yeah, so I'm still continuing this hoping that I'll get a mass wave of reviews at some point. even a flame would be nice... but while I'm waiting for that wave, I do have TWO reviews. yay!
Adeptis: thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! yeah, I've been saving that. :) after I began redoing this fic, I thought, hey that's be cool. so yeah. little twist there. :P
Cyeshinni: ooh yay! I feel honored now!
DISCLAIMER: halo and halo2 are not mine and I'll accept that as long as I can play them
The AI Cortana was frustrated. Something was wrong with the ship's close-range scanners, the Longsword had no Slip-Space engines, and John had known something Cortana didn't. And all she could do about it was lay dead in space and demand answers from the Spartan.
"So what are we going to do about her?" Cortana asked again. The Chief was carefully removing her battle armor to reveal her UNSC fatigues. He was carefully treating her wounds when he finally answered.
"What do you mean? And can you give me a bio-sign reading on her?" He injected biofoam into a wound on her forearm and turned to glance at Cortana. The AI sighed.
"I can't. I'm having trouble scanning anything in or near the ship. If I knew what it was, I could scan properly, but…" She paused, processing the information. "I think it's both a Human and Covenant signal." There was a long silence. "Chief, I think it'd be best if you moved her to a bunk instead of the floor." the AI said. The Chief scooped the still unconscious woman off the floor and headed off of the small ship's bridge.
"Oh, so you do care." he muttered and walked off. Cortana sighed again and continued to scan. The interference was strongest within the ship. The AI calculated the possibilities of what it could be. The Flood was an option, but John had already scoured the ship to make sure they had no stow-away's. She tried to scan again, without success. She pushed the scanner problems aside and concentrated on what they were going to do about Gina.
"So how do you know she's Doctor Halsey's daughter?" Cortana asked once MC had reentered the bridge. John sat down in the pilot's seat and checked the ship's status. Cortana turned off the displays. "Chief."
"There's no escaping you, is there?" he mused and stood, beginning to pace. There was a short silence. "I knew her before the Spartan II Project began. When I lived on Eridanus 2."
"How can you be sure that this is the same girl?" Cortana asked. "Eridanus was destroyed years ago." Cortana calculated a few possibilities. "Other than her eyes, I see no like-ness of Doctor Catherine Halsey."
"But you do agree that Dr. Halsey had a daughter named Gina, don't you?" John inquired, glancing at her before he continued pacing.
"Yes. Dr. Halsey told me about her once. She told me she died when Eridanus 2 was destroyed."
"By the Covenant?" the Spartan inquired. Cortana shook her head.
"That's not possible. Eridanus 2 was said to have been destroyed by a natural force. The whole Eridanus system was not heard from for months. There were no witnesses to the destruction and no evidence in the area. The whole problem was dismissed by the military at that point, because we did not know about the Covenant." the AI explained.
"So the Covenant are a possible explaination." the Spartan pointed out. Cortana paused and considered this.
"Possible, but not probable. The Covenant would have by-passed many other Outer-Colonies to get there, then gone back out of system and have been inactive against the Humans for many years." she replied. "And taking a prisoner with them would be even more unlikely."
"Yet Gina is still alive and here." the Chief pointed out. "The only explaination we have at the moment is that the Covenant did take her prisoner." Neither the AI nor Spartan said anything for a long while.
"I guess we can't know until we can get answers from her." Cortana muttered. "I'm going to try and pin down the problem with the scanners."
"You do that." MC replied and left the bridge again. Cortana began to try the scanner. She blocked out everything on the outside of the ship and concentrated on the inside. Now that she had blocked most everything out, the scanner was working better. She could see MC heading towards the weapons lockers, but the interference stopped Cortana from detecting Gina in the bunks. That's when she realized. Gina was the interference.
She didn't know where she was. She didn't know what she was doing. She felt extremely lost in the small room she now occupied. She sat on the small bed and tried to think and be calm.
Who am I? She asked herself. Gina. She knew she had another name, but it escaped her memory. The frightened child pulled the blanket up to her chin. It was a strange material she didn't recognize, but it was comforting.
What am I doing? She asked herself. She didn't know the answer. Her mind was a big black void, empty. She didn't remember anything but her name and a few short phrases.
Always fight for the good of humanity.
If you're scared, fight. If you can't do it yourself, wait for help.
She tried to remember the deeper meaning behind the words and who spoke them to her, but she didn't recall either. But she did know she was scared. She hung onto her name and the words like a lifeline.
Suddenly, a creature walked through the door. The thing looked completely alien to her. It's face was bird-like and its gun was pointed at her.
Fight back.
She jumped up, frightened.
Fight back.
More creatures came through the door. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't fight them herself. She didn't know how to fight.
She would wait.
Gina awoke with a start, breathing heavy. She sat up and instinctively reached for her side arm. Pain shot through her wrist and she grimaced. Glancing around, she saw no one was there. It took a moment for her to remember what she had last been doing. Rubbing her head, she climbed out of the bunk and made her way to the bridge.
MC was sitting in the pilot's seat, staring at the display and Cortana was nearby. Both looked up when she came in. Feeling uncomfortable by their stares, she backed up.
"Is something wrong, Chief?" she asked. The Spartan turned back to the controls and indicated the co-pilot's seat.
"Take a seat. And call me John." Gina did as she was told, now even more confused. She had the feeling she should remember that name.
"You got that bio-reading yet, Cortana?" John questioned. Characters scrolled down Cortana's body.
"Hold on, I'm processing this information." she replied. "Okay, here are the readings." Information began scrolling across the main screen. "She's got a broken wrist, sprained ankle, a few torn ligaments, and internal bleeding. A few splints and a couple of pills and she'll be okay in a few days."
"That's it?" John was visibly surprised.
"Yes, even though she should be worse. Or dead." the AI replied.
"What are you two talking about?" Gina demanded. "A little crash like that couldn't kill me."
"Did you just describe that as a LITTLE crash?" John asked, turning to her. "You were telling me to leave you when you blacked out. Remember?"
"Yeah." the marine replied. "But that was only because I thought you wouldn't be able to get away if you waited for me to get up." The Spartan stared at her.
"You expected to get up?" he demanded. The girl shrugged.
"I've gotten up from worse."
"It's true Chief." Cortana put in. "You won't believe all this information I'm getting. It's almost as amazing as the Halo's." Gina looked over at Cortana.
"What's amazing?" she questioned. "What do you know?"
"A very good explanation please." the Spartan muttered, becoming impatient. Information began scrolling down the display.
"Your assumption was right, Chief. Gina is Dr. Halsey's daughter and your childhood friend. Gina's got every scrap of information on the Spartan project right here in her head."
"What?" both soldiers demanded.
"What the hell are you talking about? I've never heard of any Spartan project!" Gina snapped.
"Hey now! Calm down! Both of you are getting a little too anxious here!" Cortana yelled. Both humans sat silent. "Now, if we won't have anymore interruptions, I can explain everything." Neither said anything. "Good. Now, from this here, you can see that Dr. Halsey, when told her research on the Spartan project would have to have a fail-safe option, she secretly stored everything in a Neural Implant, similar to the ones in high-ranking Naval Officers. Dr. Halsey implanted it in her daughter, Gina here." The AI paused for effect.
"Number one, I don't remember anything about that, and Number two, do you mind translating that, because I can not read English." Gina said aloud, obviously annoyed by everything that was happening.
"You can't read?" John asked. "You could read better than I could when I last saw you." Gina stared at him with a blank expression.
"Am I supposed to remember this, because I don't." she stated simply. The Chief took off his helmet to reveal his short brown hair and blue eyes.
"You don't remember anything about Eridanus?" he asked. Gina bit her lip. That word sounded familiar too, but she didn't know why she should remember it. After a moment, she shook her head. The Spartan looked dismayed.
"A reason for her memory loss is in her NIT too, but we'll get to that in a minute. I can, although, teach you to read English in a second." Cortana said. Gina raised an eyebrow, then looked over at the display, that was still scrolling English characters. What had been unrecognizable gibberish to her seconds ago was now understandable. Cortana grinned at Gina's obvious surprise.
"What I've done is transferred some of my language index to your NIT." she began to explain. "After I did that, I flooded your memory with that information, making you be able to read."
"You have that kinda access to my brain?" Gina asked sourly.
"That's the limits of it." Cortana replied with a shrug.
"Great. Just great." John interrupted. "Now that we've had our technology lesson for the day, can we get back to the story?"
"Oh yes." Cortana replied. "During the Spartan, Dr. Halsey sent multiple transmissions to Gina's NIT for safekeeping. She thought she was sending it on a secure and unused channel, but the Covenant must have intercepted the message." She paused and let the information sink in before continuing. "They, of course, only got part of the message and deemed it worthy enough of finding the rest of it. They traced the transmission to its destination and found Gina. They kidnapped her and destroyed Eridanus."
"So that's it?" John demanded. "Why didn't they kill you after they got what they wanted?" He turned to Gina for an answer, but she shrugged.
"I don't remember that part of it either." Cortana put her hands on her hips.
"Now if you two would stop and finish listening I could answer all your questions." she snapped. The two humans sat and didn't say anything. "Now, after the Covenant had reviewed the information, they revised it to fit their own standards and they're material at hand. They effectively recreated the Spartan Program and renamed it Ginaesseve, after they're name for Gina." This time, Cortana didn't pause. She didn't want anymore interruptions. "But the Council deemed the project too risky to try on their own people, so they decided to try it on Gina. After the augmentation, the only side effect was complete memory loss of things before the augmentation. She was trained to fight."
There was a long enduring silence. John got up and began pacing the room. Gina, in someway, felt like she was the odd end in all this. She felt uncomfortable sitting in the co-pilots seat.
"So what you're saying, Cortana, is that my childhood friend has been turned into a piece of Covenant technology and has been trained to fight against the human race?" He was visibly angry as he said this.
"Hey, now!" Gina snapped, jumping from the chair. "Would you stop talking like I wasn't in the room? Yes, I was trained to fight you, but will I? NO!" Both Cortana and John were surprised about the outburst. Why wouldn't she fight them? Did she remember something?
"Cortana is right about not remembering anything about what happened before the augmentation, but I did remember my name and two little phrases." Gina turned her back to the Chief and muttered, "Always fight for the good of humanity. If you're scared, fight. If you can't do it yourself, wait for help." John was hit by the words. He remembered those too.
"Your grandfather said that." he mused. "All the time. He was a retired war veteran." Gina shrugged.
"I don't remember. Everything's just a big black hole." She turned back around and faced John. "That was the only thing I knew for awhile, until I got used to living with the Covenant. And I've always lived by that." She looked down at her feet. "I didn't want to tell you much about my life because you trusted me. Now that you know…" She shrugged again. "Guess your going to have to judge me."
John examined her closely. She was his age, but she looked more like a tired and frightened child. How much of life had she missed out on? How much had he missed out on? He realized how similar they really were, deep down. He touched her shoulder softy and she didn't recoil. She just looked at him with her sad gray eyes. He embraced her.
Somehow, Gina found comfort leaning against the Spartan. After going through life being different, it was nice to have someone that accepted you.
that's a wrap for this chapter! now you know… kinda! there's more to come about Gina… or Ginaesseve. muahahahaha…:P