RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
This is another episode that starts heavy but it should be the (long promised) conclusion of the "Seven fucks up the Infinity" arch. There might be some more scares for you here and this chapter is also a bit long, so be careful. But anyway, enjoy :)
25. WORLD'S EDGE
proofread and corrections by SL4Y3R -hugs-
NAVIGATION AISLE - BRIDGE
MISSION CLOCK TIMED OUT
The last Elite in the area dropped dead under Commander Palmer's heavy fire.
"Clear!"
Tedra Grant ran after Walter and entered the navigation aisle to find the lights on but all the screens offline. The Commander strolled in slowly, behind her, scanning the area in search of any other possible threat; she stood beside the massive black dog. Only when she convinced herself that they were now safe, Palmer lowered the pistol and moved to the consoles. She tapped in a few controls.
"The navs are still dead." her frustration was evident.
A familiar voice crackled through the main speaker system: "This is UNSC Smart AI RLD 0205-4 calling to all available assets."
"Roland?" asked Palmer, between amazement and relief. "Can you hear me? Are you operational?"
"Safe and sound, ma'am, it's Sigrid and I. There's only the two of us left now." the AI answered, although his voice kept broadcasting the previous message as he spoke with the SPARTAN. He didn't show his hologram. "I have eyes on you, I'm taking back the systems as fast as I can. I must report to you that Jul 'Mdama just fled the ship along with Dr. Catherine Halsey, they used a device to avoid the slip-space anomaly and jump out of the Infinity."
'That old hag was aboard?' Sarah thought, now alarmed. Her mind raced trying to find an answer she'll probably never get. 'Why? This isn't a coincidence, she came here to do something. What if she sabotaged the ship? Shit!'
"Just like rats." the Commander hissed instead, frowning. "The Spike?"
"Terminated, ma'am. The Master Chief and Cortana succeeded."
Sarah Palmer took a deep, relieved breath. She also felt a little less guilty.
"And I guess you annihilated the enemy AI too."
"You guess right."
"That's the third best news I've heard today. Thank you, Roland."
"Jul 'Mdama took off just like that, leaving his men behind? It's hard to believe." pointed out Grant. "Elites don't flee, they fight 'till the last one standing."
"Not many of them left anyway, SPARTAN Grant. In three more minutes we would have neutralized the threat. Although we are far from safe."
Palmer frowned and sheathed her sidearm. "Wait, you said something about a 'slip-space anomaly', what's going on?"
"We're diving out of control in some unexplored layer of slip-space, ma'am. The ship isn't taking it very well, as you can see. We've lost pressure on several decks due to hull breaches and power failures, the air recycling system is in critical shape. I can count radiation leaks and you don't want to know what else. There are mechanical failures that need a human hand right away. I've also lost all wireless comm networks, but I still have a handful of speakers working."
The Commander stood very still. She wasn't sure if it was safe to remove her helmet or not, so she just stood there, sweating inside her suit. Heart pounding in her ears, Sarah tried to wrap her mind around what the AI was saying. They were crippled and going God knows where.
How many people were already dead, and how many more would die?
She didn't dare to ask, not now.
"Then take us back to normal space!" said Grant, her voice full of worry.
"No can do, SPARTAN Grant. The engines and the reactor have to be stabilized first. I'm diverting power and coolant fluids from every dispensable substation to the main pipeline, it should help. All I can do for now is keep her running and I don't know for how much longer."
Palmer punched the console before her, cracking the thick liquid crystal surface, denting the metallic frame. She managed to keep her voice calm:
"What can we do to help you?"
"Gather the engineering crew, send them down there to fix the coolant leaks and kill the fires. It's mandatory. Then we can start thinking about a shutdown."
"Fine, I'll get to it."
"Commander... there's something else." that was Sigrid's voice. "Dr. Halsey left the ship with Jul 'Mdama and another young female. It was Subject Two, ma'am. I think they kidnapped her."
NO DATE RECORDED
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK - DELTA STATION COMPUTER LABS
standard time not recorded
"Oh my God, what is this?"
"We can get to that later. Please, just..."
He heard two familiar voices, far away and a little muffled.
It was like listening to someone else's conversation through a wall, as far as the thundering background noises allowed him to hear. He was lying on his back. There was an amber glow around, the color reminded him of light sticks. Someone crouched down by his left side.
"Okay, he's breathing, that's good. And I see the blood, where are the wounds?"
"I saw breaches on his exo-suit, somewhere up here."
There was a short moment of silence.
"Okay, this is scary. I can't find the port to link my pad. Help me take the helmet off... if we can take it off, that is. Collins? Get me some blood, you know which one. Two units. I don't like how this looks."
"Yes, ma'am." that last one wasn't a familiar voice.
They were now messing with his helmet's pressure locks. His first, most natural reaction was to engage and fight back, but his arms felt really heavy so he dropped the idea. His sight was blurry, his breaths were shallow. He should let them work, he could trust those voices.
Yeah, he was absolutely willing to cooperate.
"Whoa! Step back!" that was Dr. Quinn.
"I was expecting something like that. He can hear us."
Was the other one Cortana? It sounded like her.
He sort of recognized Dr. Quinn's features; she was wearing an oxygen mask. The air tasted weird, thin and smoky. And it was cold. The woman carefully leaned over him and waved a hand before his face, wielding a pocket flashlight.
"Hm, I don't like this either." she pulled the collar of his undersuit and touched the left side of his neck, then retreated to work on a glowing square. "Weak pulse and low blood pressure, which is consistent with massive blood loss. I guess that even war gods bleed from time to time, but, where is he wounded, exactly?"
"Be careful."
"Believe me, this thing scares the shit out of me so I'm being careful." the Doctor snorted, nervously. "Master Chief, are you with us?"
John tried to speak, but he only spat out a confused groan.
The woman presented her gloved hand in front of his eyes.
"How many fingers do you see?"
"Two?" he felt his mouth full of cotton or something.
"Congrats, you're handsome and smart. Can you tell me where are you injured?"
John wasn't really sure, and that would be a first for him. His sight cleared a bit and he felt under the tips of his armored fingers that the floor was trembling. It all came back to him slowly. Paragon. Subject Eleven. The Challenger. The shrieking sun. The Infinity. The attack. Dr. Halsey. Subject Two. Cortana. Sigrid. Roland. Seven shoving her swords through his flesh.
Something screeched in the distance, metal scraping against metal.
He pushed with his elbows and tried to get up to a sitting position.
"She attacked me. I couldn't move my arms." he said, still not fully conscious.
"No, don't move, you have something attached to you..."
"Chief, be careful. You will be okay, trust me!"
She grabbed his shoulder, he knew it was Cortana.
Trust her? About what? His pulse raced and he quickly regained lucidity.
The Chief sat straight up and the amber lights glowed over his armor. How come he didn't notice before? Something was off. It was almost weightless. Matte black, with some stripes made of an iridescent shade of dark olive-green. Maybe. He wasn't sure. His sight was getting blurry again.
"Cortana?" he murmured, lost.
"I'm here. Lie back, come on..."
"Is Charley okay?"
"We had to put her in cryo, she's not doing so good. You need to lie back, now."
Something pounded on the back of his head. White noise. It became louder.
It was moving against his skin, sliding slowly, making him feel uncomfortable. It was like the touch of sand. Something was pressing against his... consciousness? It was pushing and pushing, his head hurt. There was an unmistakable presence in there with him, fighting to take him down without any violence. He felt dizzy. His eyelids became heavier, his head started spinning and the pain escalated.
"What is happening to me?"
"Don't panic, John. You will be fine, I..."
She kept talking, but he couldn't hear her voice anymore.
Panic? He wasn't one to give in to panic. He just passed out again.
NO DATE RECORDED
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
NAVIGATION AISLE - BRIDGE
time stamp not recorded
There was no proper way to calculate how much time had passed. It could have been just a few hours, but given time's tendency to fly when people is busy, it might as well have been days and nobody would care. Everybody was hungry, thirsty, in dire need of sleep and sore, but they kept going.
Once they breached the blast doors into the S-Deck and the main armories, the morale seemed to spike. The remaining SPARTAN teams could gather gear, ammo and more suitable weapons. Now they had Marine, ODST and SPARTAN squads sweeping through the ship in search of any remaining alien with hostile intentions or anyone who needed help. Every available hand capable of wielding a welder, a screwdriver or a plasma saw was commissioned to help the engineering crew with the repairs. There was no clock, true, but they were all still working against it; the ship reminded them every now and then that she might not last for long. It was impossible to access certain bays because of the jammed doors or the wild fires raging everywhere.
Fear fueled some people's determination. Hope fueled others.
With eighty percent of comms dead, most of the maintenance decks uninhabitable and beyond immediate recovery, not enough air or medical supplies for all the wounded and two Forerunner engines devouring energy like crazy, they still made it.
They made it, because survival was hardwired in their very natures, reinforced by training.
The hardest part was to stabilize the reactor, since the radiation leaks were near deadly values. It was a coordinated effort along with the other crews that were repairing damaged pipelines and broken pumps. Once the pressure returned to normal values, a lot of other sub-systems recovered steadiness too. At least the Infinity wasn't screeching like a wounded animal anymore, for the time being, and it stopped shuddering too. Then it came Roland's turn to grab a hold of the engines and take control of the ship, which was another tricky task even for an AI such as him.
"Okay, let's do this." Lasky murmured, almost to himself. He watched attentively the screens in front of him, some graphics were flaring in critical-orange, others in be-careful-yellow (which was always preferable over you're-fucked-red). The Captain felt that he could breathe comfortably now. He gave Sarah Palmer a worried look, she gave him a concealed thumbs up. "Sigrid, Roland, are you both ready?"
"On your mark, sir." they answered together.
They were in sound-only mode to save power.
"Do it. Take us to normal space."
"Initializing shutdown protocol. Exit vector ready."
"Shutting down FTL drives." Sigrid said.
"Keep an eye on the pressure. If it reaches…"
"Man your station, Roland. FTL drives offline."
"Fine, grumpy queen. Forcing exit vector. So far, so good."
"Exiting slip-space in seven... six... five..."
"Cherenkov radiation is spiking, way off normal values."
"… three… two… one."
Every single person present on the bridge clutched to their seats. Palmer moved forward and seized the Captain by the shoulders, but none of them were ready for what followed. The momentum was brutal, as if the ship had crashed head first against the immovable end of the world. Again came the screeching of twisted metal, this time with the addition of loud thuds, they were ramming through very large loose objects stranded in space; it could have been either debris or anything else.
Despite Palmer's magnetic boots, she and the Captain fell violently to the floor.
"Roland! What the hell is going on?" shouted Palmer.
"The exit vector opened a port in the middle of an asteroid field, ma'am. Please, remain calm." said Sigrid. "Correcting course now."
"We made it!" Roland was really excited.
"We're crashing into asteroids, what are you so happy about?"
"I'm on it, Commander!"
For a moment the gravity inside the bridge seemed to increase, but it was merely the effect of acceleration as the AIs guided the ship 'up' at full cruiser speed. Palmer got up from the floor and lent the Captain a hand. They both seized positions around the deactivated holo-table, grasping the edges. The ship hit a few more asteroids on her way out but finally, after a few minutes, the bumping and shuddering stopped and there was only silence.
Lasky let go of the table carefully.
"Anyone hurt?"
One after another, all the voices across the bridge answered negative. The Captain sighed in sheer relief.
"That was too easy." muttered the Commander.
"I'm not going to argue with the results." said Lasky. "Roland? Sigrid?"
"We're still here." she answered.
"Good work." Lasky smiled, mostly to himself. "Are we still in one piece?"
"Well, since we didn't leave half of the ship behind, I'd say we are. Do you want to know what's our twenty, sir?" asked Roland, cheerfully.
"If you please."
"Deploying probes now." Sigrid informed.
"Accessing navigation database and triangulating stellar coordinates." the other AI replied, his electronic voice steady although it crackled with static. "Uh. I'm reading bodies matching Pluto's and Charon's mass. Mostly planetoids. I'm still scanning, but this seems pretty conclusive to me; Captain, this appears to be Sol System. Kuiper's Belt to be more precise."
"Wait, we're that close to home? It can't be, we were several months away from Sol System when the Infinity was hijacked."
"You imply I'm wrong, sir?"
"I don't know, you tell me."
"Checking again." that was Sigrid's voice. "He's not wrong, sir."
"The long-range perimeter scan also confirms. I'm picking up encoded signals from two UNSC relay satellites." Roland filled the aisle's screens with eerie live video feeds of the Infinity's surroundings, including the thick asteroid field they just rammed through and all of the major bodies. It was also possible to see how damaged the vessel was from the outside, in certain angles. "We were probably seconds away from Earth, you never know how slip-space this deep works."
Lasky didn't say it out loud, but Roland probably meant that everybody aboard that ship had been incredibly close to death and yet miraculously survived. Either if it was out of luck or the most accurate timing ever, a good lot of people were still alive. It was more than something, it was the best news Lasky had heard in a long time.
He sighed deeply and rubbed his prickly beard.
He could use a good shave, and something to eat too, he didn't care what or how much, just something. A nice date with a comfortable pillow would be nice too. They were safe, he could take a step back to clear his head. Sarah Palmer must have read his thoughts, because she leaned in a bit and whispered on his ear:
"Let me take care of this, Tom. You still owe Dr. Quinn an appointment."
"Thanks. But first things first." he sighed, content. "Good work, everyone, I think we've earned ourselves some rest... within our possibilities. Take us home nice and easy, Roland. We have repairs to do."
"You mean... you'll let me drive, sir?" the AI asked, his voice tinted with surprise.
"Not in a million years, you're under Ensign Webber's watch."
"Can I play some music, then? It's therapeutic."
"You know what? I'd say you can. Just... nothing too obnoxious, please."
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Lasky left the bridge accompanied by the sound of the nav crew's happy clapping and cheerful whistling, while soft old time rock-n-roll music flowed through all decks, aisles and bays filling every corner. The Captain smiled briefly and kept walking.
He waited until being inside his quarters to close his eyes and let the worry and sorrow wash over him, like a wrecking ball. It would take days to retrieve the bodies, to get all the living souls accounted for and to recover even a small sense of normality, but they would survive.
DAY ONE
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
S-DECK ARMOR ASSEMBLY STATIONS
standard time not recorded
Cortana let out a loud sigh and rubbed her eyes, terribly tired.
One of the twelve ODSTs guarding the hydraulic platform gave her a weary look. She straightened her pose, angry.
It was day one of the Infinity's quiet trip back to Earth; through the relay satellites they made contact and received orders to avoid any activity that could endanger the structural integrity of the ship, so slip-space jumps were off the table for the time being. A rescue fleet was on their way. Everyone at Earth seemed a bit surprised to hear from them, although the Challenger made it to deliver the message about the hijacking and the UNSC was somewhat expecting their return. More like FLEETCOM was expecting the largest warship ever created to appear over their heads, at the point.
She heard two ODSTs talking about what fire-teams Sygma and Drachma found at the K-9 quarters earlier that day. Charley, Walter and the other three dogs John chose for operation PARAGON were now the only living members of the Infinity's K-9 unit. Cortana checked on the growing list of KIA personnel every now and then, although she shouldn't be doing that. Amongst the dead, she read of a young Corporal named Amira Jenko, but since Cortana didn't know who that was, she didn't feel any sadder than she already did. At least SPARTANS Thorne, Hoya and Madsen were recovering from their injuries; thankfully Grant was unharmed.
None of them were taking well the death of their team leader. Nobody was taking anything very well in general, to be honest.
Admiral Osman and thirteen of her men and women were found trapped inside an armory with very low atmosphere. Ten ONI agents were dead, but Osman and the other two survivors were in a coma due to oxygen deprivation. Dr. Quinn had no idea if they would wake up anytime soon, or if they would have any kind of brain injuries. To sum up more, the two main med-bays were full, the medical staff were shorthanded both in supplies and personnel. There were patients sleeping on the very hallways. Thousands of people were quickly placed in cryo-sleep because of the severity of their injuries, it was the most practical choice; the frozen people didn't eat or breathe, for the time being the power wasn't the problem.
Cortana had to lay the pad down. She couldn't bear it anymore.
Worry was eating her from inside out. She spent hours with the Commander and the Captain filling them in with the facts she could account for. If there was any chance of taking advantage from Dr. Halsey's intel on Subject Seven, Cortana was willing to give it a try. Sarah Palmer was very reluctant (and angry because nobody shot Halsey right on the spot) but Thomas Lasky tried to keep his mind open. He wanted to believe in Cortana's words about the formulas she found scribbled on the walls of the Delta Station computer lab, her theory seemed solid and hopeful.
Alas, if Dr. Halsey was right, they were running out of time; what she said might mean that she wasn't working along with the Rampant Spike after all.
It didn't matter, anyway. The Infinity wasn't going anywhere anytime soon unless the major repairs could be performed and FLEETCOM approved the operation, it was a dead-end. Lasky was clear about that, they had orders. Cortana understood, of course, but she couldn't help to feel more frustration and fear. She was pacing nervously around the S-Deck dressed in the undersuit of her HARPY armor, with the armor itself clutched at her back like a bulky backpack, in desperate need of a shower and a bed. The bed was the more appealing, to be honest, her bones nearly melted at the mere thought.
She needed to sleep so bad...
But she didn't want to leave him alone.
Cortana's eyes found the Chief's figure again. He was still unconscious, pinned to an armor assembly station by the wrists and ankles, immobilized. As if that thing could stop him. She wondered what he would say when he woke up and could see what Commander Palmer ordered the technicians to do.
She figured that John wouldn't be happy at all.
She had to leave, anyway. The ODSTs were very insistent about that.
DAY ONE
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
SCIENTIFIC STAFF QUARTERS DECK
standard time not recorded
Cortana went straight from the containment facility in which she stored the crate with her HARPY to her quarters, kicked her boots off, washed herself a little (water was being rationed now) and let her weight fall over the thin mattress. She didn't bother in picking up the towel from the floor. Exhausted didn't even get to cover half of how she felt. She quickly wrapped herself in a thick blanket and closed her eyes, trying to warm up and relax. The heating wasn't working so it was a bit chilly in there. Cortana focused on clearing her mind, taking deep breaths. Every muscle on her body felt immediately better, it was such a marvelous sensation...
Sleep was taking her when a husky yet feminine electronic voice startled her:
"I need your help."
Cortana groaned and covered her head with the blanket.
"Showing up like this in someone's room is just rude, Sigrid. Even I know that."
"Well, I'm sorry. Now, get your ass out of that bed, I said I needed you."
"How do you even know...?"
"I've seen your face through the S-Deck video feeds. You have terrible eye-bags."
"Can't you just go and annoy someone else?"
"No, I need you. Specifically."
Cortana shoved the blanket to her feet and rolled to lie on her back, irritated.
"And why is that, I wonder?"
"... you will understand once you see it. At least, I hope you will. It has to be now, there's nobody around."
Now, that piqued Cortana's interest. She swallowed another groan and pretended not to be paying attention, but still, she sat on the bed and fixed her untidy hair.
"Okay, fine. What do you want?"
"Containment facility four. I'll be waiting for you there, so hurry up."
DAY ONE
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY
ENGINEERING DECK - CONTAINMENT FACILITY FOUR
standard time not recorded
Cortana crossed her arms, defensively, when she saw what Sigrid had done.
The AI's hologram flickered over the holo-pad above the table, she had her arms crossed too. She hacked the engineering drones to get something from the quarantine facilities; on the table lied a HARPY in the shape of a neat pile of black sand. If Cortana had to guess which one it was, she'd say that it was the one recovered from Sanghelios, when the Chief managed to kill Seven for the first time.
A shiver ran up and down her arms, she took a step back, behind the yellow lines drawn on the rubber floor.
"You shouldn't be playing with this, it isn't safe." Cortana scolded her, serious.
"There's a reason why this is called a 'containment facility', right?" Sigrid mocked.
"You have an attitude problem, kid."
"I'll reflect on that later. Place that nuclear battery on top of the pile."
Cortana narrowed her eyes, between annoyance and suspicion.
She picked up the device, anyway. "Magic word?"
"Please." Sigrid huffed. "Place the battery on top of the pile, and step back."
"My pleasure." Cortana gently dropped the battery with the green display facing up, where Sigrid had requested. "What are you going to do?"
"A little experiment. Roland shared with me his logs about the HARPY's systems, and I believe I have figured out how to wipe out its programming. But I need power to hold it together and I don't have body heat or bioelectricity like you. It could also backfire on me, so step back. A little farther."
"I'll be right beside the kill switch, don't worry."
She retreated again until her back was against the blast doors. Cortana opened the small box by the doors and held a finger over a red button. It would generate a small, controlled EMP pulse that was supposed to deactivate any kind of technological device six feet around the table (inside the yellow lines). It wouldn't hurt Sigrid, since most of her higher functions were stored in the Infinity's network, but it would probably fry a small part of her.
"Well, here we go."
Sigrid's flickering figure walked out of the holo-pad and disappeared, as if she had jumped head first into a pool.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
After a full minute, Cortana noticed movement over the surface of the pile. A little whirlpool opened, growing bigger and bigger, spinning faster and faster. The whirlpool grew thick vines that clutched the battery and dragged it to its core, then it crumbled over itself folding and prancing like turbulent sea waves. It kept moving and building itself up, taking the shape of a solid black cube with very sharp edges. After a moment, suddenly, all activity ceased and for a few more seconds it was quiet again. Even the soft hissing sound stopped.
Four little polished-black worms crawled up from the upper side of the cube.
No, they were fingers. Four fingers.
Then a fifth, and a whole hand. A forearm. An elbow, an arm. A shoulder.
And a head.
Cortana took in a deep breath. The solid body rose slowly, as it forged itself it drained the dark material until there was not even a single bead left and it revealed a full sized human figure with all the right proportions, female and curvaceous. A green status light blinked on the body's chest. The figure stood still for a while, as if frozen, sitting with her fair legs cast aside and down the edge of the table. It was naked, although the artificial skin was traced in a soft scaled-like pattern which smoothed at the hands, feet and face. Every feature was highly detailed, eye-catching.
It seemed to have its eyes closed, no eyelashes. The nose was softly rounded and small, perky; and the lips, although rather thin yet a little pouty, were clamped shut. The 'hair' was a collection of tightly fabricated small braids streaming over the figure's head, back of the neck and shoulders, carved into the polished dark skin.
It was of slender, muscular frame, feminine and powerful like the shield-maiden she liked to resemble.
Sigrid. It was Sigrid, wasn't it?
Cortana closed her mouth, trying to contain her amazement.
"Sigrid?" she asked, cautiously.
The figure's head snapped towards her, eyes now open. There was no pupil or iris, just shiny dark eyeballs in the same shiny dark plastic-like face. Cortana felt another shiver run down her back.
The creature frowned.
"It feels strange." it muttered, the lips moved producing the words, the voice was familiar but odd, with an electronic ring on the background. "I mean, it actually feels like something. I feel the room temperature. It's cold, I believe."
"Sigrid." Cortana insisted, asking for confirmation.
"It's me, yes. UNSC Smart AI SGD 0306-7. I'm fine."
"Did you just... make yourself a body?"
She looked at her fingers and curled them softly, making a fist, then stirred them back. She wiggled her toes and feet, balanced her legs. She was absorbed watching the muscles constrain and flex, as if made of real flesh. And then, pushed aside and fell from the table, standing on her lean legs.
"It was just an experiment. It worked." Sigrid said, distractedly. "Can I keep it?"
Cortana dropped her shoulders a bit.
"Now I understand." she muttered. "Why you wanted it to be me. You'd think that I, of all people, would understand what you are doing now. And I do, believe me, but whether if you can keep this so-called body or not... that's not up to me, I'm afraid."
Sigrid took a steady step towards her. She was taller than Cortana, a living seven feet tall statue made of black marble. As tall as John in full armor.
"I will scratch your back if you scratch mine." she said, grimly.
Cortana frowned. "What?"
Sigrid turned her new head slowly towards the computers and blinked. A screen came to life, displaying a transcription and scans of some documents with ONI seals on them. Still watching over her shoulder, Cortana approached the console to read.
"They will take you." Sigrid explained, softly. "Admiral Serin Osman is in coma, which gives us a little time, but she prepared the documents. If she wakes up, it's game over for you and all of your siblings, ONI wants them too. She had you classified as a potential threat. But I can help you."
"Help me? Help me how?"
Sigrid tilted her head to the side, unnaturally slowly
"You know how. Maybe I could do something like what you did to get Ackerson in trouble, back in the day."
Cortana took several steps back. She didn't like the tone of Sigrid's electronic voice. And too bad she didn't have her armor on, she had the feeling that she might need it.
"And I guess that's how you got this information, right?"
Sigrid drew a wide, almost wicked smile on her lips. Her perfectly shaped black teeth shone like the rest of her body. In the same mix with those ghostly black eyes, the result was as terrifying as it was mesmerizing.
"I made a mistake and now I'm in danger too. If someone finds out that I have this much power, I will be decommissioned. Erased." She stated, now looking at her hands clasped together. Her polished-black features contorted in sheer fear. Too bad that the first real emotion she ever got to experience had to be fear, precisely. "Humans tend to destroy or kill what they don't understand, and I don't fully understand this myself, but I can work on it. With this much processing power, I can multiply my utilities and maybe even overcome rampancy, become something else. I don't want to be erased, Cortana. I don't want to die."
The situation was getting off rails and could even end up in something worse than rampancy itself in no time. Cortana grasped her wrist; the creature was cold as a dead body, the skin was slippery.
"I said I understood." she whispered, catching the AI's attention. "But I didn't agree to be your partner in crime just yet. Now get out of that system. It won't end well if someone inconvenient sees you."
Sigrid nodded a few times. She looked confused now.
Maybe her systems were crashing, it was too much for her to manage alone. When Roland tasted the HARPY, Cortana was still controlling it, the armor was feeding from her, not from an alternate source such as a battery.
Trying to control her emotions, Cortana just stood there and observed how Sigrid crawled up the table and how the body disintegrated, returning to its original shape as a pile of tiny black beads, the battery cast aside. But although her eyes were watching the scene, Cortana's mind was racing deep in her own world of disturbed thoughts. She knew that it would eventually end up in something like that, she knew it since the very moment Serin Osman laid a boot inside the Infinity. She had her examined by a crew of technicians that pretty much harassed her and even had the papers ready. Why? Cortana understood the logical and tactical reasons behind such orders (anyone in Osman's place would have been just as careful as her), but she didn't want to comply.
She was alive and she wanted to stay that way. Was it so hard to accept?
Just like Sigrid, apparently.
And so much for asking for help, anyway. Who would endanger his or her career to help (or protect) a creature like her (like them both), who wasn't either human neither artificial? It was a tricky question with an easy answer; she could think of one man who would stand up in her defense. And he was unconscious, he had been like that for many hours now.
He didn't have to make any more sacrifices for her, either.
When Sigrid reappeared at the holo-pad, Cortana approached.
"Access the video feeds and erase any log on what happened here. I will deal with Roland myself if necessary. And above all, Sigrid, you won't speak of this to anyone. Acknowledge." she demanded, serious.
"Acknowledged." the AI replied, calmly.
"Now, about scratching each other's backs..."
TO BE CONTINUED
You know that proverb, 'slip-space fucks logic and physics'? Well, I just invented it, but it seems legit. They were traveling reeeeally deep into the deepest layers of slip-space. Sort of. Maybe nothing went "massive weird bat-shit crazy physics style" inside the ship because of the Forerunner engines, who knows? The important thing is that they are alive and...
AND WTF HAPPENED TO THE CHIEF? WHAT WAS THAT? OMG OMG!
Also, Sigrid made herself a creepy body! How about that? For the people that still suspects of her, I guess this makes you even more uncomfortable xD Okay, no more drama (for now), let's have a bit of fun and somewhat relax for the next few weeks, big things will happen and I think you'll like it very much *wiggles eyebrows*.
Crazyman844; quoting the Librarian, 'prepare' and get a bucket because there's more to drool about in the upcoming chapters xD -hugs-
Guest; Thanks, I'll try to improve in the creative department but I won't make any promises since I'm the first person that has to be satisfied with this story and currently, I am very satisfied. Thanks for being the review number 217.
Kat; I'm a ruthless bastard and I do that all the time, but relax, someday they will have the chance xD -hugs- I'm glad you're having a good time!
RandomGUy; hey there! yes, we can say the alien AI was somewhat based off the Flood, it ate other AIs and made them part of itself to grow bigger. We still have a lot of surprises coming up. About my books, two major issues; 1- I write about not-your-ordinary-werewolves, with a pretty modest success of which I'm very proud, 2- I write in Spanish, the books will be available in English about the end of 2016, hehe. If you handle yourself with Spanish, go to ladywolvesbayne ( m) and you will find me :) I appreciate the interest! Abso-freaking-lutely, I'd be happy to borrow my concept of the UNSC enhanced service dogs to 343 if they can get them in some game xD just imagine that, gigantic armored dogs kicking ass side by side with SPARTANS or protecting Marines in top-of-the-line assignments!
Nico; my dear, my lovely, I hope you have a wonderful time in your vacation, the story will be still here when you return. Have fun!
I bet there's one or two things somebody wants to say about what happened today, so shoot! Be sure to log in for a quicker answer! :) See you all next Sunday!