RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
Hello there, my dearies! Mama is back! *claps furiously* I was supposed to use the past weeks to refill my spare chapters quota but then Fallout 4 happened -nervous laugh- Enjoy today's episode and don't forget to tell me all your thoughts about it :)
35. RABBIT HOLE
[THARAX SYSTEM SLIP-SPACE SINGULARITY]
[FACILITY SERIAL NUMBER BH0675-09]
[DESIGNATION 'EVERLASTING FORTRESS']
SERVICE LOG ENTRY 060010043554/6643
ECUMENE STANDARD DATE UNREADABLE
ECUMENE STANDARD TIME INCONSISTENT
...
MAIN INSTALLATION MONITOR: 05-001 RESILIENT BIAS
MONITOR STATUS: [ERROR]
IN THE EVENT OF PREDICTED ATTEMPT OF CONTACT
INITIALIZING OUTER HULL SCAN_
...
/SCAN SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED
AUTORIZED USER: RECLAIMER CLASS
ACCESS GRANTED
...
INITIALIZING RECEPTION PROTOCOL
DISENGAGING MAIN ACCESS GATES
CLEARING LANDING ZONE ACCESS SHAFT
GRAVITY FIELD ENABLED
BRIDGE SYSTEM STARTUP IN PROGRESS
ESTIMATED TIME OF ARRIVAL: INCONSISTENT
LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM [ERROR]
WARNING: INNER CHAMBER TEMPERATURE UNREADABLE
MONITOR STATUS: [ERROR]
ACTIVATING BYPASS DIRECTIVE
STANDBY_
...
...
...
WARNING
WARNING
WARNING
DATA CORRUPTION
REDUNDANT ERROR UNKNOWN
SOURCE OF INFECTION UNKNOWN
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ENABLED
CONNECTING TO INSTALLATION 13
[ERROR] CANNOT CONNECT TO INSTALLATION
ERROR CODE: 426/55 NO RESPONSE
MONITOR STATUS: [ERROR]
...
...
...
[THARAX SYSTEM SLIP-SPACE SINGULARITY]
[FACILITY SERIAL NUMBER BH0675-09]
[DESIGNATION 'EVERLASTING FORTRESS']
THIS IS THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE
THIS IS WHERE YOU END AND I BEGIN
COME ON IN, JOHN
I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU_
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
It mattered little.
John reached that conclusion while the Pelican kept falling into the bottomless pit, after the mega-structure opened for them. The windshields only had darkness to display, but it was sort of comforting because it wasn't empty, the humming at the background of his comms kept him calm. All the instruments were dead and the engines themselves had deactivated all of a sudden, yet the Pelican wasn't falling out of control. He wasn't afraid to crash. He could feel in every inch of his skin the pull of gravity, which meant somewhere beneath that darkness there was a solid object large enough to have such effect on the aircraft, say, the ground.
He released the controls, knowing that it was useless to try anything.
The clock on his HUD flickered quickly between the same three numbers, most of the applications were frozen in his peripheral vision so he dismissed them. No way to measure distance or speeds. No North or South. No right or wrong. No dust or stars, nothing. Just this feeling in his stomach which ensured him that at least something still made sense, up was still up and down was still beneath him.
Despite the darkness surrounding him, John felt that he could see everything with shattering clarity now.
It mattered little if it was a trap.
It mattered little whether the extraction plan failed or not.
It mattered little what lied at the end of the track.
It mattered little if he made it out alive.
He was there to end it all.
He was ready.
Without a hint of warning, the consoles lit up and the engines suddenly whined to life again. Acceleration made the Pelican jump and John manned the controls as fast as he could, frowning. A proximity alert flared before his eyes, there was a solid structure beneath them and at the current speed they would crash upon it. Bingo, the pit wasn't bottomless after all. Once the thrusters were activated and the aircraft's speed receded, John realized there was light filtering through the windshields: little flickering bright spots, wandering randomly like fireflies.
The Pelican descended enough for the Chief to detach the Warthog, the vehicle fell on the silvery platform with a loud thud. Next, he maneuvered to land as carefully as he could, not devoid of noise either.
He wasn't counting on getting there undetected, anyway.
John came out of the cockpit as the cargo bay door slowly opened, his team was already on their feet and armed, barrels aiming outside as the ramp went down. Eleven manned one of the Mongooses to take it to ground, while Fred moved the yellow prism-shaped crate that contained the nukes; the rest of the team drew a defensive perimeter around the ramp.
John descended last, carrying two crates of anti-HARPY ammo to distribute.
Cortana started walking away. "I'll look for a terminal."
"You do that." commented Eleven. "I'll keep them safe."
Kelly spared him a dubious look from beneath her faceplate, but said nothing.
"Sigrid, find any frequencies to tap into." ordered the Chief, gravely.
Cortana stopped dead on her tracks and turned around, all heads pointed at the embodied AI with sharp attention. Sigrid just shrugged one shoulder, the barrel of her plasma weapon aiming down.
"I must refuse, Master Chief, and keep my ports closed for the time being. Any external interference I might suffer could have very unwanted consequences, don't you agree?" she answered, carefully.
John stood silent for a few seconds, thinking. Cortana felt his uneasiness.
"Alright." he nodded once. "Everyone, grab extra anti-HARPY magazines on the double, we're out in the open."
The Pelican was parked right in the center of a platform roughly a kilometer wide (maybe more, maybe less, it was hard to tell for some reason), crisscrossed by several paths of thin hard-light bricks whose design resembled something utterly familiar yet of alien nature. A flower, maybe? The ceiling showed only a pitch black hole surrounded by radiance, like a reversed spotlight. The hole started to shrink until there was only waves of these floating objects, the illumination that allowed them to see inside the now cathedral-like environment actually came from above and occasionally it flickered like sunlight through ocean waves.
He didn't know why, but John remembered the ocean and the waves, a beach from a time far back when he was only a kid.
"Keep an eye on those lights." John commented, dryly. "Whatever they are, they move independently from one another."
"Drones, maybe?" wondered Fred. "No, too small to be drones."
"It's just data." Eleven interrupted them, from his post on the Mongoose. "Chunks of information drifting from one server to another. This is a data center. There's nothing to worry about them, trust me."
Linda and Kelly seemed to relax, they both dropped their weapons an inch.
Sigrid drove the other Mongoose down the ramp and parked it beside Eleven's, meanwhile Fred unlocked the yellow crate and extracted the nukes, John quickly sorted out fresh magazines and handed some to Kelly and Linda. Cortana, however, drifted alone close to the center of the structure, an octagonal platform connected to the others by vibrant hard-light gaps. She spun on her heels, slowly, taking in the beauty of the flickering display of lights.
She didn't see any catwalks or bridges (or terminals, for that matter) close by or any place to go other than scout the platform. She dared to look across a transparent hard-light gap and saw nothing but the darkness below. How were they supposed to get out of there and reach the Bridge?
"Eleven, where to now?" she asked through TEAMCOM.
He hesitated at first, but then let out a loud sigh.
"I have no memory of this place, but then again, I'm not surprised."
"I thought you knew your way around here." John snapped, impatient.
"And I thought you weren't counting on easy, Chief."
"We're wasting time."
"What an interesting concept, are we really? We can't tell after all."
"Listen." Kelly stepped up, serious. "You know how to get out of here or not?
"Remember when I said the Fortress was a labyrinth, and that I had some extra help back then? Well, this will take some time."
The SPARTAN shook her head and turned to the Master Chief immediately.
"At least it seems like nobody is home." she pointed out, there was a hint of relief in her voice, but not that much. "I was expecting a warmer welcome after the picture he painted for us."
"Careful what you wish for, Petty Officer." retorted Sigrid. "You might get it."
Just when Sigrid finished her sentence, the ground beneath their feet shifted and the hard-light bridges shut down.
Cortana ran back to the Pelican but when she was about to jump from the circular center to the other platform in which the vehicle was parked, a silver wall erupted from the gap, separating her from the team. John's first instinct was to run towards her, rifle in hand, but he only found a solid wall of very thick and resistant alien alloy, the curved surface blocked him out completely.
"Cortana!" he shouted, through the radio.
"I'm fine!" she answered, the next second. "Find the exit! It's falling apart!"
"Guys! Something is happening!" yelled Eleven. "Don't get separated!"
The Chief looked over his shoulder to see the man armored in black and red be isolated by another silver wall as well, as the floor trembled beneath their feet. There was only the sound of his fists banging on the wall, desperately, and a few seconds later, only the silence.
The SPARTANS spread all over the platform when the largest sections in which they were standing slowly started to separate from one another and flip or move over an horizontal axis, leading them to the black void beyond their silvery length. The vehicles skidded on their wheels and fell through the borders; a loud noise rose from the silence, like a deep-toned alarm that flooded all comms. John felt the sound piercing through his mind and clenched his jaws in a futile attempt to fight back.
"This isn't made of metal!" said Fred, when he tried to use the magnetic soles of his boots, to no avail.
"We're going down! Try to land on something soft!" claimed Kelly.
"Easier said than done!" roared Linda.
Sigrid jumped off of the Mongoose and grabbed the handle of crate full of mines, but there were no crevices or borders to clasp to and she slid over the edge, sinking into the darkness along with the explosives. Fred, Linda and Kelly managed to stand on their feet a little bit more using the thrusters embedded on their armors, that way they reached the upper border of the flipping structure. It was but a momentary relief, since the piece of platform kept spinning slowly and they eventually fell too, along with the heavy bulk of the Pelican.
All the Master Chief could do was to watch as his team got disbanded, impotent, for the gaps between platforms were now too wide to be crossed in one single jump, thrusters or no thrusters. The platform's angle shifted violently and he lost foot. The Warthog sliding out of control entered John's peripheral vision and hit him broadside before he could move. He got dragged along, unable to stop.
John clutched to the front of the vehicle but fell anyway, facing the darkness.
He thought he heard big objects hitting liquid, far below, but he couldn't tell for sure. Not until he found resistance and pain, and lost consciousness.
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
Roland touched the terminal and the material from his gloved hand dissolved into small vines that clutched the console, tiny black beads filtering through every single gap they could sneak in. He leaned in a little over the surface and stood so quiet that it was even more evident that he wasn't human, for if the melting hand wasn't enough proof of that. Commander Palmer just observed the show with reluctant comfort, shifting her weight from a leg to the other.
"I'm in." the AI informed. "This is... whoa, it's weird."
"Please tell me you mean the good kind of weird."
"I'll let you be the judge of that, Commander. Seems like there's no monitor in this installation." ensured Roland, uneasy. "It's far too automated to even need someone to take care of it."
"You sure about that? Maybe the monitor is dormant."
Roland processed for over five seconds, diving across oceans of files faster than he ever dreamed of being capable. The answers were all there, the only thing he had to do was to assimilate them. And it felt good to absorb those monstrous amounts of data, invigorating, exhilarating. He was having a feast and he would have loved to share it with Sigrid, for some reason that he didn't stop to think about. In human terms it could be compared to an orgasmic experience, but that didn't keep Roland from performing his primary duty in full consciousness:
"Well, given the fact that the architecture of this Halo differs very much from the others I have records of, I'd say this installation was built for a specific purpose, hence the lack of a control room or a monitor to keep it running. Yes, there's no control room either, it doesn't appear on the schematics." Roland stepped away from the terminal and retrieved his arm, flexing his fingers until the particles of his new body became a full hand again. "I have most of what I need, ma'am, but this is mainly a service terminal. I would be more useful if I could have access to a mainframe, the shutdown protocols aren't flat out in the open for everyone to tinker with them."
"Point the direction and let's go." Palmer agreed, and then she reached the rest of her teams through the general frequency. "SPARTANS, give me a SITREP."
"Majestic One; everything clear and quiet."
"Bravo One; clear and quiet too. Shall we proceed, ma'am?"
"Copy that, Majestic One and Bravo One. Any signs of company?"
"Majestic One; not a soul so far, ma'am."
"Bravo One; we haven't seen movement either, Commander."
The Commander sighed under her breath, a little relieved.
"Good. We move down another level. Palmer out."
Two miniature badges blinked green on Palmer's HUD, sign that both SPARTAN teams had acknowledged orders and were already following Roland's newly acquired map of the installation. The evident lack of a control room had the Commander a little misplaced, what could this particular design mean for a Halo installation? Judging by the looks of the massive room they were in, she'd say they were on some control station. She didn't know much about such technology beyond the fact that it was a dangerous weapon that could kill the entire galaxy, but her first thought was to pay attention. She turned the comms on again.
"Majestic, Bravo, keep your eyes wide open. I don't like this place."
"Copy that, ma'am." both team leaders answered in unison.
She followed Roland when the AI strode ahead, leaving the terminal to the end of a wide catwalk hanging over a deep void. The chamber was well lit in a cyan hue, but the loud humming of machinery on the far background was unnerving.
"Roland, how wide is the range of your scans?"
"Level by level, Commander. As I said, this installation is different."
"What can you make of it so far?"
"Still analyzing, I downloaded a good ton of data to look into. It's a Halo, for sure. It does the same as the others, yet... the lack of a monitor AI or a proper control room is curious. I suppose that, since this ring seems to be unfinished in the surface, it wasn't meant for the same purpose as the other twelve; but if it's not activated from the inside, well, that only spawns more questions. A mainframe should have the answers we seek, Commander."
Sarah Palmer pursed her lips, uneasy.
Damn right those peculiarities spawned more questions.
What if the ring was only to be activated or deactivated remotely?
And more important, how far away was that switch, if it still existed?
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
Linda-058 extended her arm carefully and the tips of her armored fingers brushed the wall (if that thing was a wall, that is). It was solid, alright. But it seemed to be made both of crystal and stone, or stone coated in crystal. The strangest, yet one of the most beautiful things she'd ever seen in her life. Whatever it was made of, the wall was curvy and irregular, rugged like the insides of a cave. Here and there, a great deal of columns made of the same material supported a roof so high it wasn't visible, not even with the help of her powerful scopes. But then again, her built-in imaging system didn't work properly, so she couldn't make a correct measurement on distances.
Through the crystalline surface, thousands upon thousands of microscopic dots of light flowed up and down in separated currents, like streams. This place looked so very organic, far away from the sterile sophistication of any Forerunner facility she'd seen up to date. Coarse, ancient. Linda could remember every second since she got separated from the rest of Blue Team; she had fallen through the darkness beneath the collapsing platform only to land, mostly unscathed, on that solid crystalline floor.
And she wasn't alone.
Subject Eleven was trying, to no avail, to find someone on the radio.
"Comms are dead." he sighed, disappointed. "Not surprising either."
"What is the meaning of this?" Linda demanded, ready to pounce into action.
"We didn't die, for starters, which is something that I'd consider good." Eleven answered, slowly. He wasn't looking at Linda, the raging red narrow 'V' of his faceplate pointed somewhere else, somewhere far. "Do you have all your weapons and ammo? I feel we'll need them very soon."
Linda clenched her fists. "I lost my rifle on the fall, it's here somewhere."
"Let's find it. Together we'll make it out of here, I'm sure."
"I work better alone." said the SPARTAN, dryly.
Eleven turned around to look at her.
"Oh, me too. But this place is tricky, so I thought we could work alone together, if you catch my drift." the man commented, tilting his head to the side in a cocky gesture that had something of Cortana in it. On him, the gesture looked like a well intended threat. "Besides, I need someone to watch over me, you know. In case I might need a bullet through the head."
Linda stared at him in the same menacing fashion. She didn't trust this man. She understood what the Chief explained them about him and his origins, but no matter how much John was willing to trust him arguing that it was a part of the Cortana they all knew, she didn't. Eleven wasn't right in the head and Linda was absolutely sure that she needed to keep an eye on him, alright, but not because he asked politely for it.
She had a bad feeling about everything, not just about Subject Eleven.
But now it was mandatory to regroup. The Havoks had to be somewhere around there too, along with her weapon of preference and the rest of Blue Team. The bombs were secure enough not to detonate or be damaged by external impact, so the Team still could count on them to be still operational.
Linda started walking away.
"Let's find my rifle." she growled, as she unsheathed her sidearm.
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
"Kelly, can you hear me?"
That was Fred's voice. Kelly hit the side of her helmet with the talon of her hand and the image in her HUD flickered, went blank, but then returned and stabilized. He was kneeling beside her, holding a weapon and clearly expecting her to pick it up. The SPARTAN instinctively grabbed the firearm but everything came back in a rush when her stomach shrunk and she felt sick. The long fall. Kelly-087 had never been afraid of heights but that was definitely a height to be scared of, she thought she was going to end up as a SPARTAN splatter over some rock, or just get lost in space.
Or worse, falling forever out of control.
"How long was I out?" she asked, when her stomach settled.
Fred presented his open hand at reach. "Five minutes, give or take a few seconds. My clock is working backwards so I've been counting my heartbeats."
"The others?"
He shook his armored head, the gesture was definitive enough.
"They can't be that far away." Kelly quipped, as she grabbed Fred's hand.
"Any injuries?"
"Negative. You?"
Fred shook his head again. "Good. On your feet."
He pulled her back to her feet and then she checked her arsenal and ammo, it all seemed to be in order. Kelly knew their MJOLNIRs were made to resist, but if that fall was as long as she could remember, she was sure that she must have ended up dead or at least severely wounded, yet she felt fine. Deep down she also knew that she shouldn't be wasting time musing over something she couldn't explain...
"So, where are we?"
"I have no idea, but I want to get out of here real quick." Fred started walking in an indefinite direction, no way to say if it was right or wrong. "I heard noises this way, we might end up running on the Chief and everyone else... or something else. Weapons ready, back to back with me and let's walk."
She followed, minding the astounding crystalline columns that surrounded them. The floor seemed to be made of the same material, and the chamber was so vast that no matter in which direction she looked, there was no end in sight. Everywhere thick paths of flowing data provided light enough for their enhanced eyes to see, so they wouldn't have to turn on their headlights.
Well, at least she was with Fred. Kelly sighed in relief.
She tried to use the radio, but only heard white noise and a high-pitched cry, so she disabled the application. The silence of the great chamber was ominous,
"What kind of noise you heard?"
"Voices." Fred whispered, loud enough for her to hear.
"Human voices?"
"Yes. Although I'm not sure if I recognized them, I was a little dizzy."
Kelly hummed something under her breath. "We'll be fine."
"I'm counting on that."
She kept walking almost back-to-back with Fred for a long time until they got to an area with rocky terrain, or at least, the rugged and massive formations looked like big rocks made of translucent crystal. The general lighting of unknown source flickered in that area, like rays of sunlight filtering through sea waves, as it happened before above the platform.
Something caught Fred's eye and he hurried to kneel beside a rock.
Kelly saw him pick up something heavy, with a long barrel...
"Linda's SRS." she said, when she recognized the weapon.
"What is this doing here?"
"Maybe she fell over here, the voices I heard. Come on, let's hurry."
The Lieutenant clasped the sniper rifle to his back and leveled his own weapon again, but he didn't make a step. Kelly was staring into the distance, it was easy for Fred to sense her discomfort. Whatever it was, it was getting to him too.
After so many seconds (or maybe minutes), she commented:
"Did you see how he ran to her when the platforms started collapsing?"
Fred pursed his lips behind the faceplate of his helmet, uncomfortable. He didn't have to ask who she was talking about, he'd been thinking about that too and honestly, he couldn't shake off the bad feeling. Well, the Lieutenant hadn't been thinking about how desperately John ran towards that woman he sustained was Cortana, a former UNSC AI, but he'd been thinking about the Chief's behavior, yes.
"I saw." Fred answered, clearing his throat.
"I don't understand; what is John doing, exactly?"
"I don't know, Kelly. But we aren't here to question that, are we?"
"No, we aren't. We have a job to do."
He nodded, and yet...
"I see your point, though." Fred said, a moment after. "And you're not the only one worried about him. Let's find our team."
[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
John woke up to the sound of a detonation nearby.
The sound was like nothing he'd ever heard before, it rumbled like an earthquake and crawled across the sky with a relentless thunder. It felt ancient. It vibrated within his bones. The cold touch of breeze on the skin of his face made him jump to a sitting position, only to find that he'd been lying against a dirt wall, holed up in some trench, and he wasn't wearing his armor but a brown coat. There was a lot of yelling, thuds and whistling. No idea about where he was, but the area seemed thick with trees and snow covered dead bodies inside the trench. There was someone else beside him, also dressed in a brown coat, holding in her hands an ancient version of a bayonet.
The Chief snapped to attention and found the face; the same blue eyes of Cortana spied on him from beneath the edge of a strange hat-like helmet.
"I thought you weren't going to wake up, Chief. Get up, the artillery is coming!"
"What?" he mouthed, and grabbed her by the arm.
Her hand clasped to his wrist instead: "Run, John! Now!"
She managed to get rid of his hold and ran through the trench. John stood up with a quick jump and followed her, dodging the cadavers, broken wooden crates and sacks of sand piled up everywhere. They made it out of the trench in mere seconds. Cortana jumped over a twisted fence fixed with barbed wire and he went after her, climbing up a small hill. When they reached the top, he saw the massive tanks and cannons moving forward in their direction and realized they were on a battlefield. The cold wind hit his face again, his skin had never been in contact with this kind of temperatures before and it sort of hurt. His feet were freezing, adrenaline kept his veins warm but the tips of his fingers also felt weird.
Hundreds of men in brown coats were running against the tanks, falling wounded or dead by the dozen every minute. John felt the bullets pass by a few centimeters away from his face, the stench of death was so intense that he...
More thunder, more explosions.
"Over here, Chief!" she yelled, bringing him back to that strange reality.
Stunned, John walked back and found a hole in the ground beneath a lid made of wood, disguised with rotten branches. He got inside the hole with her, into another pitch black place until she found and lit up an old oil lantern and light coated them in a soft amber radiance.
An oil lantern, that was history class material.
"Cortana, where are we? What is this place?"
The woman lit up other lanterns. They were inside a subterranean refuge, dirt fell of the roof whenever a bomb exploded outside. The sounds of battle still reached John's ears, but muffled and distant. Cortana went to the other side of a precarious wooden table and left her bayonet on it, then she pulled off her flat helmet, showing him that her hair was cropped short, almost shaved completely.
She was also taller than the Cortana John could remember, but evidently female.
"Alright, to a practical end you call me Nine. I am Cortana's logic."
John stood very still at the mention of that designation, that is, until she lifted up the sleeve of her left arm and showed him a Forerunner glyph, a number he could easily recognize. That's when he knew for sure that beneath all the wrong there was something even more twisted.
It all came back and a bolt of pain passed through his head; he remembered the Fortress and the fall, Cortana and Eleven being separated from them by those silvery walls, the vertigo that followed...
How did they end up inside the recreation of some ancient war?
"Subject Nine." he said, carefully. "Eleven said Seven killed you."
"She wished she did." the woman rolled her eyes. She scratched her short hair and paced around the table, quickly. "That's the thing about this place, nothing ever really dies or disappears. This is one of many points in which space lays down with time and reality takes the toll. This is the place in which all past lives are stored, this is where some of the most ancient life-forms once lived: stitched together with the fabric of the universe. I didn't die, I just went back to the source."
"Where are we?"
"Nowhere, I hacked your neural interface. You are unconscious, I just used the memory of an ancient soldier to link us; it was almost the only way to reach you without Seven finding out."
"So she is alive."
"Pay attention, Chief. This is important and we don't have much time. You might want to take some notes."
He didn't like her tone and he wasn't sure if he should trust her, but given the circumstances...
"I'm listening." John agreed, reluctant.
"If you are here, it means you know what is going to happen next and you came here to prevent it. I will tell you the part you yet don't know: Seven wants to reconfigure the Halo so she can use it as a mega-fracture and get her army out of the bubble." said Nine, crossing her arms over her chest. "But she needed a Reclaimer to reactivate the facility from the outside, and guess what? She got herself a Reclaimer."
"A Halo can become a portal?"
"Not a regular Halo, this one was especially designed to be placed here. Now she has the means to get her army out, and she has the raw material to finish this so-called army of hers."
"The Covenant and Forerunner ships." John nodded.
"Don't forget this one."
A bomb detonated somewhere, more dirt fell over John's shoulders. She lifted her hand and out of her palm sprouted a small blue hologram in the shape of a very familiar spaceship. The miniature rotated over her hand until she closed her fist, when she was certain that the Chief had recognized the figure.
"The Infinity left moments after we were deployed." he observed.
"No, it didn't. You just played the cards Seven gave you to make sure everything would go according to her plan. There were a few setbacks, but the major picture wasn't affected... now the Infinity isn't going anywhere. Seven needs all those precious tons of titanium to feed her army."
He tried to turn around and go back to the surface.
"We have to send Commander Palmer a message, the Halo must be deactivated. If it fires, Seven will have the Infinity without a fight."
"If only." her dry voice stopped him, the Chief looked at her again. "Installation Thirteen's control room is at the Bridge, and it doesn't require an activation index since the human DNA is easy to mimic. It was the metarch's duty to keep this place buried in slipspace and fire the Halo to keep enemies at bay if something went wrong."
John walked back to her, slowly. "What metarch?"
"Resilient Bias was its name. Contender-class Forerunner AI, very advanced."
"Where is it?"
"Dismantled, of course. My worst mistake ever, if I had known..."
"You said human DNA is easy to mimic; you mean there's something out there that can do that?"
"Oh, it's not out there, it's in here. The Fortress is a bunker, it was made to resist but not external attacks. You see, the gravitational pull you feel, it doesn't come from the Fortress, it comes from the singularity; the Fortress was built around it to keep it contained. This is a very special spot of the universe in which our space rubs with the space of the dimension from where they originally came from, the Precursor race. They opened this gate, they got trapped in here. Think of them as the true Gods the Covenant should have worshipped instead of the Forerunners and you might start to understand a fraction of the abilities they possess."
He took a moment to process all that. The information the UNSC had on this alleged Precursor race was very limited and he knew little, but the little he knew was enough to relate those almost god-like beings to the Flood itself, and anything related with the Flood was a problem. A big problem.
He pressed his lips together, uncomfortable.
"If what you say is true..."
"I never lied to you, Chief." her reply was quick and sharp.
John hesitated for a second. "The the problem, the way I see it, is not that they are trapped in here. Is that we are trapped in here with those beings."
"It's highly unlikely that Seven is willing to unleash any of those ancient beasts, it would be disastrous for her plans. But we have found things here, disturbing things. It all must end here, John. Once and for all. Find your team. Find me, the physical me. I will take you there and I will give you the weapons to end it."
"Why don't you end it, if you know how to?"
She gave him a broken smile.
This version of Cortana was skinnier, paler, she looked sick but the intelligence in her eyes was as sharp as a knife. She was fragile, yet solid as a rock. The dark circles under her eyes and the cropped short hair made her look like other person, absolutely different. John felt the need to protect her. It was stronger than him.
"I am just your shield and sword, remember that." she commented, afterwards.
"Where is Cortana?"
"There's no more Cortana, Chief." the woman replied, calmly. "Not the Cortana you used to know, at least. She doesn't exist anymore and most likely, she will never exist again as you knew her."
"You know who I mean."
"Yes, and because I do, I'm trying to be objective about this." she said, this time her assertive tone had an edge of aggression. "Focus, Chief. This is important, you need to... oh, damn, it's here."
"What are you talking about?"
An explosion, louder than the previous, shook the underground bunker. A lot of dirt fell off the roof and the lights inside the small room flickered, everything trembled. Subject Nine grabbed her bayonet.
"The Sphynx. It's the Guardian of this facility. You have to leave."
"You mean, the monitor."
"No, Resilient Bias was the monitor, the Sphynx is a guard dog... sort of. It patrols the Fortress' data centers." she pushed him towards the hatch, her hands were now trembling as well as the floor. "If the Sphynx finds you, it's going to ask for a password, which you don't have, and that nobody has since I deactivated the metarch. Whatever you do, John, do not give it an answer."
"Cortana, wait, I..."
He couldn't even end the sentence, when the brick wall behind him exploded and everything went dark again.
TO BE CONTINUED
Damn, damn, damn! We're back and we're in trouble again!
Nice way to get back into action, hehe. I want to thank everyone for your patience lately, I've been a little off between work and Fallout 4 as you know, but in less than the blink of an eye you will know about me again and I will gladly answer all your kind messages, I have not forgotten about you. I want to give some special thanks to our not-logged guest-readers of every week (you know you are awesome) and to every single new reader this story has acquired since Halo 5 was launched. You make my weeks and my efforts as a writer more enjoyable.
Stay here to see next Sunday's episode, there will be more fucked-up-ness to dive through. The end is near! Leave your comments now or shut up forever!