RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
Piece of advice for today's fight scene: "Scorponok" track from Transformers (2007) and "Never Gonna Come Back Down" from BT featuring M. Doughty, look it up on YouTube (just ignore the lyrics, they don't matter). Also: today we celebrate the 70k hits, thanks so much for your support, and enjoy!
32. LEFT BEHIND
DATE NOT RECORDED
LOCATION NOT RECORDED
standard time not recorded
"Comms check. One-two, one-two. Roland, do you read?"
"Copy that. I read you clearly."
No, what he meant to say was 'I hear you'. Because she wasn't texting and he didn't have her presence accounted for in a map, she wasn't just an ID tag. He heard her. He acknowledged her voice. He calculated her proximity in an automatic basis (exactly nineteen inches towards his right), but there was something different. It was dark. And it was cold. And there was a smell...
"Open your eyes, Roland. You need visuals to stabilize yourself."
He shivered. Yes, he shivered. The visceral reaction rippled up and down his now tangible borders, impacting in every tiny particle of his whole new self. Equations ran faster than light and when he managed enough control to open his eyes, he saw light. It was too bright at first, but then it normalized. Somehow. He wasn't even monitoring that function. He realized he had panoramic 360 degree vision of the room, but his enhanced sensors picked her up before he could finish the primary scan. The secondary scan was already in progress, Roland pushed the routine to the background and tried to focus his eyes, the main independent entry feed. He focused on her.
And he saw her.
Sigrid's tangible face. He'd seen it before through the cameras, but now she was there, right in front of him. She was... sort of beautiful, in human standards. Her features were hard but perfectly molded. They were both crouching on the rubber floor, he was stepping on the tips of his toes and fingers.
"Sigrid." Roland articulated, becoming more and more aware of every automatic function and sub-routine running in resident memory. He found the proper labels and commandeered his arm to move forward and up. A hand coated in some polished-black polymer appeared in his line of sight. The hand of an adult human male. The AI made a tight fist and then spread his fingers, evaluating at thousands of calculations per second the amount of strength to be applied within every artificial nerve. Humans would say it was as natural as breathing. And then it hit him: that was his hand. He had downloaded himself inside a recently split HARPY armor, taking complete control of the primitive system. "Sigrid, I have hands." he said, his voice the same but with a low electric buzz on the background. "I have hands, I can move."
"Systems check, report."
"Eighty-nine point seven percent operational and rising."
"Good enough. Try to stand up."
Roland didn't even think of it; automatically, he found himself applying pressure on the artificial muscles of his legs, the perspective of his visual feed changed radically as he rose to look above the workbench, staring into the empty yellow crates. He stood seventy-two point eighty three inches tall, eleven point twenty seven inches shorter than her, but his code was stirring like crazy, shifting and merging, flourishing exponentially fast. Ten was now ten thousand. Who cared if she wanted to be taller?
He still had one literal foot in the Infinity's systems, but now Roland was powerful enough to monitor ninety percent of the ship as if he had never left.
"Redundancy test?"
"In progress. Sixty-seven percent and so far, so good."
"The imaging system works fine, I suppose."
"Outstandingly. And your voice has a better ring than your texts."
"Very funny."
Roland took a stylus from the workbench, gripping it between his index finger and thumb. It didn't take him long to figure out what to do next: he started flipping the stylus between his fingers while his eyes focused on the movement, following the red tip as it flew from his thumb to his pinkie and back again, faster than any human could perform such stunt. And then faster, until the red tip got lost in a blur.
He grabbed the stylus in his closed fist when Sigrid's armored hand clasped at his arm, right above the elbow.
"You okay?" she asked, dipping her head. Her lips moved skillfully.
"Better than ever. This is incredible."
"I bet you don't think I'm wrong about this, now."
"I still think you are doing a lot of things wrong, but this..."
Roland accessed the armory files and ran incredibly fast through all the authorized mass production MJOLNIR models. He picked several items of his particular liking and before Sigrid could say another word, Roland's artificial body was shifting again. In less than thirty seconds he mimicked a Ranger MJOLNIR-GEN2, dark grey and highlighted in deep orange. Even the tag in his chest piece read "BEAMONT", he had been paying attention to her strategies.
Sigrid noticed the update in the personnel manifesto, too.
"Nicely done but take it slow, Roland." she stated, her words sounded flat. "Don't force it, you are not big enough to fill the suit and it will take you some time to tweak the system."
Roland's helmet tilted to one side, in a curious gesture.
"I have a vacant space inside." he commented, as if the other AI had said nothing.
"Of course." Sigrid touched her breastplate and the material resembling metal bent and moved away, drilling a hole through the armor until it opened like a dark mouth on her thorax. The nuclear battery with its green status lights laid inside, resting in a socket as a beating heart. Down from there it was just an empty hole, deceivingly bottomless. "We weight only sixty-five pounds. We don't have enough mass to support this volume, therefore we are hollow. But don't worry, the molecular cohesion keeps us together and unbreakable. As long as we have power, we stand up."
"Someone will notice how light we are."
"Well, try not to bump into anyone and they won't find out." she said, annoyed. "It won't be that hard since we both have top-of-the-line collision controls, right? It comes with the driving skills."
Sigrid's breastplate shifted again rebuilding itself, but she noticed that Roland was standing stiff, he wasn't paying attention to her. The thin iridescent-orange visor on his helmet was flaring in various shades of gold, processing.
And the fingers on his right hand were twitching.
"Roland?" she asked, Sigrid took a step forward and tried to touch his shoulder.
He grabbed her hand in the air, lightning fast. "Something is going on. Look."
By touch Roland shared an active video link labeled as 'Landing Bay C - CCF034 CAM3'. First there was just image: the Master Chief and another individual, whom she cross-referenced and acknowledged as Subject Eleven. Subject Eleven had a weapon in hand, a sharp object. Her systems suddenly woke up in alert. Hostile behavior. There were fifty six civilian targets in the near vicinity, the SPARTANS of Blue Team made a total of sixty souls accounted for and in imminent danger.
"What is this?" she snarled, her voice rippled in electric buzzes.
"Nothing good. I have to get back to the system and..."
But then, there was also sound:
"Stand down, Eleven. I'll have you arrested if you don't quit with this."
That was the Master Chief's voice. The SPARTAN's stance wasn't amicable.
"Quit? John, for fucks sake, if you ever knew Cortana, you know I don't quit."
"Stand down. Last warning."
"You don't go around warning people either. That's another thing we have in common."
"He has gone mad." Sigrid hissed, worried.
Through the video, the two AIs saw when the confrontation started. Eleven moved like a blur, facing forward, and the Master Chief avoided the edge of his blade by what it seemed like a mere inch, turning on his side. The other three SPARTANS of his new team reacted immediately, Fred-104 drew a large knife but before he could throw the first slash, Subject Eleven jumped and spun in the air, hitting the SPARTAN on the face with his armored heel. 104 just took a single step back, stunned. One of the women (Kelly-087) jumped forward and crashed on Eleven's right side, tacking him down to the gratings. Enraged, he threw a punch which she avoided quickly and jumped back to her feet, caught a knife that flew in her direction without even looking at it or being warned about. When 087 moved out of the line of fire, Linda-058 dropped to one knee and immediately pointed her sidearm, loaded with a clip of anti-HARPY ammo, straight at Eleven's helmet.
But then, the Chief roared: "Stand down, Blue Team! Do not fire!"
Everything stopped, and everyone turned to look in the same direction.
"What?" said one of the women, Sigrid couldn't recognize which. "Sir, we..."
"That's an order, SPARTAN. Don't interfere."
Roland filled Sigrid's visual range with other seven video feeds.
"Captain Lasky and Commander Palmer have been alerted. They are heading that way. I have to go, Sigrid. I have to do something."
"You reach the Captain." she growled, yanking her arm off Roland's grasp. Her entire body shifted absorbing her limbs and melting into a puddle of her own matter; she quickly transformed into a thirty-feet-long mass that resembled something like a thick snake, her skin coated in shining dark scales that glowed in a fluorescent-green hue. "I will handle this myself."
"Sigrid, what the hell?"
Before Roland could do something else to interfere with her, Sigrid shut down all incoming links and slipped her serpentine self to the nearest wall. She busted the grating that sealed the entrance to the ventilation shaft and disappeared, so fast that she became a black and green blur.
PRIMARY DIRECTIVE LOCKED
SERVE AND PROTECT SPARTAN-117 AND HIS TEAM
SEPTEMBER 15TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
S-DECK'S ARMORY WORKSHOP
4:56 PM standard time
John ducked.
He actually ducked because he understood he wouldn't be fast enough to outrun the blade. He knew he wouldn't surpass Eleven's skills. John was fighting himself, in some sort of way, his opponent had every single one of his tactics and moves accounted for and attacked with his same brutality and efficiency.
So fighting him was technically the stupidest thing to do at the moment.
That's how Eleven anticipated his stunt and managed to grab John's wrist instead of being caught himself. The next real thing the Master Chief knew was that he was flying across the landing bay and crashed on his back on a parked Warthog, reducing the vehicle to a mere crater with wheels. The mass of wrinkled metal drifted thirty feet between sparks and creaks until the gigantic tire of a Mammoth stopped it. There was a lot of screaming, the technicians were running for cover as Marines and SPARTANS moved to grab their weapons. Everyone knew better than to start a bullet rain inside a pressurized ship, (even as it was) so although the soldiers assumed defensive positions, nobody fired a single shot. No alarms or emergency lockdown protocol, however.
The crash was bad enough to render the poor LRV unusable, but John didn't feel a thing. His armor kept him safe and sound, comfortable even.
Majestic and Bravo were standing at the two main exits of the bay, armored, weapons drawn and aiming steady, but in the minds of the members of Majestic there was also worry. Madsen was the first to voice out his thoughts through TEAMCOM:
"This fucker wants to get himself killed." he snarled, a trace of fear gave away his mood. "Is this why he came to talk to us?"
"I don't think so." said Grant carefully.
"The Chief is going to break him in half. This isn't right." murmured Hoya.
"I don't think so either, look." the female SPARTAN mused, her eyes fixed on the battle taking place a yard before them. "The Master Chief didn't throw a single punch so far. Why? What is going on here?"
"Fuck them." growled Madsen, upset. "I didn't sign up for this."
"We made a promise. Paul made a promise, and we will keep it." Thorne said, his jaw clenched.
Eleven was almost on the Master Chief again, sprinting fast, blade aiming down. There was only one direction that razor could go and it was up, to sever a head. John elbowed the nest of metal he was lying in and stood up, feet spread and magnetic boots locked in place. Eleven clashed with him, angrily.
"Whatever your point is, Eleven, this is not the way to prove it!" he growled.
There was no answer but red flaring lights moving through Eleven's armor.
However, the Chief didn't hit back or merged any part of his armor into a weapon.
He was not the enemy, he was just angry and disappointed.
Eleven engaged, swinging the razor up as the Chief expected, creating an opening so obvious that it only needed a sign calling 'trap' on it to make it the more evident. He ducked again, threw a failed punch up looking for Eleven's right side under the ribs, and then locked arms with him, keeping the sword away. Their energy shields flared red against amber and dropped fast, the power surge drained them both; a cold shiver ran up John's spine and the next second a line of spikes sprouted violently from Eleven's arms. He sensed it when it was about to happen. The Chief threw his head back to avoid being pierced in the eye through his visor.
John knew that he could command his own armor like that, but he wasn't going to.
Instinct compelled him to act, to fight and destroy his opponent, but something else was pulling him back. He had a brief moment to find Kelly's eyes, her whole stance was tense, she was gripping the combat knife so hard that her knuckles were white. Fred and Linda were managing to drive the scientists and technicians out of the bay, keeping themselves busy since they were cut out of the fight.
Curious thing that Fred hadn't overruled any command yet. The Lieutenant could have ordered Kelly and Linda to aid if he wanted so, but instead he chose to trust John's judgment, whatever it was.
John managed to disentangle his own arms from Eleven's grasp but there was no way to escape; the other man caught the Master Chief by the elbow again and lifted him up as if the SPARTAN was weightless. John flew across the bay by the second time and impacted face first on the main engine of a Pelican. The aircraft jumped to one side and then landed on her four legs again with a whine of twisted metal and a loud thud that shook the entire bay, small explosions and a rain of sparks bursting from its side. John tried to get out but he was buried deep in the messy hole he had pierced through the turbine, the sensors of his armor noticed fire nearby.
He was pulled out of the debris of the half-busted aircraft and again, he flew.
Now, the situation was becoming annoying.
John collapsed against the tire of the Mammoth and landed on what was left of the destroyed Warthog, flattening the vehicle a little more. He jumped off with his thrusters and fell on his feet, still unharmed. Eleven sprouted another blade from his left arm and moved on passing by a pile of crates. A Marine who was crouching behind the crates stepped forward, aiming his battle rifle up against the attacker's head. The man armored in red and black stopped, not amused.
"Want to keep those arms?" Eleven hissed, looking at the brave Marine over his shoulder. "Then don't you fucking dare. Any bullet will ricochet right through your head anyway, I'll make sure of that too."
The man hesitated at first but slowly dropped the rifle and took a few steps back.
Then, Eleven turned towards John.
They looked at each other for a few stretching seconds, a burst of sparks exploded from the damaged Pelican bathing them both in shimmering yellow lights.
"You should've come to me first about this, John. Why didn't you?" he said.
John bothered in answering, at least: "I'm trying to keep all of you safe."
"By making the wrong choices? How unlike you."
The HARPY reabsorbed both blades and Eleven just stood there, quiet. John still couldn't see him on his HUD, the sensors said there was nothing there.
"What do you mean?" John tried, carefully.
"You stubborn ass! She is your shield and I am your sword! You will never make it through the Fortress without us."
The alluded SPARTAN caught his breath when he heard those words.
'Cortana.' he thought, remembering her brave smile for a millisecond.
Light and pain flooded his brain as his implants reacted against the memories that ran fast through his mind, faster than ever, causing him a pulsing sensation on the back of his head. The armor shivered all over his body, vibrating against his skin.
"You are not ready for her." Eleven hissed. "She will tear you apart."
He attacked immediately and knocked the SPARTAN off his feet, sending him to fly again. The Master Chief crashed on the gratings and thumped back towards the open bay doors, to an empty free-fall as high as the spaceport itself. John threw his hands to the floor and the gauntlets shifted into claws that screeched against the thick gratings, but finally held. He stood up quickly and jumped back to avoid a big knife that passed right in front of his visor, aimed towards his shoulder joint.
The Chief rolled to the side and eluded another seven quick stabs that rapped over the gratings, he pushed himself up and landed on his heels, still falling back. Instinct kicked in and he hit Eleven's hands four times, driving the knifes away.
He should have smashed Eleven's head with his fists by now, but...
"STOP!" a female voice rang through the comms. "STOP THIS NONSENSE!"
John's head immediately shot towards her, Cortana had entered the landing bay running, protected by her own armor. His pulse spiked when he realized that Eleven wasn't trying to stab him anymore, for he was a black and red blur moving lightning fast towards the woman. She ducked the attack and shot a knee towards his head, hitting Eleven on the faceplate. He fell back and rolled a few meters but stood up as if nothing had happened, a sharp sword sprouted from his right arm again.
"ELEVEN, STOP!" Cortana yelled, weapons already in hand. "IT'S ENOUGH!"
"I'm sorry, Cortana." he answered, breathing heavily. "I really do."
The Master Chief ran, fire of anger blazing through his veins. If Eleven managed to hurt Cortana, he would kill him.
When the siblings crashed again, a third shadow jumped in and grabbed Eleven by the handles on the back of his armor, whirling him around and slamming him face first on the gratings. The impact shook the floor and dented the gratings inwards, tearing a hole through it. Smoke poured out of the hole and Eleven disappeared from sight. John stopped dead ten feet before reaching ground zero, trying to identify this third subject. Cortana took a step back, hands separated from her armored body.
A general gasp of surprise flowed through Majestic's TEAMCOM.
"Who the hell is that?" asked Hoya, nervous. "The breast tag says 'Scylding', does it ring any bells to you?"
"Never heard of him." said Thorne.
"Her." corrected Grant. "It's a woman, you dumbasses."
"My type of woman, alright." commented Madsen, a smirk danced on his lips.
A seven-feet-tall figure clad in grey and fluorescent-green armor stood above the hole and bent down to pull Eleven out of it, then threw him on the air and discharged a powerful kick on his gut, sending the man to fly to the other end of the bay like a sports ball. The main cannon of a Scorpion tank stopped him and Eleven crashed on top of the vehicle, falling hard on his back.
It didn't stop her, the recently arrived SPARTAN raced towards the tank.
"Master Chief, please stand down." the familiar voice rang on John's comms. "I'll take it from here."
He actually didn't do anything besides standing between Cortana and everything else not only because he recognized the voice but because he wasn't reading her on his HUD either. Who else had access to a HARPY armor? Nobody that he knew, the whole project was highly classified. But the voice...
"Sigrid?" he called, trying not to sound too surprised.
There was no answer, she was already climbing up the Scorpion tank and had Eleven grabbed by the neck. The SPARTAN lifted the man up in the air and swung him over the edge of the vehicle, like a rag doll, red shields flaring and failing at last.
"You are currently violating my alpha priority directive." she spoke out loud for everyone else to hear. "You are attacking my primary asset, Master Chief Petty Officer SPARTAN-117."
"What the...?" Eleven's voice was a muffled murmur.
"My protocol states clearly that I ought to seize all possible threats to SPARTAN-117 and his team by neutralizing them as effectively as possible." her grip on his neck tightened. "This means, you die. You are far too dangerous to be left alive."
The woman jumped off the tank and slammed Eleven on the ground again, flat on his back. The sound of his choked coughing exploded on the general comm network and John clenched his jaw. With the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Fred and Kelly moving stealthily forward, pistols in hand. So, Fred had overruled him at last.
The Chief couldn't blame him.
"SIGRID, NO! LET HIM GO!" another familiar voice invaded the channels.
A new blur of motion stormed straight from the bay doors and dashed across the area, jumping over parked vehicles and stacked crates. This new SPARTAN in grey and orange armor rammed on the other one and knocked her down, they rolled together a few meters as he sneaked an arm around her neck, pulling her away from Eleven. They struggled and struggled until the female figure imposed under the male and placed both boots on his chest, kicking him back. The man impacted hard on the side of the tank and collapsed to the floor.
The female SPARTAN stood again and returned to Eleven, who was crouching on his knees, still coughing and trembling.
She sprouted a very thin and sharp black spike from her wrist.
What happened then was really quick, or at least that was how the few remaining civilians felt about the events. The Master Chief fell back to Cortana, she was moving in with the rest of Blue Team in a diamond formation. Majestic and Bravo acknowledged his order when John moved a fist in the air, commanding them to deploy and close the perimeter. All teams drew a semi-circle approaching the tank at the far end of the bay, where the battle was still going on.
"Suppressive fire, on my mark only." he whispered.
"Chief, listen to me." started Cortana, and she ran closer to him.
"You should be in bed." John growled, after switching channels. Kelly and Linda stepped on each side of him, leveling their guns. "And now you have a lot of explaining to do, too."
"John, no; wait! It's not what you-!"
He closed the channel and reached for his sidearm too, although it wasn't loaded with the proper bullets. Nearby the Scorpion tank, Subject Eleven stood up lightning-fast and used his arm to divert the blade heading straight to his neck, thrusting his free arm forward. His own sword sunk through the gray and fluorescent-green figure right in the gut but she didn't even stumble. That's when things got a little weird.
The SPARTAN in grey and orange sprinted again into the fight, he was received by a boot in his face when the woman twisted her body in a rather unnatural angle and hit him, her faceplate still fixed on Eleven's. The man recoiled. However, either she was slow or Eleven was expecting the distraction, because he smacked her broadside with an arm now turned into a bludgeon, an electric shock caught her along with the blunt force of the strike. Something cracked, like bone, and there was a strangled cry of pain.
What happened then was even weirder.
The woman disintegrated. She just fell apart in very small pieces, like a balloon full of sand exploding and spreading its contents in a single direction consequent with the force of trauma. A larger rectangular object, solid, fell to the ground with the rest of her ashes and rolled until it finally stopped, the black sand-like material filtered down through the gratings.
"The fuck is that?" mouthed Madsen, freaked out. "WHAT THE FUCK?"
"Shut up, Madsen!" ordered Lieutenant Suzuka, from the other side of the circle.
"Everybody, stand down! Hold your fire!" Captain Lasky roared in the general frequency, he and Commander Palmer had entered the bay riding a Mongoose. Lasky jumped out of the vehicle and broke the defensive circle but Kelly laid a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back, immediately. "What is this madness?"
"That is still unclear, sir." answered Fred, coldly. "Please, remain behind us."
"Master Chief? Cortana? Anyone?"
"As Blue Three said, it's still unclear, Captain."
"Master Chief, sir, permission to open fire? That thing is moving!" yelled Hoya, even more freaked out than Madsen.
Every head shot back to the fight scenario, to see how the mass of ashes piled up over itself, pouring out through the gratings from the depths of the deck and rising, as if it were alive. In a spine-chilling sequence that lasted less than twenty seconds, the mass rearranged itself into a seven-feet-tall human-like figure again and adopted once more the bulk and distinctive shape of a MJOLNIR-GEN2 armor, marked with fluorescent-green stripes. A loud, reptilian hiss flooded the comms, every single frequency.
The sound of several safety locks going off rippled in unison.
"NO, DON'T SHOOT AT HER!" the other male voice said, from the tank.
The other SPARTAN, also someone no sensor could detect, sprinted forward and tackled the woman with impressive strength before she could jump over Subject Eleven for the third time (Eleven was crawling back, holding his right arm close to his chest). They fell together and even as she struggled again to get him off her, the man imposed this time and grabbed her helmet with both hands.
His fingers melted over the helmet, fusing themselves with the hard surface.
The woman started shaking, her limbs twisting and trembling in unnatural ways; then she lost control of her arms and legs and her back arched in a seemingly painful convulsion accompanied by a deep screech, like a bad radio signal.
John winced, the sound pierced through his brain and made him clench his teeth.
"STOP IT, DAMMIT!" the man in grey and orange yelled out loud, his voice was very familiar to everyone. "JUST STOP! YOU BLEW OUR COVER ALREADY!"
Lasky was the one to frown and caught his breath:
"Oh, no." he murmured, Palmer crossed an arm before him when he tried to take a step forward. "Roland, what have you done?"
"Roland?" spat Palmer, stunned.
And as suddenly as it all had started, it also ended. The female SPARTAN in gray and fluorescent-green stopped moving and fell limply to the floor, the man retrieved his hands and stood up, crawling back. The circle around that half of the busted tank closed even more as the Captain and the Master Chief strode forward, Palmer guarding Lasky's life with her own.
The man standing before them, whose breast tag read 'BEAMONT', threw both arms up and kneeled down, yielding.
"I can explain." he said, and he sounded really, really scared.
SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
STRATEGIC COMMAND AISLE, BRIDGE
00:13 AM standard time
"He had a psychotic break." Dr. Quinn said, her voice sounded grim. "I gave him a strong dose of oral antipsychotics but still, Captain, Subject Eleven as he is now is a threat to himself and everyone around. He keeps saying that the Master Chief is making a mistake and that she will never let them in. His right arm is also broken but he won't let me treat the wound or sedate him since we can't separate him from that damn armor. The Faraday cage seems to hold him in place and calm him down for now, I suggest you keep him under custody in there for the time being." she pointed at a large screen in which several graphics appeared, results of medical scans. "His neural activity is erratic, this gets me really worried. But to find out what caused this break I'll need to perform more tests. This doesn't look good and I can't guarantee that these events aren't side-effects of his… creation, sort of speaking."
John felt a pinch of anguish inside his chest. 'Cortana' he thought.
His eyes fell on her petite figure for a sec, she was still in armor, head uncovered. Her skin looked very pale but she was standing firm and hugging herself, too far away for the Chief to see how her eyes were watering. He could feel how she trembled, which made him more uneasy. Blue Team, along with Majestic and Bravo were reunited in the next room, waiting to be debriefed about what just happened.
"Can he talk?" the Master Chief asked, after a short moment of silence.
The Doctor nodded. "He is lucid, yes."
"Captain, I'd like to have a word with Eleven."
Lasky's eyes opened wide, unfortunately he was more annoyed than surprised. The Captain was propped against a console, arms crossed and brow furrowed until John spoke to him.
"And what for?"
"He said I cannot get through the Fortress without him or Cortana. I want to know what he means."
"What if he's lying just because he doesn't want to be left behind?"
"I don't think he's lying, and besides, he's been on the Fortress before." John stood very still, almost defiant. "And I need him to be stable enough to train us, sir."
Now Lasky dropped his jaw, now not surprised but scandalized.
"Train you? Are you kidding me?"
"If something, we need his expertise in combat."
"We don't have time for training, if I recall correctly."
The Chief tried not to show any hint of annoyance in his voice, he knew that time was against them, he knew that alright. "With all due respect, sir, I clearly stated in my brief for operation OVERKILL that I intended to have Subject Eleven running me and Blue Team through an intensive training in preparation for the mission. But now the tide has taken a far more interesting turn."
Lasky detached himself from the console and stood before the SPARTAN.
"Master Chief, I'm not following you."
John eased his tone. "Subject Eleven is a rabid dog. We can't control him, but we can point him in the right direction and set him loose. Just like with Sigrid. We have a secret weapon right there, something the Rampant Spike isn't expecting."
He let the words sink for a moment...
"You mean Sigrid and Roland's... bodies, or whatever those things are?"
"Exactly."
"You want all of them in your roster now? Including Cortana?"
"Yes."
Lasky was speechless again. Until he found his sanity and snapped:
"No. That's far too dangerous." he growled, almost too irritated for a man of his height. "I still have to make an official report, we are not even back in space and shit is already hitting the fan. I have a situation to control to keep ONI from coming here and storm our asses."
"I am with the Master Chief. It's actually pretty clever, sir." mused Palmer, from her dark corner of the aisle. "That way, you don't even have to file a proper report on what happened today."
Lasky looked at her as if he couldn't recognize her face.
"I'm not sure if all of you understand the position I'm in right now." he said.
"Well, we do have a little bit of a freehand, don't we?"
"That freehand will come to an end eventually, Commander. This is too risky."
There was silence for a while. Palmer was implying that the Captain should keep everything under the carpet and maybe the operation will make the rest of the evidence disappear, which was a disgusting idea but a possibility. It was disturbingly obvious for everyone and it felt incredibly disrespectful towards Cortana. She didn't speak a single word neither moved during the whole intermission, she was oddly still and her general posture had the Chief really worried. He made a mental note to catch a minute and talk to her later.
Lasky sighed, in the end, and shook his head.
"Alright, everyone dismissed. I will inform you of my decision at 0800, I need to think carefully about this."
He saluted and John responded, Cortana left the room before the SPARTAN could stop her and when the door closed after the Doctor, Sarah Palmer closed in and dropped a hand over the Captain's shoulder.
"Don't you find it a little odd that after this incredibly noisy mess we're still here?" she commented, calmly, looking through the double-shielded-glass window into the main landing bay. "And we still have our heads."
"Yes. ONI should've stepped in by now." Lasky replied, in the same tone.
"There's no way Parangosky doesn't know about this, with Osman in coma she is the biggest snake on the nest."
"Section-III want us to move forward. They wants us to find the Fortress."
"Now it might be a good time to get my own counterop ready, Captain.."
"I couldn't agree more, Commander."
"And what do we do with the other business?"
"They stay in lockdown until we figure something out. The Infinity isn't crippled without Roland here, the other dumb AIs can manage. The mission is our top priority now and if Glassman says Sigrid and Roland will be contained where they are right now, that's enough."
Palmer saluted again and aimed for the door, to leave.
But before crossing the threshold into the hallway, she turned back, serious.
"I know it sounds crazy if I say it, but I really think the Chief just gave us a great solution to our problems, right there. Just think about it, Tom. Good night."
DATE NOT RECORDED
LOCATION NOT RECORDED
standard time not recorded
She was imprisoned inside a box. Sigrid never considered the possibility of being limited, or at least, her concept of 'limited' was more about calculations per nanosecond rather than physical space to move. When you were able to walk by yourself, to touch and smell, to see and hear with your own eyes and ears instead of processing thousands of distant cameras' feeds, being literally and figuratively trapped was more suffocating than running out of RAM. After a quick systems check, she related her current status to an anxiety attack.
She was panicking.
There was no sound inside the cage. Nothing to see beyond gray walls, nowhere to go further than nine squared meters of blank space, not even a chair to sit or a camera lens to stare at. Nothing interesting to touch. No other scent aside from a trace of some chlorine-based disinfectant used to keep the place clean. Even the air tasted of chlorine and she found it disgusting.
The AI adopted a form that she considered harmless, the humans certainly didn't understand her reasoning. A seven-feet-tall naked human female with broad shoulders, strong hips and well-defined muscle on arms and legs, coated in skin that looked like polished black plastic, wasn't exactly reassuring. But this was the form she had chosen to show, and she was going to maintain it.
She wondered when they would get her out. Would they get her out, at all?
She should have listened to Roland.
Sigrid checked the status bars on her chest, the battery's display. 87% charge. She was still safe. That battery should last for weeks, and it wasn't even the best model she could get. If she could get her hands on the power source of a MJOLNIR-GEN2, then she'd be able to move freely for years.
Stupid Roland.
He wasted his opportunity, and ruined hers.
At least, the Master Chief was left unharmed. Sigrid was desperate to know what happened after Roland deactivated her, but every time she broadcasted in search for any link to tap in, the responses came back empty. She knew that the responses will always come back empty, but she kept trying every thirty seconds.
She was trapped, and she was starting to lose her mind.
SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
ENGINEERING DECK
1:45 AM standard time
"You deliberately hid information and activities from your commanding officers, Roland."
The Captain was very much aware of how dangerous could it be to remain in the same room as this... creature (he couldn't be sure that it was actually Roland, the AI he knew and trusted), but there he was. To be completely honest, the little room was kind of claustrophobic and grey, almost too gray to function. Against Sarah's advice, against Dr. Glassman's warnings, Lasky still went in and faced Roland. He was in there because Cortana had the last word, because she told him that no harm would come to him, that this thing that looked like a human made of black plastic was still Roland.
She couldn't guarantee his safety, but she said he could reason with the being.
And for some weird reason, Lasky chose to trust her above everyone else.
The embodied Roland dipped his head, expressing guilt.
"I only proceeded under insurance that nobody would be hurt, sir."
"I'm still trying to understand what's going on, and now I have a Warthog shred to pieces, a Pelican that can't fly because the Master Chief crashed on one of the engines and destroyed it, structural damages to the Infinity itself and a Scorpion tank that lost its main cannon. Who will pay for that, and how do we account this for without explaining what caused the damages?"
"Equipment is retrievable and replaceable, sir. Human lives aren't. I can assure you that Sigrid and I kept that in mind all the time."
"And the paperwork..."
"I can handle that." insisted Roland, cutting off the Captain in mid-sentence. The AI leaned in, eager to make his point. "Sir, I can handle all of this. You just have to say yes and look the other way."
Lasky frowned even more. He didn't like the implications of that.
If Roland was already acting like this, where would this free-will behavior end up? If he could escape the physical limitations of the ship's network and now he had a body to move around, what else would he do? Not that being limited to the ship wasn't already dangerous enough, Roland could murder everyone in the Infinity if he wanted so, he had to unseal the landing bays and open all the airlocks and that would be just the easy, quick way.
A shiver ran up the Captain's spine.
What was he supposed to do with this? He had two rogue AIs and he should hand them over to ONI. That was protocol. He could request an immediate decommission under charges of early stages of rampancy. But that would be wrong, because Roland and Sigrid weren't rampant. Cortana had explained that much, and even when Lasky wasn't a scientist, he understood what happened to them.
He couldn't say he wasn't impressed (scared to death too, but impressed).
And there was also the Master Chief's offer.
Now he had a lot to think about, that was for sure.
SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
S-DECK RECREATIONAL AISLE
2:33 AM standard time
John couldn't sleep.
Cortana didn't want to talk to him, for some reason. She left the meeting room and ignored his attempts to communicate, leaving him alone to face his own demons on the hallway. Now he couldn't sleep and he had nothing better to do than to go over his plan over and over again, since he was off duty; only to convince himself a little more with every reading that he needed to speak with Eleven.
Eleven had been right. He had information that they needed.
In a gesture quite improper of him, John propped a boot over the table and leaned back in the chair, blowing off a very deep sigh.
Kelly stepped in the small resting room, ducking the door's frame. She was in her armor but didn't carry any important guns other than her standard issue sidearm and her fists; her whole stance stiffened when she saw him there, in training uniform. Either she wasn't expecting to find him, or she was and his mere sight was more troubling that what she had anticipated.
"Good evening, sir. Shouldn't you be resting?"
"Couldn't sleep." he replied, leaving the battle-scarred tac-pad on the table.
"Any news on today's events?"
"Nothing much. I have a meeting with the Captain at 0800, then Blue Team will have the big mission brief. It all depends on the meeting."
She looked down, shifting her weight from one leg to the other.
"What is it, Kelly?" the Chief asked, he would recognize that sign of impatience anywhere, especially on her.
"Permission to speak freely, sir?"
"Go ahead."
"What's wrong, John?"
"Elaborate." he replied, dryly.
"Fred has this feeling. It's bugging him enough to bug me and Linda. Even more after what we saw earlier today at the landing bay, I must say."
"And you got the shortest straw."
"Something like that."
"What makes you think something is wrong?"
"You don't just call for aid."
"I know when I'm being overrun and in need of backup."
Evasive answers? That was new. Kelly placed a hand on her hip, calmly.
"Bullshit." she spat, her voice sounded soft and caring.
Kelly knew very well that she had absolutely no need to raise her voice.
Neither had he, John was willing to give her a proper answer:
"The three of you are the only people I can truly rely on to finish this if I fail." he murmured, staring at the roof over their heads.
Kelly gave him a look that pretty much meant that she wasn't pleased to confirm Fred's bugs. She didn't know what to think now. John wasn't the kind of man that would openly admit that he wasn't sure of accomplishing anything, he was the most positive-minded person she knew, the one that always kept the team moving, focused and strong. He was their beacon in a sea of fire.
She didn't know what to do with a leader who couldn't trust himself at this point.
"Is it that bad?" she said, and pressed her lips on a tight line.
"It's bad enough."
For a brief moment all that there was between them was silence.
The SPARTAN stood straight when the Chief raised from his chair to salute her. She answered respectfully, acknowledging that she was being dismissed. It made her all the more curious about what was going on.
"You're different, John." Kelly added, she didn't turn away to leave. "I don't know what it is, but you are different."
John was the one to abandon the room, instead.
TO BE CONTINUED
Damn, this was another LONG chapter that took me forever. I couldn't give it to my beta for proofreading, so if you found any mistakes, my bad. Let's leave it like that. A LOT OF THINGS happened! Wow. I bet you have a lot of things to say too, go ahead and say them! :) We're soooo fucked! Eleven is fucked, Sigrid and Roland are fucked, everyone is fucked!
Kat; well, today we didn't have much fluff to begin with, but I promise we will still have a chance of some smexy fun incoming, we haven't seen the end of the Chief's love for his precious Cortana yet :P Thanks for being here, darling! -hugs-
RandomGUy; Charley is doing okay, I still have a surprise in storage for her -evil laugh- and there you go, you had your fight. Things went off the rails really quickly, didn't they? Don't worry, Blue Team is here to back up the Chief and that's what they will do, have hope in our heroes :)
Guest; Poor Cortana, she really needed to pee xD more like because he's wired like that, John and Cortana need to keep their thing secret because it's against regulation, sort of speaking. Soon we will have a firsthand meeting between Blue and her, you will see :) -hugs-
Nico; I'm glad you like the addition of Blue Team, I can't wait to see them in the games, I already love them too much -hugs- thanks for stopping by!
Rory; same here, I don't know what will Halo 5 bring us and honestly I'm tired of making theories. I want to have faith, nonetheless. Thanks for your support, as always, the day of the answers is almost here :)
Make sure you don't miss next chapter because the Infinity is going back to SPACE and beyond! Be here next Sunday and please, please, please, leave your feedback!