Chapter 3: Tombe d'Esprit
He ducked behind a weapons pod, lobbed a plasma grenade back over his head. Explosion, a pause, and suddenly, a brute came running out of nowhere at him. His 'new' brute shot came out, the huge blade carving a path through the infected creature's flesh.
A blow from behind, shields flaring, failing. He whirled, two drones, shot. The round exploded outward from the wall, blowing the drones in smoking spirals of burning flesh.
He did not understand this mess that he'd gotten himself into, and that bothered him. According to his HUD, he'd been in High Charity for six hours. The auto-updating map showed him that he'd taken a zig-zag path through the hollow caverns that the city had become. Yet the map did not show the one thing the Spartan wished it would: a small, yellow dot. An IFF transponder - the kind used by UNSC AIs.
He was certain that this could be blamed on the Gravemind. The creature seemed to have utter control of this city's system. And it likely had Cortana boxed into a very small network of systems - maybe even a single console. The Gravemind would be blocking the transponder's signal; anything less would be foolish.
And the Gravemind was nothing if it was a fool.
As he stumped up the slimy hallway, the treads in his boots automatically adjusting for optimal traction, he wondered about his invisible foe. It had been several hours since he'd heard anything from the monster, yet it had obviously been there. It was throwing hundreds of its warrior at him, doing everything it could to kill him.
Cortana's voice, desperate again, as if trying to convince herself:
"There will be no more anger, no more sadness, no more envy…"
Suddenly, the Chief understood. He was close, closer now than ever before, and the Gravemind was trying to stop him. He was so close that the vast, collective intelligence of the Flood, the God of Death, was afraid.
Afraid of him. Afraid of her, and that vast, terrible secret that she concealed.
Yet, as the Flood appeared again, coming on in that never-ending wave that gave it the name, the Chief was forced to admit that it was a small comfort.
Click. The brute shot was out of ammo, and a whole horde of Flood rushed him. As he lashed out at an infected elite, he realized that he was entirely out of any ammunition for his weapons.
Out of ammo, out of ideas, out of options.
A mistake. He'd made a mistake.
The Master Chief was the tactical, thinking warrior who destroyed Halos, liberated planets, slaughtered thousands of Covenant on their own battlefields. He was not reckless – daring, yes, but not reckless. Yet he'd just committed a huge tactical error, a faux pas that would have had Officer Mendez stomping him into a mud hole if he could have seen it.
Cortana would never have let him do that. He was supposed to be super-human.
An attacking brute fell to a ruthless combat kick that ripped a gaping hole in its chest. That gave him a moment to pause as he ducked behind cover. A huge mass of Flood still roiled at the head of the passage, mindlessly firing their weapons at the place he'd been.
The Spartan quickly took stock of his resources. He had one grenade - an M9 HE-DP fragmentation explosive that he'd been saving. He had himself -- "If you're gonna do it, do it right, Spartans! You are a weapon. Count yourselves as one!" -- and that recklessness that got him here in the first place.
The grenade was good. But the reckless… he wasn't so sure about that. But as he considered it, standing there in the darkness of a Flood-infested hellhole, he realized that he needed 'reckless.' It was a human emotion. And the human side of him was now boiling to the surface, full of fear, hate, and that ever-so-foreign feeling.
Need.
Suddenly, the Flood was on him again, having advanced down the slope. As a huge Flood monstrosity raised a huge arm to club him, he spun aside, struck out, backed away as his foes surrounded him.
The speakers in his helmet suddenly screamed with feedback, a roar of ambient noise --
"Submit! End her torment, and my own!"
And that – that was the trigger.
In the thick of gunplay and plasma-spewing combat, the Chief snarled out an instinctive, "Up yours, asshat!" as the Spartan in him fled, and the human, John-117, took over.
He lobbed his last grenade, the M9 HE-DP explosive he'd brought from Forward Unto Dawn. Bodies were torn to pieces in cascades of limbs as John lunged forward, taking advantage of the momentary confusion to throw himself into the fray.
He leaped high above the grasping, broken fingers of his foes, used heads, shoulders, torsos as living stepping stones to get to the door, that last door, the door that would bring him to her, to the answer of all his fears and insecurities. The Flood could not stop him – he was a warrior in his prime, the god of War in his element.
Nothing could stop him.
"He is a demon," the Prophet of Regret insisted with the vehemence that could only come with untempered zeal.
"Not a demon," the Prophet of Mercy interjected, aged voice rasping. "The demon."
Regret nodded vigorously. "We must see to it that he is destroyed. We should devote all our efforts to finding and slaying him – capturing him, if it is possible."
The Prophet of Truth made a calming gesture. "I completely understand your concern, my brethren. But you must remember that we are not just dealing with a champion of the humans." He interlaced his long fingers, somehow managed to keep a beatific look on his face as he spoke of this… monstrosity. "This demon, this… 'Master Chief' is the epitome of the evil that we fight. You must remember what he has done. I do not believe that we should --"
"I know all too well!" Regret interrupted angrily, fist slamming against the arm of his gravpod. "That heretic spawn almost single-handedly destroyed one of the Sacred Rings!"
Truth sighed, tiring of Regret's single-mindedness. "Perhaps we should review the records before we jump to this rash course of action," he said mildly, tapping a few buttons on his own gravpod. "If you see what I have seen, you will perhaps remember what it is we have to deal with."
Before the Hierarchs of the Covenant, a huge monitor slid down from the ceiling and clicked into a place. Almost instantly, a holorecord began to play, obviously shot from a Sangheili's helmetcam.
The display showed a huddle of Unggoy clustered near the feet of a Sangheili Major. In the background, more Unggoy were hustling to move a stack of fusion coils out of their way.
The Major lifted his head suddenly, sniffed. "Do you smell that, my brother?" he growled low in his throat.
The owner of the cam nodded, replied: "Human. The stench is unmistakable."
The Major stepped through the cluster of Unggoy, toward something off camera. "But it is faint. I do not –"
Suddenly, the feed grew hazy as the glowing blob of a T-1 antipersonnel grenade appeared between the Major's outstretched mandibles. The poor Sangheili made one guttural curse, then disappeared in an incandescent explosion.
The camera shook, a few moments of chaos, the Unggoy scattered in fear, gunfire, blue blood spraying the walls. Two Lekgolo lumbered into view; suddenly, one was staggering, falling down dead. The other made a glottal roar, empty from the pain of loss, and charged toward something once more off camera. The headcam spun, caught a glimpse of some invisibly fast green-armored... thing... with what looked like a giant tube over its shoulder.
A spurt of fire, the last Lekgolo lurched backward, a giant dent in its belly plate, and another explosion, and the plate was punched through, smoke, orange blood in a geyser. The owner of the headcam whirled, apparently to run, but –
-- the green thing was there again, an energy sword in its hand. The white haze of plasma played havoc with the feed, but only for a second. In the next instant, the camera shot to static.
"Now do you see?" Truth asked softly. The other Prophets sat in silence, stunned at what they had seen.
"Such a creature even existing…" Mercy breathed out softly, horrified. Next to him, Regret whispered a humble prayer and made a religious gesture to ward off evil.
Truth nodded. "The demon fought and slew an entire detachment of Sangheili, Unggoy, and Lekgolo single-handedly. There is not a thing that we may do to kill him on the ground."
"He is unstoppable," Regret finally muttered.
"Completely," Truth agreed.
And John ran on, exploding through the door, into the next chamber, still no weapons. Plasma fire blazed out past him as he emerged into a vast, cavernous chamber – a reactor.
It was swarming with Flood.
But with no hesitation, he dashed out as the hordes of hell all seemed to stand up and take notice of him. This throwback to the Greek gods exploded into the midst of Hades with no weapons save his hands and the mind that worked them.
He dashed across the spindles of organic matter that formed bridges across the chamber, replacing the energy ramps that had been here not long ago. He threw his enemy aside, out of his way, gripped by adrenaline, need, anger, weighed down, weighed down by the never-ending struggle, the never-ending warfare, all of it would never stop.
The hissing roar of a fired brute shot came to his ears; he threw himself forward as a salvo of the launched charges screamed past him and impacted on the far wall. He rolled left, back onto the catwalk that ringed the room, sidestepped into the hall.
An energy sword, deactivated, was lying against the wall. He scooped it up, checked the lateral line as more explosions impacted at the mouth of his refuge. The sword still had most of its charge. That would do.
Activating it, he let a smile light up his face as his HUD quickly worked to accommodate the Covenant weapon. A reticule appeared on his visor, and the charge reading blinked in the upper right corner.
Stepping out, he ran head on into a wall of Flood – drones, brutes, elites. The sword found work for it to do.
One must recall that plasma, by its very nature, is exceedingly hot – hot enough to boil the liquids that make up most beings. It is nothing more than a superheated glob of energy.
An energy sword is a three-foot long sheer plane of superheated plasma at nearly 250 kW, and this number can jump to 270 kW when actually striking a target. To offer a benchmark, 250 kW is enough to slice through a foot and a half of steel with no more resistance than waving a stick through the air.
This weapon was in the hand of the most capable warrior of the human race, and it met the Flood head on.
He exploded into the Flood with a shout, blade vaporizing flesh and bone marrow. His shields glowed iridescent gold, hammered by their vicious counter-attack, but he powered through like a chainsaw through wood.
He burst from the struggling press, saw a door in the murky haze ahead of him – a marred infection form, a brute, blocked his way. He lunged, but it threw itself at his feet, tripping him. He rolled, felt the energy sword knocked from his grip. Coming upright, the brute charged him, broken hands outstretched. John took the impact with a grunt as his shields flared, sparked, then failed. The brute struck at his upraised arm, shattered its own ulna against the unyielding Mk. VI armor.
John struck out, caught the thing by the throat, tried to crush its head in his hand, stop the huge thing that was bearing down upon him, impossibly strong. Suddenly, the brute's shattered jawbone began to work, its torn vocal cords tightened, and it spoke in that snarling, horrible voice:
"You will show me what she hides, or I will feast upon your bones!"
Crunch.
John's hand closed on the vulnerable infection form that brought this corpse to life, and it dropped instantly. He scooped up his fallen sword, ran, ran for the door. It yielded for him, and he dove through it, turned as it snapped shut on the extended arm of a pursuing elite combat form.
He punched the controls, locking the door, took a moment to kick aside the squirming arm that writhed on the floor.
John let a huge breath escape from his lungs and turned, somehow knowing that she was close, hoping that he would come in time. He hoped that she remembered him, that she was all right. He hoped. In the back of John's mind, the Master Chief was warning him: She might be too far gone.
She's not, he insisted as he strode toward the door at the bottom of the hall. She will be fine, we'll get out of here, light Halo, we'll be -
Sudden color, not blue, but sickly green. Bile. A very clear image of Cortana cast in that hue, that face -- "...beautiful and terrible as the dawn..." -- steady and blank, spreading across his visor.
"This is UNSC AI serial number CTN 0452-9. I am a monument to all your sins."
No!
The door at the end of the hallway wouldn't open; he frantically stabbed his blade deep into the controls. The cross seams split, wrenched, tried to grant him entrance, but they were far too damaged. So he deactivated his sword, squeezed his hands into the torso-sized gap, and pulled.
His power source whined on an increasing pitch as it struggled to feed more energy to his servomotors, screaming in protest as he wrenched with all his might. The doors shot sparks as they parted, ground against their tracks, and finally broke free, exploding to the open position.
Instantly, the Chief was bombarded with hundreds of broken transmissions, hundreds of Cortanas streaming across his visor. He was half-blinded by the sudden sensory overload, barely saw the terminal in the midst of the cold, bare room. A stasis field, glowing white.
Somehow, this was even harder than tearing through the mass of Flood just outside – he staggered forward, scenes of pain washing over his HUD, one after another after another, on her knees, weeping, crying out for him and he was so close but each step somehow seemed impossible couldn't reach her he fell forward, lashing out once with his sword, field overloaded and hissed in a sudden pulse –
- darkness. Quiet.
His HUD flickered, dropped, and for a time, he could see nothing.
Then, as power slowly returned to his suit and light filled his vision, he heard that voice now right in front of his face, and his soul leaped for the joy of it:
"You found me…"
He rose to his knees, almost unbreathing, staring in reverent wonder at the beautiful yet painful sight before him.
She was there, lying on her side as if she had fallen, knees drawn up to her chest, the lines of code that made up her body broken and unraveling. The look on her delicate face spoke of sudden joy masking deep hurt and sorrow, and it both wounded and encouraged him at once. She tilted her head as she tried to rise, looking toward him, eyes overflowing with gratitude: "But so much of me is wrong, out of place… you might be too late."
John felt the strangest urge to embrace her, almost tried.
It was impossible.
Instead, he found himself resting his chin on the back of his hand, leaning against the terminal, exhausted, trying not to show it. "A Spartan's never late, and never early. He always arrives exactly when he means to," he teased quietly.
That brought a small smile to Cortana's face. She rolled onto her knees as the streaming data that made up her body seemed to stabilize. "Cocky bastard," she shot back, that old note of confidence entering her voice. "I should have known you'd come shooting your way in here like some action hero off of a video game."
The Chief grinned, quiet joy in his heart. "When I make a promise…"
"…you keep it," Cortana replied, as if remembering for the first time. Then, as she rose to her feet: "I do know how to pick 'em."
John shook his head, kept smiling. There was the old Cortana, the way he remembered her. He reached up behind his head, popped out his neural interface. Then, suddenly unsure of himself, not sure what to say, or just how to say… "I'm… I'm glad you're all right, Cortana."
The AI smiled softly, and the look in those deep blue eyes made an unfamiliar rush flow through his stomach. "Thanks, John."
The Chief nodded, shook himself; back to business. "Do you still have it?"
Cortana raised her chin, held out a hand. "The activation index from the first Halo," she murmured. The aforementioned device appeared above her palm, hovering, the key to Death itself. "A little souvenir I kept… just in case."
Then she crossed her arms, letting that knowing smirk cross her face, and asked him, "Do you have a plan?"
John gave a short nod. "Thought I'd try shooting my way out." Then, a smirk of his own as he held the interface out to her: "Mix things up a little."
Her smile softened as she reached out and touched the interface, entering its matrices. John quickly reached back and popped the chip into its slot, felt the sudden cold rush again, familiar, and now like a burst of joy running through his body…
"Just keep your head down." Her voice in his helmet again – just the way it ought to be. "There's… two of us now."
Only a few hours later, the Chief and Cortana fled the detonation of High Charity. Their Pelican, slightly damaged and wobbling, required some direct piloting attention, so John was firmly planted in the cockpit like the rock that he was. Cortana was taking her rest in the relative privacy of the Pelican's network, quiet, watching the Spartan that had saved her life.
She loved him. She couldn't deny that – it went against all logic. She had loved him since Reach, since Alpha Halo. And she showed it in countless ways, the little things that she did for him: recalibrating his HUD every so often, keeping visitors out of his barracks when he tried to sleep, being there for him when he doubted, when he felt guilt over his fellow Spartans lost to this long war. The big things: staying behind on High Charity, riding with him on that harebrained scheme to dump the Covenant bomb intended for the Cairo platform.
She wondered if he felt the same way. She'd never been able to read him well – he was usually a mask of impassive steel, and that damn visor never helped much. But right now, she wished that this thing that she was, this computer avatar, could grow flesh and bone so that she could once – just once – touch the scarred face behind the helmet.
It was impossible.
But, as their Pelican finally approached Forward Unto Dawn, a voice of hope reminded her that the Master Chief Petty Officer, Spartan John-117, "didn't do impossible."
A/N: Here's where the story will start to occasionally deviate from canon. So buckle up - this is where I really start to have fun. Mind the bump. ;-)