After some encouragement, I'm back with chapter two; having read through chapter one, it's actually a lot smoother and more put-together than I thought...it's not going to be my main project, and I no longer have any idea where I'm going with it, but I'll run with what I can make up as I go along. In any case, let's get this trainwreck moving.
Though he knew that they weren't necessary, John carried his assault rifle and magnum with him into High Charity; he just didn't feel right, as if he were a different person, without some kind of weapon in his reach. He moved through the tunnels of flesh and rock with practiced ease, and the quick gait of a soldier, ignoring any of the grotesque Flood forms that passed him by. He marched on, into the heart of High Charity, moving further and further into the lair of the creature more ancient than all of human history.
When he finally came to see it, for the second time in his life, the Chief felt dwarfed by its massive size. It was formed of thousands of bodies, a million years of thoughts and memories that were collected from all the Flood and their innumerable hosts over the years. This was not the original Gravemind, the Primordial, who had spoken with the Didact as he lay dying...but the Flood's king was still there, commanding his people as a king would and should.
"Child of the children, you have returned at last...I have survived your attempt to destroy me, as you can see. One of those accursed rings is certainly enough to kill the majority of my people, but never will it be able to defeat me; my only enemy is time."
His words reminded the Master Chief of something that the Didact had said: "Time was your ally, Human, but now it has abandoned you."
"To that end, I will give you back your ancilla; she now contains my knowledge, of a hundred thousand millions of lives...though you will no doubt find her strange because of what I did to achieve such a feat. You took from here a chip, containing that which was artificial and digital. Now, I give to you-"
He felt warm hands, tingling with their static electricity, wrap around his armor and sink into it. A body pressed against his, though that too faded into his suit, and a familiar blue color tinted his visor's screen. In that instant, John-117 knew what it was like to feel overjoyed; never again would he need to say that she was dead, that there was nothing to be done about her. She was here, with him, again.
"-an immortal of the Organon, which the Forerunners call the Domain, reversed from digital life to flesh. She is Cortana, which in the Eldar Tongue of the Flood meant Queen...and you, John one-seventeen, the Master Chief, Reclaimer, child of the children, are Sek'het Elddama: bearer of the Mantle. You are now the Mouth, Sword and Mind of the Grave. It is your honor and your duty to uphold the history of all our peoples. Before you leave, however, I would give you one final gift."
As the Master Chief waited, he saw the Gravemind's form wither; from its mouth exited a humanoid, of the Chief's size, with no truly definitive features. It spoke with the Gravemind, as one. "Those of the Precursor race, which were consumed long before your time and of whom I was one, had the power to manipulate an organism's biological evolution. You experienced this to a very minor degree with the Forerunner known as the Librarian, but she knew only the barest minimum of our ability...you will need it. While the Flood were initially peaceful, there were several more ancient denizens of the galaxy and universe that are decidedly not. They still exist, in hiding, but the day will come when only you will stand in the defense of humanity. Had you been born a hundred thousand years ago, John-117, the Forerunners would have lost their war against your kind."
It touched his chest plate, and that was when the pain began. He felt it everywhere, unbearably agonizing blades and needles that not even Cortana could keep him from feeling. His skin shredded itself, his muscles tightening and rewinding over bones which became even more dense than they had been. His skin rebuilt itself, years practically melting from his face until the Master Chief under his armor looked to be no more than a man in his late twenties. All his physical augmentations were increased in their measures, and his strength felt as though it had multiplied a thousandfold...by the time it was over, a very long and excruciating half-hour, the Master Chief felt like a new man.
"What did you do?"
"I gave you a lifespan to match your ancilla's, and the strength you will need to hold the Mantle of Responsibility for yourself alone; it was meant for an entire race, but there are none now who have the power to hold it. If you wish to find more, seek out Charum Hakkor. There, in the shadow of the Humans of old, you will find your answers."
The Gravemind shriveled, collapsing in upon itself...the Master Chief didn't need to be told what to do; he ran, far and fast, doing his best to escape the death throes of an entire race. His heart pounding, his muscles surging, he ran with the wind and climbed with the earth. All around him, High Charity was collapsing...stone and metal and flesh were falling, raining down. He had no time to dodge or move, jumping over the larger pieces of debris when he had to, until he finally made it to the Pelican on an outside ridge. Only then, as he was flying away, did he pause to think about all that had happened.
"Cortana. You're..."
"Yes." Her voice came, still the same as he remembered. "I'm not just an AI anymore, I'm a person who lives and breathes like the rest of you. I can still act as an AI if I want to, as you can see, but now I'm more than that."
She moved from his suit, standing before him. Her arm reached out, pressing against his chest in the same way she'd done on Requiem; to his surprise, and hers as well, she almost pushed him over. "I can choose when to become non-solid...wait, did you almost fall down?"
"Maybe."
She laughed, and her smile went all the way to her eyes...while the Master Chief had lost virtually all of his libido in the process that made him into a true SPARTAN, he could certainly appreciate the small things. He wasn't just glad to have her back; it felt like he was whole, and no longer a shadow of his former self. That could also have been the Gravemind's body-reconstruction technique.
She was pale-skinned, with midnight-blue hair and eyes of blue ice. She looked like a much younger Catherine Halsey, as if the Master Chief might have seen her when he was no more than a child, and even their voices weren't that different. She stood just a few inches under his mighty in-MJOLNIR frame, which meant that she were likely to be near his height when he had it removed. While she had been strong enough to make John brace himself, lest he fall over, her muscles weren't particularly defined...which meant that she'd likely undergone the Gravemind's "biological evolution" technique as well.
"In any case...it's good to have you back."
"Charum Hakkor?" Terrence Hood asked, incredulous. "Where is that?"
"It's an old world." Cortana, for the time being, had taken her AI form. "More than a hundred thousand years ago, it was the capital of the Human-San 'Shyuum Alliance throughout the Orion arm of the Milky Way."
Cortana's explanation was as brief as she could make it, from the advent of the Flood to the rise of the Precursors, their choice of Humans over the Forerunners, the ensuing Precursor-Forerunner war, the Human alliance with the San 'Shyuum, the Human-Flood war, the Human-Forerunner war and humanity's loss after a fifty year siege, the Forerunner-Flood war that wiped out the majority of the Forerunners, all the way to the day where they now stood. She aided her story with memory feeds, which she'd gained access to during her time with the Gravemind, and by the end there could be no doubt in anyone's mind that she was telling the absolute truth.
"You're telling me that ancient humanity not only had the strength to fight the Forerunners on even ground, only losing because they fought the Flood as well, but also that we had an alliance with Prophets?"
"Yes, but the Prophets from times before the firing of the Halo array were far different from the San 'Shyuum now...in any case, Charum Hakkor was lost. We have no idea if it still exists, or where it might be; all we know is that it's somewhere in the Orion arm of space. You saw what it looks like, so do you have any idea?"
"None. Of all the planets I've seen, there hasn't been one that's looked like that." He was clearly irritated by the lack of knowledge, despite the fact that he shouldn't have known anything. "We do have a lead, though. You said it's in the Orion arm, and there's very little of that which hasn't been mapped out-we can draw from our databases to find out if we've already discovered and re-named it. And, failing that, there's still some of the Orion arm that hasn't been explored."
It was a start.
"Lord Hood, I'm more worried with something else that the Gravemind said: other aliens, older even than the Flood, who aren't peaceful and that still exist today." The Master Chief spoke his mind. "If that's the case, then we aren't going to be safe forever. Even with the Flood gone, and the Covenant no longer against us..."
"I know, one-seventeen, and I'm concerned as well. However, we would need to find Charum Hakkor to get the answers we need...something that we can't do just yet. I'll have people searching our network for information, and send out exploration teams if that fails. You've earned a rest, SPARTAN, for a job well done."
"Thank you, sir." With a quick salute, and Cortana manifesting into a physical form, he walked out of the room.
From there, he went to the gym; while he knew that the Gravemind's meddling had made him stronger, he didn't know just how much stronger he'd become. He moved to the weight bench that had been specifically designed for out-of-armor SPARTANs, as even the smallest weights were unable to be lifted by normal humans...of course, he'd always been one to push the upper limits of what a SPARTAN was able to do. He still held that his Mark-VII MJOLNIR armor was far better than the newer GEN2 suits preferred by the SPARTAN-IVs, and had mentioned it several times to all of them. They seemed to think that they held some sort of moral superiority over him, even as they respected and lauded him, because they had chosen to become SPARTANs rather than having it forced upon them.
Quite frankly, he didn't care.
He stocked the bar as high as he always had, at four thousand pounds of solid weight; it was the highest that he'd ever managed to go, even in his suit, and he wanted to test his limits...getting on the bench, he put his arms up and lifted.
"It's lighter than I thought it'd be."
He stacked another thousand on, and the strain wasn't noticeably increased. Two thousand on top of that, and he felt like there was an actual weight to be lifted. At ten thousand pounds, five tons, he began to have trouble in continuing to lift...his limit, he found, was fifteen thousand pounds. By the time he finished, a small crowd of soldiers had gathered to watch; one of them went to a small board on the left side of the room, tallying up the total weight lifted.
"SPARTAN Sierra one-seventeen has passed his own record of four thousand pounds by nearly four times, and remains at the number one spot for most weight bench-pressed."
Ignoring them, he exited through the room's other door. Entering his own room, which was larger and more spacious than he remembered, he sat down on his bed.
"It's more empty than I thought it'd be." Cortana said. "A bed, a desk, a table, a single chair, with a giant private restroom next to it. And yet, for all that, you have done literally nothing about decorating it."
"What would I put here?" He responded. "I don't have any pictures, and there's not too much that I'd care to remember about my past. The only thing I own is a quarter from the United States government, more than five hundred years ago, and I keep that in the right palm of my armor, inside the black suit."
She sighed. "That's not the point, John. Believe me, I know about your life. I even saw what happened a few months ago, in your memory...and I'm sorry you had to go through that. All the same, however, I'm still here."
His response was a long time coming, an old joke brought to life.
"So now we have proof that you're a human and I'm a machine."
I think that turned out well...I'm not sure when the next update will be, but it shouldn't be too long in the wings.
Keep your MA5s close and your AIs closer.