RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
Hey there! Sorry for the delay, I've been having a rough couple of weeks so I had little time to write, but still I made it to post on Sunday, as always. The story has only a handful of chapters left, so enjoy :) these last episodes will be the hardest to manage, stay strong with me!
33. SHADOW RECRUIT
(I finished this barely minutes before posting, sorry if there are any mistakes)
PROBABLY SEPTEMBER 16TH, 2558
LOCATION: FORERUNNER DREADNOUGHT FIRELIGHT
standard time unknown
Something had happened.
She wasn't sure of what (the moments of clarity were more diluted every time) but it was something big. She trusted the numbers, so she wasn't really worried about that part. The numbers were safe, they were reliable as long as she played nice with them.
The numbers said they were in the right place and that the time was also right.
Then why was everyone so upset?
Subject Two stood close to the bridge's entrance. There were no shadows inside the ship, so technically there was no place to hide if she wanted to listen without being adverted. She didn't understand Sangheili anyway, but Halsey was having a heated argument with the Shipmaster. She pressed her body closer to the wall, minding her arm. This ship was different from the one she had been living in for the past few days; it was brighter, warmer and it looked a lot better, with shimmering turquoise lights here and there, a system easy to access and a lot of calculations to amuse herself. It was also easier to operate, like breathing. But despite her silent confidence, Dr. Halsey didn't seem to be that impressed or content with the current situation.
More angry voices shouting, Sangheili and human with equal strength.
Two helped her get where she wanted to go, why was Halsey so mad?
She backed away and hid her small, trembling frame behind a pillar, sensing the ship's thoughts through the palm of her unharmed hand.
They found the better ship, they made the right calculations and they crossed the great gates. Sure, they also had lost around half of the ship's crew doing so (some of them lost the top half, others lost the lower half, the chaos was very noisy) but Halsey knew that the numbers would take what they deemed as theirs, that the ship was better but it didn't mean there would be no consequences after ripping the space open the way they did. She tried to warn Halsey about the missing equation, but the Doctor wouldn't listen (or she didn't understand, Two wasn't very good with words).
They were in a hurry, apparently.
Now she had taken Halsey and her tall and scary saurian friends to that place, the place Eleven made her swear she would never go back.
Subject Two didn't do it entirely against her will, she was tempted by the numbers and couldn't help it; Halsey gave her a crystal with many formulas and she spent the rest of that day cracking them. It was so fun to solve the equations. She was very happy. But the mere moment she returned the crystal with the problem solved back into to Halsey's hand, she knew it would get bad. This Catherine was as pushy as the other Catherine, if not even more. She wanted to go to that place more than anything, she wanted both the Absolute Record and the Fortress; maybe she craved for the Fortress the most.
Two was terrified. She knew that the others would be there. She was afraid of the others. Well, Four, Five and Six were nice to her, Eight pretended she didn't exist at all and Ten was most of the time too busy to care about anything else besides reading the millions of languages she could reach, but Seven and Nine...
Seven and Nine were the worst. Especially Seven.
Seven was really scary, she was always angry and she had this smile.
It was the very same smile they all used to draw on their lips whenever they had a happy thought about John, but Seven's smile was tainted with bad omens. Seven didn't mean well for John. Seven always said he was the cause of their misery, that they would never be complete again because he was too weak to do what was required.
Three was gone. It made her really sad. Three had been nice to them, at least when they were close to one another.
To avoid further conflict, Eleven helped her escape and made her promise that she would never lead anyone to get where it all began, and Two wasn't planning to do that. First, there was the Fortress, then there was the Bridge and finally, the Inner Chambers. She knew the way, the safe way, but she wasn't telling. Her broken arm still hurt and she didn't want to see Seven again.
She was certain that Seven would be there.
And she was planning something bad, for that was all Seven was capable of.
SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS, OFFICER'S DECK
05:20 AM standard time
"You are sure about this." the Captain said quietly.
The SPARTAN before him nodded once, the iridescent faceplate gave nothing away except for silent commitment. Lasky still had his doubts about the plan but since Subject Eleven had passed with flying colors all the psych evaluations and basic med-scans, there was only distrust holding back the decision.
None of them had slept well, the Captain less than four hours and the SPARTAN barely forty-five minutes. There was just too much electricity in the air, enough to keep the nerves on edge. The Master Chief's 'intensive training' schedule was due to last less than fifteen hours, and it would be more like a very prolonged brief rather than an actual exercise, although a live-fire exercise was scheduled at the end of the day. That wasn't a comfortable thought either.
Fate was forcing his hand, perhaps. Lasky sighed deeply.
"Fine, it's your call, Master Chief. You can have him. But Subject Eleven will be handcuffed all the time and yours and your team's weapons must be loaded with anti-HARPY piercing rounds by default. He refuses to disengage his armor, so the meeting will be held in a secured room, and only Blue Team, Cortana and Commander Palmer will be attending. I want everyone armored as much as armed, you and your team have permission to eliminate the target if the situation goes South. There will be no record of this, not even a second of audio. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't think this is the better course of action, frankly."
"I understand your concerns."
"Yeah, well, I don't understand why you changed your mind about the operation, either. I mean, using Sigrid in her current state is somewhat beyond sane and yet makes some sense, we have to do something about her and Roland anyway. But taking Cortana and Eleven, after you decided... what happened?"
"I reconsidered it. As they are, Cortana, Eleven and Twelve are high-importance assets and they mustn't fall in the wrong hands. It's a well-known protocol, sir, and I am willing to do what is needed."
Lasky frowned, narrowing his eyes as well.
"You prefer to have her die with you before ONI could take her?" he said, slowly.
The Master Chief held position, eerily still. "Lord Hood was clear about what to do in the event of third-party intervention."
'That's not what I asked you.' the Captain thought, mildly irritated. Lord Hood's orders were to make the assets disappear, of course he wasn't implying killing them but it would have to be a combined effort between the Infinity's brass and the Chief Medical Officer. Instead, he said out loud the next thing he thought. "Yes, I suppose the best way to get rid of them would be getting rid of the evidence in the first place. Because your extraction plan seems a little... tight, sort of speaking. It would take an immense amount of timing, if not luck, to pull together what you are planning."
"We will make it." the SPARTAN's voice was reassuring, confident.
"Why would you rather ask Eleven about this instead of Cortana?
The Chief didn't hesitate: "I have questions for her too, sir."
SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY DOCKED IN RIO DE JANEIRO
ENGINE ROOM
7:54 AM standard time
Still wearing her armor, Cortana looked at the time on her tac-pad.
Everything seemed to be in order, the balancing equation coupled nicely with the rest of the calculations. The repairs were finished against the clock, every piece of scrap tech retrieved from the Wanderer (the Forerunner Dreadnought) was already in sync with the hybrid systems and the crystalline array of the energy supercore seemed stable too. So far, so good. She pressed the data-pad against her breastplate and looked down below the guardrail, to the massive engines.
The crystalline array was a stabilizing structure. Set in an hexagon-shaped display over a massive cooling system around the main casket, six pillars of transparent glass, ten feet tall, filtered the raw energy deflecting it from one to the other in crisscrossed paths until it finally exited from a manifold on top of the supercore, steadily. A cyan beam flowed up into a transformer, a bulky device with gigantic cooling turbines which later redirected the power straight towards the Infinity's hybrid engines. There was a permanent, thick fog down there, liquid nitrogen flowed through the pipes and impacted against white-hot materials in a rate of gallons per second. Momentarily, the transformer was decomposing power to standard values; however, in order to create the slip-space fracture, the device would have to be removed. Power had to flow raw straight from the supercore, and that would be quite a feat.
Then, the fireworks would come.
It had to work. Cortana clutched at the data pad with trembling fingers.
"Attention, ladies and gentlemen." said the dumb AI currently in charge, her deep but feminine voice echoed in every piece of metal and polymer, reaching every corner of the enormous room. "All personnel, please find the nearest safety post and strap on. T-minus five minutes, thirty six seconds to begin lift-off. The Captain would like to thank you all for your efforts up to date, keep up that good work, crew."
Cortana sighed, thinking about how fake that AI sounded giving a compliment, and spread her feet. The armored boots hissed and shifted slightly, she was now locked to the gratings.
"Figured you'd be here."
Her armor didn't warn her about his presence, naturally, but Cortana didn't fret.
Since she wasn't wearing the helmet, the woman looked over her shoulder to find the Master Chief's familiar faceplate, he was standing about a yard behind her. Then, he approached and stood by her left side, non-threateningly.
"Are you here to scold me for skipping Dr. Quinn's schedule?" she asked.
"Amongst other things."
"I don't need the schedule anymore, read this and cry." Cortana leveled her data-pad and tapped on the surface to send a file towards the Chief's HUD. "Results from this morning. I'm perfectly fine, Dr. Quinn doesn't know if she has to be furious about it or just confused."
He stood still for less than two minutes, reading.
"The armor." John whispered, afterwards. "It healed you. As it first healed your memory, as it healed me when Seven almost cut my arms off. That's why Eleven refuses to disengage his armor, it's mending his broken arm."
"Most likely. He knows more than what he says, anyway."
"Cortana..."
"How are Roland and Sigrid doing?" she asked, after clearing her throat.
The woman looked at the enormous engines faking interest. The electromagnetic interference was scrambling their comms so nobody would hear their conversation, but what he had to say (if John was willing to say it, that is) she wasn't ready to hear it. Her memory was still quite fresh and sore with the idea of using Eleven as an attack dog, sending him to his death. It hurt because in the same line of thought, the concept could be applied to her own existence and although she knew that John just said it to ease the Captain's mind, it was shocking to hear it. He wouldn't do that to her, right?
She peeked at John with the corner of her eye, uncomfortable.
The Master Chief kept the silence a few seconds, then answered: "Still in solitary lockdown."
"This is unfair, they did nothing wrong. The Captain knows it."
"Cortana, we need to talk."
She sighed. "I know."
End of the line. Cortana pressed her lips together and frowned. Two technicians walked behind them and went for the elevator, the engine room was about to be cleared. She thought of it and the HARPY shifted around her shoulders building the helmet around her head, and once the inner pressure of the suit stabilized, she wrapped her hand on John's wrist to establish a stronger comm link. She felt the warm presence of his conscience brushing oh so gently against hers; the connection was intimate and comfortable, almost like sharing the same body, almost like old times. The feeling eased her heartbeats and breaths, synching them with his.
"What's going on?" he asked, through the link. "You've been avoiding me."
"I'm afraid, John." she murmured, her voice didn't betray her words. "I don't think I've ever felt this way before, it's like... I feel like I'm running across a tunnel, I can see where it ends but the exit keeps getting away from me no matter how fast I run to reach it. I don't know what comes next, and it scares me."
"That's why we have a plan."
"Don't play dumb, Chief. That's not what I mean."
"One thing at a time, Cortana. We can only deal with this right now, we'll handle the next problem when we are set to face it."
"That's not what I mean either."
"Then, what are you trying to say?"
"There's no future, not for you and me, at least. I can't see what comes next."
He didn't answer right away, because he wasn't expecting to hear that.
"Like I said, one thing at a time. We solve this problem now."
"Eleven is losing his mind, I feel the aches too. What if I try to kill you as he did?"
"Eleven also said that, of the twelve subjects, you were the one with the greatest potential. That you were the closest of them all to the former Cortana AI. You will be fine. I will find the way to keep you safe."
She wanted to cry, for some reason.
Cortana blinked fast to prevent the tears, she was certain that he could feel her alteration through the link. Maybe that's why John's head turned slightly towards her, as if he were peeking.
The lights on the room faded and the engines abandoned standby mode as the lift-off sequence started. It was 0800. The electromagnetic interference increased as much as the deafening roar of the turbines, coolant pumps and the engines themselves. All exit doors were now locked in place and the lighting changed from white to amber, the safety protocol was active. John grabbed the guardrail with his free hand.
"What if... she is there?"
The Chief turned to look at her this time, curious. "Who?"
"Cortana. The actual Cortana. What if she exists in that place, complete, waiting for you? Have you thought about that? Because I have. And if there is even a chance that the construct managed to survive and rebuild itself, I don't know what I'm going to do. That is the worst part. It scares me, because I know that you will..."
"Stop."
The floor trembled beneath their feet, a deep rumbling that made Cortana's teeth rattle and suddenly she felt too heavy, her knees protested. Acceleration was kicking in and the HARPY shifted a little to reinforce the inner pressure of the suit.
"You will go to her. Because she is the real thing and I am just a defective copy."
"Cortana, stop."
He unexpectedly broke the link between their hands but before any of them could feel the abandon, John grabbed her by the elbow in a demanding gesture. She gasped, a little startled, and her head turned to face him.
"You are here, with me. You are the real thing."
The Chief let her go a little later, but as the engines kept accelerating and the deep roar grew louder, John's hand moved enough to slide his fingers against hers, the back of their armored gloves brushing each other. It wasn't an accident, and that was as much as he felt he could do. The link was weak but warmer than ever.
She couldn't hold back the tears and this time, she let them flow down her cheeks.
"And I won't lose you again." he promised, more to himself that to her.
SEPTEMBER 17TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY EN ROUTE OUT OF THE SOL SYSTEM
BRIEFING ROOM, S-DECK
1:11 PM standard time
"Tell us everything you know about the Fortress." ordered Commander Palmer.
Linda was leaning back in her chair, right arm propped on the table; her hand was covering the handle of her standard issue pistol, the weapon lying down on its side and her index finger carefully hovering over the trigger, a fresh clip of anti-HARPY ammo just loaded and checked.
The look in her piercing green eyes was calm, almost relaxed, but her finger was ready to take the shot. A very deadly shot.
Subject Eleven was facing the digital board-wall, his head uncovered but the rest of his body still wrapped in angry-red and polished-black armor. At first it didn't seem like he had heard the woman speak, but then he snapped out of it and his eyes recovered lucidity. He nodded and focused on the audience; four armored SPARTANS, his older sister, Cortana, and the Commander, who was also ready to jump into action. The place resembled a classroom, the soldiers were sitting behind adequately sized tables, holding tac-pads and their weapons.
"Where would you like to start, specifically?"
"Layout." that was John, the sound of his voice drew Eleven's attention.
The two men looked at each other, no trace of resentment on their faces.
Eleven leaned into the board-wall and touched it with his shoulder, since both of his hands were locked at the small of his back and his feet had limited mobility. The display activated and through the touch, Eleven transmitted to the holographic projector a complicated schematic, it resembled a map drawn by hand. It was a memory.
"The Fortress is a labyrinth." he started, sluggishly. The drugs were still running through his system despite the HARPY's efforts to clean his blood and fix his broken arm. "It's like a forest-sized data center, it has many directions and things can get pretty weird after a while, time flows differently inside its borders. I got lost in there a few times... it's really tricky."
"How did you make it out?" asked Kelly,
"With some extra help." he answered, his voice a bit lower, then cleared his throat and kept going: "If we make it safely across the Fortress we will find the entrance to the Bridge, it's the middle point. There's where the interesting things happen. It's both a bridge in the traditional sense and in the navy slang, a transition point between the regular Universe into the Domain itself, sort of like a control room. More like a control city, it's smaller than the Fortress but most likely bigger than this ship. If we are bound to find trouble, it certainly will be at the Bridge."
"What kind of trouble?" John again, sharply.
"We'll get to that later, now pay attention." Eleven actually growled, showing off his teeth. Linda's finger twitched over the trigger of the gun. He closed his eyes to take a deep breath and the schematic shifted into a different design, circular and intricate, with a wide blank area right in the middle: "If we make it past the Bridge, the last barrier is to breach the Inner Circle. I really don't know what this thing is, I've never been there because it's sealed, so I don't know what's inside or what happens in there. I just know that I can't get in, at least not in the traditional sense, so I suppose this is a very sensitive spot and that's our final destination. I believe that if we successfully breach the Inner Circle, we will be entering the Domain."
"We won't have to go that far." Cortana crossed her arms, confidently.
"The best location to place the Havoks would be at the Bridge." commented Fred, rubbing his chin in a thoughtful gesture. "That way we can separate the Fortress from the rest of the facility."
"We don't know what anomalies the mere explosion could cause." said Cortana.
"It's still our best shot. We are going there to blow it up in pieces, right?"
John leaned back on his chair, still looking at Eleven: "If the Bridge is the control room, then we have to get Cortana safely there so she can erase the Rampant Spike from the Domain, basically."
Eleven hesitated, but then nodded. "... basically, yes."
Cortana gave her sibling a doubtful look. John frowned a little, he didn't like the way Eleven faltered to give an answer right away, but Kelly was stretching her arms up her head and her long legs under the table:
"Sounds easy." she said. "Too easy. I bet there's a catch."
"There is. Well, sort of. Aside from the fact that I'm sure that there will be trouble waiting for us, turns out that Two, Twelve and I were extracted from the Fortress via slip-space portal, it took our Pelican to a safe destination away from the Fortress itself. So technically I've never seen the Fortress from the outside and I don't know how to get in. It is supposed to be impenetrable, hence its name."
Fred leaned in over the table, now it was his turn to frown.
"Are you serious?"
"Unfortunately." Eleven cleared his throat again. "I don't even know how it looks like. And she doesn't know either."
"That's true." Cortana admitted, lowering her gaze to the floor. "I spent my time at the Bridge, I know my way around and that part, I have it covered. Eleven, Six and Nine were the ones fond of exploring."
"Well, shit." murmured Linda, pursing her lips.
"Set a reconnaissance first." decided John, his arms now crossed. Linda gave him a quick, puzzled look and her eyes went back to the target. "We have to find the Fortress and analyze it. We will find the door and ram our way in until we reach the Bridge. We split up in teams of two and place the Havoks while Cortana does her thing, then we're out. We will set the bombs' timers once we know how much time it took us to find the spot. Straight assault, plain and simple, it has to be fast enough to prevent any backfire and any counterattack."
"How about what he said?" commented Kelly. "Weird time anomalies?"
"I have that part covered too."
The following silence was a little upsetting, to say the least.
"Now the extraction plan makes more sense." snorted Fred, not amused.
"The extraction plan is appropriate." said the Chief. "The Infinity delivers us as close as possible to the Fortress, we deploy via Broadsword and then the Infinity jumps away. We go dark from then on. If we make it out alive, I'm sure we can find our way back to the UNSC controlled space."
"Yeah, how about NO?" Eleven growled. "You're right, Chief, this needs direct, definitive assault; shoot first, ask questions maybe... but this isn't aggressive enough. If I were Seven, I'd be waiting for us with an entire army."
Eleven let his words sink for a moment, looking straight at the Chief's eyes.
One of John's eyebrows twitched lightly. Very lightly. He had thought of that too.
"Why is it that she hasn't showed her ugly face around yet?" Eleven continued, since nobody said anything. "She knows we're coming and she's getting ready to receive us. Look, I trust your gut, but in this particular scenario I know that whatever you're thinking, it falls short. It won't be that easy."
"I wasn't counting on easy." John answered, calmly. "Any suggestions?"
"I'd double the Havoks and the anti-HARPY ammo load right away. I know we'll need them. Which means we need better weapons, I'll oversee the modifications with Dr. Clayton's crew if I'm allowed."
"The extraction plan still doesn't make any sense." mused Fred, serious.
"Like he said, we will still have the Broadsword." Kelly said, trying to bring peace between the combat siblings with a small smile. "That is, if I'm piloting. We know what happens when the Chief is driving."
"It's a damn shame that I destroyed the two slip-space portal generators we had." Cortana sighed. "That way we would have a safe extraction plan, it would be as easy as walking our way out."
"You did well, Seven is in the dark thanks to that."
Cortana looked at John as he said that. Now she was convinced that this was the craziest idea ever, maybe he wasn't thinking straight. Or if he was, she wasn't capable of anticipating his game and that bothered her to no end. She hated not to know what was going on in his head.
"Is that the trouble you meant before?" asked Fred, still a little concerned. They had been over with the briefing on what the Subjects were and the tragic events from the previous month about half an hour ago, it wasn't a fun lecture for anyone in Blue Team. Their overall reaction to Cortana and Eleven themselves was mixed between curiosity and mistrust, and nobody could really blame them. "You think Subject Seven might be building an army of copies like her? Is that what you suggest?"
"I don't think so, I know. I can guarantee it."
"Because you can predict her behavior." added Fred.
"If I had at my disposal the technology to create as many soldiers as I wanted and fuck everything up, I'd take it gladly just for the sake of being a pain in the ass." Eleven looked at the ceiling, annoyed.
"Easy there." snapped Cortana, her voice was soothing.
Her younger sibling licked his lips and nodded, taking another deep breath.
"I'm losing it." he murmured. "I won't be of much use in this state, so please, just listen to me. We have to act quickly. Let me help Dr. Clayton to improve your weapons while I still can."
All the eyes in the room, including the Commander's shifted to look at the Chief.
"Are you sure you can do that?" he asked.
"I know everything about killing, remember?" Eleven cocked an eyebrow. "That includes weaponry and whatnot."
"Fine. Linda, you will be doing most of the sniping. Tell him what you need."
"Yes, sir."
"Kelly and Fred, choose your weapons and do the same."
"Would we have time to test them, afterwards?" asked Fred, cautious.
"I would be heavily disappointed if you didn't." John nodded.
The other two SPARTANS nodded too in sheer agreement. Fred didn't seem very content with the idea of leaving his weapons in the hands of a mentally unstable person, but even as he was technically CO of Blue Team, he accepted John's command without hesitation. His mind was already thinking strategically in order to aid the mission plan as it was, not to overrule it.
Commander Sarah Palmer was quietly propped against the sealed exit door, her attentive eyes darting from one to the other as the people before her spoke. In the few hours she'd been supervising Blue Team's training-brief almost without saying anything, she grew more and more reverent of them. It was somewhat bewildering to watch them, with their minimalist gestures and always composed faces, something in them was built as machines and it was all the more evident in SPARTANS 104, 087 and 058; but they were all made of the same steel and temper, like siblings. She'd never seen this degree of understanding and harmony in a fire-team, ever.
Palmer was amazed, to say the least, but she tried not to show it that much.
"Now, regarding Subject Seven." this time, Kelly took the lead. "How fast do you think she really is?"
SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY, UNDISCLOSED RENDEZVOUS POINT
6:56 AM standard time
"Everything is ready. This is the moment of truth." whispered Cortana.
At the Infinity's bridge, Captain Thomas Lasky gave the order. Green to go.
At the engine room, Dr. Henry Glassman typed the keyword into the system and disconnected the power transformer unit. The room trembled and the fog increased as the liquid nitrogen poured over the boiling machinery. The cyan lighting became really bright, almost blinding.
At the engineering deck, Cortana and a handful of technicians stared hopefully at the multiple screens and consoles before their eyes, the woman was checking as many variables as she could manage at the same time. Temperature increasing, the core and the engines were close to ready. She typed a few commands and with a sliding control, she released more energy from the supercore to the engines in gradual stages. She kept a close look on the graphics, again. If it happened too fast, the machinery could overheat and explode, or suffer a power surge and explode, or fall out of synch and probably explode too. They could end up in pieces, for whatever the reason.
The whole ship shuddered and John, who was at the K-9 quarters at the moment, felt it through his armor.
When the graphics reached the desired values, Cortana typed her access code and entered the destination coordinates. The system worked on them for a few seconds and when she was about to catch her breath, all the screens flared in green. The Infinity's hull shuddered once more and then it all stopped.
Literally, it all stopped.
Cortana saw her stylus detach itself from the console and float in the air, as if the artificial gravity had been disconnected. She turned her head to see, and everyone was quiet. She frowned.
At the bridge, Captain Lasky was the first to acknowledge that something strange was happening. First, all the navigation personnel was very still in their stations, like frozen, but he could perfectly move. He took two steps and the screens of the strategic command aisle went blank, filled with white noise. Tom winced and quickly removed his earpiece, a deep screech was the only audible noise in the main channel. He turned around to look at Sarah, she was as still as a statue.
For Sarah Palmer, however, it was the opposite. She moved and Tom was frozen.
John backed his hand away from Charley's fur when he noticed the dog was rigid with her heavy head lying on his armored thigh, she wasn't even breathing. And there were a lot of rubber balls, reinforced harnesses, collars and other small items floating around him, in very slow motion.
Then, there was a sound like thunder, deep and raspy, artificial.
It moved across the ship, sweeping from bow to stern like a wave, the air vibrated and disintegrated visibly before everyone's eyes they acknowledged the weird stillness of their comrades.
It was there when time bent over itself, space bent over time and reality bent over time and space, physics and logics laid together creating monsters and everything mixed up in a twisted formula; past, present, future, true, false, what if and what not. The space cracked and ripped open, and the ship crossed over this perfect gate, its precious living cargo safe from the tyranny of the numbers by an insubstantial shield, a mathematical formula designed to keep them true as they deconstructed and rebuilt themselves at the other side. The wave crossed the ship scanning the humans' minds, giving them visions that, once the journey had ended, they would never remember. But in the thirty seconds it all lasted, they saw unimaginable things, heard impossible sounds and felt the very essence of ghosts and life on every cell.
It was beyond science, beyond understanding. It was primordial and raw.
At 0659, the UNSC Infinity broke the laws of physics.
At 0700, the UNSC Infinity was somewhere else, somewhere nobody had been in the past hundred thousand years.
PROBABLY SEPTEMBER 18TH, 2558
LOCATION: UNSC INFINITY OUT OF MAPPED SPACE
NAVIGATION AISLE, BRIDGE
7:23 AM standard time
"Sir, we just checked for the fifth time. Nothing." said Ensign Webber.
Captain Lasky turned to look at Cortana and Dr. Glassman, hopeless.
"What is happening?" he asked, impatient. "Did we have a malfunction?"
Glassman pushed his glasses up with his middle finger, nervous.
"Honestly, sir, I don't know. The AIs are reading the stars but so far they couldn't find any recognizable constellations, we have no idea where we are. If I recall correctly, Roland anticipated once that the coordinates leaded somewhere far outside of UNSC mapped space."
"We are not lost in the middle of nowhere, right?" Lasky insisted, stubbornly.
"Well, we are in the middle of nowhere."
"Where is the Fortress, then?"
All eyes looked at Cortana. She was calm but underneath her cool appearance her mind was racing, cold sweat was running down her spine. That was a good question, a very good question. So far all they had were small asteroids adrift in space, a few hundred crewmen and Marines with severe nosebleeds and one or two distant comets, but nothing else, not even a planetary system or lone star on the near vicinity. Nothing inside the Infinity's range of scan.
"Obviously, it isn't here." stated Glassman, as if he was the one to answer.
"No, it is here. It has to be." Cortana inflicted, stubborn. For a short moment, she stood there looking at the tiny stars that filled the screens. Then she took a deep breath, her eyebrows rising: "Just not exactly before our eyes. It's in slip-space. That's why it can't be found, because it isn't in normal space."
"A stationary object in slip-space? That's impossible." Glassman almost snorted.
She turned to her, her blue eyes shined with a defiant blaze:
"If this is Precursor technology, who cares about what's possible and what isn't? They built the Domain. Think about it: this location it's so hard to find because it wasn't part of the Forerunner network to begin with. This installation should've been destroyed when the Halo array was fired for the first time, a hundred thousand of years ago. The Fortress should have died with it, with the Domain... but maybe, just maybe, a small fraction of the Domain survived because of this. If Dr. Halsey somehow got there before us, she might have stumped into the ultimate database, Forerunner and everything else. Absolutely everything. An incomputable amount of information. Any AI in contact with this would go rampant in a matter of minutes."
"... okay, I think you're speculating a little too much."
"Send in a probe. Same coordinates, drop it into slip-space, as deep as possible."
Captain Lasky didn't hesitate. He turned to his Ensigns.
"Deploy the probes, now. Ten of them, use different diving equations. Give them fifteen minutes each."
"Aye-aye, sir!"
Cortana didn't wait for any comment or for Glassman to speak any other of his so-called 'great ideas', she manned the nearest console and tapped in the engineering deck's network to extract files. It would be quite easier if Roland or Sigrid were around. Blood and excitement were boiling in her veins, her head hurt again. Her vision was becoming blurry as the headache increased and then faded like a wave. Her forehead was shinning with sweat, it was great that John wasn't there to see her like this.
She should have stayed in her armor, the HARPY would keep the pain away.
Ensign Webber transmitted to Cortana ten different data feeds from the probes, as each of them fell into slip-space. Six signals were lost within three minutes, the other four remained steady and transmitting for over eight minutes, enough time to perform a complete scan of their surroundings. Probe ten, however, was still diving and it kept doing so for a while.
Nothing. Cortana couldn't see anything but darkness.
Suddenly, probe number ten stopped moving and its feeds changed from no-signal black to an eerie white. No white noise, just pure white screen. When Cortana opened that feed and brought it into the main comms channel, filling all the screens with this empty frame, a distant and muffled rumbling sound became perceptible.
It was the scariest thing she ever heard, it froze her blood. She recognized it.
The visuals shifted slightly as the probe adjusted the visibility with filters, but the video only became grainy and distorted.
"Sir... probe number ten found something. The signal is weak and we might lose it; it seems that there is a massive structure just about a hundred thousand kilometers from our current location. The measurements are tricky, we can't get a good reading, but unless this is some weird slip-space anomaly, it's there. Deep in slip-space, I mean. It doesn't seem to be moving either."
Glassman's glasses fell off his nose, but he was lucky enough to catch them.
"A stationary object in slip-space." he mumbled, astonished.
Cortana grasped the sides of the console so tight that she almost broke a nail.
"That's it." she murmured, mostly to herself. "That sound. That's it."
As shocked as he was, Lasky heard her almost silent words and didn't think twice about his next order: "Seize those equations, Ensign. Everyone, man your stations, we're diving in. This is what we came here for."
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
When the Infinity emerged from the second jump, she bathed in sunlight.
The beauty of a warm, pure white poured through every screen, as it were filtering through the very walls of the ship. At first it was impossible to see anything clearly, not until filter after filter, the advanced perimeter scanners of the Infinity itself cleared the view enough for human eyes to see what was hiding behind this veil of brightness.
Rings of debris, floating adrift around a star.
No, it wasn't a star; it was as vivid as a sun, but whatever this construct was, it was made of pure light and equally brilliant crystalline structures, like intertwined cells. The main configuration, however, was made of layers of light and crystal, some smaller nested amongst some bigger sections, shaped almost like the petals of a flower. At least, Lasky thought it resembled a blooming flower, to him the display was very similar to an open lotus.
It had a peculiar aura of quiet and despair, its mere sight made some hearts sink for absolutely no reason and it lifted up the spirits in others. The silence that fell all over the bridge made it all the more ominous, as if they were in the very presence of a deity, and the deity were smiling back at them. However, the most unnerving detail about the breathtaking sight wasn't the massive structure itself.
It was the fact that, lazily flipping around this stunning installation, there was another Halo.
TO BE CONTINUED
FUCK YEAH, ANOTHER HALO!
HOW MANY OF THOSE FUCKING THINGS WERE BUILT?
WHAT IS THIS HALO DOING FLIPPING AROUND THE FORTRESS?
WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON? I'm so excited. Now the story escalates into the next level and we will see some trigger-warnings here and there, so be careful. I'm not going to fuck with your minds (that's more like Cor Tenebrae's style, I'm not that smart or talented to fuck with other people's minds) but you will see some shit, and the SPARTANS will see some shit too. But more importantly, John will see SOME REAL SHIT. PREPARE.
CMDRKai; I don't play the games, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Rory; you see? And that was nothing, there's more shit about to hit the fan!
RandomGUy; as I calculated, probably I won't have enough time to do something about Eleven and Lieutenant Suzuka, but the idea still stands. Cortana is very worried, I think the Chief didn't consider the possibility of finding the "true" Cortana again, did anyone say DRAMA? :P
Kat; Eleven is losing his shit, poor thing. At this rate I don't know if I will be able to place any more "fun" because we're going deep into mission, but I will not spare in emotional moments, rest assured -hugs-
Nico; hell yeah, I wish I played the games, but I will be satisfied with watching the cutscenes, I'm dying to see Blue Team together and in motion! And the animated series, Fall of Reach. So excited!
Now don't forget about me and leave a little comment, I want to know what you think of this turn of events! And let's meet here again next Sunday, yeah!