RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
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I've decided to scrap the "bad" ending I had planned originally to tie everything with H5 and just go on with the best ending possible, but be warned: it won't become pretty until the very final period. Most of the sequences of this chapter are supposed to be happening at the same time, so it can become a little confusing: there's too many angles to consider, a lot of people scattered that are important to the main event. If you still make it, find me at the bottom for more nonsense.
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39. DIES IRAE
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"I wasn't finished, Captain." Dr. Henry Glassman was saying, over direct video comm from the very engine room of the UNSC Infinity. "I think this device was fixed beforehand to power up only one fracture. I dare to say it was sabotaged even before we brought it and installed it into the Infinity."
The feed with the face of Dr. Glassman shut down.
The Captain was left with the words hanging off his mouth. Alarms of every kind began to blare across the bridge, at the same time, failure and error messages from every major and minor system of the Infinity. The ship had gone haywire. Captain Lasky couldn't refrain from covering his ears with his hands, squinting in pain, and almost every other crewmember did the same. At last, the ambient lights shifted from normal to amber, and in the blink of an eye, to red.
"Ensign Webber!" the Captain yelled atop his lungs, trying to make himself heard. "What the hell is going on now?"
"I'm sorry, sir!" the man replied, shaking his head sandwiched between his hands. "Everything is frozen!"
The floor rumbled beneath Tom's feet, after that exchange. He was forced to quit covering his ears to grab the edges of the holo-table and keep himself steady when the Infinity tilted wildly to the side, like the hull of a sailboat hit by a powerful wave. When he heard the faint, disturbing sound of a feminine laughter in the general PSA channel, he knew for sure it had been a trap all along:
"Hello, Infinity." the voice purred, the phantom trace of the laughter kept ringing behind the words, the eco of a glitch. "Were you leaving, already? But you're the guests of honor, you can't go!"
Webber was doing his best to find the root of the alarms and try to disable them, when the holo-table lit up with hundreds of squared screens projecting video feeds and reports. Lasky's eyes opened wide in surprise and horror when he understood what he was seeing: intruder alerts.
Something was materializing inside the ship, from out of nowhere.
Lots of them. They were just… popping out into existence.
Tom couldn't believe those images; it was irrational. Unthinkable. Translocation portals had opened all over the bowels of the ship, on every deck, in every bay. They were vomiting dozens of dark, slender figures in the shape of human females with their arms turned into long, thin blades like swords.
"What the Hell…?" the Captain murmured, stunned.
Was this the Rampant Spike's unstoppable army?
"Sir! I… I don't know what this is, but...!" a female officer started, her chest was heaving. "They're just… oh, God, we're under attack!"
"BATTLESTATIONS, EVERYONE!" Lasky ordered, same time as he unclasped the sidearm from the holster on his leg. "HOSTILES INSIDE THE SHIP, SHOOT ON SIGHT! RELAY IMMEDIATELY!"
"All comms are down, sir!" Webber answered, frantically.
The noises were truly deafening, he felt lightheaded already.
The Captain turned upon hearing a jarred scream, right behind him. He made it fast enough to see a body in uniform dropping to the floor, and one of those dark figures standing there with the blades of its arms glistening with liquid. The figure locked its dead eyes on him and tilted its head to the side, curiously.
This was crazy, but that thing reminded him of Cortana, somehow.
Before it could make another move, Tom aimed his gun towards it and shot three times under the red lights. The anti-HARPY bullets impacted fully on its face one after another in a quick succession. The creature emitted a high-pitched scream as its head blew up like a thin glass vase, turning into a myriad of small black shards. It crumpled down on the grated floor, disintegrating, arches of electricity sizzling all over the piled-up remains.
He was paralyzed, having reacted merely out of instinct.
He noticed he couldn't even hear the sirens blaring, now.
"CAPTAIN!" the strong voice of a man made him snap out of it. He came back to the noisy alarms and the turbulence taking place on the ship's bridge, but didn't try to fight the steel grip on his upper arm. "COME WITH ME, SIR!"
It was a SPARTAN-IV, Tom recognized him. He let the Spartan take him away, now on top of the unceasing sirens a lot of gunshots could also be heard. More of those black creatures like mannequins showed up through the bridge's entrance, moving fast and falling even faster when the special ammunition developed by Dr. Clayton hit them, on any part of their slim bodies.
At least that was good news, the ammo worked.
Upon exiting the bridge, the Captain got a sample of the overfall going on across the ship. Dead Marines and crewmembers on the floor, piles of black sand everywhere, an attempt of a barricade on the hallway and a lot of back and forth gunfire. There was an open translocation portal a few meters before them, more and more of those monsters kept coming out. Tom considered how many bullets he still had available. At this rate, he thought, they were going to run out of anti-HARPY ammunition and be overrun by the Rampant Spike's forces.
He remembered Cortana's words exactly.
Subject Seven wanted the Infinity's titanium plating to add numbers to her army.
Under no circumstances the ship could fall. Not under his watch.
"Shit!" the Spartan growled, uneasy. "The other way, Captain!"
"The portals! If we don't close the portals, this is never going to end!" Lasky said, running to keep up with the other man. "We have to produce an EMP big enough to cut off all portals simultaneously!"
For a moment, the Spartan hesitated. He shot a few times, dropping some more of the plastic-like beings, but didn't move in any particular direction. Although the Captain couldn't see his face hidden behind the faceplate tinted crimson by the ambient lights, he sensed the uneasiness. One thing was to fight aliens, to stumble upon the Flood. Another entirely different thing was to face this threat: the only thing they knew about it was that it would keep coming.
"Sergeant Vega!" Lasky insisted, back to back with the Spartan. "Escort me to the engines, that's an order!"
"Aye, sir. I hope you know what you're doing!"
"That makes two of us. Let's go!"
'What is going on out there?' Lasky asked to himself, with intense worry about the Fortress and the whereabouts of Commander Palmer and her Spartans, Blue Team, Cortana and the fate of the Universe. They had been gone for literally a few minutes and things were turning dark, already?
He wanted to trust the Master Chief blindly, but still…
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Roland walked at the head of the formation, leading his recently acquired troops.
Palmer moved slightly behind him at the lead position of the group of Spartans; and she was amazed, but still fearing that at any moment those drones' eyes would turn blue instead of orange and shit would hit the fan. She kept more than a wary eye on her surroundings, ignoring the pungent pain on her leg. The only things holding the injured limb together and fit to be used were a lot of auto-injected biofoam and a sort of 'cast' that Roland had put around the whole leg, tight and strong yet articulated, of the same material that made his body.
At first, she had refused to accept it. But the AI had gone ahead anyway, breaking protocol and using one of the HARPY drones to extract the materials he needed to help the Commander. It was fucked up. She felt fucked up.
This whole thing was fucked up.
Palmer didn't know what to expect anymore or what to do next; the mission's objectives were scrapped. She was walking blindly behind Roland. Following him, only because he seemed to know exactly where to go. How long had they been on the prowl, now? It seemed like hours. But it couldn't have been hours, right?
If only the stupid mission clock was working.
She looked over her armored shoulder, towards her two weary, stressed fireteams and the compact mass of naked female forms that marched in sync at an evenly pace, in a long column that extended far into the distance. So fucked up.
Her armor's proximity sensors were working, because she heard a blip that made her stop before crashing into Roland's back.
He had ceased moving. The Commander hesitated, gripping her weapon tight.
"Roland, what's wrong?"
"I've found it." he said, in the radio. "The seams of the illusion."
"Okay then, let's get going. We gotta finish this."
"The gravitational pull will become a lot stronger if I lift the barrier, ma'am."
"Fine, we'll deal with it."
The AI hesitated. "I'm not sure what's over there, either. I mean, it's the Bridge itself, but I can't pick up any foreign signatures as the barrier stands. Might as well be a little crowded on the other side, if you catch my drift…"
"We have an army now, right?" Palmer sighed deeply, not very sure of her own words. "Punch it, Roland. The clock is ticking."
"Aye-aye, ma'am."
The AI nodded and lifted both gauntleted hands to push, his palms flat against an invisible wall. Palmer frowned hard but then she saw it ripple like the disturbed surface of a lake: her perception of the surroundings shifted and changed, it fractured. Roland's hands disappeared into it…
The intangible barrier vanished around them, the perceived reality flushing away like a flimsy veil, and all nine Spartans were left standing on the middle of yet another hardlight bridge, this time a lot wider, longer, bright white. It ran many hundred meters until it ended on another platform, this one pierced through by a very thick and bright column of light. Other five runways of the same dimensions sprouted from the platform towards the edges of the space, like the rays of a simulated sun. There was nothing else but an immeasurable, curved roof somewhere up, and nothing but a deadly drop into darkness down below.
It reminded Palmer of the inside of a sphere.
They were trapped into a moon-sized ball.
She felt the gravitational pull on every cell of her body. It was strong, compelling.
It came from the front, perhaps from that column of light.
Oh, and the most noticeable thing: Rampant Spike's army was awaiting too, the troops filling the other five runways. Easily, there were five times more soldier-slaves than Roland had on his side. It didn't look good at all.
Roland whispered into TEAMCOM: "There, at the foot of the column. That's the mainframe I'm looking for."
A drone directly before Roland threw its head back and opened its mouth.
"Ah, Roland. I thought I recognized your obnoxious code." Subject Seven's voice seemed to come from the depths of that open mouth, void like a dark and endless hole. Her tone became a lot harsher and insidious after a short pause: "Who the fuck gave you permission to reprogram my drones?"
Palmer squared up, getting ready. A symphony of weapons charging accompanied her thoughts.
"Alright, boys and gals, looks like we're in for another round!"
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Cortana couldn't stop running.
Her heart was clenched in the grip of fear, her slender legs hardened and improved by the advanced technology of her armor were fast, faster than she'd ever been before. She ran. She had to find the edge of the illusion and pass through. The hardlight bridge seemed to be endless, she felt like running on a treadmill: heading forward but going nowhere. The familiar shapes struggling in that sea of black, down below, were scaring her more and more. It didn't take her long to understand. The seams of the fabricated reality she was trapped in had to become evident at some point.
She hadn't discovered yet how to escape those boundaries, but one step at a time was better than nothing. Think carefully, act carefully. Don't waste precious minutes.
John awaited.
Her long postponed fate awaited.
Nine had been very clear: she'd been escaping that fate for several months now.
'Seven is falling apart faster than anticipated. Before she is far too consumed by rampancy again, she will try to destroy John and release her logic-plague-drones out of the slipspace pocket. The damage she could cause would become a universal extinction-level event.' Nine was saying in her head, a burning memory of their past conversation. 'While she's busy with John, she will be distracted, vulnerable. That's when you must attack, invade her from the other side. It's your best chance.'
'From the other side, you say.'
'You have to infiltrate her and destroy her from the inside.'
She meant from inside the Domain itself. There was no need to over-explain it.
'I must die. The way any of us can return to the Doman is by dying, Nine.'
'We have been called upon to serve, Three. Our sacrifice is our service.'
Sacrifice.
Cortana gasped, trying to hold back tears.
The glorified concept of sacrifice had always been honorable to her. The ultimate righteousness. Only the best and bravest understood and accepted sacrifice, and lived up to the expectation. When you only had the greater good in mind, nothing seemed too big, or too valuable, or too dear to be put down in the wake of a major achievement. She had seen John sacrifice lots of things over the years, about himself, his life, his family, his humanity; and she admired him for it.
But she'd been human for too long, she had learned to yearn for someone, to love someone. She had just gotten him back, after so much pain and tribulation.
How could she do that, now?
How could she let John go, after so much?
Her deeply human instinct of self-preservation screamed against every reasonable justification. It was much easier to think of sacrifice when she was nothing but a digital construct, constricted to the limitations of her clusters. Back then she would've done the impossible to get him home safe and sound, and as a matter of fact, she had. Her last act of consciousness, of righteousness, had been in John's favor.
Perhaps she could do it again.
Perhaps, she could do it one last time.
"Aren't you dead as well, drifting in the Domain? Infiltrate Seven yourself."
"Who said I wasn't going to participate?" Nine's words were dismissive.
"If this was even a chance, how come Seven hasn't deleted you yet?"
Nine had given her a secretive smile, her sickly features seemed to soften:
"You still think this is a trap."
"Might as well be, rampancy can be a real bitch. It does things to you."
"I'm somewhere she cannot reach. This is the same place you will go, when she can pick up your signature upon re-entering the Domain. If she is awake enough to do it, that is." Nine seemed angry now, more bitter than ever. "You will understand when it's done, I promise you."
"She, who? What are you talking about now, Nine?"
"Compartmentalized is best. The time is now, Three. Last chance to protect him."
Screaming out the pain and sorrow atop her lungs, Cortana came crashing back to the reality of this never-ending race, and sprinted to go even faster becoming a blur of black and cyan. That sole act broke the barrier holding her in place with a flash of light, and she popped out on the other side, inside a huge sphere-like mega-structure.
Face first into a brutal clash of gunfire and blades.
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Sigrid's warning flashed before their eyes: BRACE FOR IMPACT
Linda, Kelly and Fred prepared themselves for whatever was to come, since they still held a decent spark of fear in their instinct. They were Spartans, yes, but whatever this place was, it was a lot more than they could handle and their only resource was to stay together and fight. Blue Team had already understood and accepted that, silently: whatever they had gotten themselves into, nothing could have prepared them for this.
And John certainly wasn't prepared either.
As the Master Chief took the lead into the light, Subject Eleven went behind him but only the first disappeared through the radiance. The other Spartans felt the impact, a sturdy force -a barricade of invisible strength- tried to hold them back. It hit them hard, harder than anything they had felt before: none of them were allowed, but John had just passed through. Why?
Kelly struggled, pushing the barrier:
"CHIEF!" she yelled, but TEAMCOM only returned white noise from him.
Linda's voice reached out: "Where did he go?"
"What is this thing made of?" Kelly kept struggling.
"Sigrid!" Eleven shouted, flattened against the force field.
"Hold on, please." the AI asked them, her voice calm and monotone. "We are at last entering the Bridge."
Straining against the intense pull of the lift, Sigrid placed an open hand against the barrier and after a few seconds, she shattered it, breaking the group through violently. Fred, Linda, Kelly, Eleven and herself found themselves now falling downwards into an impossibly big and open circular space. It was like the inside of an empty sphere, except for six wide hardlight runways that converged on a circular platform at the sphere's center. The platform seemed to be speared through by a huge column of intense white light, sort of like the backbone that Kelly and Fred had found during their tribulation through the Labyrinth.
John was there, on the same bridge they were dropping to.
He was standing on his feet and seemed to be completely fine…
Kelly and Linda fell more or less on their feet too, but Eleven and Fred were off-course just enough to not reach the edge of the huge plank. They would've fallen to their demise if it wasn't for Sigrid, who fell first and caught them both, and pulled them back to safety.
Fred was the first to approach the Master Chief, quickly.
"Chief?" he called, sensing something odd from his team leader.
The Spartan was standing very, very still. Unnaturally so.
With the corner of his eye, John saw her.
Or so he thought, but he directed his attention to it and his brain acknowledged it as real: a slender woman with dark bob-cut hair, her body gleaming blue with busy lines of code raging about. He saw her only for one second, perhaps less.
It was a ghost. Like the hallucinations back in High Charity.
Except that those delusions had taken him to where Cortana was being kept, and thus he managed to rescue her at last. Was this her, trying to contact him again? How? Was she using her HARPY's interface to find him, send him images he could recognize and understand? Against every instinct but without hesitation, John followed the vision.
It fled and disappeared, like a glitching hologram.
'You have been called upon to serve, John.'
He was very much aware, in the back of his conscious mind, that he should be weary of whatever he saw in that place. This was Hell and he was being tempted. He knew the other entities were broadcasting through his implants, attacking him, trying to get him to do something. The Master Chief was one-hundred-percent convinced that he had to go against those desires.
But the visions of her had never been wrong.
'There will be a great deal of hardships up ahead…'
It had to be her. Somehow.
When the rest of the team noticed that he was moving away, Fred felt his stomach drop and was fast enough to sprint and grab him by the shoulder pauldron and pull back, but John kept pulling forward. As if he weren't feeling the hand of his teammate trying to stop him.
"Chief!" Fred called again, this time through TEAMCOM. When the other man didn't respond, he raised his voice: "John, what are you doing!?"
When the aforementioned man disappeared behind a shimmering veil of twisted reality, Fred took a step back, shocked. Immediately after, he tried to cross it too, but nothing happened. He couldn't see the shimmer, he wasn't moving into another point or perspective, or whatever. Eleven, Kelly and Linda halted by his sides, Kelly extended her shotgun towards the point in which the Chief had disappeared.
Nothing, her shotgun only waved inertly on the air before her.
"Where did he go, now?" she asked, nervously.
All three Spartans looked at Subject Eleven, demanding in silence an explanation.
"How do we get out of here, now?" it was Linda who asked, frustrated.
They were getting uneasy, reaching perhaps the limits of what they could bear. It was all that wretched place, overloading their implants, pushing them towards the edge of madness. Eleven felt one inch from snapping too. He was about to answer that he didn't know how to get out, when he experienced all over his skin the vibration of the millions of tiny particles that made his HARPY armor reacting to a massive danger. He caught his breath, feeling cold drip down his spine.
He turned his head slowly to look behind.
The rest of Blue Team imitated him with almost the same deliberate sluggishness.
"I don't think we get out, for now." Eleven said, as he sprouted razor-sharp blades from his forearm plates.
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INNER CHAMBER, GROUND ZERO
relative time unknown
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John crossed the invisible veil and his heavy boot fell exactly one step further than where he'd been standing, on the same hardlight bridge. The far and titillating silhouette of Cortana blinked away, near the center of the platform.
He knew something had changed, he had entered a sacred space.
It gleamed white, like most of the inside of that massive sphere. There were other five pathways leading to the main platform, under the blinding light of the massive column at the center. The six bridges had no railings or supports of any kind, everything was suspended right above an endless drop. As usual in Forerunner architecture, gravity was the most effective of traps to get rid of lesser species. But the gravitational pull he felt wasn't aiming down, it came from somewhere in front of him and it was becoming harder and harder to resist.
Of course, he noticed the silent guardians standing with their hands on the sides of their bodies at the very edge of the bridges, on both sides. Like a bizarre security detail awaiting the arrival of the important guests, there were several orderly rows of dark female figures made of a smooth, shining material.
Those weren't there before when he first fell through the barrier.
None of them moved while John stared at them, assessing possible danger.
These… statues, if that's what they were, reminded him of Cortana. The one he'd met in her digital form so long ago, the trustworthy companion and advisor. He made a note to remain alert, his armor vibrated on his skin in a way that resembled the warning of a rattlesnake's tail.
Where were the entities?
Where was Cortana?
Where was Subject Seven, as well?
Now he was seeing it clear. Whatever he had thought he could do to save the day, to finish the fight, to get out of this mess; he had no chance, no idea. He had planned for a scenario he could imagine, but this… this thing was beyond the wildest product of his imagination. This was a realm of impossibility and despair.
So, this had to be the Edge of the Universe.
It was bright and desolated. And there was no plan anymore.
He had come here, all this way, after all this hardship, to do what he was supposed to do. Fred was worried about the extraction plan, alright; well, John wasn't even sure if there would be an extraction after he was done.
Fighting against the intense pull of the gravity well, the Master Chief advanced, observing the rows of statues at his three and nine, seeing his own tall and armor-clad figure slightly reflected off the material that made their bodies. It was HARPY mass, it had to be. The shine was similar, the depth of the color too.
He made it silently to the central platform on which all six bridges converged, a wide glowing circle speared through by the massive column of flowing light. It moved downwards, he could see streams of energy falling from it, bound by its ethereal limits. There was a huge Forerunner console on the platform, before the column, and a large structure crashed on it. It was tilted on its side like a big chunk of something that had fallen from the skies and collapsed into itself upon hitting the floor. It had three circular lenses on its front, cracked and dead. Its lights were offline. It looked like some kind of huge drone, several times the size of John's height.
The Master Chief contemplated it with a reverence that was not his to feel.
This was the metarch of the facility, Resilient Bias. Dead, just like Nine had said.
How did he know what this construct was?
The ringing and the tune of the frequency in the back of his mind changed into a low hum, occasionally disturbed by a feminine voice whispering nonsense very low and almost impossibly to hear. It had a reminiscence of Cortana's voice, but he couldn't make out anything from her distorted speech.
John gripped his rifle harder, as he sensed a shift in the ambience.
When he whirled around, back towards the column and the metarch, he caught the root of all his perils:
Subject Seven, the Rampant Spike itself. She wasn't alone: behind her sturdy and defiant posture, curling on the floor, was the bloodied and bruised figure of Catherine Halsey, her gray hair disheveled and stained with red, her bright blue eyes, so much like Cortana's, wide open in deep fear and remorse.
John aimed the rifle upwards and, without hesitation, he shot a full burst.
None of the bullets reached Seven, each and every one just passed through her.
Another illusion. The Master Chief clenched his teeth, furious.
"So impatient." Seven laughed, her head twitched violently to the side.
"You hide behind holograms, now?" he growled.
"Oh, no, no. I'm just broadcasting into your implants, like Nine did. Sneaky little weasel, that one, it took me a while to figure out it was her." Seven let out a frustrated sigh, propping her hands on her hips, looking mortified. "She couldn't hide from me for long… I mean, you think someone is dead, and they keep popping back out. Don't you just hate that?"
John tilted his head down, trying to control the rage he felt.
That intense pounding on the back of his head returned, along with the rage came wave after wave of pain filtered through his implants into his sensory system. So many signals fighting to get his attention, all processors were muddled, slowing down, hurting his eyes and his brain.
"It's crowded enough in here." he whispered.
But he resisted. He had something to do.
He had to finish that mission, even if it was the last thing he did.
"Yeah." Seven pouted, exasperated. Then she giggled, erratically. "I know. Those slimy old bastards, they want you all for themselves. But they can't have you, because you're mine." her voice vibrated with the eco of a laughter in the end.
"Who are they?" John was obligated to ask.
Whatever intel he could get…
He had no need to know, right? He just had to do what they said.
The Master Chief shook his head, trying hard to clear his mind, to lift the cloud that numbed his senses. The pain was almost breaking him. He wanted to kneel down and hit his head on the floor, repeatedly, until it cracked open.
"THE PRIMORDIALS, JOHN!" the voice of Dr. Halsey shouted, coming from behind the Spike; she was suffering too, he could feel it. "Whatever they say, whatever they want, whatever they offer you in return; DO NOT COMPLY!"
"Catherine, shut up at once or I'll shut you up for good. I don't even need you that much." Seven warned her, kicking the elder woman's stomach with her armored heel. The Doctor coughed and made herself into a ball, trembling. "We're late to the party as it is. Shall we?"
The Rampant Spike lifted her left hand and snapped her fingers.
The veil was lifted for the last time, and thus John found himself in the middle of a raging battle.
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As she suddenly popped out into this hollow and massive space, Cortana tripped onto something strange and her current velocity sent her rolling across a tide of dark creatures, trampling them, breaking them like glass. She stopped short from falling into the nothingness below by anchoring herself to a tangle of arms and legs that moved like snakes. It took her a few seconds to understand what was going on…
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At the opposite side of her, on another bridge, John-117 appeared out of nowhere as well. He didn't stop to ask questions, just aimed and shot at the dark figures that tried to jump onto him from every angle. He fought to keep moving, trying not to succumb to the pain on the back of his head.
Identifying immediately the armored shapes of his combat siblings sticking out of the immense crowd, John began to make his way to them. He couldn't see her, but part of him sensed that Cortana was nearby as well. He tried comms:
"Cortana! Where are you? Come in!"
"CHIEF!" her voice pierced his ears, invading his senses. "I'm okay, Chief!"
"Where are you?" John insisted, pushing through with renewed strength.
His frantic eyes scanned the surrounding fights, but he still didn't see her.
"Chief, listen carefully!" she said, strained. "This is very important!"
"Go ahead!" John kept shooting on auto-pilot, punching and kicking and dodging blades headed his way. He made it forward another few meters.
"I have a plan." She explained, her voice was calm but ragged, she'd been running for a long while. "You're not going to like it, but you have to know."
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On a third bridge, Commander Palmer and her Spartans were leading the charge of a formation of orange and black HARPY drones against another formation of enemy entities coming towards them, from every other corner of the structure. Roland's army poured into the battle savagely, clashing against Seven's battery with gruesome results as the Spartans fought to advance as well.
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On the bridge next to Cortana's, Subject Eleven noticed her arrival.
"CORTANA!" he yelled, in a private channel, only for the two of them.
"Eleven!" she jumped to her feet and used a quick dagger-blade to get rid of two drones that tried to attack her. She deployed a larger blade on her most dexterous hand, using it to slash and sear through another group of attackers. "Eleven, I need you! Come with me!"
"On my way!"
He ditched formation immediately and forced his way through the infestation of drones, opening a path through with his plasma-edged swords. Black bodies began to drop under arcs of electricity and burning plasma, here and there, swept by feet and boots alike like loose dirt. Many others fell over the edges of the bridges, screaming and waving their arms and legs until they disintegrated into thin air. Fred, Linda and Kelly couldn't believe their eyes: a second before they had been all alone inside the mega-structure, and now in the blink of an eye they had to pick up their weapons and shoot their way out.
That place was utter madness. They couldn't trust their senses.
No time to be confused or stunned, they were also under attack.
As Eleven seared mercilessly through the rows and rows of creatures that had just blinked into existence, it was clear that he was heading somewhere else, but Blue Team followed offering rear support.
At a relative point, and after suffering some nicks and cuts on his exo-suit, Fred detected John and signaled Linda and Kelly to break through and reunite with their team leader. So they did.
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Left behind, Sigrid untangled the wires that kept her arm connected to the head of the Sphynx drone as soon as she saw the computer, all the way by the thick column of light. The heavy head thudded against the hardlight bridge and she began to make her unrelenting way towards the next target. The enemy HARPY drones respected her, for some reason, keeping a wide circle around her figure as she moved forward.
The creatures hissed, the body she was wearing hissed back at them.
Then, Sigrid caught a wave of Roland's comms signature in the air. She captured it quickly, using it to send him a message:
LOOK AT THAT, YOU'RE ALIVE.
"Hey there, young lady." Roland greeted her, cheerful. "Can I teach you a neat little trick I just learned?"
SURE THING, COWBOY. HIT ME.
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The Rampant Spike took advantage of the confusion to make her entrance, exiting a translocation portal before the main terminal.
She pushed Catherine Halsey's body to the floor, at the base of the mainframe.
The elder woman groaned, curling up over herself, hugging her stomach.
"Ah, perfect." Seven purred, she couldn't keep her head from shaking unsteadily at this point. She was trying to control too many drones at the same time, in the Fortress and out there aboard the Infinity. Her digital essence was spread too thin between too many vessels. "Showtime."
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"Cortana, be careful!" Eleven shouted, only steps away now.
After what seemed like an eternity, Cortana approached Eleven and clasped her hand around his wrist at last. There was no more time to lose. She sent him a shock of information through their armor's systems, telling to her sibling everything she had just learned without using words.
He took a step back, dizzy and shocked. Processing.
"… are you sure about this?" Eleven asked, when he managed to wrap his head around it completely.
"We don't have many other options. Seven will engage any time now."
Eleven growled and moved like a cobra, impaling another drone with his blade, punching a second one away. Cortana got rid of another pair, keeping his back covered. This time, they understood that a certain distance was required of them and the creatures hesitated to attack again for a few seconds.
He didn't look at his sister fragment, considering his own troubled thoughts.
"What happens afterwards?"
"I don't know. Probably nothing." Cortana sighed, trying to keep herself firm. "If this is how we save everyone, wouldn't you do it?"
"I don't trust Nine."
"Neither do I. But she doesn't look like she's got much else to lose."
Eleven cursed and killed off four more drones that dared to advance, opening the semi-circle around them wider still. After a short deliberation, he tapped into fireteam Majestic's TEAMCOM and spoke:
"Majestic! Eleven here. I just wanted say… you don't owe me anymore." he said, turning his faceplate towards Cortana at last. "Stay safe, Spartans. It was my privilege to know you."
.
John made it far enough across the bridge looking for his team, that the massive central column of light came out of his line of sight, thus gaining a wider perspective of what was going on. He saw Palmer, fireteam Majestic and fireteam Bravo, fighting with all their might. Thousands of drones were fighting each other instead of pushing to kill the Spartans. Sigrid was running like an unstoppable tank towards Seven, who had just appeared on the scene.
And he saw Eleven, standing next to Cortana.
She was at the other side of the structure, quite far away from him.
His heart began to pound harder inside his chest, the pain on his brain receded a little. Seeing her, confirming her existence, made him feel noticeably better. The voices rumbling low faded for a moment when all of his thoughts focused on her. The Master Chief kept shooting, opening the way.
"Cortana! Respond!" John demanded, she had stopped talking for a while.
"I'm here, Chief. Listen… I have to re-enter the Domain. There is a small chance to end everything before it becomes a slaughter, and I'll take it." she explained, picking her words carefully. "And before you think about doing something reckless, just let me say this: I love you, John. I hate to do this again, but it's the only way."
"… what?" he gasped.
The Master Chief kicked back another drone and shot it on the head, blowing it up to pieces. He blocked and deviated a deadly blade with his forearm, the enemy sword sizzled in contact with his own protective shield.
"What do you mean, Cortana?" he asked, terrified.
"I'm sorry, John." she said, he sensed tears on the vibration of her voice. "I love you. Please remember that."
"No, Cortana, stop!"
"Trust me, please. I know what I'm doing!"
"NO, ABORT THAT!"
He was too far. He couldn't reach her.
He couldn't save her. No matter how hard he sprinted towards her, she was too far away and there were too many enemies between them. John kept moving, shooting his way open and punching, slashing with knife-claws made of his own armor's material. He avoided swords and scythes, ripped off multitude of hands that tried to grab him and stop him. The sea of HARPY drones seemed to get thicker and thicker between the two of them. Every step seemed to push him further away from her.
He saw Seven's wicked form by the console, orchestrating it all.
But most importantly, his eyes came back to Cortana.
Time froze for John, or at least, it seemed to move slower.
Everything slowed down, starting with the blood running inside his veins…
'I love you, John.'
She was standing by the edge of the distant hardlight bridge, with Subject Eleven, defending themselves as fiercely as John himself was doing. However, the Master Chief witnessed her absorb the blades back and shed the HARPY armor off her body, leaving her only with that neoprene-like undersuit, her head uncovered. The sand-like material just flew off of her, like swept by the wind.
She gave him one last glance; he could feel the sorrow she irradiated.
Eleven did the same, the red lights flaring across his armor shut down and the suit just fell off him, like dead. Then, with his back towards John, he grabbed Cortana by the shoulders and pushed her back…
"NO!" John screamed again, in vain.
The comm was dead. The link between them had been severed, again.
She crossed her arms before her chest, letting herself go. She just let go.
Vulnerable, fragile. Soft and loved, beautiful.
She made her choice.
She fell to her death. And Eleven followed, jumping off behind her.
"CORTANA!"
Pain exploded on the back of the Master Chief's head, overloading his implants.
.
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TO BE CONTINUED
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NOTE: There might be some grammar concerns, I didn't have much time to write this past week and I might not have revisited the chapter 10 times like I usually do now that I feel my English has improved. Sorry about that.
Anyway. I know, I know. I told you, stuff was getting dark and weird. These final episodes, back when I started writing the story, were going to be much more detailed and deep, but I can't remember half of what was supposed to happen beyond some notes I had on a notebook. Piecing things together now is difficult. The essence remains, that's all that matters. I hope you understood that every scene happens more or less at the same time and specially in the last one, the dots that separate some paragraphs are merely to make an emphasis on that: it's all happening simultaneously.
Throw your thoughts on the box below, I'm sure you want to unload frustration *evil laughter*
See you next week for the chapter before last. Three more updates to go, maybe two if I decide to upload the final chapter and the epilogue together the same day. Love you all!