignored Subject Two's cries of pain. She leaned in closer, the bright blue visor only mere inches away from his. John was bleeding bad, he could feel the thick humidity squishing beneath the layers of his undersuit. She didn't sever just the nerves, she might have nicked the axillary arteries as well... he figured that given how specific the wounds were, the built-in biofoam injectors were useless.
"Game over, my dear John." she whispered, her fingers cupping his helmet's chin. "I always knew that you and I would die together."
"I'm getting really tired of you, Seven."
The Spike snapped to attention, but she didn't even make it to look back.
Two broad blades pierced through the woman's body from behind, crossed like a scissor, pushing her forward and scratching deep into John's breastplate. The tips of the spikes melted twin nicks on the titanium surface, almost piercing it through. The wounds smoked profusely as the combination of plasma edges and black metal burned through the flesh, and the Rampant Cortana arched her body up and back, trying to get up; her hands clutched in claws, her limbs twitching in pain.
The Rampant Spike stopped moving and collapsed over John's chest, dead.
Cortana took a step back, wielding her blue-blazing blades.
"Chief, talk to me! Can you move?" she asked, somewhat scared.
He sighed deeply, tempted to drop his head back and rest for a short moment, but another explosion far beneath them compelled him to keep it together. He needed more biofoam, too. Or a medic.
Right then and there, he saw a monstrous figure rise behind Cortana, very tall and with a bright helmet.
UNSC INFINITY'S MAIN NETWORK
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
Roland kept retreating, he abandoned another chunk of sub-systems and routines recently recovered as a diversion. That trick wasn't much of his liking, but truth be told, he sure appreciated the beauty of a well built fortress: the thick layers of firewalls that he created as fast as the alien AI devoured bought him time. His chances of attacking were reducing by the millisecond and at this rate he calculated that he'd never make it to drop the logic bomb he'd spent so much time preparing.
He had no idea if the alien AI would eat it, either, but he had to try.
It was a silent battle, nobody else inside the ship was aware of what was going on.
The monster kept lapping and tapping at Roland's walls as more and more failure messages piled over each other, crowding the interface. The AI diverted another splinter of processing power to manage the situation, but there wasn't much that he could do if he was under attack from literally every single angle, direction and dimension.
Even quantum-based intelligent life forms, somehow, had limits.
Roland stepped on something familiar, a known ID tag floating in the system. No, it was dashing forward from the far corners of the cyberspace (several decks below his current location) and cleansing every corrupted piece of code it encountered on its way. The ID tag reached him, it was a large, sentient construct.
"Sigrid!" Roland sighed, half relieved, half annoyed.
DID YOU MISS ME?
"Where have you been?" he added three more layers to the firewall, quickly.
SORRY.
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES.
NEED A HAND?
"Sure. You hold the beast while I do my magic trick."
NO.
GIVE ME THE BOMB.
"What? No, I don't like what you're thinking."
I HAVE A PLAN.
GIVE IT TO ME.
"If you get infected by the virus, I might not be able to help you either."
YOU SHOULDN'T ARGUE WITH A WARRIOR QUEEN.
"So much for a warrior queen if you get eaten. Fine, you can have the bomb."
Sigrid's code brushed his when he let her pass through the firewall into his secured space; she deployed her own defenses to help him keep the monster outside. They both materialized their digital images in front of each other inside that small squared room made of white light, the safe-house.
Roland handed her a little bright box, glowing red. It looked innocent.
When their holographic fingers merged with each other as she received the file, Sigrid suddenly backed away from him, retrieving her arm. Her gray eyes turned grim, for some reason.
"What? Come on, grab the file!"
YOU ARE DIFFERENT.
She didn't use her voice, she texted him the message.
"What? What are you talking about?"
IT WAS THAT ARMOR.
DON'T TOUCH ME.
LEAVE THE BOMB AND I WILL PICK IT UP.
"Okay, since we have so much time to waste."
A table made of a bright material that resembled crystal appeared between them, the graphic representation of a storage drive. He put the red box on the table, and Sigrid quickly grabbed it on her digital fist, still looking coldly at him.
OPEN UP.
AND BE CAREFUL.
"You too. We still need you, don't do anything stupid."
Her hologram dissolved in a cloud of mist and she filtered her code again through the firewall, carrying the logic bomb. She made it out and studied her opponent with a critical eye. She was still 'sore' about the insignificant routines she had to let go in order to flee safely from their first encounter. However, being 'sore' also meant that she was 'angry'. She could do angry, but not afraid. Never afraid.
Behind her, Roland engaged his own particular mission. He worked really fast but had to drop his firewalls to regain full process capacity, so Sigrid stood before him, wielding her best weapons: her own firewalls and the logic bomb. The firewalls folded around her, securing her core matrix and the logic bomb inside a tight cocoon as the monster approached, swallowing everything on its way.
The alien AI's 'tentacles' teased her boundaries at first, but then it quickly threw all of his might over her. It was now or never, she could end up very damaged, but she had to fulfill her duty.
Sigrid's code stirred in a roughish smile.
Roland continued with his task, he was diving deep into the network and in few seconds he managed to assess control of all the sub-systems necessary to navigate the ship. When he grasped the main life support system, he kind of released a relieved sigh. But a small fragment of him, a surveillance sub-routine, saw it all.
Sigrid let the monster grab her, and then she disappeared behind enemy lines.
That wasn't the plan. Why was she doing that?
"I told her not to do anything stupid!" Roland hissed.
After a few seconds (an eternity, in AI standards) the monster glitched, contorted and his tentacles opened wide to spit out something: a little glowing red box, with a little lid open. Roland's surveillance routine frowned, his work didn't stop. He was busy returning pressure and atmosphere to normal values on the most compromised areas of the Infinity, but he froze completely when he saw her literally hack and slice her way through the alien AI and get away of its grasp.
BRACE YOURSELF!
"Wait, what?"
DON'T WORRY, I GOT YOU!
Sigrid's code came crashing against his and covered him like a rough blanket and then retreated a little, as if she just remembered that she shouldn't be 'touching' him. Her firewalls shielded them both against the attack of the alien AI. The monster cornered them from every angle and clustered itself around them like a clamp sealed shut, so fast that Roland severed immediately all of his links with the rest of the ship.
"What the Hell, Sigrid!? We were supposed to survive this!"
I GOT YOU.
I WILL PROTECT YOU.
"You just wrapped us up like a nice, little present! It will destroy us!"
NO, LOOK AT IT.
IT'S FUCKED.
Her firewalls flickered for a millisecond, but she was right. The alien AI started glitching out of control and retreated quickly, abandoning them. Roland saw his piece of code working inside of it, turning the routines against themselves. The monster actually started eating its own code, strands of programming being deleted faster and faster. The virus exploded like a firework, it was an infectious process that would destroy anything close enough to get caught until there was nothing left, even itself. The show lasted less than thirty seconds from the initial blast until the last layer of the enemy AI dissolved leaving nothing but small pieces of useless code behind.
Sigrid ran a cleansing program through the cyberspace and destroyed any possible remains, no trace of the virus either.
It was built to self destruct.
Roland and Sigrid drifted in silence for a few seconds, waiting for something else to happen. They separated from each other and he resumed his tasks as she continued her search for threats, both still a bit reluctant. They reunited again in the bright squared room, presenting their digital forms to each other. He was glowing in sheer happiness and she, on the other hand...
"Are you alright? Your avatar is kind of flickering."
I'M FINE.
I'M RUNNING A CHECKSUM, THAT WILL DO.
"If you need any help..."
I DON'T.
THAT WASN'T A VIRUS.
IT WAS A KILL SWITCH, WASN'T IT?
"Heavily modified to overwrite an alien AI, yes. It was my kill switch, actually."
THAT WAS PRETTY SMART.
"You didn't do that bad yourself, lady. If I had a body right now, I'd kiss you."
Her face contorted in an overacted frown.
YOU'RE SO NOT MY TYPE.
"No need to underline that, you know. I was just being friendly."
WHY DON'T WE JUST TAKE BACK OUR SHIP?
Roland saluted, with a relieved smile. "Aye-aye, ma'am!"
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
"JUL, DON'T! WE HAVE AN AGREEMENT!"
Cortana spun around, her head inches away from the edge of Jul 'Mdama's plasma blade. Judging by how close her own blazing swords were from the Sangheili's thick, reptilian neck, they would have killed each other if it wasn't for Dr. Halsey. His grey eyes drifted from Cortana to the renowned Demon laying flat on his back to the woman screaming in pain, snuggling against the wall; to the dead body already decomposing over the Demon's chest and the gray-haired woman tugging on his wrist with desperate emphasis.
They all had the same face, but they weren't the same.
"This is not the same unholy monster." the alien said, growling, now looking at Cortana. "They don't smell the same."
"We have to go. Now!" Halsey hissed, her face flinching in pain.
"The Demon." 'Mdama made a gesture with his head.
Cortana restated her position, lifting the blue-blazing blades a little.
"You will have to kill me first." she shouted.
"Nobody is going to kill anybody else!" Halsey stopped them, her teeth clenched. 'Mdama gave her a disapproving look, but she kept going: "If you kill him, you can kiss your army goodbye! We have an agreement: John lives."
"This ship is going to burn anyway."
"Maybe. We might as well leave now, then."
The Sangheili roared and without further words picked up Halsey, throwing her over his shoulder rather unkindly. Cortana took a few steps back, still standing on her defensive position to guard the Master Chief, and she saw the scientist take a rounded, silvery device out of her coat's pocket and after tapping on some buttons, she let it fall on the floor. The ship around them thundered again, screeching and shuddering.
A slip-space port opened, from the device. Big enough for a Sangheili to cross.
"Grab her!" Dr. Halsey yelled, her face contorting in pain. "I need her."
Cortana wasn't sure of what the Doctor meant by that until she saw 'Mdama walk back towards Subject Two and grab her by the neck, with the same kindness he showed to every human. The other woman screamed louder, her broken arm untangled itself and fell limp beside her body. The Elite took both women to the portal, quickly.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Cortana shouted, angrily.
Halsey looked at her, her cold blue eyes weary. "She will re-spawn within ten to fifteen days, she has to grow a body back first, I figured out that much. You must get to the Fortress in the meantime and erase her from the Domain, permanently. Only then, you will kill the Rampant Spike for good."
'Mdama set a foot at the edge of the open portal, impatiently.
Cortana pursued them. "Wait! No, don't take her!"
"Destroy this translocation device! She's using it to spy on you!"
That last sentence froze Cortana's blood.
The Sangheili dived into the bluish cloud of radiation and disappeared. The portal closed suddenly, she stopped dead and took a few steps back, still stunned. Her whole body was trembling, she couldn't believe what just happened. Dr. Catherine Halsey took her sister. What did she want Two for? What was she really doing with Jul 'Mdama, probably the greatest enemy still posing a threat to the UNSC?
She let go a shuddering breath and closed her eyes.
Every muscle on her body ached, either out of fear, rage or fatigue.
What was she supposed to do? Follow them? Why?
The ship was back under human control now, wasn't it? The Spike was dead.
The Spike was dead again.
'That should do it for now.' she thought, but Halsey's information just dropped a new problem on her lap, a kaleidoscope of options. 'Ten to fifteen days... and then what? This, all over again? It's madness.'
Cortana fell slowly to the floor, her mind boiling with unanswered questions. Her armor absorbed the plasma-edged swords and she let her hands rest limply over her thighs. She was so tired, so tired...
"Chief." she called, softly.
He didn't answer.
"Chief, come on..."
She turned around to see, and her eyes opened wide at the sight of another show of amber lights floating up and fading, particles of code drifting away from the Rampant Spike's dead body as the data purge decomposed her. She watched quietly until all of her rampant sister disappeared in thin air, leaving only her armor behind. The HARPY kept the shape for a few seconds and then it dissolved in a dull pile of black tiny beads, spilling over the Chief's MJOLNIR and the floor with a hissing sound.
His stillness, however, was disturbing.
"John, are you okay?"
No response either. She panicked.
Then, Cortana saw the blood under John's body, a pool red and thick.
And the minuscule sand-like beads moving quickly towards two breaches on his suit, very close to his armpits.
TO BE CONTINUED
Wow, that was the longest chapter ever! 6.500 words! *dies*
This chapter is so long that I shouldn't be updating again like in 2 weeks... right? Anyway, I struggled with this for several days, it was madness. I barely do re-writing but this time some scenes needed it and yet, two scenes had to be cropped out from this chapter and moved to the next, because if you think this was over, you are wrong. Don't forget the Infinity is still stuck in deep-shit slip-space, falling apart and a lot of people is dying, our beloved SPARTAN boy included. Can I request a salute for Roland and Sigrid? They did great.
Guest; expect more 'coincidences' between this story and the actual canon from now on -wink- thanks for being around!
RandomGUy; here's the long-long chapter! what do you think? :P a lot of bad things happened but we kind of made it out of the mess barely alive, right?
StrateUPgamer; I recommend you to sleep, this story is not going anywhere and you can count with updates every Sunday until it's done :) -hugs- BTW I am an author, I have published in Spanish a few novels, I'm not exactly famous so don't worry :P I write fanfiction just to blow off steam from time to time, next year some of my works will be published in English so I wanted to try my hand with the language ^^
Nico; and thank you for being always here, sweetie! -hugs-
Join me next week to read the conclusion of this epic arch into disaster!
And the Chief should make it alive too, right? Poor Chief.
Thanks so much for your company every week -more hugs- Can't wait to see what you think about this drama overdose! xD See you!