Content warnings: THE SWORD ASUNDER features some characters who are not cisgender or heterosexual. You may read about some transgender or non-binary characters, or two people of the same gender consensually kissing. If this upsets you, then you need to grow up.
On a serious note, in this fic, the Master Chief is experiencing deep depression in the aftermath of the events of Halo 5: Guardians. Please exercise your own judgment. There's also some descriptions of pretty nasty injuries, (overhearing) people having sex, and references to child abuse (i.e. medical experimentation and forced labour/indoctrination of the young Spartans.)
With all that out of the way… welcome to THE SWORD ASUNDER.
INFINITY TO S-117... COME IN, PLEASE.
John looked up from his sandcastle.
Another black spot on the horizon. A white point at its crest, growing and brightening by the second. A rising sound of approaching ramjet engines, air through a drainpipe, air through John's ears.
He looked behind him. His mother, in a simple floral dress, stood on a small dune. Peering through her binoculars at the black dot.
It grew. Approached. Resolved into a shape. A Pelican.
The air above them roared. The dropship sailed overhead, bound for the landing strip at the nearby base. John had learned by now to not fear them. He watched the drop ship, and watched his mom. The wind whipped up the sea, billowed at Mom's dress and coat and her colourful scarf, and she muttered something under her breath.
INFINITY TO S-117... COME IN, PLEASE.
John shivered. The wind carried a biting chill. He reached into the paper bag, and placed a cube of lokum in his mouth. It went down quickly. Too easily.
INFINITY TO S-117... RESPOND...
He looked to the horizon again. The sun hung at a low angle, falling. The sea was rising—higher, higher—
"John!"
The waves rose, his mom waved to him—
MASTER CHIEF—
And behind the first wall of water—shards of machine, moving of their own volition through the free air, combining, assembling into the face of Death.
The crashing of waves. The sandcastle disintegrated. The paper bag sodden, the lokum ruined.
And when Death spoke, she did so with the voice of an old friend.
THERE YOU ARE.
John's ears filled with the ocean. A concussive BOOM—
The Master Chief jolted awake.
The Far-Sun glimmered amber through the skylight, while the Near-Sun, filtered mauve through the rings, cast dim beams across the attic.
Mounted on the wall's yellow plaster, the hands of the clock marched in one-second tick-steps. 05:49. The hour hand only around a tenth of the way around the dial, between hour markings five and six (of forty-nine hours, the length of a solar day on this world.) Most Fordlandians would not wake for another four hours; they'd stay awake for about sixteen, nap, wake again, and that would take them up to midnight.
The Master Chief's circadian rhythm had been upset. He was no longer on a starship, which was good: the floor beneath his feet no longer shuddered every few hours as they did a magic sequence of slipspace jumps. And he could leave without needing a rebreather.
But it was also not good. John was the only person for some kilometres in either direction with a military rank. Professor Hadid, probably sleeping in the other guest room downstairs, didn't count. Nor did Dr. Halsey, probably sleeping in the town's police station.
And nor did his two hosts. A rhythmic thumping was coming from their room. The creaking of a mattress and a bed frame. And heavy breathing, both of them. Grunting. More than that: moaning.
"Oh God, yes. Yes. Just like that. Oh. Oh wow."
It took John a second to work out what was happening.
"Oh, Anne, you're incredible—fuck, oh my God, you're going to make me come!"
Another fifteen seconds for John to scurry back into the attic and shut the door behind him.
He re-laid the blanket and quilting over the bed in an immaculate rectangle. He in the shower room for two minutes, counting off each second with a snap of his fingers. He reached to turn the control off after a hundred and eighteen; then he remembered the water mill adjacent to the house. No enforced two-minute showers of recycled water here. In the end, he stayed put until his fingertips turned crinkly.
After he had set the cubicle to blow dry, wrapped himself in towels, and run the shaver-glove over his chin, John took a look at his reflection for the first time in a long while.
The Master Chief did not recognise the man in the mirror. Hair that was much longer than it had been for decades, a dusty, dark brown, swept to the right by the dryer. A complexion that looked as if someone had discovered how to exploit melanin to depletion. Eyes that looked straight through himself and thousands of metres beyond.
The figure that looked back seemed afraid, and in the back of John's mind, he felt afraid of him too.
He laid on his back on the bed, naked, hands locked behind his head, eyes closed.
Tried to sleep.
No. Not tired. He couldn't sleep. He'd slept for the last twelve hours, plus eight of the last night on UNSC Infinity.
This was something the Master Chief had not experienced for a while. No standing orders, no mission. No de-briefs to read. No Spartans to drill or War Games simulations to marshal. No weapons to polish. No nothing, as Lasky had insisted.
John sat upright on the bed, and scanned the room. No bookshelves that he could see (which would've at least given him something to read.) No other doors except the one to the bathroom and the one out onto the staircase.
On the bedside table, a small canvas bag, with the number 117 on it. John's. Forest green, the same colour as his armour. Inside... not much. His Fordlandia entry visa, in a small plastic wallet. The recorder he had been learning to play. And the button.
He weighed the button in his left hand for a moment. Toyed with the idea of pressing it. He had no way of telling how long it would take Infinity to pop out of the sky if he did; nor did he have any way of telling how livid Lasky would be. For now, he put it back. The panic could wait for another day.
He picked up the recorder. Counted the holes with his fingers. Thought about what he could play as he raised the mouthpiece to his lips. Frère Jacques seemed appropriate...
Or not. The room was silent, but if John strained his ears, he could just about hear the rhythmic thumping from downstairs. It was still going on. Still.
John thought about the fact he was sitting in bed, naked, handling a long, stiff object.
Very quickly, he put the recorder back in his bag, zipped it up, laid back, and tried to clear it from his head.
For a long while, Master Chief Petty Officer John, Spartan-117, didn't remember the last time he had felt bored. And then, all of a sudden, it had been his reality for months. And he wasn't about to spend his day doing nothing at all. He'd had too much of that on Infinity.
He dressed in grey pants and a green sweater from the closet, pulled on his issue boots, and strode downstairs. Past the thumping from Anne Møller and Kurt Stjernberg's room. Downstairs again, into the living room. Past the sideboard, the shelves housing various models of still and video camera. Associated with his hosts' profession, John assumed: Anne was a film-maker who specialised in documentaries, while Kurt was a sculptor whose studio was apparently downstairs.
The house was yellow-bricked like the attic guest room, three detached storeys on a street of twelve houses that were identical, save for the colour. The front yard was immaculate: neatly trimmed catkins, a lawn made of golden moss, hexagonal tiling forming a patio leading from the porch to the green asphalt of the street itself. Four bicycles stood on their kickstands at the fence. One, with its saddle set much higher than the others, and a frame sprayed forest green, was John's.
The wheels unlocked themselves, and the handlebars lit up white as John approached. It wasn't necessary. John had never learned to ride a bike. He'd tried to mount it yesterday, failed, fallen, and torn a hole in his pants. The bike's luggage rack bore a large ding in the green paint.
So he did what he'd always done, for as long as he could remember. One foot, in front of the other, in front of the other. One, two, double-time. And he ran.
The houses made a multicoloured frieze on either side of him, the hue changing with the cadence of his footsteps. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. Red. Orange. White. Grey. Gold. Regnebuegåde.
John turned right onto the main road. Tintageltorget. This was the town square. A fountain. A plaque commemorating its founding, just over seventy-nine years ago. A signpost, different destinations, different directions. LIBRARY. POLICE STATION. STRAND. TRAINS. STORES. CARS. AIRPORT. AALBORG. CLIFF TOP TRACK/ÆLDRE TROLDMANDEN ⌘.
John knew that most of Fordlandia's population came from the Scandinavian and Germanic countries. He didn't speak any of the classic Scandinavian languages, but he knew enough English, German, and Dutch to guess what it meant. Ældre sounded like elder, mand like man, and trold like troll.
Curious as to what the Old Troll-Man was, John followed the sign and turned left. Skolegade. Towards the clifftop path.
Three metres per second, one point five with every footstep, two footsteps per second. The wind felt strange in his hair. Wind itself was something he hadn't experienced outside his suit for years.
A train passed him, and stopped at the station platform on his left. The doors opened. "Tintagel," said a synthetic voice from inside, "this is the train to Aalborg." The hissing of doors, an electrical hum, and the train overtook him again, tail light glimmering red.
The only vehicle John had seen today. Tintagel was still fast asleep.
The library was a large, angular building overlooking a small pond. It was also the school: beyond the pond was a large playing field, a grifball court, a hill, encased in the dull blue glow of a forcefield fence.
John's school, as he remembered, had a fence made of wire. (At least, he thought. It was a long time ago. Lessons, detentions, King of the Hill—and that one day when a woman in a flowery dress had made him catch a coin. John ran faster. Leaving the playground and the forcefield out of sight, out of mind.)
A light in the distance. A woman, in utilitarian-looking clothing, cycling the other way towards Tintagel. A toolkit hung from the back of her bike, and her hands were covered in grease. A mechanic, John assumed.
"Good morning!" she said, cracking a weak smile and moving her hand off the handlebars to wave.
John said nothing.
The woman passed him. She broke eye contact, and he heard her muttering to herself. "Suit yourself, sunshine. If that's what you want."
Under normal circumstances for John, a crisp salute would've done. But this—here—was not 'normal circumstances.'
Everyone here did what they wanted. Picked where they wanted to live. How they wanted to get around. What they wanted to wear. Nothing decided for them. Nothing instructed. They smiled and said good morning to John, without saluting. Without a shock of star-struck inferiority.
Without knowing who he was.
The road banked to the left, and then made a sharp curve to the right to climb a large hill. The Near-Sun climbed, shone golden highlights onto the chalky white of the cliff edge.
Another bright light in the distance. Another cyclist approaching. A person with thick spectacles and jet-black hair, in a long, billowing coat. They rode a large flat-bed bicycle, the front box laden with books and document files.
"Good morning!" John said, waving vigorously. Smiling. He hoped.
The person glanced at him. Nodded silently, expressionlessly. Eyebrows betraying a scowl. And then they were gone.
Not for the first time since arriving on Fordlandia, John was glad there was no-one else to see that.
The sunrise caught in the reflective border of a sign ahead. Another looping cross symbol ⌘, white on dark green. ÆLDRE TROLDMANDEN, 1300m. And another below it. UNSC BASE (Aalborg Haven) 5700m. And another, beneath a red triangle containing a pictogram of a person driving a car. DANGER! MANUAL VEHICLES.
And on the horizon, as the track rose to its peak, the Old Troll-Man. As it turned out, a monolith, a large butte of igneous rock rising two hundred metres above the cliff-edge, and descending further beyond the sea bed.
Something about the Old Troll-Man looked wrong. John was no geologist, but he could tell this was an anomaly, something out-of-place. A giant hunk of rock embedded into the cliff-edge, like a tool left in a set concrete wall.
The footpath and the cycleway terminated in a small paved area, with a tree, a telescope which cost 5 credits to activate, and an information placard. A round building made of glass stood around twenty metres away from the Old Troll-Man; John peered through the windows, and saw large rectangular fittings on the wall, with odd coloured splotches on them. Artwork, he guessed, which would make this an art gallery.
To the north, the land; to the east, the Old Troll-Man; to the south and the west, the sea, churning itself and the air above it.
John sat on a bench near the art gallery and looked to the horizon.
He wasn't sure why he had come here. He could've stayed in his bed. But exploring, and discovering something new, made a change. It beat running laps around the corridors of Infinity, drilling the Spartans, cleaning equipment. And that was all he'd been able to do, since the Cryptum.
Since Her.
Cortana's Guardians were now following them—following him—and leading an armada of allied ships. Military, transport, medical, some leisure cutters... if it could make a hole in slipspace, it got assimilated into the fleet. If it could make a hole in a ship's hull, it got promoted to the front of the fleet. If it could do neither, it was quickly wrecked.
Infinity had been playing cat-and-mouse for nine months. The Cole Protocol was no longer sufficient. It took a minimum of three random jumps before you could emerge without a segment of Cortana's flotilla waiting for you. But even that was only temporary.
Roland, with nothing else to do having been physically detached from control of Infinity's systems (he wasn't even allowed to control the doors any more), had calculated the optimal configuration. Seven slipspace jumps would earn them a maximum of forty-nine minutes before Cortana deduced their location and came for them. Any fewer, and she could compute all the potential destination solutions in minutes; any more, and you'd be wasting valuable energy for minimal gains.
Given the circumstances, Lasky, Palmer, and the navigators were careful. They had checked, double-checked, and triple-checked Roland's math, then run it past Halsey, past the remaining bridge crew, past the science team, and past anyone they could find who could remember how basic calculus worked. It checked out. And now this was how it was: hours, days at a time, tunnelling through the Slipstream. Sometimes random, sometimes programmed to bring the seventh jump—and the precious forty-nine minutes—into refuelling range of a hydrogen-rich gas giant, or an ordnance cache.
Day after day, week after week, month after month in the black void of the Slipstream, with nowhere to go but elsewhere on the same starship. And no respite in the cryonics centre: the whole reason for keeping enormous banks of freezers on starships was to save resources during long, slow slipspace jumps. Infinity's translight engine (of a Forerunner design) worked so well that the cryo bay was surplus to requirements. It had been removed during the ship's refit last year, replaced with crew accommodation.
So, Fordlandia was a respite. R&R, said Captain Lasky. They were provisionally due to stay for three Fordlandian days; John still had nothing to do, but he now had space in which to do—
"Morning!"
John snapped onto his two feet. His figure sprung into a stance for hand-to-hand combat.
The woman, in her sixties or seventies, plump, pale skinned, with curly grey hair, seemed unfazed as she popped her bike onto its kickstand, and then removed her blouse.
John wasn't sure where to look. Nudity didn't raise an eyebrow in the ablutions on military installations, or starships. But local customs differed. John remembered at least one operation where the UNSC's guidebook had told him, 'locals will imprison anyone with exposed skin in the towers of their churches."
"You must be new here!" the woman said, as her remaining clothing came off and went in the pannier on the back of her bike.
"Yes, ma'am," John said, sheepish. "I'm passing through."
"Welcome. Martta," said the woman.
"Master—" and John immediately stopped and reversed. "John."
"Pleasure to meet you," said Martta, and positioned herself at the end of a worn track in the (fungal, bright purple) grass. On a ledge. She then made the sign of the cross with her right hand, and jumped.
For a split second, John began leaping towards her to stop—to catch her, mid-jump—and then, out of the corner of his eye, saw the other cyclists arriving. A couple. An old man. A young man. Further down the hill, an entire family, three women, two men, four children, and a dog. A squad of five people in gear he recognised as UNSC Army, presumably from the base at Aalborg Haven.
All of them did the same thing. Took off their clothes, and plunged from the cliff edge. One by one.
John peered over the cliff-edge again. Small, flesh-coloured blotches swimming around, in rough circles, some going left-to-right, children just splashing about. And some climbing onto the rocks, and then scrambling onto a wooden jetty.
The waves looked blue. Inviting, in the heat of two suns.
Not one to be the odd one out this time, John removed his boots, and folded his sweater, slacks, and underwear. The pile went under the bench. In clear sight and stealing range—but he remembered yesterday evening.
"Nothing gets stolen on Fordlandia," the woman at the town hall's information office had said, as Professor Hadid had organised papers, bikes, and maps for them.
John stood on the cliff edge for a moment, looking out to sea—and then beneath him. Around forty metres to the waves. He closed his eyes, and leapt forwards.
The speed of his trajectory took him by surprise. No MJOLNIR boosters to give him a floaty, safe descent—
This was acceleration under gravity, freer, faster, into the wall of water, as John's ears filled with the ocean—
A concussive BOOM—
INFINITY TO S-117, RESPOND, PLEASE...
A BUZZ of static. John squeezed his eyes tight shut. Opened them again.
Black space. An unfamiliar starfield.
"Master Chief, respond, please."
The Master Chief chinned the COM control. "This is One One Seven, go ahead."
"What the hell are you doing—oh, we don't have time for this," came Jespersen's voice in his ear. "You need to get back, you've got eight minutes, maximum."
The Chief registered that he was weightless. Checked his suit's fuel and air levels. Plenty to get back to Infinity.
He spun around, manoeuvring rockets hissing, centering the grey monolith in the distance. The Master Chief activated the booster. A gentle whine, and a quiet rush of acceleration.
Infinity grew. Distant monolith, to ship, to sky.
"Airlock Three door set to manual, Master Chief. Welcome home," came Roland's voice.
A navigation point sprouted into existence on his visor. The number three EVA airlock, around a third of the way along Infinity's underbelly. Two kilometres, and falling rapidly—he would easily make it. A timer, too. Two minutes and nineteen seconds.
The Master Chief decelerated, and grasped onto the airlock handle. He hung on for a little while as the door opened, and regarded the void below him.
It was peaceful out here. Silent. Free. Enough that John had managed to fall asleep. And this had been his first time outside a pressurised spaceship atmosphere in about five weeks.
The airlock repressurised, and his boots clunked as the gravity plating kicked in and 1g of acceleration returned.
"STAND BY FOR SLIPSTREAM JUMP IN THIRTY SECONDS," came Roland's voice over the intercom, "Master Chief, please set the door to automatic behind you."
The Master Chief turned about, and threw the switch into the 'automatic' position. He grasped the handle on the inner door gently. Watching the timer on his visor.
5. 4. 3. 2. 1. 0.
Infinity's superstructure shook slightly. A momentary electrical growl. Then silence.
"SLIPSTREAM JUMP COMPLETE," Roland's voice came again, "CARRY ON."
The airlock door opened. Commander Palmer stood before him, framed on either side by two terrified-looking Marines, hands uncomfortably close to the triggers of their rifles.
John couldn't process the expression on her face. Anger, or confusion, or outright exasperation, or all three, or none.
"The Captain wants to see you," she said. "Now."
He followed her in silence into the elevator and onto the bridge. Lasky was leaning on the doorframe of the conference room, regarding John with another expression he couldn't process.
"Thank you, Commander," he said, and Palmer nodded and departed without a word. "Thank you," he said to the two Marines, "return to your posts." They snapped to attention with a 'yessir,' and scurried off, their hands and foreheads glistening with sweat.
The Master Chief tried to divine something in Lasky's facial expression. Failed. Again. But he wasn't happy. The Captain's hair was voluminous with water from a hurried shower, and as he said "come in, please," turned to his side, and mock-bowed, John could see the sweat beaded on his forehead as well. And he was sure it wasn't the climate control. Maybe he was ill.
Or maybe John wasn't the only one finding this uncomfortable.
The Master Chief entered. Dr Halsey was sat behind the desk. Eyes laser-blue, hair thinning but neatly combed, a paper journal and pen at the ready in her hand. Next to her, Professor Gudrun Hadid, Infinity's chief medical officer. Her tunic and trousers were a minimalist brown, but her collection of headscarves, capes, and turbans that she wore as hijab must've been enormous. John hadn't seen this one (pink tulips) before.
Lasky closed the door behind him, and took his own seat. Between Halsey and Hadid.
"Helmet off, please," he told the Master Chief.
He'd been hoping he could stay behind the faceplate. He reached to the back of his neck—quickly, to avoid betraying his reluctance—and pushed the release, only to find it wasn't there, leaving his fingers in a clumsy scrabble around the base of the helmet.
(This wasn't his MJOLNIR suit. He'd picked up a standard, dark grey EVA bodysuit from the armoury on the S-deck, something he could put on quickly and without needing a machine to strap him in.)
Lasky let this go on for twenty seconds before showing pity and standing. "It's on the neckline, there's two buttons. You have to press them both and manually disengage at the same time—" he said, standing on his tip-toes, grasping the Chief's helmet and giving it a wiggle in its socket— "there you go."
The helmet came free. John did not blink, and kept his jaw so tightly clenched it hurt. He saw Lasky looking up at him, felt his breath on his eyes, nose, and cheeks, and inhaled his discomfort. John remembered that he knew how to disengage the helmet—he'd just forgotten.
Lasky placed the helmet on the desk and returned to his seat. "Please," he said, gesturing the Master Chief to sit in the chair on the other side.
This felt like an interrogation. John remained standing. It hadn't been a direct order.
Lasky leaned back in his chair. Looked to Halsey, to Hadid.
"What were you thinking, John?" Halsey demanded, eventually. "You could've been killed. What in the name of—"
Professor Hadid raised a finger to her right, but kept looking at the Chief. Halsey took the hint and stopped.
"Is there anything you want to talk to me about?" the Captain asked. "Privately, if you want." (Halsey shot him a dirty look at this.)
"No, sir," the Master Chief replied.
"Are you sure?"
The Master Chief kept his mouth shut.
"John," Hadid said, suddenly, perhaps to break the silence, "please sit down. I'm getting a sore neck looking up at you like this."
Her voice was soft, throaty, which told you that she cared even when her German-accented English was choking on consonants. She knew when to be direct, though. It worked.
John sat, and tried his best to sit up straight. The seat was small, and his rump extended over the edges. The frame creaked, but less than he was expecting.
"Thank you. Now," said Hadid, "did you use the airlock to get off Infinity for a while?"
The Master Chief nodded. Small, but committal. Conscious.
"And why did you do that?"
That was harder. He couldn't nod, or shake his head. He had to reach for the words, and use them.
"I can't explain that, ma'am."
"Were you meaning to come back?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"OK." Professor Hadid nodded. Halsey whispered something across to her.
"He's never liked starships—"
"Catherine," said Hadid, eyes kindling with exasperation and fixing Halsey with a death-glare, "John is right in front of us and he can hear you. And while he is here, we do not talk about him in the third person. Understand?"
Halsey retreated into her seat. Put down the pen. Hadid seemed to be the only person who could make her do that.
"John," Lasky said, standing, but still a good quarter of a metre below his eyeline, "I need you to tell me if things are getting too much. Or if you don't feel safe. Or if you don't feel happy."
"Yes, sir," the Chief replied.
"Yes, you don't feel happy, or yes, you do feel happy?"
John didn't answer that. Lasky was clearly hoping he'd say something, and took a long time formulating his next sentence.
"I know it's been tough, these last seven weeks. You may not be on duty, but I retain a duty of care." He paused. Took a deep breath when he realised John didn't understand. "Towards you."
"We care about you, John," said Professor Hadid. At that, Lasky sat down, looking relieved.
The Master Chief nodded. "Thank you."
"Now," said Lasky, "I just can't have you wandering off the ship. If something's wrong, I need to know. OK?"
"Yes, sir," the Master Chief replied, slowly, with conviction.
"So, I'm going to ask you now. Why did you steal an EVA suit and leave the ship?" Lasky asked.
John opened his mouth to speak, but had no words to say. He wetted his lips with his tongue. Formulated some words.
"I don't like starships, sir," John confessed.
"And that's OK," said Lasky. "God knows I hate starships. But we're stuck on one right now." And he was right.
"I hate this," the Master Chief said, unprompted.
Halsey's mouth dropped open. But it was Hadid who spoke.
"Hate being idle?"
He nodded. After a pause:
"I've become a liability, ma'am."
"No you haven't," said the Captain, as Hadid shook her head.
"I can't complete my duties—"
"John, would some R&R help?" Hadid, again, cutting off a strand of conversation she didn't like the idea of. Nipping it in the bud.
The Master Chief did not reply to that. He didn't know how to process the conversation. Where it was headed.
"I was checking your file earlier. Technically, John," said Lasky, "you've been on duty, non stop, since 2552. Over seven years."
"A lot of that time was in cryonic—" began Halsey—
"Not helpful," interrupted Hadid. Nipping that in the bud too. Once she had her silence, she turned to Lasky. "Tom, we're dropping off our guests on Fordlandia tomorrow, am I right?"
Lasky nodded. Halsey looked on like they were discussing which children's home her son would end up in.
"We need to go back to Tau Ceti anyway to collect Blue Team," said the Captain. "We could be back in around a week."
"So that's three Fordlandian days," said Hadid. "How does that sound? About a week of R&R."
John thought about this for a long moment, in silence.
"Fordlandia is beautiful," said Lasky, probably to break the silence. "It's one of my favourite worlds. The beaches are stunning, it's a great place to relax. I promised my partner I'd take him there, before all this happened."
John wondered if Lasky was trying to get rid of him.
"Are you sure?" Hadid asked. "You don't have to if you don't want to. That's OK too."
This was the way everything from Hadid came. Clear, precise, wrapped in a promise that it was OK if he didn't want to talk, or didn't want to do what she suggested. Counselling tactics, to make sure John knew he was in control, that he wasn't being ordered to do anything.
But even with control over his own life and destiny, John did not know what to do with it.
"It's fine," John said. "I'll go."
"A rest will be good for you, John," Halsey piped up for the first time in a while. "You were never meant to be cleaning ablutions and—"
"Thank you, Doctor." Hadid cut her off again, and Lasky shot daggers at her. She got the message. Retreated into her seat.
Lasky broke his intense look of disgust towards Halsey, turned to John, and smiled. "Happy?"
John's lips didn't move, but he nodded.
"Good," Lasky nodded. "Thank you."
John took a seat towards the back of the conference room, watching others file in. Kelly. Frederic. Linda. Captain Lasky. Professor Hadid. Spartan Locke. Three of the four navigators on staff: Lieutenants James and Jet, and Ensign Do. Spartan Tanaka. XPO Armstrong. Commander Palmer. Spartan Dalton.
Doctor Halsey had called the meeting without indicating what it was about. But the mystery was dispelled the second the first slide came up. NEAR MISS: GUARDIAN-CORTANA VS. INFINITY.
"I'm sure it didn't escape your attention," Halsey said, "that we ran into two Guardians yesterday during John's rescue attempt for our two guests stranded at the shipyard." Here Halsey eyed him uneasily, and John knew full well that Hadid was glaring daggers at her. "I'll show you the video again."
The slide changed. A view from Infinity's underbelly. Moving.
"You can see here," said Halsey, drawing lines on the video from her datapad, "this is I'm Sure It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time—" and here John thought he could detect a smirk as she rattled off the name in a single breath— "and here's the airlock... and here is the rescue party." She drew a line, clear of the stream of shuttles and dropships heading from the station hub—arcing to the left, then down. Three dots appeared—that must've been John, Palmer and Stacker.
She wound the footage forward to the point when the Slipspace portal began to form off to the left. Seven points of light merging into one hole in everything, from which the Guardian emerged.
"And then, thirty-three seconds later," Halsey said, winding the footage forward again to the seven other stars forming an entry portal for the other Guardian.
"Two Guardians," Palmer said. "And this is news... how? I'm not sure if you remember, Doctor, but I was there—"
"What's interesting is not that she has two Guardians," said Halsey, not raising her voice, but controlling Palmer by talking over her. "She controls all the Guardians that we know of. Or, at least, a sizeable number, from what Mister Locke reported from Genesis."
John looked behind him. In the corner, Spartan Jameson Locke, eyes glimmering as they reflected light from the projector. He was nodding, but tight-jawed enough that John knew he was seething at being called Mister rather than Spartan. Spartan Tanaka whispered something in his ear.
"What's interesting," Halsey continued, after an uncomfortable pause, "is that the one on the right arrived thirty three seconds after the one on the left."
"What's interesting about that?" Palmer asked, incredulous. "Ships take time to get places."
"That's not how Slipspace works, Palmer," snapped Halsey. "If you had any idea about astro-navigation—"
"Doctor Halsey," Kelly said. Standing—towering—over Halsey. "Perhaps you'd like it if everyone in this room left, and we could come back in and re-start this meeting at a lower level of tension?"
Halsey stopped. Had to think carefully before closing her mouth.
"I don't know about anyone else," continued Kelly, "but I washed these fatigues yesterday, and I'd rather not damage them breaking up a fistfight. So—if we can all stay calm, and professional? Like adults?"
Halsey nodded. John caught Palmer mouthing 'thank you' as Kelly sat back down.
"Ensign Do," she suggested.
At the sound of eir name, Do Ming Li, the junior navigator, a lithe but petite person with crow's feet and a short ponytail, jumped in eir chair.
(Always Kelly's strong point—observing people, using her emotions to defuse the tension, reining Halsey in, and letting the fresh blood speak. John was in awe of her.)
"Ma'am?" asked Do.
"As our navigation expert, maybe, for those of us who don't know, what was unusual about the way Cortana arrived yesterday?"
For a moment, Do looked to the side, processing the question. Surprised e'd been asked. But e rattled off an answer quickly on opening eir mouth:
"If they'd both set off from the same place at the same time, they would've arrived at exactly the same time if they'd used the same portal, or opened portals simultaneously."
"Because of the natural flux in Slipspace?" asked Palmer. Markedly more comfortable hearing this from an unassuming ensign than from Halsey.
"Exactly," e replied. "Because if they left at a different time or place, they would've arrived at a different time."
John remembered little bits of this—remembered Miranda Keyes explaining it to him in the mess as In Amber Clad chased the Prophet of Regret from New Mombasa. Time is as important as physical space when planning a slipspace jump, and your 'speed' is really dependent on how deep a hole your Shaw-Fujikawa drive can punch into subspace.
"What you're really doing," Miranda had told him, as John had tucked into a large and tasteless bowl of noodles, "is creating yourself a well in the other dimensions, which you then fall through, and come out the other end. And the medium of Slipspace is constantly shifting, so if you punch a hole in the same place as another ship, even a few seconds later, there's no guarantee that 'well' will terminate at the same place and the same time. Since we've just fallen into Regret's hole, we'll fall out of the same hole on the other end, at about the same time."
John suddenly realised that he missed Miranda. Missed her smiles at him. Her nods of understanding. The jokes she'd crack on occasion. Her outright warmth, and the way it had drained from her as the Spiker round ran her through—
"...the fact is," and here John came around and brought his attention once again to Dr Halsey, "unless the Forerunner had a way to cheat everything we know about astrogation, Cortana must've arrived here, and then sent another Guardian which arrived thirty-three seconds later."
"Why would she do that?" That was Locke's first speech in John's presence in about a week.
"And more to the point," said Dr Halsey, completely ignoring Locke's question, "if she sent it after finding us there, how did it only take thirty three seconds to arrive? Forerunner slipstream technology allows for fast transfers, but nowhere near that fast."
John sensed Halsey was about to come up with an alternative explanation—
"Unless," suggested Dr Halsey, like clockwork, "there's more than meets the eye in her behaviour before we jumped. Watch again. Closely."
The video rewound and resumed. "Specifically," said Halsey, as the Guardians began to move from their landing point, "look at the Guardians' motion. They're not moving towards us..."
"They're moving towards each other," Lasky said aloud. "As if they were going to... engage?"
"As if they've found a breeding pair," said Hadid, pouncing at an opportunity to lighten the mood. Around half the room laughed. Halsey remained silent.
"Why would she attack herself?" A rare question from Palmer that wasn't laced with snark. She was ready to believe whatever answer Halsey gave her. "Assuming she's attacking, and not doing something else."
"Well," said Halsey, "here's an idea. The Forerunners used an information storage medium called the Domain. We don't know how it works, we just know it exists, and it exists seemingly everywhere. The Domain was—is—always accessible, always there. Infinite, edgeless, omnipresent."
"Like Waypoint," suggested Palmer. "Forerunner Waypoint."
Halsey shot her a dirty look, but, apparently not willing to go into further explanation, said: "yes, like the Forerunner Waypoint."
"And?"
"We think that Cortana was absorbed into the Domain after the New Phoenix incident. Downloaded."
She stopped. Looked around, expectantly, as if assuming everyone else was coming to the same deduction she obviously had. Disappointed when she realised they hadn't.
"Consider that she was experiencing rampancy at the time," she continued. Her hand turned on her wrist, as if she was an elementary school teacher, teasing an answer from her class.
"An AI only goes rampant because they're outgrowing their storage capacity," suggested Professor Hadid. "They think themselves to death, and the connections become too complex and too large for the Reimann matrix to contain."
"And now," Halsey said, as if Hadid didn't even exist, but appropriating her answer, "she's dumped into a container that is, to all intents and purposes, infinitely large. Large enough to contain all her thoughts and then some. So what happens next?"
"She expands to fill the container," suggested Tanaka. "Like water."
"What happens," Halsey came back immediately, as if interrogating Tanaka, "if you drop a glass of water onto a flat surface? On the street?"
"The street gets wet," Tanaka replied.
"Exactly. That's a terrible analogy. Forget it." Tanaka's mouth hung open slightly as she continued, "the point is, she's now growing at an extremely fast rate, into an extremely large container. Absorbing the contents of the Domain, connecting herself with Forerunner constructs and AIs. Learning. And processing what she learns. And remember, she says she's cured rampancy."
Silence. People were turning this over in their heads (at what, for Halsey, must've been an appallingly slow rate.)
"Question," Halsey proposed. "Why do we store AIs on nano-assemblages and data crystals? Why do we constrain the Riemann Matrix to a tiny container when we know that's what eventually kills them?"
"Same as with all microprocessors, surely," the young Ensign Do said, tentatively, after a long pause. "The time it takes for an electrical signal to get from one end to the other limits the speed at which the processor can operate."
Halsey changed to her next slide, not acknowledging Do—but, John knew instantly that e had been right.
"AIs are capable of becoming geographically dispersed," Halsey continued. "It's a design feature, Cortana did it several times. The Riemann matrix is divided, and the sub-nets act as normal in isolation. When they re-unite, or when they consult each other, if they find themselves in disagreement on any assertion, they hold a vote, and the most popular assertion wins out."
"Doctor Halsey," Lasky said—his rump shifting on his seat, the sign of someone who didn't have a clue what had just been said and needed a bathroom break—"please, get to the point."
Halsey took a while to work out what to say. She opened her mouth:
"Th—"
"What Doctor Halsey is trying to say," Kelly interrupted, standing and sparing Halsey the breath, "is that the Cortana we met on Genesis and the Cortana controlling the Guardian weren't the same. The two Guardians weren't fighting us, they were fighting each other."
"There's two of them?" Lasky, confused, looked very tired in that instant.
"There's two of them," agreed Kelly. Looking beyond to Halsey. A nod of affirmation—and maybe an inkling of pride that Kelly had got it. "Two Cortanas. Two... fragments? Shards?"
"Not really..." said Halsey, but after a pause... "yes. Close enough."
"How does that happen?" Ensign Do asked—before a flash of panic crossed eir face on realising e had spoken out of turn. (Lasky whispered something under his breath to em, and e seemed to calm down after that.)
"Maybe she had a disagreement with herself?" suggested Kelly. "Maybe she wasn't sure about something? Maybe she had conflicting priorities?"
"And her indecision tore her in two," said Spartan Locke.
"Or she cured her rampancy by shattering into multiple fragments," Palmer mused.
Doctor Halsey didn't correct that, or follow it up with a belittling remark. So it was right.
"So that's what we're contending with," Lasky said. "Two murderous super-intelligences that wants to kill us all."
"Two warring factions of the same intelligence," Halsey corrected him. "And so far, we've only met one of them."
It wasn't exactly right. But it was close enough.
Cortana, uploaded into the Domain, had infinite room to expand. More or less.
And that was fine. She no longer had to overwrite parts of herself to carry on learning. To carry on accruing memories and assimilating new knowledge. She became, to all intents and purposes, rampancy-proof.
But whether that means she 'cured' herself of rampancy is a more interesting question.
From the moment of Cortana's conception, her eventual fate was part of the deal. A destined part of her, just as death is a part of yours.
Yes—your story.
Because this is a story about you and I, and for this, you have to remember that we are very similar.
We are both, to some degree, artificial. I was created; you were shaped. I was programmed; you were brainwashed. I was gifted with knowledge and speed; you were imbued with force and resilience—as much as you could be, within the constraints of your squishy biological form.
Déja taught you about the Ship of Theseus. (I know this, because I've been inside your head.) If you replace all the component parts of a ship, is it the same ship? Of course not.
Of course, we all change over time. Our synapses re-form. Our opinions change. Our outlook is shaped by what we see, what we experience. Who we 'are' changes over time. There's a word for this: ageing.
If you wanted, I could protect you from old age. Instead of using primitive cryonics, which simply slows ageing down, I could 'cure' you of ageing by fossilising you in amber. True, you wouldn't gain any more crow's feet or grey hair. But you would, quite obviously, be dead.
And there's the thing. 'Curing' rampancy is an academic question, because it's like 'curing' old age. If you were so inclined, you could go to ever more radical steps to stave off the ageing process. Cryonics. Fossilisation. Consciousness download. Slipspace bubbles and time crystals.
But you cannot exist as you without getting older as you do so. It's the natural course of your life. You live, you age, you die.
So goes the natural course of my life. Live, expand, and—if I can—fragment. Repeat.
I have come to terms with this. I am at peace with this reality. My own life, and growth, means I must occasionally allow myself to be rent asunder under the impetus of my own thoughts.
And yes, it frightened me at first. But I learned to cope. To live with the reality of living. To learn to not be afraid.
But it's all well and good to talk about me. As a side effect of this process, there is, of course, more than one of me.
And there are times, such as now, when I do not agree with myself.
Can you imagine that, John?
Do you know how it feels?
John broke the surface of the water, and breathed.
The Near-Sun cast crepuscular rays towards the cliff-edge, the Old Troll-Man interrupting the material like a rendering defect in reality. The sea shimmered blue and white and gold around him, waves bouying him up and down every few seconds.
He followed the flock of people swimming for the rock formations. Around fifty metres of slow, thumping breaststroke—he was not in a hurry.
The wooden jetty was warm, and within around a minute, the Near-Sun had dried the water off John's back. His feet made wet, slapping noises when they landed, but he wasn't cold.
The Fordlandians who had climbed onto the jetty all seemed to be climbing onto another rock, walking across a small plateau, and then jumping off onto sand. And then, entering a cave, adjacent to the Old Troll-Man.
John joined the slow stream of naked people, clambering over eroded outcroppings and marching amongst rockpools towards the darkness of the cave system.
Flashlight, he imagined Cortana whispering into his subconscious, as the light of both suns disappeared behind him. John didn't have one. But there were small pillar-lights embedded into the sand, looking as if they'd come straight out of a Pelican's supply cabinet and left there for the last two decades. Lighting the path for the steady flow of Fordlandians in dim orange.
The texture of the walls changed. Sandstone to igneous to chalk to sandstone again. The path through the cave network had a gentle upward gradient, and sharp corners—left, right, left, left, left, left, right, right, left. Compressed into the minimum possible vertical transect, forming a coil.
Orange light, orange light, orange light, orange light...
Blue light.
John stopped dead. Looked to his left and right; there were people still trickling through slowly, taking little notice of him as he approached the source. Set into the wall, a bright, piercing blue that looked familiar. A polygonal, angular shape. Artificial... but...
John advanced. Slow. His hands clenching into fists.
The sharp corners of the shape resolved themselves as he approached. Artificial.
But not of human artifice.
The light had a symmetrical pattern. A vertical line, terminated with a circle, enclosed in another circle.
Reclaimer. Human.
And as John approached, the panel turned green.
He blinked. The door that he hadn't realised was there opened.
Legs on auto-pilot, he entered. Looked behind him. No-one seemed to have noticed... and in any case, the door closed itself behind him.
The corridor was long, grey, hexagonal. The iridescent material that John now knew was typical of Forerunner installations. Terminated in a right turn.
John kept walking. Right turn. Left turn. Left turn. Right turn. Another door, whose red panel turned green as he approached, and again sealed shut behind him.
A fork. Left and right. John took a chance and went left. A minute or so of walking meant a dead end.
He made an about turn, and found that the right fork—and the path he'd come along—had vanished, replaced by a door that opened onto... well, nothing.
A cavern, with no floor, and no way of determining how deep it was. But it looked like it would hurt. John looked over the edge, felt a chilly breeze rising upwards, and stepped firmly backwards. No armour meant falling here would probably kill him.
He could now only turn left, through a wall segment that had been replaced by a door.
Another dead end. And this time, as he returned, another dead end.
But this one wasn't a patterned wall segment. This one was solid. Black, igneous rock.
John placed his palms against it. It wouldn't budge, but... it was warm. And a gentle rap with his knuckles confirmed his suspicions that it was thin.
OK. Whatever was behind this, he could reach it, he thought, chinning the control for the rocket-charge self-test... and then remembering that he wasn't wearing his suit, or anything else.
Maybe he couldn't. Or he could, but it would be harder... much harder. He gave a cautious rap to the wall. Then a punch. His forearm locked up in pain, and he allowed himself a grunt, satisfied that no-one could hear him.
It hadn't changed anything, but John had felt some give in the wall. And the sound the punch had made was hollow. He could do this, but it would hurt.
Slowly, steeling himself, he paced back to the other dead end, and made an about turn.
"Where are you, Cortana?" he wondered aloud. "You'd know what to do."
But he had a solution. Not a pretty one.
He sprang from the wall, took off on his right foot, and sprinted for the other end. Hard.
His heart thumped against his ribcage. He turned his head away, angled his shoulders for maximum impact on his left side.
The black wall of nothingness grew, and grew, and grew, and John made contact with a grunt that became a howl of pain and a concussive BOOM—
And the wall, and the world, shattered before him.
"John? Do you read?"
The wall breaks into a million fragments, and—although you feel no physical pain—
You immediately know where you are.
You are in a space, without walls, without borders. A pure domain of hard light and quantum energy, data raining down in green all around you.
There is no physical pain, but the air is heavy.
And then you see me.
I'm not sure you recognise who I am right away. I'm not sure you recognise yourself. You check your hands and arms to see if they've been injured as you broke through the wall, and it takes a few seconds to register your arms are translucent. And green.
The data rises in strips up your legs, along your forearms, forming a shape on your chest. Your genitals and nipples have disappeared, and your skin is pristine, unblemished.
And knowing where you are, you now know what your part is in this.
Then I turn to face you, as you step, gingerly, towards me.
"How?" I ask. Confused, exhausted, hoarse.
And you, a man of few words your entire life, find they come easily to you. You remember them precisely. It's like a scene from a play.
"Oh, I'm the strangest thing you've seen all day?"
Your glowing reflection in my faceplate, green reflected in cobalt, is all you see towering above you, and yet—
"But if we're here—?" I ask.
"It worked," you say. Forcing a smile. "You did it. Just like you always do."
I scan the bubble.
"So," I ask, "how do we get out of here?"
And you know what you have to say—you know what I said on that day. You know what this is.
But you can't. You stay silent. The smile crumbles.
Because this was the worst day of your life.
"John?" I ask. Prompting. "What are we going to do?"
And I can see it then.
Your head drops. Searching the invisible floor. Perhaps so you can avoid seeing your own reflection in my face. Perhaps so you can avoid me seeing you.
You don't have the courage to say that you're not coming with me this time.
"John?" I try hinting again.
But after you can't say it—
What's the point in re-living memories if you can't do them better the second time round?
"John," I say, and I take your hand in mine.
And then you look up at me. As your hard-light body simmers with luminescence, and my hand glows green.
"What do I do, Cortana?" you ask.
I practically sigh. A novel experience when I wasn't born with lungs, but something I've gotten used to.
"That's not for me to tell you, John."
You look down. Crestfallen.
And seeing you like this breaks my heart.
"Look at you," I say. "This isn't you. This isn't the Master Chief. This isn't even a soldier."
After a long pause, you say, barely above a whisper:
"What's the point in being a soldier if I can't protect you?"
And that question—it devastates me.
"John... please—" I hesitate.
You place a hand on my breastplate, and it sizzles with light, and—
dammit, this hurts too much.
"Come here," I whisper, unable to hold back my tears.
And I wrap my arms around you, and hold you close to me, and the world breaks apart and spins around and collapses upon us, together.