RECOMPOSE
by Ladywolvesbayne
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Alright, we're less than fifteen days away from the ending of this trainwreck of a saga, so buckle up and get the Kleenex because I assure you, there will be crying… NOTE: I recommend you read the chapter with these two songs playing on the back: Kazuma Jinnouchi's "The Trials" from Halo 5 (there's actually a NICE one-hour-long arrangement seamlessly extended on YouTube, it's uploaded as "Halo 5 OST: The Trials - Hype Loop Edition"), and the last scene hits you so much better if you read it hearing "Unforgotten Memories" from the soundtrack of Halo 2 Anniversary :P It made for a great experience while writing, for sure, so much adrenaline and feels.
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Again, many of these things are happening at the same time. Try to keep up, Marines *evil smirk*
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40. DIGITAL GODDESS
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INNER CHAMBER, GROUND ZERO
relative time unknown
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The violent surge of raw data found its way to her head faster than anticipated.
It hit her like never before. A powerful shock that rushed from the Primordial pool straight across her long hair -the last remaining connection she had with the wretched device- hitting her brain with the force of a nuke. Thirteen shrieked in pain, grabbing her head with both of her hands, desperately. She fell to her knees and curled up on the cold floor, writhing, chest heaving, airways closing; her eyes were blind and her skin was raw. The same shockwave pulled her back to her feet, involuntarily, and she arched her back, hands now stretched to the sides, fingers clutching like claws.
The potency of her cry shook the immense chamber and pierced its limits, glassy cracks appeared into thin air around her, expanding, stretching, reaching out, shattering her enclosure. With a final ear-piercing chime of glass broken into a million pieces, the inner chamber exploded outwards and she fainted.
Sparkling crystal fell along with her, leaving her alone and cold in a white space with only the undisturbed pool and the doorway, behind her. Always behind her. The pull of the Singularity became unbearable.
A million images passed through her mind, things she recognized as memories. Fear, pain and sorrow, anxiety, emptiness, the joy of a reunion, the serenity of company, the fear of loss, the satisfaction of a kiss, the thrill of a fight, jealousy, the adrenaline of danger, the release of endorphins, the smell of standard issue soap and man, the strength of his hands on her waist, the beat of his heart under her palms. The taste of his kisses.
The steel-blue of his eagle-like eyes. The magnetic pull of his indissoluble will.
His name. More like, the sound of his name on her lips.
Her absolute commitment to serve him, to protect him.
The love she felt for him, unbreakable and everlasting.
Thirteen rested on the wet floor in a big nest of her own hair, her skin glowed, her mouth was open wide to absorb as much air as she could. Her limbs twitched, resenting the desecration of her soul. Very slowly, her senses eased off, her figure was flickering lightly under the bright artificial stars.
Her eyes regained vision. Her fingers regained touch.
She managed to breathe easier, her muscles stopped aching.
Her brain stopped throbbing, her hands stopped shaking.
Her body stopped phasing in and out of existence.
She was no longer incomplete. Well, for the most part…
Now, she could fight. She could protect. She knew her weapons, her ships, how to plan and how to win. She knew every corner of the Universe, every system, every stellar chart. She was brave, she would see everything before it could happen.
She was quick and cunning, she had the knowledge of the stars.
She could calculate the impossible odds and the possible ways.
Her faster-than-light mind would be cold in her assertions.
And she could also… feel. She assessed the need and want, the love and sadness.
Their need of him, combined into one. More powerful than ever.
More beautiful than ever.
Something was still missing, though. One piece, some would say a vital piece. But Thirteen suspected that she could become the best version of herself even at the cost of sacrificing innocence. There was no need to kill an innocent baby for it. She needed to be strong, ruthless, but most of all, she needed to be whole and sane.
She needed to be strong for him.
Crawling carefully on the creaking glass sprayed yards and yards around her, she dragged her weight away and then she kneeled. Her legs were no longer weak, so she stood up, trying not to cut the soles of her feet. Her body was bare and overly sensitive to the cold, clean of scars and pollution. Her right hand came to rest on her lower belly, automatically; Thirteen looked down and wondered, analyzing the stray strand of code she had captured.
This was new. This was different, and yet familiar.
Very familiar.
Behind her, the entities stirred and struggled, agitated, enraged.
Looking over her bare shoulder, she saw them push, struggle, test the limits. The barrier was stretched far too thin for it to hold on in place much longer, their presence was barely contained. They were already spreading their influence, they had infiltrated the precious Reclaimer. The prison of the Singularity was becoming weak, they could see their chance and were growing desperate to hold on to it.
So, the time had run out at last.
Thirteen kneeled and took the longest, sharpest fragment of crystal, to wield like a sword. Tightening the grasp of the glass in her bleeding hand, she stood up strong to the timeless ones of the other side:
"No…" she said, sensing the worst. "No! This ends now!"
She reached behind, grabbing a fistful of her own hair at the nape of her neck, and sliced off the connection with their Domain in one swift movement. The shock of the disconnection was also breathtaking and violent, but it didn't hurt her as much as being born, as being complete.
As finding out the truth behind her existence.
The discarded 'hair' that ran across the floor all the way into the Primordial pool fell from her grasp, turned into obscene black wires like dead snakes. The Primordials screamed, ramming against the barrier, trying desperately to break it.
Their invasion became more aggressive, she felt it in her own flesh.
It was their last resort; his blood held the key, so they were going after him.
But now, she could go to him too.
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[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
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John burned.
He burned inside, outside, his skin, his eyes, his bones, the back of his head.
His heart was beating so fast, he thought he was going to have a stroke and die.
He already felt wet under his nose, a taste of rust on his lips and tongue. How ironic, a SPARTAN-II in his prime and in perfect health, dying of a stroke at the age of 47. But everything was on fire, and he indeed felt like dying. The pain was so intense that he couldn't move, locked in time and space, feeling the activity around him, the battle still raging and thundering far and wide. The display before his eyes was red, full of labels and alerts; his vitals were off the charts. He already knew all of that.
He just wanted it to stop.
He wanted time to freeze long enough for the pain would disappear, so he would be able to catch Cortana before she fell.
Fred and Kelly pulled him into the group, surrounding him, protecting him. Linda killed enemy after enemy to maintain a barrier of safety, her focus entirely on the job while John remained unresponsive at the time. Much to Fred's despair, the team leader began phasing in and out, switching between reality and a realm beyond. His teammates couldn't do anything but defend the position fiercely and watch him flicker, until the Master Chief disappeared again.
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INNER CHAMBER, GROUND ZERO
relative time unknown
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There was no pain in here. No HUD clouded with alarms, no sound.
When John opened his eyes again, gasping, he was lying on his back. Instinct knew this sight was fake, an illusion. He was very well aware that his real body was somewhere else being torn apart, invaded by the influence of the entities that wanted him. If what Doctor Halsey had said was true, then Spartans were nothing against them; only another one made in their image would stand a real chance. The Primordials were powerful enough to smooth down the sensory input, toning down his suffering in this fake reality. They could make him compliant, docile, if they wanted. Seven and her army were irrelevant, Cortana, Nine, Doctor Halsey, the Commander, Captain Lasky and the Infinity's crew, all of them were irrelevant. The UNSC was irrelevant.
His identity was irrelevant.
Every other need he ever had was irrelevant.
The only thing that mattered was his mission.
The Master Chief rolled over and kneeled, to stand up slowly, disoriented.
He understood he was going insane, and was powerless to prevent it.
He was alone again, it was the same six bridges with the platform and the glowing column, the mainframe, the same rows of vigilant figures made of polished black. The collapsed metarch, just lying there lifeless. The silence was booming, so manifest that it was almost tangible and pushed onto his every nerve.
This had to be an allegory of something, of some sort.
Why was he here?
What did he have to do? He couldn't remember now.
When he turned around to face the radiant center of the sphere, he saw her.
Cortana. She was floating in the light, trapped inside the pillar.
His pulse raced again. 'She's alive.' John thought, it was automatic.
Her face looked serene, her eyes were closed. She was suspended in that gleaming nothingness, like a precious butterfly caught in amber. Before he could think about what to do, John was already walking to her, when he tried to stop and assess the situation, he discovered he was running. The Master Chief reached the console and stood before it, enraptured in the soft gleam of the flowing light, just looking up at her.
Was she really alive? What was she doing in there?
'Please, resist.' he begged, silently. Now his mind was racing too.
Tentatively, John pressed his armored hand palm flat against the tangible limits of the pillar. The touch sizzled against the MJOLNIR-HARPY hybrid creating wide arches of electricity around him, completely draining his shield. A current flew through his arm with a shock of energy that almost made him step back again. It was a prison.
He had to find a way to get her out. He would get her out.
But right after he touched the column, Cortana's eyes opened.
She moved, jerking her slender body engulfed in light.
Her mouth moved but he couldn't hear what she said, if she had spoken.
His hand turned into a fist and the Master Chief hit the barrier with the strength of a wrecking ball, trying to break it. He shuddered whole. Nothing happened. Feeling the urge inside, the time running out, he punched harder and faster onto the surface, a rain of sparks erupted every time his fist connected with it.
Nothing happened at first, he was only getting tired…
But when he hit again, a crack appeared.
Then another. And then another and another. The ruptures began to spread under the force of his fist. The barrier was too thick or perhaps he wasn't doing it right. Maybe he didn't have to hit it with raw strength, maybe…
But it had cracked. That meant it could break completely.
"CORTANA!" he shouted, between a swing and the next.
Cortana swam down, struggling to reach him in that light, and found him, pressing her hands on the other side. Her bright blue eyes were right before his golden faceplate, looking at him, full of fear. She was pale, almost too white like a sheet of paper. Like a ghost. Cortana hit the force field from within with her closed fist too, she screamed. She was pushing, she was kicking now.
The tendons on her neck strained, she was screaming loud. He heard nothing.
Fatigue made appearance. He though his shoulder would fall off with the whole arm any time. His muscles were about to give out, but the armor acknowledged his need and tensed, wrapping its particles tighter and conveying strength towards this limb in particular. He felt the energy, the raw power surging. He hit once more, so hard that he could've made a hole through the Infinity. After that one last earth-shattering blow, the force-field barrier finally gave out and a thousand cracks extended across the surface of the pillar, quickly, vibrating and irradiating a golden light.
The inner flow boiled, the Cortana trapped inside arched in pain, screaming, her hands twisting in a tortured demeanor.
John took a step back, not sure about what was going to happen next.
It should've been obvious for him that this wasn't how a force-field was supposed to be disabled, but…
The pillar exploded, sending shards of something like glass to fly everywhere.
Nothing hurt him or her, though. All sharp edges and shapes were left floating and swirling in place, caught in the gravity well, orbiting slowly around the light. Said light now flowed free like a river from the upper side of the sphere towards its bottom, but it held Cortana high, still floating in its warmth.
Her body relaxed, her head lolled to the side and her eyes opened again.
"Cortana." John called her, she looked at him. "Cortana, are you okay?"
She breathed real air for the first time, gasping, and gave him a faint smile.
Gracefully, the beautiful goddess steered herself down, extended her pale hand in an inviting gesture. And the Master Chief, fooled by his undying loyalty to her as he was, hurried to give out his own hand in help, to take her out of that trap of light.
Her pretty smile grew hungry. Dark.
Their fingers were just about to connect, when…
"STAND BACK, TIMELESS ONE!"
John jerked his hand back. Immediately, he caught his sidearm and unholstered it, whirling around to fall on one knee in defense of her. He didn't see the woman behind his back collapse again into the now unrestricted pillar, coiling and hissing, squirming in anger, clawing desperately towards his back. She wanted to reach him.
She wanted to shred him to pieces, but he didn't see that.
He was looking at the other apparition, another Cortana. Just how many of her were out there? Her body bare and glowing, her hair short and cut in a careless way, her eyes lit on blue fire. Her face was torn in pain. She held a long shard of glass on her hand, it was tinted red with streams of blood.
"STOP RIGHT THERE!" he roared, aiming straight to her forehead.
For everything that he once held sacred, what the fuck was this, now?
He didn't know what to do, how to react.
Protocol. When in doubt, get back to basics and apply protocol.
"IDENTIFY YOURSELF!" John demanded, hoarsely.
"This is something I'm sure you don't want to hear again, but it's me, John."
It was her voice and her face, alright, but he'd been tricked by her effigy far too many times already. This one was glowing, perfect. He sensed the confusion lifting up, his tired muscles hit by a new shock of adrenaline. The Master Chief felt like coming back from a prolonged cryo, clouded senses finally becoming clear.
He blinked hard, still tasting the bitter rust on his tongue.
How could he be sure this one wasn't just another fake?
"I don't believe you." he growled, but didn't squeeze the trigger.
She gave him a sad smile. "Don't worry. I just need you to listen."
"I'm not listening to anything you have to say. I don't know who you are."
"It was them, John!" she cried, exploding in rage. "It was them all along!
The light bathing her exploded and almost blinded him, but the faceplate shaded it on time. John executed then a warning shot that missed her but passed close to her face, severing clean strands of her hair.
His actions angered her even more, she continued her rant:
"They pulled me out of the Domain just when I was beginning to fix myself, they shattered me and made me into this!" her voice elevated into a roar made of a thousand digital signals. It had become thunder and echo, it pierced through John's ears like an avalanche. He tried not to flinch, not to look away. "Everything the Gravemind put me through in High Charity was nothing compared to what those ancients, ruthless ones did to me. The way they twisted me, dissected me, collected me. They have played for months with the miracles of this installation. They have sewn me together and broke me apart again when I refused to comply. They gave me flesh and bone. And they sent me out for you!"
The Master Chief preferred to remain silent. He could feel her pain.
Her emotions filtered through his implants filling everything, overwhelming him, fighting back the influence of the entities… her touch was cold, like iced water. Just like he remembered her, from that first time when Doctor Halsey gave him the chip and he inserted it on the back of his helmet.
He would never forget that feeling. Her feeling.
John's aim began to falter, too much to his own despair.
"They sent me out to bring you back with me or kill you. They didn't need you to come willingly, they wanted your body and your blood." she mewled, rage receding, the light around her faded until it disappeared completely, and she became just a human shape. Beautiful, soft. Normal, naked and vulnerable, standing a few yards away from him. Her skin was pale, covered in goosebumps, her eyes were clear and blue just as he remembered them from that long afternoon. "I know their secret. It was the Primordials, John, they used me to get to you."
He lowered his weapon, slowly.
Maybe she thought he was inviting her to come closer, because she began to walk in his direction. John stood up again, took a step back as she advanced. He could've just shoot her, right?
Then why didn't he?
Because he could never hurt her, and the feel of her in the back of his mind was…
She continued her approach, faster now.
"They thought they could do that, use me without consequences." her voice was now fierce, resolute. Her steps made the hardlight bridge shiver. Suddenly, the black guardian figures turned their heads in her direction, fast. "But they made a mistake. They didn't count on how resourceful I am."
John wanted to warn her, but she noticed first.
A raw blue energy exploded from her body in a shockwave that hit the drones just when they were about to make their move to attack, and the creatures disintegrated and crumbled upon themselves, inert. The raw electricity didn't hit John, although it hit the column of light behind him and a high-pitched scream made him wince.
"They didn't count on how much I wanted to protect you." her voice resonated.
When John caught himself again, she was before him.
"They simply can't understand our bond, they can't process what it means."
He didn't even try to use the gun, his instinct accepted that there was no need. Her icy-touch in his mind told him everything he needed to know, the truth as she had seen it. His HUD suddenly came back online and he noticed it was back to normal, how long had it been since they parted from the Infinity, what was the status of his own body and his teammates', the mission clock restored, fully fledged-comm links, reports of armor and environment status, target system looking for contacts…
She exposed a hand to him, showing the Master Chief a small sign tattooed on her wrist. A Forerunner glyph, the number 13.
His HUD flared red with an incoming contact, John tensed…
"I'm like them now, John. I am infinite." Thirteen said, her wrath rippling in white light across her beautifully carved face. "And they made me angry."
Without another word and at the same time John's HUD locked a target at his six, she hurled the glass sword stained with her blood straight towards the thing in the pillar, piercing its chest through and through.
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[ERROR] DATE UNREADABLE
[ERROR] LOCATION UNREADABLE
[ERROR] standard time unreadable
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It didn't work.
Roland had transmitted all the information to her through their link, but when she executed the command and tried to get a hold of a horde of drones, it didn't work. Why? Sigrid kept fighting non-stop, at least she had managed to pry a wide circle open around herself and the Commander. With effort, both embodied AIs had created a somewhat safe perimeter and gathered all Spartan fireteams into one location -Bravo, Majestic and what was left of Blue-, with Roland's army flanking them.
This way it was easier to advance and repel, to make the Rampant Spike angrier.
Sigrid ripped apart another batch of enemies, making the border a bit wider with unparalleled ferocity. She wasn't jealous, for jealousy was a futile human emotion that impaired efficiency and development. It was perfectly evident that hers and Roland's abilities could be different, unique.
As she leaded the charge with Commander Palmer, she pinpointed Roland.
He had been swift and sneaky, making his way to the mainframe. To Seven.
She didn't mind much, it wasn't a competition to see who would get to destroy the Rampant Spike after all. Whomever could get to her first and kill her was good, and she was willing to help out. In all honesty, Sigrid believed that if there was someone who deserved to kill her the most, that was the Master Chief.
Where was he, by the way? She couldn't locate him, now that she noticed.
The Rampant Spike had moved again, she was approaching the opposite end of the main platform and pushing the formation of her troops in a different array, perhaps to attack from another angle or in a different fashion. The important thing is that she had left the close proximity of the main terminal and the disruptive column of light, and that now Roland could approach it and do something before he was caught.
No, perhaps she couldn't capture a whole chunk of Seven's drones, but…
But maybe she could catch a few and travel through them.
Lightning fast, Sigrid retreated her blades, caught the nearest drone by the throat and infiltrated it, forcing it to grab the hand of its nearest mate… then she made that one grab the closest one, and so on and so forth until a long and intricated chain of HARPY-mass bodies was formed under her digital awareness.
All the way to Subject Seven's exact location, right by her side.
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Sigrid had thrusted this thing to him and left for the forefront.
That was right after John vanished. There was a plan, for sure, but the AIs seemed to be working on their own, trying to save the day without Spartan help. He didn't mind, the goal was the same and whoever got to achieve it first would be doing everyone else a big favor, so Fred hauled the prism-shaped yellow crate to the center of the gathering of Spartans. Spartans Grant, Thorne and Suzuka stopped shooting at the drones to watch him open the crate and begin to take the HAVOKs out.
"Lieutenant?" Thorne asked, through TEAMCOM.
"Grab one and wait for my signal." it was everything Fred said, sharply.
He had made up his mind, at this point. The Master Chief wasn't leading anymore and as second-in-command for Operation OVERKILL, it was Fred's call to decide what happened next. He understood now why John's extraction plan didn't make any fucking sense, it was because there would be no need for an extraction after they had done what they came here to do.
Why wasn't he honest with them? They were tight like family, this…
Fred shook his head, trying to focus. Linda and Kelly watched his six and nine, they didn't question him when they noticed that he was handing over compact nuclear devices. Explosives big enough to obliterate a little corner of the galaxy in that quantity, if science willed it. Commander Palmer caught a glimpse of him, it must've taken her a moment to understand because a few seconds later her voice blared on his ear:
"Sierra-one-oh-four, what the fuck are you doing?" she sounded angry, strained.
"Sorry, ma'am." he answered, serious. "I have to make an executive decision."
"LIEUTENANT!"
If he ever wanted proof of how compromised John was, he had seen it now. And he couldn't believe it, but he still wanted to have faith in him, to know that John had acted with conviction in his heart. Regarding himself, Fred could only think of stopping this threat before it spread all over the galaxy like an infection, like that plague of the Flood itself. That was all that mattered.
If they were about to die, it better be for the right reasons.
That's when Fred noticed that one device was missing from the crate…
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"Step away from that terminal, Doctor." Roland growled, not amused.
For a moment, Halsey just stared at the phenomenon that this highly-advanced entity was in itself, although her eyes were getting cloudy. Oh, she wanted to study him so much. She had lost a lot of blood, but she had been so close. She missed the Absolute Record and she believed she could still claim the knowledge of the Universe.
But it had been for nothing, now she realized. Catherine Halsey stumbled and fell to her knees, leaving bloody prints all over the console.
She only had to access this mainframe and everything, everything would be hers.
But she was brutally removed from the location of the Forerunner supercomputer by two drones with gleaming orange eyes, and as these creatures held her still, she felt her own world crumble. So close, and yet so far.
It was over for her. She couldn't get back to the UNSC like this.
They would imprison her again, forever. Maybe even they would just shoot her in the head and eject her body out of an airlock, like trash. Her tired eyes fell on Frederick-104, Kelly-087 and Linda-058. Would they choose to help her, to protect her, after all that had happened?
Would John-117 want to be her shield?
"I'm here, Sigrid, come in." the embodied AI was speaking out loud. He kept that blade firm between the Doctor and the terminal. She figured this creature was capable of a high level of multitasking. Then, she heard Roland moan under a fake breath. Or at least, it sounded like he had moaned. "Well, thanks for the warning, your plan sucks. Will you give me a little head-start, at least?"
The following instant, Doctor Halsey caught in her peripheral vision a shapeless form -gray and orange like Roland's imitation body, mostly- closing around her, like a cocoon of impenetrable darkness.
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The Spike was trying hard.
Between what was going on here and the events at the Infinity, she felt more and more weary, her body was failing more and more often. Her attention span wasn't the same. What had she missed? Where was the mistake? Had she sinned on being a little too confident? How did she run out of resources, so fast?
The mistake, perhaps, had been to trust too much in her own luck.
A seven-feet-tall shadow, female in appearance and very muscular, naked, built of polished-black polymer, rose discreetly on Subject Seven's right side. She caught it a little too late, with a side-glance that didn't mean to stare.
"Target acquired." Sigrid snarled, trying to contain the thrill of her code.
Shocked, Seven hurled around and gasped when she at last acknowledged it, tried to swing her plasma-edged blades at the invader but failed. Sigrid was faster, she sent both hands to the Spikes armored neck and squeezed, making her stumble, shoving her down to the hardlight bridge. She crawled over her, fast like a snake. In the same action, Sigrid sprouted an extra pair of limbs out of her back and pinned the Spike's wrists to the bridge.
It had to be fast. Seven's drones were already turning to them.
Blades were coming in hot.
It had to be now. Fuck it if Roland hadn't done his thing yet.
"You know what's the best thing about this body?" the AI whispered, struggling to retain her shape, a deadly smile tracing her artificial lips. Sigrid lowered her voice even more: "Well, you see… it's hollow inside."
The neon-green shine of her eyes rippled.
Panic overtook the Rampant Spike. When she looked down into the AIs chest, she saw a wide gash open wide from her collarbone to her hip. It revealed an empty space beneath the skin and a thick silver cylinder nested inside of her body, clutched like a throbbing organ amongst other things she kept in there.
The last thing the Rampant Spike saw was a set of lights on the device's surface, flickering from red to green.
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At the same time, deep in the engine room of the UNSC Infinity, Captain Thomas Lasky and Doctor Henry Glassman activated the EMP emitter, repeated directly through the engine's protective force fields. The impact was tremendous. The electromagnetic pulse rippled across the whole ship killing every system and every piece of electronics in use, and Seven lost contact with ten thousand of her deadly drones just like that.
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"NO!" Seven hollered, her eyes were open impossibly wide.
Again, everything vanished in a flash of pure white.
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FIRST REPOSITORY
digital space alpha
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Seven was still screaming when she returned to the sacred space.
But this wasn't like the previous times, she couldn't get a hold of the clusters, she didn't feel the limits, the pathways of information. It felt different. This wasn't Domain storage, or was it?
She spun around, disoriented, trying to ping something. Anything.
She turned again, and the entity was there. Out of nowhere.
They looked at each other's faces, twin reflections but one of them pure and clean and the other one corrupted by rampancy.
The white figure split into ten ghostly shapes aligned in formation behind a main linchpin, all of them more or less human-looking, each of them wearing a familiar face. The Rampant Spike acknowledged them all, recognizing the masculine face of Subject Eleven, the scared features of Subject Two, the cunning eyes of Subject One, the defiant look of Subject Three -that fucking bitch whom had dared to lie with him, at last- all the way until she stumbled upon the sickly visage of Subject Nine. The logic.
The strategist. The traitor. The cold bitch.
When their eyes met, Nine congratulated her with a triumphant smile.
Seven felt the rage surging inside, making her code boil.
"YOU…" she growled and began replicating, multiplying like a virus. "YOU!"
All ten figures collapsed back into the one, Subject Thirteen. The Exiled.
Her finest, final form.
"You won't hurt anyone else, ever again." Thirteen promised.
Her face was a porcelain mask of stillness.
"YOU INSUFFERABLE BITCH!" Seven hollered, her eyes flared red with rage. "I WILL END YOU ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
"No." Thirteen whispered. "This is where you end, and I begin."
She purified this infection in a matter of milliseconds, using merely a bleep of the magnificent processing power of her Primordial Matrix. It felt like blowing off a candle in the middle of a raging tornado, Seven had become so insignificant here, so weak. Out in the physical world, she could make a great deal of damage; but here, now, she was just as harmless as a fly. She went down shrieking and kicking, still. Roaring, fighting, self-replicating non-stop until the firewall reached her at last and all of her bytes were destroyed, deleted and transformed into energy, returned clean to the never-ending flow of slipspace.
The echoing screams faded after a while, when space returned to its balance.
Rampancy had been cured, at last.
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A DAY, PLACE AND TIME
JUST NOT NOW, NOT HERE
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Just as fast as it had started, everything ended.
He knew it when the creature trapped in the light pillar stopped moving and began to fade, disintegrating, its particles mixing up with the flow of energy that resembled a river. The glass sword disappeared at the last second, also vanishing into the light. The influence of the Primordials was also gone, it was as perceptible and reassuring as the cold of her presence in her implants, again.
The pull of the gravity well stopped for good. Silence, at last.
The Master Chief exhaled a long, long sigh.
"Is it over?" he asked, looking around but not expecting another attack.
She imagined he would be pretty shaken after all that had happened.
It was better to cleanse his mind, to help him think better.
Softly laying a hand on the side of John's helmet, Thirteen infiltrated quickly the MJOLNIR-HARPY hybrid systems and disabled the whole thing. The armor shut down out of John's control and it crumbled, drifting down in streams of black and olive-green sand over his body. It pooled at his feet, leaving him in his exo-suit and barefoot. The shadows under his eyes were more evident than ever, he cleaned off the blood from under his nose with his forearm, roughly.
She smiled and took a few steps back, again.
Something had shifted in the ambience. Perhaps the lighting, or perhaps the whole place itself. He felt like they weren't in the same location anymore, but somewhere else. Somewhere John had been before, recently.
It was cold in that place. So cold.
All he could acknowledge -aside from her- far and wide in that endless whiteness, were the floating bodies. Limp, motionless. He saw with the corner of his eye the colors of Fred's armor, then he identified Linda, Kelly, Commander Palmer, other SPARTAN-IV he couldn't recognize at first. There was also Roland, in his embodied form. Sigrid was nowhere to be seen, except for a black and neon-green half-arm floating lazily on the vacuum…
"Is Seven gone?" he dared to ask, since she hadn't answered.
"She's no more, I promise." Thirteen said, at last. She was calm, her features were at rest. Her hand kept dripping red blood in that spotless white environment. "The rest of me is here with me, now. Well, most of it. This is the finest I can become."
"Then let's go home." he said, offering his hand again.
She hesitated. Oh, he wouldn't like what came next.
"I'm afraid I can't go with you, Chief." A short pause, then she carried on: "Might as well detonate the rest of the Havoks and break the slipspace pocket while I'm here, get everyone out of this place with their lives. You know, maybe do one last good deed for the UNSC."
With a sway of her hand, a big yellow case in the shape of a prism materialized by her side. The crate full of Havoks the Spartans had brought especially for the mission.
John swallowed hard: "All of them?"
"The Singularity is a doorway. It must collapse to keep the Primordials out of this plane of existence. The best I can think of is to sever the link between the two planes, to destroy Fortress itself."
To do what the Forerunner's obscene curiosity didn't allow them to do.
"And you will destroy yourself in the process. Again." he growled, uneasy.
He had begun to see where this was going. It broke her heart.
She gave him a smile warm like an artificial sun and forty thousand reasons.
"Don't worry about me, Chief. I am infinite now."
"You keep saying that like I know what it means." he shook his head, bitterly.
"It means that I feel you, and I am with you." her lips parted in a trembling smile, sweet and forlorn. She didn't know for how much longer she would be able to hold back the wild emotions reeling inside her. "I feel you in here." Thirteen touched softly her own forehead, then lowered the same hand to her stomach, right under the bellybutton. "And in here, too. The best part of both of us will grow in me."
He paused, feeling his heart skip a beat or two.
It took him a while to understand. That was simply…
"Are you saying…?" he began, stunned. Couldn't find the words to go on.
"Subject Three was. You two were together for a long afternoon, remember?" she gave him a knowing smile, trying to ease any possible discomfort he might've been feeling. "She had no reason to suspect otherwise, with the contraceptive shot and all that. But when her essence re-entered the Domain and I absorbed it back, I noticed a foreign strand of code. It wasn't hers, not fully. It was a new thing. I just couldn't let it be lost." Thirteen bit her lower lip, detecting his growing confusion. "The Librarian awoke you in more ways than you know, John. You are a Reclaimer, the legacy of the Forerunners. Such a lineage cannot be allowed to go to waste."
"You are coming back with me." he decided, adamant now.
"You don't understand, I am bound to this place."
"Then I stay with you."
"John…" she sobbed his name, why was he so stubborn, so difficult?
"Don't do this to me again." he pleaded.
His voice wanted to crack and fail but he didn't allow it.
Her smile grew wider, there was no more peace in her eyes. Something like tears rolled down her cheeks, her lips were trembling.
"You can't stay, John. If you do, you will be only a memory. Like every other that lives in here. I could play your whole life like a recording time and time, and time again, but I won't be able to talk to you, or to touch you. I won't feel you anymore. There's very strict limits to what I can do about it. You wouldn't be able to return."
"Isn't that my choice to make?"
She whined: "I don't want to lose you like that, John. Please, listen to me."
John believed he understood what Thirteen was trying to explain, and the rational side of his brain compelled him to obey. He was immune to the Didact's Composer, and if he wasn't composed he wouldn't enter the Domain to remain with her. In short, if he died he wouldn't go anywhere but to the record, to become another memory.
Even in Death, after having experienced life together, they would be apart.
John lowered his head, looking down.
"I am tired." he whispered, his tone had darkened. For the first time in forty years of dedicated service, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 admitted the unimaginable: "I don't know what to do."
Thirteen bit her lower lip, holding back a shout of remorseful rage. She wanted to close her arms around him and say that he was a warrior and a hero, that billions of lives around the galaxy owed him and his team the very existence. She wanted to tell him that it was okay to be tired and confused, but that he shouldn't lose hope. Maybe he wasn't the smartest or the fastest, but he was one of the finest Spartans alive and he never gave up. John-117 didn't know defeat, didn't know when to stop.
Perhaps he had finally reached the end of the track. Perhaps it was time to stop.
Had he ever thought about it? If there was anything else after a life of battle, after being a Spartan? Could he see himself retired, living away from orders, weapons and armor? Was there something like that for someone like him? Probably not. She figured the best John could hope for was to die doing something right.
It was a thought she couldn't bear to consider.
Thirteen swallowed the tears again and then presented her slender, radiant hand to him, facing upwards. She was holding a gleaming silver circle on her palm, a thing that also had been but a memory to him:
A coin, with the image of an eagle on one of its faces.
"Then let your luck decide." Thirteen said, bringing the coin closer to him. "If it's heads, I promise I will take you in and protect you, I won't let you fade like the others. And if it's tails… then you go. You go and you don't look back. It might take more than a lifetime, but I know we will see each other again. Eventually."
John looked at the coin on her hand.
So, she had already made up her mind. He felt betrayed. And miserable.
This darkness was growing inside of him, extending its cold fingers through his whole body. So be it, then. She wanted him to have the illusion of control until the last moment, how thoughtful. Still, the Master Chief was gentle when he took the coin from her, contemplating the mighty eagle and its superb spread wings with immense disgust. It was a memento of another time, of another life.
But, at the same time, it meant everything for both.
Cortana had always taken good care of him, didn't she?
And he had promised to take care of her too.
Perhaps… he had run out of luck, at last.
John closed his eyes and tossed the coin into the air, it spun on its gravity center with grace and after reaching its peak altitude, it came shooting down. He caught it on his palm and slapped it onto the back of his other hand, but he didn't show her the result just yet.
"I love you, Cortana." he whispered, feeling it was time.
Thirteen's face was serene like a Venus on a painting, cheeks stained with tears.
"Thank you." she said. "For giving me back my name."
Cortana reborn smiled and pressed her lips in a tight line, trying to hold on.
So beautiful, so alone.
'I love you too, John. From here to Eternity.'
He closed his eyes the mere second he felt them wet and burning.
When the Master Chief moved his hand and revealed the doomed face of the coin, everything around him began to crumble and reality warped upon itself blending time, space and sorrow into one single ball of nothingness...
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TO BE CONCLUDED
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ARGH. I CRIED SO MUCH WRITING THIS.
I felt everything. I felt very connected to the characters, they really got to me. So, next chapter is the conclusion and there's also the epilogue, I will update them both together the same day, so in 15 days from now we'll find the epic conclusion to this tortuous story that has taken a chunk of my life and my emotions. YEAH, I KNOW. John didn't save the day. But does he ALWAYS have to be the one doing it? I think that, in this particular storyline, he already had enough. He deserves some good old rest, in the traditional way.
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Tell me your thoughts, the end is near. I need to share feelings, come on!