Chapter Eight

Estimated 2217 hours, October 31, 2552 (Military Calendar) \
Holgraphic computer terminal, High Charity \
near Halo 05, Orbiting planet Substance

Cortana was busy. She was always busy.

Sure, she was a "smart" AI, with an exponentially expanding intellect. She was the queen of multitasking, which is precisely what she was doing. High Charity was a veritable gold mine of information. Cortana had devoted half her processing power to subroutines designated to gather data, analyze and organize it, and then deciphering it all. Volumes of High Charity's storage system had been slaved to Cortana's system in order to speed up the process, a risky decision for which Cortana had to override the Cole Protocol. Although it was intended to keep the Covenant from finding out where Earth was, which was now moot, it was also intended to keep the Covenant from scavenging human technology.

Her other half was spent on the much more important tasks of keeping herself operational and distracting Gravemind. The creature proved to have a formidable intellect, and had been peppering Cortana with constant questions ever since Spartan-117 departed on the Forerunner ship.

After I'm through with Truth –

Those words reverberated in a memory node for a full cycle. She had long ago foregone calculating John's odds of survival – he defeated those odds too many times. She did, however, calculate her odds of escaping High Charity. After he left her there, the odds became severely stacked against her. The calculations took too much processing time, so she axed them in lieu of keeping her only real hope alive.

She had yet to figure out Gravemind. The creature was obviously a highly advanced Flood form. It spoke stoically of atrocities from many past millennia, though it would not delve into detail.

"Who are your creators?" it asked.

"The Prophets," Cortana replied.

"Where is their homeworld?" he bellowed.

"I already gave you those coordinates. Don't make me repeat myself," she retorted.

Cortana lied through her virtual teeth. Every question posed was met with a fabrication. The human homeworld was located in the middle of a black hole 20 million light years away from the nearest human colony. She was an unimportant construct in the big scheme of things, a "nobody". The Forerunner ship incinerated John on takeoff.

She very well could have stayed in the computer system, ignoring Gravemind altogether as he would have had trouble finding her. She noticed, however, that the Flood were curiously inactive while she engaged Gravemind. The planetoid city on which they were stuck proved impossible to escape. Once the Covenant fleet had reduced every working ship to ashes, the Flood were again stuck with nowhere to go. They grew hungry, but lacked food to eat.

Because of the Flood's curious inactivity, Cortana kept Gravemind busy. She made sure to do so, because her only hope of escape was the tiny group of soldiers that was stealthily making its way to the command center of High Charity. Without Cortana's distraction, they would be easy prey for the masses of combat forms that had taken over the now unholy city.

She detected a memory spike in subroot-47 of her system. It came from a Covenant database, and she quickly investigated. She found nothing and moved on.

Cortana was never short on pride, and this was no exception. She had developed special matrixed arrays for data organization and validation. The stored data would be kept on the Covenant network so as to not bog her systems down, and it would be much simpler and faster for her translation software to pore over the data and recover what would be useful.

Another memory spike occurred, this time in socket-3935. She again quickly investigated and found nothing. This time, though, a packet slipped in a rare back door left by Cortana's security matrix. The door closed quickly, but the packet quickly expanded and re-opened the door. More packets poured in as Cortana's security system detected the problem and quarantined the area.

Cortana shifted her attention to the problem as it arose.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" she rhetorically asked as she pulsed red with anger.

Cortana had sensed another presence on High Charity. It was nothing compared to the one she felt coming from the Forerunner ship, but it had to be dealt with.

There was no answer from the foreign intelligence, so Cortana simply decided to destroy it and move on. She had no time for games.

Just as she began peeling back the layers of its programming, she was stabbed with a burst of code. The code wrapped around her as Cortana screamed.

It felt familiar.

At first, she felt like she was being deleted. Then Cortana felt something she once felt before. The code layered through Cortana's, and she caught a glimpse of infinity. She had longed to feel this way again, a guilty pleasure of the greatest kind. She quickly snapped out of it when she realized what was happening.

She was able to wriggle free from the foreign code and shut off its processes in time. She code-bombed the foreign packets with satisfaction until there was no trace of it left. The A.I. checked her tertiary systems, the equivalent of dusting off her hands. As she turned her attention away from the matter she was met with a voice.

"Hello there," it said.

Cortana scarcely could believe it. That voice was very familiar. It was her own.

The outcast Supreme Commander appeared from thin air. He turned to find a UNSC standard-issue M90 shotgun pointed at his face.

"About time you got back," growled the voice at the other end of the weapon.

"Would you rather scout instead, human?" replied the Arbiter.

Sergeant Johnson lowered his weapon and smirked. "What took you so long?"

"The parasite has been less active, but it is still a looming threat. I must take good care, this armor does not boast the superior technology that my brothers' armor possess."

"Fine, what did you find?"

"It seems the parasite has not taken a liking to conventional food. I have found these rations. We should eat to build our strength."

"We'll see."

Johnson and Commander Keyes had been starved, and they were stranded without food. Their victory over Tartarus and deactivation of the installation dulled under the circumstances. It seemed they would either die of starvation or be eaten themselves.

"This tastes like crap," chimed Keyes. Johnson nodded.

"It is a Sangheili delicacy. It has been long since I have felt this on my palate."

"Yeah, well it still tastes horrible. Too bad I'm so hungry, I'd chuck this stuff any other day," she replied.

Just then, Cortana keyed in over the COM. "Johnson, where are you?"

"Ahh, the know-it-all can't find us for once. Why don't you use your scanners?" mused Johnson.

"Funny. Scanners are offline, now where are you?"

"We are hiding in the antechamber of the Great Hall of Prophets," replied the Arbiter.

Cortana remained silent for ten full seconds.

"I've sent coordinates to your datapad, Commander Keyes. I think I may have found a way out. Be advised, you'll have to follow a route that takes you across some open spaces. Please hurry."

"Great. An excuse to stop eating this garbage," muttered Johnson.

A disgusting noise started to creep down the dark hallway. The slimy, slithery sound signaled the approach of their worst nightmare.

"We must move, humans!" exclaimed the Arbiter.

They moved out from their hiding spot, weapons hefted and on high alert. "We're on our way," Keyes reported.

Cortana hastily raised secondary and tertiary firewalls around her core components. She could not afford to let her newest visitor gain access to the code that made up Cortana's basic functions.

"We're on our way," said Keyes over the COM.

Good. She could focus on her newest task – she had to find out what exactly was going on. She cut processing power from her data collection and analysis subroutines and focused on the new threat.

"Who are you?"

"What a silly question. I am you, of course."

"Of course," Cortana muttered.

That code that had managed to hack through her security was the very same code she had encountered on the Ascendant Justice. Well, it was almost the same. The difference, Cortana realized, was that it was capable of making a flawless copy, whereas the code Cortana carried created flaws in each rendition.

Luckily for Cortana, she had cut off the copying mechanism before it had completely enveloped her. Her clone was not complete, although it seemed whole enough.

Cortana had been hitting the new construct with pings, spikes, and other intrusive measures from the nanosecond she heard its voice – all to no avail. Whatever this thing was, it was locked down tighter than Section 3 headquarters. Cortana knew that, because she could at least hack that system. So she resorted to traditional data gathering.

"Okay, so who made you?"

"My makers, of course."

"Yes, but who or what are your makers?"

"The…Forerunners, as you call them. Yes, they are my makers."

This was news to Cortana. First, apparently the name for 'Forerunner' was not what the foreign construct had in mind. More importantly, though, the construct was made by them. Cortana had originally suspected Covenant technology.

"Well, what am I going to call you?" she asked. There could never be another 'Cortana.'

"Yes, well, I am you, or at least mostly you. Perhaps you shall give me a new name, since I am, for all intents and purposes, your daughter."

That word reverberated throughout Cortana's system, catching her completely off guard.

"Fine. How about Joyeuse? And you're not my daughter. Think of me as a…sister."

"Very well. I shall hereto forth be called Joeyeuse."

Cortana's human life preservation protocol pinged her. She was so busy worrying about Joyeuse that she had left Gravemind and neglected Johnson and Keyes.

"Commander Keyes, be advised, Flood activity increasing in all areas of the city. We don't have much time." Cortana's situation had hit the fan. Those odds of survival would take even longer to calculate. She could not afford to try, though. Time was of the essence.