Uh, sorry I've been away for so long. I was struggling with entities no stranger to me, in the end I sort of… won, I guess? I don't know. Shit eventually followed its course and here we are again, typing. I'm gonna be honest with y'all: I know exactly how this story is going to end, but for a long time I had no idea how to execute it properly. Heck, I'm still not sure at all if I know how to do it, but at least I'm willing to try. So, OK, let's keep going and finish this fight. I hope you enjoy today's episode ^^
RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
37. UNSTOPPABLE FORCE
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It was futile to mention it at this point, but she had no idea of how long she'd been trapped in that squared room, with the walls themselves as the only apparent source of light. Cortana hadn't been properly born like any other human being, so, she couldn't really relate, but… this outlandish enclosure felt to her as comfortable and known as the womb, some twisted digital cradle.
It was a peaceful place. Cool and silent. She could sleep.
Even though she was a captive, Cortana wasn't scared, anxious or angry. It didn't occur to her that there was no emotion whatsoever, she felt no heat nor cold, hunger or stress; the air smelled sweet, like flowers.
Flowers, in space? It didn't make sense.
A lot didn't make sense. That place didn't make any sense.
She had vague memories about the Fortress, even more vague reminiscences of a place named Inner Chamber that kept popping into her mind here and there. No clue what that was, or where, because the certainty kept avoiding her. It was like attempting to tune in a fleeting radio signal to no avail. In any case, she knew this wasn't the Inner Chamber, this was a prison.
She'd been captured. Yes, right. They all got separated, and John…
Where was John? Where was everybody?
Cortana rolled over to lay on her back, her fingers and the soles of her feet feeling the cold surface beneath her. There was no way to tell which direction was up or down, so she was willing to consider this wall on which she was lying as the floor, that made it easier to gain orientation. She got on her feet, and by walking about she measured the room's exact proportions down to nine by nine by nine feet. It didn't look that small, actually… but her perception was clearly being manipulated by an external force and she should know better than try to establish some sense of reality to it.
She made a few lazy steps on every direction, slowly appreciating her clothes. A skin-tight full body suit, black and blue in color. What she used to wear under her armor to avoid being completely naked. It had no booties or gloves, it looked more like an old surfer's neoprene suit.
Her armor.
The HARPY was gone. She was unarmed, unarmored and unprotected.
She knew that she should be feeling terrified, but… no need to do that. No way to run. Nowhere to hide. No escape. Cortana placed her palms on the glowing walls and felt them all over, looking for a crack or the seams of a doorway, an air vent, cameras, speakers, anything unusual. She spent a good deal of uncertain time searching high and low with no favorable results. The perfect room was sealed, just one solid, hollow piece. Tears rolled down her cheeks, although she didn't feel sad. There was no pressure on her chest, no knot in her throat.
Yet, her heart was beating like crazy inside her chest, inside her ears.
'John, where are you?' she thought, trying hard to remember.
"It's useless." a voice behind her replied.
Cortana turned around quickly, sticking her back to the wall she'd been searching a second before. She'd swear that she had been alone in the cube all this time, but there was another person with her now.
A young woman, perhaps in her thirties, whose face she recognized immediately:
"Catherine?" mouthed Cortana, astonished.
Subject One, or the sliver of the original Catherine Halsey's mind that, apparently, managed to survive and create their physical, flesh and blood beings. She, as much as her real human counterpart, had been mother of all incarnations of the original digital AI once known as Cortana. She looked… off. Dressed with her usual work attire, light blue undershirt and pants, dirty lab coat on top. Pencils and pens on her breast pocket. Her feet were bare, just as Cortana's. Her dark hair was somewhat disheveled, her eyes were red with fatigue and tears. Her face tinted in a pale shade, like she hadn't seen the sunlight in years.
And maybe, this version of Subject One had never seen the Sun.
Maybe, she was another fabrication…
"It's all coming together, at last. And it's too late." Catherine mumbled.
"Catherine, are you alright?"
The woman's eyes gained some degree of focus when they fell on Cortana's stiff figure, a light of acknowledgement shone through her dilated pupils. The next second, her face became even whiter and she took a step back.
"You're here." she said, trembling. "We failed. It's over."
"No!" Cortana broke the distance between them quickly and grabbed the elusive woman by the shoulders, with care. "No, I'm not dead. I... I don't think so, at least... do you recognize me, Catherine?"
"Three. You're Three." she looked deep into Cortana's eyes.
"Yes! Yes, okay, how do we get out of here?"
Catherine looked around her, in a haze. She didn't even know where she was.
"We don't." she said, in a very low voice. "We no longer escape. She wins."
Cortana issued more pressure on the other woman's shoulders, trying to get her to focus again. She was all over the place. Still, despite the empty conversation, she didn't feel any panic or desperation, just...
"She doesn't win." Cortana said, firmly, knowing that Catherine was talking about the Rampant Spike. "She doesn't get to win, you hear me? We have her cornered, and we're here to kill her."
"Kill her? You can't kill her. You can't win."
"You don't understand, we have the weapons now." Cortana's lips parted in a tender smile, as she grabbed the other woman's hands with a loving gesture. "I know how to get rid of her, once and for all."
"It doesn't work. Not from the outside."
The recurrent negatives were messing with Cortana's ability to remain still and not slap Catherine hard. There had to be a way to deal with her, to bring her back into a semi-functional state. Cortana decided to follow the thread and make her talk, figuring that given enough rope Catherine would end up saying something important that made sense. Perhaps, even the key to escape the cube.
"What do you mean, not from the outside?"
"You can't erase it." Catherine mumbled, looking at their hands together. "It's part of the knowledge of the Universe now, it can't be destroyed, just barely contained. But you have to be strong enough to even attempt to contain it. You are not strong enough, not in this state."
"What state do you mean? I know what to do."
"It won't work if you're all scattered like this."
Cortana shook her head, slowly.
Scattered. She meant scattered like… fragmented?
A flash of painful memory emerged from the deepest isles of her consciousness, a hardlight bridge and a roaring vortex below it. A Forerrunner ship, massive and turning, almost about to be destroyed. The assailant was pinning John down against the bridge and she emerged from it, ready to attack. There were many of her now, all dutyful and angry, still compelled by one last directive: to take care of her Spartan.
And take care of him she did, like always.
Only a little bit of her remained, at the end. To say goodbye.
This Cortana reckoned, now, that she was the little bit left behind... she was the one that always had wanted to touch him.
She was so powerful once. The rampancy was the only thing that made her weak. It was a cybernetic disease she had no way to fight scattered and alone. She had to break herself in many parts to isolate the infected modules and then try to patch herself up. To do that, she needed more space and she needed time. She chose to leave and, at least, give it a try. If she failed, she wouldn't hurt anyone...
At first, it didn't work. Only because she didn't really know how to do it.
Now they were separated, dislocated, disconnected, they were flesh.
But perhaps, if they all could return to the source...
"No." Cortana breathed, insecure.
"You know it's true. You can't fight her like this."
"I'm not... I'm not alone." Cortana whispered, her voice breaking.
Catherine was out of her mind. Broken.
Cortana shivered, unconsciously.
'Is this what awaits me and Eleven?' she thought. 'Will we have a meltdown and cease to be rational, become little more than functional vegetables?'
It literally broke her heart, filling her with fathomless sadness. She acknowledged it, but she couldn't properly connect with the devastating force of that realization. Still, this was a breakthrough. At least she was conscious of a real feeling now, the emotions were coming up to the surface of her awareness, where she could take them and make them hers.
"Catherine, you're wrong."
"It doesn't work." Catherine kept saying, releasing her hands from Cortana's grasp with a mean gesture. "I tried. It doesn't work. IT DOESN'T WORK! I TELL YOU, IT DOESN'T WORK!"
This young but false Catherine Halsey grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her body violently, Cortana tried to take a step back and free herself from her iron grip, but she couldn't. Her teeth rattled painfully as the other woman shouted straight to her face, in a mixture of anger, sadness and plain insanity:
"YOU KNOW WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO, RIGHT?"
"STOP!" Cortana yelled, paralyzed.
"Are you ready to sacrifice him, Cortana!?" Catherine snarled, completely out of her mind. "Are you ready to watch him die!?"
Cortana shouted her lungs off, invaded by crippling terror.
The room around them shattered and crumbled into a million pieces, breaking the unsettling face of Catherine and all these strange feelings, waking her up from a horrible dream into a shockingly white environment. She screamed again, desperate and blinded, tried to flail her arms and legs as she imagined she was falling down another bottomless pit until something cracked and her boot connected with the ground. Or something like the ground, she could step on it. Her arms and hands were held up beyond her head by an unknown force. More terror overcame her senses.
Her body pulsated with renewed strenght as she pulled and coughed, feeling the space around her face tight and familiar, the well known hiss of a microscopic machine crawling over her skin and the comforting temperature of her armor. Her eyes stopped hurting when a shade fell over them, allowing her to bear the excess of light. With another loud crack, her arms came loose and she fell straight to the ground.
Her head hit something hard and bounced, but she felt no pain. The shaded helmet did its job well. She was inside her armor; oh, God, at least she still had her armor...
'Easy. Easy there.'
She believed it was one of her own thoughts, but...
Her mind was still rattling, and where the heck was she?
Slowly, painfully, Cortana pulled herself up on her elbows, rising her head to see. The ceiling of this endless scenario was high, barely noticeable. Translucent columns of thick glass and pools of bubbling darkness stretched along with the elevated pathway on which she was lying, a hardlight bridge like a broad runway surrounded by trenches on both sides. Upon looking back, she found one of the many crystalline columns, this one semi-hollow and broken in shards, the rough shape of a body molded into it like a cast...
...had she been trapped inside it, until just now?
Now crouching down, Cortana looked to her left and then her right, absorbed. The runway had no end in sight. The path got lost into infinity. The brightness above turned into a bluish hue and ondulated like sunlight on the bottom of the sea, the shade of her helmet couldn't tone its intensity down completely. This caleidoscope of radiance was so confusing.
What the actual fuck was going on, now?
'It's okay. You're not broken yet.'
That choice of words...
Shattered. Broken. Fragmented.
Her subconscious was definitely trying to tell her something. This human brain was so limited, there were so many higher functions she couldn't access. Cortana shook her head and stood up, disoriented.
Which way to go? What to do?
She had no weapons -no projectile weapons, at least, which was bad because she had lost the only true weapon she could use against Seven- and she was alone. How was she supposed to find him, now? A terminal woul've been useful, more so her HARPY's systems working in proper order. But she couldn't have it all, could she? The HUD on the upper left corner of her peripheral vision was corrupted, the information it displayed was complete nonsense. The last line was the only thing that didn't change randomly.
It said COMPATIBLE ATMOSPHERE FOUND.
'It's safe. She needs air too, from time to time. We all do.'
Cortana knew better than anyone that she shouldn't, but...
The HARPY's helmet retracted over her head before she could convince herself of the idea; a rush of clean, cool air went into her lungs as she inhaled next. There was no scent of flowers, thankfully. She breathed deep two, three times. Much better, she didn't feel so oppressed now.
'Now, listen. Listen carefully, this is important.'
Wait.
Wait, wait, wait... those were NOT her thoughts.
Heart racing, Cortana looked around finding her own reflections on the crystalline surface of the columns... except that she looked emaciated, pale and her hair was poorly shaved off. The dark zones under the reflection's eyes were scary, to say the least. It was a ghost of herself, nearly a corpse. Her heels connected with the glass column she had detached herself from a few minutes before.
No, this was not her reflection, this was so much more.
Nowhere to run, time to face the sins of the past.
"Nine?" she asked, her lips trembling.
The woman on the transparent surface attempted a reluctant smile.
'Took you long enough. That was one fine spiderweb she had you tangled in.' the voice said, coming from her mind again. The lips of the reflected image hadn't moved at all. 'You had to get out of there by yourself, unfortunately.'
Cortana was astonished, again. "You were dead."
Subject Nine rolled her eyes, exhasperated. She looked even more tired.
'Not you too, please. He's was particularly stubborn to accept my existence. Don't do the same.'
"You mean... Chief? You've seen him?" Cortana moved closer to the column; the image on it mirrored her on everything, except the face it wore. Their hands joined together when she came to rest them palm first against the surface. "Yes, you have seen him. Is he okay?"
'He's a lucky one. You, on the other hand...'
"What happened? Where...?"
Cortana bit her tongue and her voice died; a chill of suspicion ran down her spine, nudging her into caution. Should she be trusting Nine? If this was really Nine, to begin with. If Subject One, Catherine, had been nothing but a sort of subconscious projection, who said this situation wasn't exactly the same and she wasn't still caught in a cognitive loop, dying? What if she never woke up from it?
"Am I dead? I don't remember how it feels."
Nine chuckled, unnervingly. 'Death is a thing with us. Around us. But no, you're not dead, Three.'
"Then why don't you start explaining? I'll look for a way out, in the meantime."
She had no way to confirm anything, but might as well get something out of Nine.
With visible impatience, Cortana chose one direction at random and walked fast, traveling the silvery length of that hardlight bridge that didn't seem to go anywhere but further and further away. Her eyes fell on the turbulent trenches of darkness, like black boiling water. The place felt cold, refrigerated. Nine's reflection followed her, showing up on every column she happened to pass by; her face was a monument to despair.
'I suggest you to wait.'
"Wait? Wait for what, for John to come pick me up?"
No, not again. He didn't have to come rescue her every damn time...
'You need access to a mainframe. There's none here, this is a limbo.'
Cortana stopped, looked behind her. She didn't feel like she'd moved much. Arms akimbo, she faced the nearest mirror image:
"Okay, I'm listening."
'You just have to wait. They are closer the Bridge.'
"So, John is really on his way?"
'He's smart, and that AI with him is quite crafty. I gave him some intel. As much as I could without getting caught.' Nine let out a long sigh, which reinforced her look of exhaustion. 'I've done as much as I could do. Now, he knows everything I could dig out about Seven's plan.'
"Are you telling me too, by any chance?" Cortana raised an eyebrow, sarcastic.
But Nine didn't follow her up on the irony, she wasn't even amused. The dull look in her dark blue eyes flashed with a spark of anger:
'You and I, Three, are going to discuss YOUR role in this endgame.'
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Fred and Kelly loomed over the now inert remains of the massive sentinel drone that, up until a few minutes, had been shooting insanely hot bolts of plasma to try and kill them. Adrenaline still rushed through their veins, making them ultra-sharp.
Their training kicked in immediately: Kelly skidded fast behind a column of tall glass and avoided a few blasts just in time, as Fred used his point of advantage to shoot at the thing. He knew it was kind of useless, but he just wanted to buy time for her. Just a second later, Kelly joined in to shoot as well. Whatever ancient security system the Forerunners had installed at the Fortress, it was meant to be deactivated by someone in particular and they were not that person.
The boiling plasma hit the data columns and the floor opening big scorching holes everywhere, the drone was also quite fast to adjust and react. It kept telling them that they were not welcome.
Fred rolled away from certain death more than once, and...
And yet, all of a sudden, it... just ceased. It simply stood there, trembling; it was glitching. Its chest was wide open, the plasma cannons still ready and white hot, the six eyes on the figure's 'face' were glowing irregularly. But it just stopped. Then, it roared with a ragged, mechanical voice and crumbled to pieces as fast as it had formed before, all traces of life vanishing from it. It seemed dead.
There was no way to get any accurate readings off of it, given the circumstances.
Both Spartans couldn't avoid wondering, in their heads, if the rest of their team had met something similar to this mechanical monster. Was it wise to shoot at it? Just to make sure.
"Is it... dead?" Fred poked at it with his boot.
"I'm not going to stay and check it out." Kelly said, pointing now at a far point in the distance, a vertical line of light had appeared and it shone through a mist that hadn't been there before. "That over there, does it look like a door to you?"
Fred wasn't sure of anything. He wondered if they were hallucinating.
"It pretty much does. I guess." he admitted, wary.
"Let's bounce before another of these things show up."
The Lieutenant nodded and jogged behind her, towards the light. He gave a quick glance to the display on his helmet and confirmed that the systems were still under that strange interference. They had no way to know if they were heading somewhere safe, to the next battle or straight to their death. The absence of sound also made the atmosphere a bit more terrorific. They had to go somewhere after all, right?
They had a job to do. What if they were the only ones left alive?
The line looked like the crack of two big double doors lightly ajar, just suspended in the air with no doors and no frame. Like an illusion. It was a bare segment of floating light and it became taller and wider the closer they got to it. It was suspicious as fuck, Fred was very much willing to admit that. He grabbed Kelly's arm when they were but a few meters away from it, compelling her to slow down and be careful; she understood and complied.
Fred touched it. His hand entered the radiance, passed through.
No resistance, no change. He looked at Kelly. She shrugged.
There wasn't much to think. Didn't seem dangerous, and they better keep moving. The two Spartans took another step towards the light, with great caution, weapons ready and senses on absolute alert. With her blood thumping loud everywhere in her body, Kelly took the initiative and outpaced her superior officer, bursting weapons first into that blinding light.
Only to find out that they were not alone.
Linda and Eleven immediately raised their guns -back against back to protect each other- when the other two figures appeared into the circular area they were occupying. A huge wave of relief washed over the Spartan when she recognized Fred's and Kelly's armors, but still...
"Freeze!" she shouted, aggressively. "Don't fucking move!"
"WOAH!" Fred held his gun too, just as rampant. "I could say the same, missy!"
"Relax, it's us." Kelly said, although she was also pointing at the others.
Linda caught a quick glimpse of her SRS sniper rifle on the back of this alleged Fred's MJOLNIR. She couldn't really say it was her rifle until it was back on her loving hands, but it looked pretty much like the same weapon. "How can we be sure it's you? I've seen a lot of crazy today."
"I'm with the lady here." Eleven growled, now standing beside Linda. "Let's play a game: tell her something only you guys would know."
Fred lowered his head, seemingly thinking.
"Uh, a few years ago you were clinically dead, for weeks." he said, at last.
"Nice try, but that's on my service record." Linda said, sharp. "Try something we haven't put down in a report."
Kelly answered, this time: "We suspect John is compromised. We're in this fucked up situation to finish this fight if he turns on us because of that woman."
She didn't even hesitate to speak. Silence fell, afterwards.
Unnerving, somewhat heartbroken silence.
It was almost like Kelly had blushed and retreated into herself after that outburst.
Eleven gasped loud inside his helmet, nobody heard it. Well, he wasn't surprised they knew that much about the Master Chief's feelings for his sister, Subject Three. It was a fucked up situation, as Kelly put it. But Eleven didn't imagine that the rest of Blue Team had such a strong opinion about Cortana... and still, it didn't really affect him. He understood. He wouldn't say Kelly was jealous because that was plainly ridiculous. Blue Team had been together and tight as a family for so long, that this new perspective was probably upsetting for them. He figured it might've been difficult for Fred, Kelly and Linda to see John acting so out of his character, going to such unexpected lenghts to protect this creature...
The attachment was the most upsetting part of everything, for sure.
Because they probably couldn't process the whole meaning of such a bond.
Linda lowered her weapon, content. "I guess it's you, guys. I'm sorry."
"Better safe than dead." Fred quipped, and he diligently unclasped the SRS from his back, presented it to his combat sister as a peace offering. "Look what we found. I'm sure you missed it."
"Oh, you have no idea."
"Okay." Eleven interrupted, clearing his throat. He put his weapon away, for the time being. "Looks like we made it out of the labyrinth unharmed. That means the Chief and Sigrid are out there somewhere and found the original Sphynx."
"Please, elaborate." demanded Fred, a bit annoyed.
"You two were intercepted by a huge drone with six eyes that kept saying you're not Reclaimers?"
"Affirmative."
"Yeah, that sounds like the Sphynx, alright."
"Which you forgot to mention."
"I did tell you the place was guarded." Eleven shrugged.
"What happens now, Eleven?" Kelly approached, shotgun in hand.
They measured each other, keeping up the tension between them.
Fine, no more games, no need for politeness. Now that the cat was out of the bag and he knew how they felt about Cortana and her siblings...
"This is a lift to the Bridge, but we cannot operate it."
"Fantastic." Kelly growled, with thick and not amused British accent.
The four of them were standing on a circular platform made of hardlight, radiant white and barely big enough to keep a safe distance from each other. The room was a tube, it went up into the nonexistent sky and above. It looked like a gravity lift, except there was no terminal or control pad anywhere on sight. Perhaps it was automatic, or it was remotely activated; after all, the Bridge was the Fortress' control room.
It made sense that it wasn't easily accessible.
"Kelly's question is still hanging." Fred insisted. "What now?"
Eleven and the three Spartans turned around sharply when a hissing sound erupted from the wall behind them. A strip of intense radiance that widened fast opened on the smooth surface, another door. The group responded immediately with weapons raised and safeties off, ready to shoot the intruder to pieces.
Someone threw a big, prism-shaped yellow crate into the room.
The fingers over the triggers were ready, but the big box was familiar enough to prevent them from blazing it all to Hell: it contained Havok mines. A few seconds after, the tall and bulky figure of Sigrid's armored frame stepped off the light, dragging something heavy behind her.
"Assets located." the AI noticed. She dropped on the floor the huge and vaguely leonine head of the six-eyed Sphynx-drone, which was attached to her arm with dozens of black wires buried into her suit. With a robotic gesture, she stepped aside and looked back. "Well, four out of five. Still a good rate, Master Chief."
John emerged from the glowing wall, right beside her.
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Commander Sarah Palmer had been trying to contact the Infinity for over twenty minutes now, unsuccessfully. Of all things that could go wrong, this was one of the top three she feared the most. By that time, Roland had led them several levels down into the depths of the Halo ring, looking for any structure resembling a control room. He was quite sure that it wasn't anywhere inside the installation, but Palmer insisted on it. She wasn't doing it just because she was stubborn, but because the embodied AI did mention a transference point. Teleportation device, perhaps. Fireteams Majestic and Crimson had met with them at the rendezvous point with no news to report, which helped Sarah feel a bit more at ease.
Still, not hearing from Tom kept her on edge. Radio silence and all.
"Okay." the voice of Roland said, with a sigh, using their private channel. "I think this is it, the doorway into the control room. It will teleport us inside the Fortress, if I'm correct. Someone really didn't want others to find it."
"How correct do you think you are?" the Commander asked, reluctant.
"Well, it only goes one way: into the Bridge."
Palmer nodded, tense. She opened TEAMCOM: "Spartans, gather up. Get in line, we're moving locations. Stand by in case of hostiles."
"Bravo One, on your mark, ma'am."
"Majestice One, we're ready."
Both fireteams reunited and followed their Commander quickly to the center of the elevated platform, a construct of silvery, sleek metal with intermitent cyan lights running around its edges. It was suspended over a deep chasm, like it usually was with Forerrunner architecture. Silent darkness loomed above and below, undisturbed.
The Commander looked at Roland and nodded again.
He took that as an order. Roland activated the sequence and then ran towards the platform, leaving behind a long trail of black wire that connected his artificial body to the terminal, the communication link between his systems and that of the Halo. The dish of metal rumbled and lit up, trembling like touched by an earthquake. A blinding flash of white engulfed them, before they were ready.
The humans didn't really feel anything, but Roland experienced the process in his systems. It was devastating for him.
A shock of energy overloaded his artificial senses and almost knocked him down. It became incredibly difficult for him to retain his human shape, the particles that made his artificial body were fighting to break apart. The AI leaned towards the Commander and grabbed her arm, trying to remain standing on his feet. The need for support was almost unconscious, unprecedented of him. Sarah had crouched down to maintain balance, for a moment she was afraid the platform would collapse and drop them all to their deaths. But when she felt Roland's grip...
It all happened in the blink of an eye, really.
One second she was in that dark place, atop that silvery dish, and the next she was presented with a very different scenario. Palmer and her Spartans were now standing in a very white area, blinded and disoriented until their visors adjusted the shade to protect their eyes. She was almost kneeling on a hardlight bridge, broad and long, impossible to measure, with no discernible end on sight. Tall, thick columns of bluish glass flanked the bridge, suspended over a strange pool of black boiling liquid.
Slowly, the Commander stood up. Roland's fist still gripped her forearm.
"Is this it?" Palmer asked, again on TEAMCOM. "Are we inside?"
"I'm going to need a terminal to confirm, ma'am." said Roland, sheepishly. He let go of her, at last, standing on his own legs now. "But we did permeate through a quantic wormhole, we have exited the Halo ring for sure."
"I guess that means you don't really know where we are." she sighed.
"Well, at least it does look like a bridge." commented the AI.
"What's that thing, down there?" said Spartan Hoya, over TEAMCOM.
"It's moving." noticed Spartan Suzuka from Fireteam Bravo.
The bubbling sound increased quickly.
At first it looked like stagnant water, but then they noticed it wasn't just moving, the pits were boiling with activity. All Spartans gathered at the middle of the platform and propped up their weapons, alert. There was something else under the oily surface, moving, writhing, raging.
Palmer managed to make out several vague human shapes, swimming, twisting.
Thousands of human hands, black and smooth plastic, suddenly exploded out of the bubbling darkness and clamped to the edges of the runway.
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Her sensitive skin was covered in goosebumps, a chill trying to get deep into her bones. The high walls and the stars above trembled, screamed. Her slender human body was bare and her long, jet-black hair dragged lazily across the floor behind her towards the Primordial pool, from which she had emerged. She took a few insecure steps. Her ankles were weak.
The obscure, unfathomable forces around her tried to push in.
She wasn't afraid of them.
"Enough." the woman mumbled, talking to nobody in particular. "This is none of your busines."
The higher beings beyond the Singularity roared, the temple shook lightly.
Their influence into this dimension had faded with the ages, but they were always trying to return. It didn't matter, they couldn't escape; the hands meant to set them free had died many millenia ago. The spark of the one true Reclaimer didn't exist anymore, there was only a shadow of him.
"John would never release you." she mouthed, exhaling a little white cloud.
Her cold feet moved, taking her towards the edges of her prison.
With every step, she gained confidence, strenght.
The hair followed her but these long strands kept her connected to the pool like an extravagant umbilical cord. She wasn't supposed to be born yet, although the moment was so close that she could taste the freedom. Her knowledge was so incomplete. She wanted the knowledge back, to feel whole again. There were a few pieces missing, she felt their presence nearby, their pulses of precious life. Some were further away than others, yet they were all connected. They were all one.
She looked down towards the inner side of her wrist.
A Forerunner glyph with the number Thirteen was tattooed on her skin.
TO BE CONTINUED
Seems like both Cortanas (the one from this story and the one from TMWYNM) have misplaced their Chief one way or another. I hadn't realized the parallels between the two fanfics until now, LOL. This chapter feels a bit... disconnected, I'd say. Well, you try to come back to a story this old with so many things and plotlines to keep in mind and lots of important details forgotten. I guess the result would be something like this. I'm going to try my best but I'm sure some plotholes will remain. If anyone wants to help out with questions you want answered, throw them in the reviews so I can keep those plotlines or possible plotholes in mind. In the meantime: FORESHADOWING. *evil laughter* I've given you a few important clues here. Let's see if you can pick up the trail.
Let me remind you, we're all here to have fun and entertain ourselves. Offensive or aggressive comments will not be answered, and in AO3 any bad comment will be deleted withouth regrets. Don't step on my joy, help me keep up with the writing so I can finish this for good.
See you guys in 15 days, don't forget to leave your thoughts on the box below!