Chapter Twenty-One: Remember That?
November 28, 2552 1545 hours
Covenant Warship Holy Retribution
Unknown System
Laura followed the blue NAV point in her HUD as she made her way to whatever Cortana had found on the ship. Surprisingly, there was almost no opposition, until she got to the destination itself: a very familiar-looking Elite was standing between her and her objective.
Maro 'Iramee did not need to see the face of this human, this demon, to know it was the same he had confronted many units before. The record of this demon battling his brothers had shown him all he needed to know, and more. A female? What female could slay so many of my brothers? Yet she is the Demon, or one of many Demons. He roared and prepared to charge.
Laura didn't really feel like tussling with an Elite at the moment, between her shoulder and her plasma burns. Sidestepping the snarling creature's charge, she gripped it by the back of the neck and threw it against the wall. Making sure it was out cold, she picked up a small, circular object and left the room, on her way picking up the Elite and tossing it into an escape pod.
"Get lost," she muttered, hitting the eject button.
'Iramee came to in an escape pod, wondering exactly what had happened. He had been thrown against a wall and lost his senses, and the human had the very object he had been assigned to protect. He felt the pod drifting in space as he hoped for his brethren to find him and exact revenge on this female demon.
November 28, 2552 1615 hours
About a half hour later, the Spartans were grouped around a headset-like object on the deck. For some reason, the delicate contours of the device seemed familiar to Laura, but she couldn't place it. It's almost as if I've seen it before, but where and when I can't recall, she mused. Somehow, though, she knew exactly what to do: putting the device on her head, she adjusted the sizing so it fit her perfectly. There were small openings in the back that were clearly made for power connections of sorts; she ran lines from them to the bridge console.
"Laura, what are you doing?"
"I really don't know, but I do. Somehow I know exactly what I'm doing. Besides, one of us needs to test it, and I'm the best choice since I'm the least valuable. Would you like to see what this does?"
Without waiting for an answer, Laura sat still and waited for something to happen. Partly because her conversation with Cortana was still fresh in her mind, she began to think about the first woman she ever killed, the first time she could say that a part of herself truly died.
It was almost 10:00 at night, 2200 hours by military time. She knew if she were caught, there would be hell to pay, but that didn't matter anymore. Creeping silently out the gate, she headed for the local hospital. No one noticed her slipping out, or so she thought. Was there someone behind her? No, probably just a trick of the shadows. She got to the hospital easily, and headed up to room 431, in the hospice wing. There were a number of people already there, some she hadn't seen in years.
"How is she? Have they let her go yet?"
"She's in pain, but they're still holding out for a cure. They're not going to let her rest, Laura."
"Sometimes the Hippocratic Oath can be such a nuisance. We made the decision, she made the decision, but they still won't let her go?"
"There's no way we can change their minds." The older woman, a much younger Dr. Gedeon, shook her dark head. "She wants to see you."
Laura walked into the room, grimacing at the scent of death that lingered from other dying patients. In a bed by the window lay an old woman, connected to life-support machines by several tubes. Her white hair was almost gone, she could barely see, and she couldn't really hear. Laura was only 12, but she could tell the old woman was in pain.
"Nana?" she asked, her voice pitched low enough for the old woman to hear her.
"Angel, how are you?" The dry, creaking voice brought tears to her eyes.
"I'm here, Nana. I came as soon as I could. Oh, my poor Nana."
"Laura, could you bring me a glass of water?" Laura returned shortly with the water, and helped the old woman drink while she waited to hear more.
"Laura, will you do something for me?"
She knew what would be asked of her, and hated herself for answering. "Yes, Nana, anything."
"Will you let me go?"
"Yes, Nana. I'll help you be free." She moved to the life-support machines and turned them off. Going back to the old woman, Laura picked up the frail body in her arms, rocking it back and forth as if the old woman were a child, and began to sing a lullaby in a clear voice. A nurse came in and stood there in shock for a brief moment, then tried to turn on the machines again; Laura shook her head.
"It's too late. Nana's free now, like you never allowed her to be before."
"What have you done?"
"What I had to do. Rest assured that Helen Gedeon wasn't the only one to die today."
She lay the old woman's body back on the hospital bed, and picked up a pair of scissors; cutting off a long lock of her dark brown hair, she wrapped it around the withered fingertips, squeezed the gnarled hands briefly, and left the room. Only her family waiting outside could tell she was holding back a lot of pain. Her mother looked at her, just as the nurse and several doctors approached in anger.
"Dr. Gedeon, do you have any idea what this young woman has done to your mother? She disconnected the life-support and killed her!"
"Laura? Is this true?"
"Nana asked me to do it. She wanted a way out, but no one would let her go. I did what I needed to do for her. She'd given me so much over the years; I couldn't deny her last wish for peace. Believe me when I say I wish it didn't have to be me." She stared at the doctors and nurses, tears beginning to stream down her face; they hadn't expected that kind of reaction. "Since you ignored the requests of family and patient, I had to murder my own grandmother. What would you have done if you had been forced into that position?" She turned and walked away, heading back to the base, not realizing until too late that she had been followed and watched the entire time.
Laura opened her eyes to see the shock on Cortana's face; the Spartans still had their helmets on so she couldn't tell what they were feeling, if in truth they felt anything at all.
"I had to sneak out of the base for the funeral, so ONI didn't catch on too soon and try to stop me. Once the main ceremony was over, I waited until everyone dispersed and laid a wreath of Nana's favorite flowers on the coffin: lilies of the valley. I did let Mom know I was there." The panpipes played in mourning, sweet and sad…
As she thought back to the solemn day, they saw and heard everything she saw, felt what she felt. John and Will had heard the mournful tune before on a grassy hill one night: they'd seen a woman in a filmy white dress playing, but when the got closer, all they could fine was trampled grass and a set of carved pipes bound together: it was as if they had seen a ghost. John remembered seeing Blade's face as he'd looked back, but it had been only for an instant, just long enough to make him think he'd imagined it. Now they understood who had been on the hill, but didn't know why she had been there, or why she'd left them her panpipes.
"Laura, how do you know how this device works?" Cortana was genuinely curious.
"All I have are theories, Cortana, theories that happen to fit the few facts we have. Shall I go over them, or would it bore you too much?"
"Please, continue."
"Well, to start with, how is it that Halo was constructed so much like Earth's climate and atmosphere? It was almost an exact match. Next, take into account that all the remaining Spartans have almost an innate ability to use both Covenant and Forerunner technology. Then factor in that the Monitor on Halo kept referring to the Master Chief as if he were an old friend, although some of that may have been due to the AI equivalent of insanity. Now this… as I said, I only have theories, but they make sense. I think that at least some of the Forerunners were humans. It could also have been a conglomerate of races, like the Covenant today, working side by side in peace. As far as the connection with my theories and the present data—" Laura paused for a moment, considering her words. "—there are a few theories on Earth regarding an obscure concept called genetic memory. For those of you who may have heard of it, I'll try not to bore you with the explanation." She nodded at Cortana, a slight smirk on her face.
"The whole idea behind genetic memory relies on the belief in past lifetimes. In essence, your body remembers past events because you were there, genetically speaking. The theory is based on the reports of people remembering events from the ancient past that they weren't alive for. They can't explain how they remember, and some people don't remember anything at all, but things seem familiar to them for inexplicable reasons; sometimes this is described as reincarnation, but genetic memory is completely different. None of this has ever been proven, of course." Laura shook her head in bewilderment, realizing the full implication of her words. "If it was true, then we were Forerunners ourselves, once."
"For a human theory, it does make a surprising amount of sense," Cortana put in. "But how did you know about the Monitor, or Halo, or any of that?"
"ONI can't encrypt their files well enough to keep me out, as I said before. I read the mission reports, every single one of them."
As soon as she finished saying this, Laura was whisked away into another memory, this one completely unfamiliar.
"Alaya, how are the tests coming on the Flood infection form?" The voice came from what looked like a Covenant Prophet, and was speaking to someone who looked almost exactly like Laura.
"All I have discovered so far is that they have extremely high threshold tolerances for heat and cold, but can't withstand focused temperature extremes, which we already knew from previous research. It would also appear that they are resistant to any form of poison or disease, if not completely immune. Unfortunately, they also have extremely fragile body structures; continuous testing has killed most of the specimens. Without more test subjects, we won't be able to find a way to stop them before they take over the universe, and the High Council is adamant that we not try to clone any specimens." The young woman raked a hand through her dark hair and sighed heavily. " Thaddeus, I can't think of anything else we can do at this point."
She picked up a small electrical device and pointed it at the Prophet. Firing off a short burst just past his head, the young human scientist caught an infection form (which had been sneaking--if that is the proper term--up behind Thaddeus) with the electrical discharge, paralyzing it long enough to put it back into containment.
"Sorry about that. I thought I had secured all the specimen containers."
"You have been under a lot of stress lately, Alaya, and you are tired. Why do you not get some rest?" The Prophet's voice was quiet and kindly.
"What's the point? If I don't find a way to stop the Flood I'll kill us all. I can't have that on my conscience."
"If you overwork yourself, you will have failed anyway by killing yourself before you could stop the Flood. Now, go and get some sleep, or rest if nothing else. Besides, I heard that Captain Corin has returned from the front lines for a few days."
"It's not nice to tease, old one, especially regarding delicate subjects like that."
"Who said I was teasing?"
The young scientist left the lab and shed her protective gear, sanitizing herself for safety's sake before leaving the laboratory. Walking into her quarters, she pulled off her clothes and basked in the comfort of a hot shower. When she got out of the shower, however, she was surprised to see a young man (who looked a lot like the Master Chief) sitting in her quarters.
"Corin! What are you doing here?"
"Am I not allowed to visit my wife every once in a while, my beloved Alaya?"
"I wasn't expecting you back for at least another solar year! Is something wrong?"
"We've lost another outer world to the Flood, but most of the colonies have been evacuated, so there's nothing for them to feed on at the moment. I'll have to go back out in a few days, but I can't do anything while the transport ship and my platoons' armor are being repaired, so I decided to spend some quality time with my wife."
"Corin, you know it's not nice to tease." She had a twinkle in her dark eyes when she said this. He didn't say anything else, just smiled at his young wife as he wrapped his arms around her.
The memory went dark, leaving everyone in the room shaken. Laura herself was pale beyond belief, and her hands shook as she tried and failed to remove the device.
"Where did that come from? I've never even imagined anything like that!" Even as she said this, she remembered a nightmare she'd had over a month ago. Forgetting she still had the headset on, she allowed the memory to replay through her mind:
"And you don't know why you dreamed it?"
"No, Mom, I don't know. I don't know who they are, what they are, I just don't know! I've had other dreams like this, and I can't explain it! Am I going mad, Mom? Is it some symptom from my augmentations?"
"Without knowing what your augmentations were, I couldn't say. However, you seem physically and mentally sound, so I wouldn't worry on that count."
"But what does it mean?" Laura sobbed.
"I don't know, Laurabeth, I don't know."
"How long have you been having these dreams of yours?" Cortana's voice jolted Laura out of her reverie. Caught between a rock and a hard place, and completely unable to meet the Spartans' helmeted gaze, she replied, "I'm not really sure. All I know is that I've had about ten of them over the last two years, and I can't explain any of them. Why do you ask?"
"It would appear that your hypotheses might be correct. Apparently, you were one of the leading scientists of the Forerunners in another life. You may have the knowledge of how to stop the Flood in you memories. If we could access it, we could develop weapons to defeat and possibly destroy the Flood."
"Great, just another reason for ONI to try and control me. Never thought I'd live to see the day when I wanted to be ignored. There's got to be a lot more in there, though." Having stopped the trembling of her hands, she pulled off the device and looked at it thoughtfully.
"I remember now, I built this myself long ago, in another lifetime. The reasons behind it were quite compelling. I had thought to try and retrieve memories to help people suffering from head injuries or other forms of amnesia. Then I thought about transferring memories to other people, important memories that could save a lot of lives. Imagine, giving new soldiers great strategies and survival techniques, new doctors the knowledge to save lives; the possibilities were too good to ignore. This was one of the greatest achievements I ever made. I don't know how I remember, I just do. I can recall several of these being made, but apparently this is the only one that's ever been found. This is one of the most important discoveries we've ever made, we can't lose this."
"Indeed this is a valuable discovery, not only the technological worth, but for the potential insight into Forerunner life, culture, science, and the information on the Flood. This is much too valuable to lose." Laura was silent for a while as she considered all the possibilities, and hit on an idea that seemed worth trying.
"Cortana, do you think you can send this last memory to the Covenant homeworld, at least the important parts?"
"Maybe. Why do you ask?"
"If we could show them the truth, maybe we could end the war. Maybe we could go back to what the Forerunners really intended. I seriously doubt they would have wanted us to be fighting each other. If we showed them, we may be able to broker a truce. It's worth a shot, since we've got nothing else to lose."
"I'll see what I can do, but I wouldn't hope for much. Even if they managed to understand the point of the broadcast, if it ever managed to reach them, they'd probably just dismiss it as a lie cooked up to stop them from massacring us."
"Understandable, but we have to try. If there's even a small chance it will work, I'll take those odds." She lowered her voice, momentarily forgetting the sharpness of the Spartans' ears, and murmured, "If I can save my family, it'll be worth it a thousand times over."
Meanwhile, somewhere on the captured warship, a minor Covenant Prophet was trembling with rage at the heresy he'd seen on the Elite observer's reports of the human intruders. He and his Elite guards had noticed the Engineers converging in one location and had gone to investigate, and had stayed there when they'd heard the reports of Covenant dying in all other locations, with the exception of the Grunts. Having left before the intruders rounded up the Engineers, they had since observed the female human with the knives speak indescribable heresies many times over, especially when she'd donned the Circlet of Holy Memory. Behind the rage, however, was cold fear. What if the Great Prophet of Truth was wrong, and had been all along? What if the strange human who knew the uses of the Forerunner relics was right? Ridiculous! He scoffed to himself. The doubt remained like a cloud of darkness bearing an inescapable doom, however, and couldn't be shaken.