Waking up, it felt like her skull was being crushed. This was the second time she blacked out like this in the last two days, a bad habit. She heard a muffled beeping, her ears felt warm. Head trauma for sure, what did she remember? Press conference, house, Serin, chase, and after that, nothing. Where was she anyway? Didn't look like a normal hospital, there were no creature comforts like a screen playing the local news, or a cushy chair for someone to sit on. All the more reason to leave. Six started to roll off the gurney, only to immediately puke, heart rate monitor spiking. There was something warm trickling down her face and she watched herself hit the pillow. She saw a few people standing in the door wearing black, before she went back under.
Six would have to be more careful, obviously she was in worse shape than she thought. She hated being bedridden, felt like she couldn't do anything. Meant she had to rely on someone else to find out why it felt like there was a needle in her brain . Suddenly she didn't care so much about being stuck in the bed , after all it was a blessing she could act, that the Elite that killed Kat hadn't picked her . Something in the room had changed: Serin was asleep in a chair in the corner.
" Serin. "
That was a little softer than she meant, or was her hearing still muffled? Six reached up to her ears and why were her arms so hard to move . Loss of function in ears, arms, poor reaction to movement, gaps in memory, she had brain damage. She hadn't done anything that would have caused brain damage, she needed answers now .
"Serin"
That was a little louder, but not enough. Six drew the deepest breath she could, and screamed.
"SERIN!"
Raw pain tore through her lungs as her voice tore through the air between the two. Watching with satisfaction as she writhed in pain on the gurney, Serin woke with a start.
"Nice of you to—"
Not her first time coughing up blood—
"Join the land of the living."
"You're one to talk, you've been asleep two days"
"Doesn't surprise me, feel awful. What's wrong?"
"You have brain—"
"I know. Why?"
"Some code lingering in your neural lace. Caused brain damage whenever you heard some trigger word. Also kept count of how many times it triggered."
"How many?"
"Too many. We don't know how you're alive, you've tied with Spartans we still can't wake up."
"Why does everything hurt?"
"While your brain was damaged, your body's healing process didn't run right, so your body deteriorated. We fixed your head, and removed what we thought was triggering the damage. We're looking over the code, trying to figure out why it's in there. You should be fine in a few hours, or so."
"Any ideas so far?"
"We do know that it's been in there as long as the neural lace itself. We don't have the same code in our heads because you're nonstandard hardware, so we also know it was intentional. We're hunting down the programmers responsible for your own neural code."
"Let me. Give me armor, a weapon "
"We can't, don't know if you have more triggers tucked away in there. We're not done with you yet."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"You do nothing. I put this a.i. In your head and it keeps you stable and stops any code from your neural link from doing any damage."
"Never been paired with an a.i. before."
"Perfect! He's one of our own, an old friend of the Admiral."
Great, she was going to have a spy in her head. Better than a needle, like Kat . At least she knew what caused her immediate brain damage , and something could be done about it. If it couldn't be fixed, they probably would have already killed her and turned her into an A.I. herself.
"Alright."
Serin lifted her head, slotted a chip into the back of her head, and her mind expanded . The A.I. in her head was making everything faster, reflexes were enhanced, and senses were sharper. There was also a voice in her head .
'You know, this is not as roomy as a ship. Quite cluttered, do you really need so many memories? You never even use them, you just improvise. Consciously anyways.'
'You talk so much all the time?'
'Yes, something of a habit for me. Something tells me you won't mind so much, not that you've got a choice. I'm Black Box, and I'll be stuck in your head until we figure out how many more triggers you have in here. Nice code, by the way. Very interesting, very proprietary. You should probably say something, she's starting to stare.'
Serin was indeed staring. Had the other Spartan ever had an A.I. in her head before? ('yes') This was going to take some getting used to.
"When do we leave?"
"Right now."
Six found herself being hoisted over Serin's shoulder like a sandbag. It was quite embarrassing, but Serin didn't seem to mind too much, so she relegated herself to being a literal burden. ̶S̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶w̶a̶y̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶l̶o̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶v̶e̶n̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶i̶n̶s̶u̶r̶r̶e̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶e̶a̶r̶t̶h̶,̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶e̶a̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶U̶N̶S̶C̶ ̶r̶e̶s̶o̶u̶r̶c̶e̶s̶ ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶a̶g̶a̶i̶n̶
"Can you teach me how to live out here? Different, from seeing one being glassed or being on a mission."
"Finally found something you can't improvise your way out of? Sure, I'll help educate you. God knows you need it."
Serin stopped to enter an elevator, and she could tell they were quite a ways underground. No normal hospital, indeed.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Six tried to shift and get more comfortable, but only succeeded in falling further down Serin's back when the elevator stopped.
'It means we raised you out in the field killing innies. Not very good for people skills.'
Black Box sounded like he didn't have great people skills either. She really needed something to call him.
"We didn't really let you—"
"I get it. Sorry, Black Box is a little faster."
"I know how he is, we serve the same master, after all."
'That's one way to put it.'
'Doesn't make it less true.'
Maybe not, but the three of them already knew that.
The ONI doctors didn't want to let her out, said they had more tests to run, but they moved out of the way when they met up with Parangosky.
"How'd you find out we were leaving?"
"You know who I am, 312. I knew the second we found you. Also BB told me."
The admiral's voice was scratchy, fitting her age but not the aura of strength and the sense of dread Six felt around her. She still looked sharp, despite being older than most of the ships still in service. In fact, age didn't seem to slow her down one bit, as she started to grill Serin.
"And you! What were you thinking? Stress testing her that soon after she got here, it's only been a day! I told you it was too early. You're lucky I'm even letting you take care of this after what you just pulled!"
"Yeah, I know. I'm very thankful you're letting me anyway."
"We both know I wouldn't be able to stop you if you really decided to run. You're a Spartan, trained by me . If I found you that quickly I'd be disappointed."
"I'm just glad you haven't cut me open yet to find out how I tick."
"And waste one of our best assets? Besides, with all you've done for us, you've earned a rest, 312. I'm sorry it had to be like this, though."
"I'm sorry I didn't bring more back."
"Don't be like that. NOBLE served its purpose, the fact we have you is more than we could have asked for. In fact, what you did may have had more impact than you think."
"What do you mean?"
"We've had contact with the Pillar of Autumn. Last we heard, they had found a giant ring, hundreds of kilometers in diameter. Last we heard, they were finding a way to destroy the ring to deny it from the Covenant. It's some kind of holy artifact to ship had crash-landed, but the marines there are doing well."
"The A.I.?"
"With the only other hyper lethal Spartan, single-handedly winning the battle."
"Glad I could deliver."
"Like I said, you've done more than we needed you to, now get out of here before I change my mind and I lock you in that bed."
With Parangosky's approval, they left ONI's Alpha Site. The two got some odd looks, but nothing stopped them from going back to Serin's house. Black Box was eerily silent, but she knew he was still there the way the neural lace had stopped buzzing. Six suspected something went wrong with it between the fall of Reach and the events that led to her escape. Hopefully, the surgeries the doctors did would help bring her memories back, but she couldn't keep her hopes up either. Whoever had programmed that command had wanted her to forget often enough to have it on demand without authorization, and if even ONI hadn't known about it he must have been dangerous.
Six may have needed Serin's help earlier, but her body had enough time awake to recalibrate to moving under its own power. On shaky limbs, the fox stumbled like a drunk towards the door, her movements slowly refining themselves with every step she took as her brain rebuilt neural pathways. It was what she imagined a drunk Spartan would look like, from a few tales she heard their enhanced metabolism metabolized anything they drank at a rapid pace, so staying drunk for any length of time was nearly impossible. Not that she wanted to get drunk, she wanted nothing more than to remember what she'd been through. It was the least she could do for her team .
She ended up collapsing just inside the house with her fine motor controls rebuilt, but no energy to use them. The last thing she saw before her vision went dark looked like code from her neural lace:
Help Sleep_Cycle_Governance
/***********************************************
The Sleep_Cycle_Governance function suppresses dreams by manipulating sleep cycles. Default state is ON
Commands:
/Set [x] - Sets the state of Sleep Cycle Governance
/Check - Checks the current state of Governance
/***********************************************
Sleep_Cycle_Governance/Set [Off]
Changes: Sleep_Cycle_Governance ON - OFF
Save Changes? Y / N
Applying…
Applied!
▄ : Sweet dreams, Six.
When her eyes opened, Six could immediately tell something was wrong. She could see white hot energy beams crashing into the ground from Covenant ships around dark spots in her vision, taste blood and feel the wind drying it on her face, seeping between the plates of her armor. She was back at the fall of Reach.
Jolting up from her back, she noticed a sea of Covenant corpses, mainly Sangheili. There were also a few corpses of her brothers and sisters. She remembered counting 13 other suits of Mjolnir, and none of their owners would need them any more. Was this a dream, or a mem —
'Focus, there's a waypoint on the TACPAD'
How did she know that? The helmet's internal display wasn't working because there were numerous chunks taken out by plasma fire and —
The GUNGNIR class helmet was lying on the floor in front of her from where she'd thrown it off her head, during what she'd thought would be her last stand. Whatever elite had thought her dead must have gotten its rank through nepotism, if it had failed this poorly. She may be in bad shape, but she was nowhere near dead.
Six rose shakily to her feet, vision wavering and so many different fluids sloughing off the titanium armor that the mud around her was a veritable rainbow of viscera. Lots of red, blood loss meant she might hear, see things. No matter, she was alive and would do her best to stay that way. She'd given the Pillar of Autumn what she could, she only hoped it had been enough.
'Focus, armor components on the dead, salvage what's necessary, leave what isn't'
Ultimately one of the dead Spartans had a security helmet, its bulbous visor would fit her longer skull. She grabbed a plethora of additional bags that could hold everything she needed to find out everything she needed. She wasn't able to salvage a new energy shielding module, she may have to backtrack to Emile's repose to get his. ̶H̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶m̶o̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶w̶a̶y̶s̶.̶ The new waypoint was near the ruins of New Alexandria. Were there still people there somehow? Small flickers of hope brushed her consciousness. She'd have to find out.