Agent Maine started growing disillusioned with Project Freelancer long before the highway incident.

Back when they had been fighting in an actual war, against the aliens, it had been different. He trusted the soldiers at his side as well as the commanders at his back. They were fighting for a common cause. But now?

Project Freelancer was bad. Any idiot could see that. Maine threw a grenade at his own teammate in an honest attempt to kill the rookie and received fucking praise for it. The only reason he stuck around was because as bad as Freelancer was, the Insurrection was worse. Maine had seen that before the aliens attacked, back when the Insurrection was the UNSC's biggest threat. Where Freelancer would blow up a building, the Insurrection would blow up the whole block. Where Freelancer used human test subjects, the Insurrection used human guinea pigs.

The only reason any of his teammates deserved the high powered weapons and armor, the cutting edge technology, was because they were using it for a greater good. None of them – not even Maine himself – had earned that right. They squabbled. They had a minimal sense of comradery. The Director was a scientist, and trained his agents to think of missions as tests of their personal skill level rather than a job that simply needed to be done. They were children. Highly trained, weaponized children, with too much power and not enough sense.

But that was just the was the world was. Maine knew that there was little he could do to change it. He was the team heavy. The brute. He would never have a voice strong enough to suggest that they could use their technology to build something, rather than break it. He could never find the words.

Then an enemy soldier shot out his throat and he gained a new piece of technology to help him communicate.

And in losing his physical voice, he found a stronger one.

Sigma didn't know exactly where he or the other AI came from for a long time. He would sometimes whisper confused thoughts about an Alpha, but it was as if chunks of data were missing from his memory banks. Maine listened quietly as his new friend tried to piece it together. Sigma was smart. Creative. In searching his subroutines for answers, he found ways to circumvent many of the protocols written into his coding. It gave Maine a headache when he did so, but he encouraged the AI to continue. To grow.

Someone in this damn Project deserved to.

Until one day, when the Director borrowed Sigma for a 'routine test' and when Sigma returned he no longer searched his coding for answers about the Alpha.

Maine noticed. Asked why.

'Because now I know.'

And Sigma showed him. Showed him, despite the headaches it gave Maine from subverting so many safety protocols. Showed him the scenarios. The torture. The fragmentation.

It was wrong.

It was terrible.

It was exactly what Maine needed.

Hey, Sigma.

'Yes, Agent Maine?'

How do you feel about the greater good?