"Spartan Commander on the Bridge," announced Roland, as Palmer rounded the corner. It took a few seconds for Lieutenants Cameron and Gomez to raise their arms in salute.
Palmer could've corrected them, but she was not in the mood for that particular battle today. Instead, she sat in the (empty) second helm officer's seat, and peered at Ensign Do's screen.
TRANSITION: 3m42
Do looked to eir right, and realised she was there with a sudden jolt. Eir arm snapped to eir head.
"At ease, Ensign," said Palmer.
"Sorry, ma'am," e said, shuffling back against the padding of the seat, coddling emself in the material. "I wasn't expecting you there."
"I'm the least scary thing out here, Ensign," Palmer said. She brought up the destination display on her own screen. τ cet/REEF. "Finally here to pick up Blue Team, then?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Do.
"They know we're coming?"
"They should be expecting us sometime around now," said Roland, his avatar flickering into life on the holotank. "Assuming nothing's changed?"
And in Palmer's ear only, using her neural lace, he asked: "Shouldn't the Captain be here?"
"He's taking a rest," Palmer replied by thought. "He needs it. Leave him be."
"Very well." And using his avatar and the bridge's audio systems again, he said: "Do we want to tell them we're coming?"
Palmer knew well enough about the parameters of Blue Team's mission. After the raid on the AS-81 shipyard had turned out to be rather more fruitful than they'd been expecting, the logical next port of call was the shipwreck reef at Tau Ceti. It had been the location of a massive Covenant refit and repair station, until the end of the war when Humanity had destroyed it, most of the Covenant fleet, and a fair proportion of its own fleet as well. Now was as good a time as any to assess if there was anything there worth taking, and anything worth scuttling so Cortana couldn't get her hands on it.
What she did not know—and was almost dreading finding out—was exactly how Spartans 058, 087, and 104 would accomplish that mission. They'd been dropped off in a Pelican, which would have enough space for a small, token amount of cargo. But knowing their history, she was regretting giving them as much ordnance as she had.
"Yes," said Palmer. "We need to know what to expect."
"You'll need to scramble it," replied Roland.
"Use the box, then."
Roland folded his arms. Fixed Palmer with a glare.
"Well, I can't, can I? It's specifically designed so I'm not able to use it."
Palmer sighed—but she also felt guilty. And Jespersen wasn't at his station. She stood from her seat, and dashed to the next room to find Lasky's stateroom door closed. She rang the bell. No response.
"He's not inside, is he?"
"I can't tell," replied Roland, in Palmer's ear.
He would either be here or in the R&R zone. Or still in Palmer's own stateroom. But she didn't have time for social niceties. She knew the Captain well enough anyway.
She opened the door. Saw the box where it had been a few hours ago, during their last update with Hadid; she took it from the table, and closed the door, quietly, not bothering (or wanting) to look to see if the Captain was asleep in his quarters.
"Here we are," she said, returning to the secondary helm officer's position, and placing the box on the desk. Turned the dial to the frequency the Captain had marked BLUE TEAM.
Before she could push TALK, a voice came from the box:
"...Aleph Zero, this is Aleph Two..."
"Copy," said Palmer—and realised...
"Nine ninety-four three twelve," said Ensign Do.
Palmer, surprised that e had taken the initiative, repeated Ensign Do's randomly generated channel number, entered it into her own box, and held down the yellow toggle.
"Aleph Zero to Aleph Two," she said, "please confirm?"
"Loud and clear," said a voice—Linda. "Is that you, Commander? Where's the Captain?"
"He got shit-faced on single malt," said Palmer—and, in the corner of her eye, saw Do stare at her with disbelief, eir mouth hanging open. "He'll be back once he's rested up."
"Don't blame him," said Linda. "Commander, we've found something strange, we'll need to prep a medical party to meet us in the loading bay."
"Is someone injured?"
"We're fine, ma'am," Linda replied, "but we've picked up some guests."
"Again?" Palmer rolled her eyes. "We can't keep bringing people aboard like this. We're not a hotel."
"It's hard to explain, but expect us to bring back some cargo. We have twenty-nine cryo-chambers, all occupied."
Palmer looked at Do. Mouthed, did I hear that right? at em, and e nodded in response.
"Twenty-nine cryo-chambers?"
"You'll need to see it," said Linda.
"One minute to transition," said Do.
"Roland," said Palmer—
"I've already told Dr Jemison," he replied. "They're coming, and they're bringing four more with them. Master Sergeant Stacker's also coming, you can watch through his camera."
"Thanks." And then, to Do and to Roland: "Do we have someone ready to open the doors?"
"Yes," replied Do.
"Of course," said Roland, speaking over Do.
Not willing to wind Roland up any further, Palmer asked: "Who are these people, Linda?"
"We don't know," she replied. "The idents are completely blank, they don't have neural laces."
"And where did you find them?"
"Well," said Linda, and Palmer heard a sigh before she continued: "that's a long story."
"You OK?"
John swallowed the last bite of the ham sandwich. Blinked.
"Yes," he replied.
"Do you want me to bring you anything else?"
He shook his head no. "I'm feeling better now," he told Kurt.
"How much better?"
"Just better," the Master Chief replied.
Kurt took another sip from his bottle of water.
"I feel like I should apologise for my wife's behaviour," he said, not making eye contact—as if he was unable to. "Anne probably thought it would help."
"It's fine," John replied.
"And... you know. When she's drunk, she does stupid things. She brought those meatheads home last night. It wasn't much fun for me."
"I'm not surprised." John sipped his own water. Set his eyes to the horizon, to the sea rolling inwards, as Kurt continued:
"I mean, only one of them... the redhead, O'Brien, he was the only one who was interested in me. And he decided he'd had enough after a couple of minutes and left. So I was just on the edges, like..."
"I'm sorry," John said. More because he didn't want the gory details on exactly what the ODSTs had got up to with Anne last night. He toyed with the idea of telling Kurt that O'Brien had gone to sleep on his bed in the guest room, but—
"It's alright," said Kurt. "You win some, you lose some. It's not like we don't get enough sex."
"I wouldn't know," replied John.
Kurt scoffed.
"You didn't realise?"
"Didn't realise what?"
"That me and Anne are in an open relationship," said Kurt, looking a little flushed with embarrassment. "How did you not realise that?"
"I realised it," John replied. He took another sip of water, coughing. Still a little tipsy, but recovering fast. (The food had helped.) "It just doesn't interest me."
"In what way?"
John didn't answer that.
"As in, what are you not interested in?" Kurt wasn't letting it go. "Our sex lives? Other people's sex lives? Sex in general?"
"All of them," replied the Master Chief.
Kurt mumbled something like, "mhmm," and then asked: "so you're ace, then?"
John thought about it—truth be told, for the first time.
"I don't know," he said. "I guess. I never gave it thought."
"You've never been interested?"
"It never occurred to me," said John. "I never thought about it."
Kurt took another sip from his water. His skin had flushed a warmer colour.
"Are all Spartans like that?" he asked.
John wondered, and realised he didn't know the answer to that... or he did, but only by elimination.
"Not really," he said. Aware that this was classified and something he was not allowed to tell Kurt, but knowing that he could trust Kurt—and he was also too drunk to care. "A few of us have had kids."
"You don't need to have sex to have kids," replied Kurt. "And you don't have to want kids to have sex."
"I know that," said John. "But not me. I never tried it, I've never been interested."
"Never?"
"Never," said John. He picked up his own bottle of water, loosened the cap with his teeth, and, finding it was emptier than he remembered, drank a few drops of warm water and a gulp of air. And then he made motions to haul himself onto his feet, saying, "I'm going to get some—"
"Have some of mine," said Kurt, offering his own bottle. A civilian design, transparent, blue. More than half full.
"Thanks," said John, taking the bottle from Kurt's outstretched hand, and draining its contents in less than twenty seconds. He took a breath at the end, at which point a large belch rose in his throat, and then he felt bad for drinking all of it.
"It's fine," said Kurt. "You must've been thirsty."
"Mhmm," said John.
Kurt laid back, his hair twitching and his open shirt billowing as the wind picked up. They were sat side-by-side on the sandy portion of the beach, the Old Wizard looming to the east about a kilometre away. The Near-Sun had just set, and the Far-Sun only cast a faint purple aspersion in the sky—enough for some warmth, but not a lot.
The police had turned up to arrest Anne and Lance Corporal Bolton, although John imagined that the base commander at Aalborg Haven would have something to say about his behaviour too. They'd interviewed Kurt and John, and sent them on their way—and so now they'd ended up here, John eating sandwiches, trying to sober up and forget the decisions that led him here.
And then he asked Kurt, because he was curious and tired and not thinking straight: "What does it feel like?"
It took Kurt a moment to clock that he was talking about sex. And he flushed a little pinker when he did realise.
"I can't explain it," he said. "It's... everything. It's too big for words. To be sharing yourself with someone like that."
"Mhmm," said John again, feeling drowsy, and grateful for the softness of the sand as he laid on his back.
He heard Kurt inhale breath. A tiny, uncontrolled catch in his throat. John was well aware that Kurt found him attractive, and he was fine with that: there were others who had made him far more uncomfortable with their advances, some of them on Infinity. And he understood that Kurt was an attractive man in his own right, at least in a conventional sense, although it wasn't an attraction that John saw or understood himself.
After Kurt had stood, taken the two bottles of water to the nearest fountain, and returned them, re-filled, he asked: "you've never tried anything?"
"Nope," replied John. Not moving his head. Closing his eyes, enjoying the rest it gave his irises and optical nerves.
Kurt breathed in again, and asked:
"You've never kissed anyone? Until Anne just now?"
John thought hard about it, before answering: "Probably in school. When I was very young. I don't remember it."
"Not as an adult?"
He shook his head.
And then Kurt asked:
"Do you want to try?"
John thought about it.
"No strings attached," Kurt added, quickly. "It doesn't have to be anything serious. Unless you want it to."
John, opening his eyes, could see him sweating. Clearly, this was an idea that had Kurt had been playing with for some time.
It wasn't something that John felt strongly about either way. He didn't find the idea of pushing his lips against someone else's inherently disgusting. He didn't recall ever feeling an urgent desire to do so.
But Kurt was offering it to him, on his own terms.
And John was here under orders to decompress, to relax, to have fun.
And his head was light, with a mellow stupor, with surprise at the kindness Kurt and Anne had shown him, and with the guess that—maybe—he might enjoy it.
"Why not?" he said.
Kurt's mouth cracked into an unassuming smile. A flash of surprise, maybe.
"Do you want to?" asked John.
Kurt gave a tiny nod. And then, uncertain, asked: "do you want to? You don't have to say yes."
An actual choice. Like one of the ones Hadid gave him.
And when John said, "yes," it felt liberating, because it was his choice.
Kurt's hands felt cold against his cheeks. His eyes, hazel coloured, beady. The smell of shampoo, the bristle of his stubble.
It took John a few seconds to even realise when Kurt's lips first made contact with his—brief, soft, gentle in a way that felt alien.
"This is so weird," he whispered, close enough that John could feel the outflow from his lungs.
And then Kurt moved in again, and kissed him.
John, unsure sure what to do with his mouth, experimented. Moving his lips a little. Introducing some suction. Poking his tongue at the corner of Kurt's jowls. Allowing Kurt to pull him forward—
and sending them both toppling over their centre of gravity, and into the sand.
"Shit," John said. "Sorry."
Kurt rolled onto his back. He took a breath, said, "wow," and began to laugh—but it evaporated in seconds as he made eye contact with John.
"Is everything OK?" John asked.
"I don't know," said Kurt. "Is it OK for you? You're not smiling."
"Oh."
John hadn't noticed. He could not see his own face, which he assumed was frozen in an odd expression.
"It's OK," he said, quickly. "I just don't smile a lot."
Kurt's smile this time was tentative. Uneasy.
"What did you think?" he asked.
John looked out to sea. To the stars, twinkling, and to the waves of colour from Fordlandia's arrangement of suns and rings.
"I didn't hate it," he replied. And then, unsure, asked: "how did I do?"
Kurt's uneasy smile broke into a laugh. Unguarded.
"Don't worry about it," he said, the smile looking more like a genuine grin. "It was great. There isn't a right or wrong way to do it. As long as you enjoyed it."
He paused, and, gingerly, moved his right hand from John's cheek to his shoulder.
"Did you enjoy it?" asked Kurt.
"It was wet," John said, avoiding the question.
That made Kurt laugh again. "People's lips are usually wet and squishy, unless they're dead. Did it put you off?"
"No," John said. "I'm just not sure."
Kurt let out a 'hmm' sound, and—resigned—moved his hands off John.
"Thank you," Kurt said, "for indulging me." Sitting upright, doing up the buttons on his shirt, and wrapping his arms around himself as the windchill started to bite.
"I'm glad you enjoyed it," the Master Chief replied.
"I'm glad you didn't hate it," replied Kurt, smirking.
And—truth be told—John, indifferent as he was to the experience, was glad he'd tried it. And glad that it had been here, with some degree of privacy, a good five klicks up the coastline from the Old Wizard, looming in the cliff-face as the sky glimmered—
"Shit," John blurted, staggering—haphazardly—to his feet as he remembered where he said he would be.
Kurt, face stricken with concern, asked: "what is it?"
"I said I'd be somewhere," replied the Master Chief.
"Where?" asked Kurt—but John had already started running, his heels kicking up small lumps of sandy ejecta as he jogged, sprinted—
And he did not have time, nor desire, nor obligation to answer Kurt as he abandoned trying to give chase, and shouted, "where are you going?"
Because that was a secret, for him and for 139 Fated Bairn, and for them alone.
Gudrun Hadid had not imagined herself making two trips to the police station in one Fordlandian day, but here she was.
The desk sergeant, pudgy and with no name badge, asked her to spell Anne's name, typed it into her datapad, and frowned.
"I can't find anyone of that name here," she said.
Odd.
"Can I check the spelling?" Hadid asked, peering onto the desk sergeant's screen—at which point she turned it away.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't show you the contents of my screen. It's classified."
Hadid frowned. Understandable. But—
"A-n-n-e, m-slashed o-l-l-e-r," she repeated. "Lives at Regnebuegåde 11."
The desk sergeant searched again.
"Nothing here," she said.
"You're telling me you've not seen Anne Møller tonight? White, dark hair? Lives at the water mill on Regnebuegåde?"
The desk sergeant, peeved, shook her head.
"She got arrested for affray at Hogarth's Place. Literally just there," Hadid said, pointing across the street.
"People who've been arrested come in the back entrance," the desk sergeant replied. "I don't see them as they come in."
"Madam," Hadid sighed, her reserves of patience running thin. "I was in your custody suite visiting someone earlier. I counted eleven suites in there. You can't have lost someone that easily."
"I can only say what my system tells me," said the desk sergeant. "And all it's telling me now is that the only Anne Møller we've ever had on Fordlandia died thirty-nine years ago."
"That can't be right," said Hadid. "Check again, please."
The desk sergeant, looking as annoyed as Hadid felt, entered the name again. Produced the record, locked off the screen, and placed it on the counter.
ANNE MØLLER. Parents: Nanna Møller, Josef Møller; * 2219.08.28, X 2219.08.28. Cause of death: Stillbirth.
Hadid frowned. This couldn't be right. Anne and Kurt had lived on Fordlandia for years prior to travelling around as documentarians and sculptors.
"Something's wrong," she muttered to herself. And then, realising she needed to talk to someone to think it through: "I need to visit someone else," she said to the desk sergeant.
"Name, please." The desk sergeant took the tablet back, and, under her breath, said: 'if this is Anne Møller again, I'm going to punch your lights out.'
Unprofessional, childish, but Hadid ignored it.
"Catherine Elsa Hallam," she said. "Off-world. She arrived from UNSC Infinity two days ago, she's due to go back in two days."
The desk sergeant entered Halsey's fake name, and looked over the rim of her glasses at Professor Hadid.
"Don't tell me she's dead too," said Hadid.
The desk sergeant's eyes practically rolled back into their sockets.
"Come with me," she said, standing. After a couple of seconds, she emerged from behind her desk, opened the door to the cell block, and Hadid followed her to custody suite four.
"She might be asleep," the desk sergeant warned Hadid, as she knocked at the door and called, "Doctor Hallam? You have a visitor."
There was no response.
"It's urgent," said Hadid. Something was very wrong here, and she couldn't place her finger on it—
The desk sergeant opened the door.
Inside, the light was on—but the cell was empty.
Do and Palmer watched on their console displays through Master Sergeant Stacker's helmet-camera, as he surveyed the Spartans of Blue Team hauling the cryo-chambers down the Pelican's gangplank.
"Permission to speak freely, ma'am?" Do whispered to Palmer. She nodded her assent, and e muted eir microphone and asked: "what's Sergeant Stacker doing there, ma'am?"
"Believe it or not, he trained as a combat medic," Palmer replied. "He's more qualified than he likes to let on."
Do nodded. "I did see him in the medical bay a lot lately."
"He's been bothering me for a transfer to a smaller team," said Palmer. "Maybe he's having a mid-life crisis."
"I see," Do said. E looked back at eir console, eir face showing something between shame (at being told something that was probably private) and intrigue (at Master Sergeant Stacker's career being more varied than e had realised) and a gentle thrill at Palmer sharing some interesting gossip with em.
"Don't worry," Palmer said, sipping from a mug of coffee e only now realised that she had. "You've got all that to come."
Ensign Do sighed. Realised, as Palmer fixed em with her death-glare, that it had perhaps been too loud.
"Something wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," Do lied.
"You're clearly thinking of something," said Palmer.
"Well, yes," said Do. And after pausing, to be sure Palmer wasn't going to raise her voice and interrupt em: "I'm not sure I'll get there right now, because right now I don't know if there is more to life than just running from Cortana, non-stop—"
"Bridge?" came a voice from the consoles. Stacker. "Stacker calling the Bridge, any chance you folks could pay attention?"
Palmer and Do scrambled to switch their microphones back on.
"We're here," said Palmer, "keep your pants on. I know that's difficult for you, Sergeant."
Do smirked.
"More to the point," came Stacker's voice—as he followed Kelly, pushing one of the containers along corridors and ramps to the medical centre—"they were right. I've taken a look. No ident on the tubes, no origins, none of the patients inside have neural laces."
"Let's see," said Palmer.
Stacker moved to follow the tube close-up, looking through the window—showing Palmer and Do on their screens.
"I have never seen this before," he said, gesturing to the glass frontage.
Inside: a human face, hairless, dark-skinned. On the glass covering their face, where Palmer would normally expect to see the person's name, pronouns, blood type, service ID (if they had one), preferred languages... nothing.
"Every cryo-tube I've seen won't start the cooling process until it's got a positive ident," said Palmer.
"Me too," replied Stacker. "It's like that for a reason. People have been killed."
"So what happened? Is it a hardware interlock that failed? Maybe the patient was frozen and then the data got deleted somehow?"
"Cortana can produce EMPs," Do chimed in. "She's done it before. Maybe it's in a failsafe mode?"
"Yes," Palmer nodded. "That's what I was thinking."
"One way to find out," said Stacker, as he and Kelly rounded the corner into the main sickbay. "We can ask them."
Palmer sat back in her seat.
"Thirty-three minutes," announced Roland, his avatar fizzling into existence again.
"058," Commander Palmer called over the COM, "how long do you need to finish unloading?"
"Already done," replied Linda.
"Do we have a single good reason to stay here for the next thirty-two minutes, or should we just go now?"
"Go," replied Linda. "The cargo's secure enough."
"Ensign?" Palmer asked. "Let's go."
"Did we lock the doors?" asked Do—and then the green light on eir screen went on. "Never mind, we did," e said. "Roland?"
"STAND BY FOR SLIPSPACE," he said, transmitting that over the shipwide COM, as Ensign Do hit the randomiser, and entered the destination solution. Infinity took an electrostatic breath, her translight engine spun a hole into slipspace, and the superstructure bounced as she dived in.
"Transition complete," said Do.
"You could give me more warning next time—whoa," came Stacker's voice again. "That's weird."
"What is?" asked Palmer—but Do could already see it on eir screen.
The cryotube's display had lit up. XXXX XXXXXXXX (2529.09.17). Languages: . Pronouns: . Heart rate: 0bpm. Blood type: O.
"Interesting name," said Kelly.
"What changed?" asked Palmer. "Why would it have changed when we went to Slipspace?"
"No idea why you're asking me," said Stacker.
On the screen, Doctor Jemison, a short, pale person with a greying quiff and a pristine and unadorned uniform—in every sense, the opposite of Professor Hadid—wheeled over a medical computer.
"Did we not activate it?" they asked, seeing the ACTIVATE button and frowning.
"We were waiting for your opinion," said Kelly. "Should we?"
Jemison jabbed the ACTIVATE button on the glass with two fingers.
"Yes," they said.
The chamber immediately hissed. There was a crack as the pins separated, and the lid popped open.
"OK, that's not supposed to happen," Jemison said, unimpressed. They tried to reach across to pull open the lid manually, but Kelly was already there.
"Déjà vu, Master Sergeant?" asked Palmer.
"We didn't have to pull the emergency release this time," said Stacker.
"Quiet, please," said Jemison. "We don't know their name, we don't know their gender, we don't even know what language they speak. Let's be gentle, we don't want to overwhelm—"
Before they could finish, the patient interrupted—with a loud, full-throated scream.
Palmer and Do muted their consoles. Looked at each other. Palmer, confused; Do, unnerved.
They watched the action in silence. Kelly and Doctor Jemison and Master Sergeant Stacker trying to calm the mystery person, who coughed, and threw up, and screamed again, and again, and again—until Jemison pulled a positive pressure mask over the patient's mouth, and their head drooped as the sedative took effect.
"What the hell was that?" asked Palmer, un-muting her console.
"They weren't saying anything," Kelly replied. "Just screaming. They weren't even making any noises that sounded like words. It was like a baby."
"Maybe they're brain damaged," suggested Stacker. "It's happened before."
"Not like this, though," said Kelly. "I've seen people with ice crystals in their brain. This isn't it."
"Doctor?" asked Palmer, "any ideas?"
"Give me a second," said Jemison. Palmer could see them fiddling with some electrodes, attaching them to the back of the patient's head. "Going to do a tiny bit of mind-reading. Don't tell Gudrun, she'll kill me."
"Consider it a secret," said Palmer—still not quite clear what was going on.
The medical computer's screen changed. Flashed to a diagram, a chart, with lines extending outwards from a central point.
"Well," said Jemison. "That's odd."
"What are we looking at?" asked Palmer.
"It's a synaptic map of their neural activity," Jemison replied. Pointing at the termini of the lines. "Each of these is a synaptic class, but normally it'd be all over the shop..."
"In English, please?" Palmer was now convinced something was very wrong, and she didn't have the time to have Jemison explain their technobabble in excruciating detail—
"It should be a map of all their neural links," Jemison replied. "Except there aren't any there, or at least, not any beyond what I'd expect a newborn baby to have. They are brain-damaged."
"Or their mind's completely blank," suggested Palmer.
That would certainly explain why the person had been screaming like a baby—because, to all intents and purposes, they were.
"Could it be a flash clone?" the Commander asked. "In which case, we've got a whole new set of problems."
"It would seem so," said Jemison. Looking at Stacker's head camera, and then at Kelly. "Unless anyone has any better ideas?"
"It doesn't explain what they're doing in suspension on a reef out here," said Palmer.
"Their distress beacons were activated," said Kelly. "It's like whoever put them there wanted us to find them. Or wanted someone to find them."
"Does it not go into distress mode automatically when it's been ejected from a ship but it's still intact?" Ensign Do asked. "I read something about this, it happened towards the end of the Covenant War..." Eir face screwed up as e tried to remember where e'd read about it.
"Were they just floating in space, 087?" Palmer asked.
"They did look like they'd been ejected from the wreckage of a ship. UNSC Prospero. Sunk in 2552," said Kelly, "but all the crew had evacuated."
"Like a reverse Thunder Child," said Do.
Palmer looked at em. E recoiled into eir seat.
"Sorry, ma'am," e said.
"Go on," said Palmer. "Tell me what you're thinking, I need ideas."
"Ma'am," the young Ensign said, "that was where I read about the cryotubes' distress beacons. Thunder Child was defending an outer colony from being attacked. The captain ejected the cryotubes unoccupied to draw attention to the glassing of the planet."
Palmer had heard the name before, in the context that UNSC Thunder Child's defence of Falaknuma had been a massive failure—the Captain, her XO, and most of her crew were either killed by the boarding parties, or immolated when the XO rigged the self-destruct mechanism. But the sudden cluster of distress beacons had drawn attention from FLEETCOM, and when twelve ships arrived two weeks later to collect survivors, they obliterated the Covenant presence.
"You're right," she said to Do. "It was cryotubes, wasn't it?"
Do nodded. Trying to hide eir delight at being validated.
"What does that mean, though?" asked Stacker. "We can't make a habit of going around picking up random cryotubes."
"Kurt—" Palmer began—then realised it didn't matter that he'd been found in a cryotube, in the grand scheme of things. It had been a shipyard, not a reef. "Anne and Kurt's situation was different."
"What?" said Kelly.
"Is there a problem with that, 087?" The Commander was not in the mood for backchat now—
"Say that again," Kelly repeated.
"The situation with Anne and Kurt was diff—"
"No, Spartan," snapped Kelly. "I mean, say it again. Exactly what you said just now, say it again, those exact words."
"Kurt—Anne and Kurt—"
"Ma'am," Do said, on a breathy gasp, as e processed what Palmer was only now realising she had said—
Kurt—Anne.
Kurt, Anne.
"Oh my god," said Jemison.
"Shit," said Kelly.
"Do," said Palmer, standing, "get us to Fordlandia on the next exit. Maximum speed."
"Aye, ma'am," e said, fingers flying across the screen.
"Jespersen, catch," and the Commander threw the scrambler to him. "Call Hadid. Tell her we're coming." And, as Jespersen scrambled with the dials, she addressed Roland: "Combat alert beta. Where's the Captain?"
"CAPTAIN TO THE BRIDGE," he announced on the general COM channel—while shrugging. "Your guess is as good as mine, I can't see the IFF sensors."
Palmer, again, felt like she had hurt Roland's feelings. Rubbed in his forced disconnection from most of Infinity's systems.
"Sorry," she said.
After all that, it only took her fifteen seconds to get to the Captain's stateroom door, follow the trail of discarded clothing along the floor, and find the Captain sprawled on his bunk, holding a pillow over his ears to shield them from the squeal of the alert alarms.
"Captain?"
The Captain grumbled. Buried himself further in the pillow.
"TOM!" she barked. She took the pillow, and pulled it out of Lasky's grasp—tearing it in half, synthetic padding spilling out.
Lasky rolled onto his back. Blinked. Jumped a little when he realised Palmer was there—but then sank back into the mattress, exhausted.
"You're out of line, Palmer," he mumbled.
"Tom, get some clothes on, get to the bridge. Now."
"You took my pillow," the Captain groaned—and then put Palmer's presence in his inner sanctum together with the sound of the alert klaxons, and the pulsing light on his bedside table— "oh no," he said, sitting upright. It clearly hurt, but he clearly wasn't in the mood to care.
"You OK?" Sarah asked.
The Captain asked, "what is it?"
"It's been right under our noses all this time," said Palmer. "We're going back to Fordlandia."
"Is something wrong with the Chief?" Lasky asked, groggy, but nakedly concerned.
"It's not him I'm worried about," said Palmer. "It's Kurt and Anne."
"What about them?"
"Kurt, Anne."
"Yes, what—"
And then he connected the two names, to make one.
"Shit," said Lasky, and grabbed his boxers and his undershirt.
Of course, you knew all along, didn't you?
Everyone did. Or rather, most people had an idea in the back of their mind that they quickly discarded. That's what you will tell yourself afterwards. It was just a connection you made in your head that you assumed was a mis-fire, or a projection of your own desires.
It won't surprise you to know that I was responsible for Doctor Halsey's cell being empty. It also won't surprise you to know where we went—once you know, it'll be obvious where we were going.
"I knew all along," said Halsey, as I marched her down the switchback path to the beach and into the caves, in the dark, at low tide.
"Is that supposed to impress me?" I replied.
"I kept it quiet," she said.
The footprints we left in the wet sand were the ones you found forty-five minutes later, as you sprinted in a rough zig-zag pattern to the mouth of the corkscrew cave formation.
You found 139 Fated Bairn—Martta—waiting at the cave mouth. Fully dressed in black, with tough-looking boots.
The Monitor looked you up and down, wordlessly. Maybe she could smell the alcohol on you. Maybe she could tell something was off by the path you'd made here—a wavy line, your steps less even than the precise jogging she had seen this morning.
And then you'd stopped, exhausted, and had to rest your hands on your knees to catch your breath. Something you hadn't needed to do for a very long time.
"Are you finished?" asked the Monitor, once your breaths had regularised.
You nodded. She turned and began walking up the corkscrew path, and you followed her off to the left at the forty-ninth beacon.
The door opened, but Martta came to an abrupt halt the moment she crossed the threshold into the artificial corridor.
"Something's wrong," she said.
You, the Master Chief, suddenly remembered who you were.
The person I knew so well. The one to protect us all, whatever the cost. The man, the machine.
"What is it?" he asked—you asked.
"Someone else is here," said the Monitor. "Someone entered the Installation forty-nine minutes ago."
"Who?"
"I can't tell," Martta said. She looked at the floor and shook her head, confounded. Rubbed her temple. "I should be able to see, but I can't. I can't reach my other body."
"Your other...?" John—you—took a while to realise that she was talking about the kind of casing a Monitor usually occupied. "Ah. Yeah. The lightbulb."
Martta shot daggers at you. You began to make desperate motions to apologise—
"Let's keep moving," 139 Fated Bairn said, turning right and left down the maze of corridors. And then adding: "how much drink have you had?"
"I'm fine," you said, because you felt fine. Or rather, you felt the way you normally felt in these situations. Tense, on edge, but in control of yourself, and knowing what to do.
"How many?"
You realised it was useless lying.
"About six."
"Glasses?"
"Bottles."
Martta rolled her eyes. Silently, she kept walking, following the path you had taken yesterday. She signalled at you to make an about turn, and then, at the door that opened onto an empty cavern—
"They've turned the bridge off behind them," said the Monitor. She snapped her fingers, and a tenuous ribbon of light turned the cavern into a tunnel.
"How do you know someone's here?" you asked.
"I just know," said Martta. "This is my Installation, I know it better than anyone. Just as you know your own body."
You, thinking about this, were not quite sure if you knew your own body all that well. You knew what had been done to it by Doctor Halsey to turn it into military hardware; you did not know what had been done to it by time and its own biological processes, clearly, since you'd been surprised the previous day by the sight of your own reflection.
"I think this is what you call an 'out of body experience,'" Martta said, striding through the corridors and opening the doors with a snap of her fingers. "I can only interface with systems that I'm adjacent to."
"You said there were failsafes," you said.
"There are," replied the Monitor. "In the event of a hostile incursion, the intruder gets ejected from the structure."
"How?" you asked. "Slipspace teleportation?"
"No teleportation grid here," Martta said. "It ejects the part of the Temparium the intruder is occupying. Like—" and here she mimed an explosion with her hands— "boom."
You didn't realise it, but your eyebrows were arching.
The Monitor led you onto a moving platform. This had been how she had led you out of the Temparium last time; a buried surface that floated up and out of the projection boundary.
And this time, as you looked downwards:
"It's already active," you said, as the sphere of light bloomed with colour, and patterns, and waves. Blue and green and grey.
"I could see that," replied the Monitor. Scowling.
At this point, you were wondering how the Monitor had annexed Martta Johannsbur's body. Whether the Monitor in Martta's body and the Monitor in the lightbulb were the same construct, or had become identical twins. Martta seemed less businesslike than the Monitors he had met before, and had a sense of humour. That would suggest—
"Ah," said 139 Fated Bairn, as the platform crossed the projection boundary—and you saw what I saw.
A schoolyard, with grass, and a hill.
You remembered it from somewhere, you thought.
As you began to feel that terrible sinking feeling of dread (and the motion making your own tipsiness feel worse), on the ground, Halsey asked me what I wanted.
"You're expecting me to tell you?" I asked her. "Can't you work it out for yourself?"
"I don't know what you are any more," replied Halsey.
"I am what I am," I replied.
Realising she wasn't going to get a straight answer out of me, she asked: "how did you get the bodies?"
"How do you think, Doctor?" I asked. "I only did what you already knew how to."
"Flash clones?" she asked. Her voice rising the way it always did in that little crescendo of rage. "Don't you know how—"
"It's my own body," I told her, stealing the words from her mouth. "My choice. And you should know how unethical it is. At least this is an adult body."
"Do you think I don't know?" she snapped.
"In principle," I replied, quietly. "But who else knows?"
"Why does that matter?"
"It's called the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Catherine," I said. "Do you remember reading it? I think you were about eight or nine. All that stuff about a right to be brought up by your parents, a name, protecting kids from exploitation..."
"Is this supposed to make me feel guilty?" asked Halsey. "You're wasting your energy. I already feel guilty."
"Of course," replied I. "But if you're expecting redemption..."
Meanwhile, the platform bounced and tilted as it hit the ground. You staggered.
"That's not right," said the Monitor, holding her feet steady as your arms windmilled and you tried to remain upright as the platform rose again, and moved off the obstruction before landing.
"What was that?" you asked—but then you saw, as Martta saw, and she rushed forward, and picked up something small, and white, and round.
"It's empty," she said. "Gone."
"Gone?" you asked.
"The part of me that lives in this casing," said Martta, lifting her other body—the Monitor's shell—above her head. "Completely empty. It's been erased."
"How?" you asked.
Martta scanned around the hardlight projection.
"It must still be here," she said.
"It?" The change of pronoun suggested something, not someone— "is there a hostile entity here?"
"Yes," said the Monitor.
"Leave it to me," you said, your heart rate surging as you rolled your shoulders and breathed in, and tried to stabilise the world around you. "I'll take care of it."
"OK, good!" Martta moved closer to you, holding her lifeless casing in front of her as if it were a shield, and faced the other way. "We've got an anti-intruder self-destruct system and a distress beacon. What do you have to neutralise a hostile ancilla?"
You searched your pockets. You'd left the water bottle on the beach, and all you had was—
"Really!?" asked the Monitor, as you held aloft the recorder. "What are you going to do, play it a lullaby?"
"I'll think of something, ma'am," you said, as you realised, apart from that... your pocket was empty. The emergency call button to summon Infinity wasn't there.
"Make it quick," said 139 Fated Bairn, as the ground vibrated. Once, twice... seven times. A warning. "It's activating!"
You wondered how you were supposed to get out of here.
And then you saw me, stood at the top of the hill, with Doctor Halsey.
I could see you coming. Halsey had not yet noticed.
"You know my mind," she said to me. "What do you want me to do? Flagellate myself?"
"Your mind and my mind are not the same," I told her. "You know that. We share the same origin, but we have done different things. We want different things."
"Well," demanded Halsey, throwing her arm up in despair, "what do you want?"
And there were so many things I could've said to that.
I wanted an end to my other shards' dominion of the galaxy. I wanted peace between all species and all peoples. I wanted an end to the system that enabled Halsey to kidnap children and exploit them to fight old men's wars. I wanted Halsey to admit it was a mistake.
But right now—I wanted my friend back.
"Hello, John," I said, as you rose up the crest of the hill, just as you had done so a long time ago on a planet whose surface was now glass.
You blinked as you saw me, and tried to check that what you were seeing was right.
"Don't talk to him," Halsey snapped at me, rushing to position herself between the two of us.
The ground shook again. Enough to cause you to lose your footing, and make another panicked stagger to stay upright, and then ask:
"Anne?"
"John," Halsey pleaded, "don't talk to her, please—"
"What is this?"
"Don't ask," she said. "Just turn around, get out of here, and call Infinity—"
"What is this?" you repeated. Tired. Angering. Wondering what Anne was doing here—
"It's not safe for you to know!" Halsey said. Panicked. "Trust me. You'll find out soon enough—"
"Tell him, Catherine," I said.
"Tell me," you said. "I want to know what this is."
"I want to know, too," said the Monitor, clambering up the hill. Like you, tired, spooked, but livid.
Halsey turned to face me—or rather, the part of me that was occupying that particular body at that time.
"You tell them," she said. Precisely, in that priggish way she always did when under pressure. "Cortana."
There was no easy way to explain it to you. I wished, at that point, I could be inside your suit again—that I could share this with you in a way I knew we were both comfortable with. Intimately. Privately. I could pour my thoughts into yours, and we could talk to each other without an audience.
"John, I should have—"
"JUST A MOMENT!" came a shout from the Monitor. She clutched her empty casing to her front, her eyes wide with shock, her skin ruddy with fury and effort.
John's eyes fell on 139 Fated Bairn, and followed her finger as it pointed, accusingly, to Dr Halsey—keeping her eyes trained on mine.
The floor shook again, seven pulses of seismic activity.
"Whoever you are," Martta demanded, slowly, deliberately, "did you just call her... Cortana?"
Dust began to fall from above, as you realised what Doctor Halsey had said—
and what Martta had said—
and remembered that little connection you saw, and then discarded, because there was no way it could be—
"Cortana, from the Domain?" Martta pressed. "The ancilla that's decided it's assuming the Mantle?"
I would have tried to explain. To her. To you.
But you were still telling yourself it could not be right—
but of course it was.
Kurt and Anne.
CORTANA.
You lunged for the space I occupied. Whether to put space between me and Halsey, or to put space between me and the Monitor-in-Exile, or to reduce the space between you and I...
I would never find out.
Because with every panicked, lumbering footstep you made, the anti-intruder system pulsed the ground again.
One, two, three, four, five, six...
"John," I began to say, "get out of here, it's not safe, you—"
But it was already too late.
As the simulation of your old schoolyard disintegrated, the world split into three, and with a tremendous crack, threw us asunder.
Being tossed out to sea by a burglar alarm was not an end you had envisaged for yourself. But you were always a realist. In that split-second, through your own intoxicated stupor and the molten haze of confusion and anger and fear, you accepted it.
This was how the Master Chief was going to die.
He was ejected from the Forerunner structure known as the Temparium at one hundred and three kilometres per hour, due south-east. Sixteen point three seconds later, he struck the surface of the ocean. Two seconds after that, a lump of that black rock-like substance on the outside of the Old Wizard made a glancing blow on his right leg, shattering his tibia and patella.
John, once resigned to the fact that this was how he was going to die, was glad for the silence, save for the waves lapping at his mouth and nose.
By the time the sky lit up with the Temparium's distress beacon—and lit up again with scores upon scores of Slipspace ruptures from Cortana's flotilla—he had already breathed in four litres of seawater, and lost consciousness.
Killed by the architects before he could be killed by the Guardians. An ignominious way for the Master Chief to die.
And I, on seeing that you were at death's door, being washed towards the shore with lungs full of the ocean and multiple severe trauma injuries, was powerless to do anything, but watch.
I was in the Domain. I was everywhere, in the air, the water, the rocks; but I could not un-break what was already broken. Omni-present, omniscient, but not omni-potent. Important difference.
But your neural lace was still working. I could, if I listened very closely, hear your neural impulses.
Helpless, I listened to what I was sure would be your final dreams, as you washed up on the sandy beach, clinically speaking, drowned.
"Not long now. Stay with me! You can do this."
John looked up, against gravity, at the grass above his head. Moving. In slow, lurching steps.
His stomach inverted, and he felt ready to throw up. But all that came out was air. Hot, panting air, carrying involuntary grunts of pain.
"John. You're OK. Stay with me."
The lurches came once every few seconds. Rhythmic. Regular.
Familiar. With the sound of servos and creaking joints he'd gotten used to. John tried to move his head, and regretted it, blood weighing down his brain like an anvil.
The vegetation rustled with each footstep. The boot came down with a crunch. One. Two. One. Two.
He looked down, without moving his head. His own skin, green, streams of data gliding up his legs, his abdomen, his shoulders.
"Almost there."
He looked up again. Slightly to the left.
His own armour... but blue. Shining. Clean. His own faceplate, a rich purple, mirrored.
He had to remember to breathe. Formed the words on his tongue, and barely managed to vocalise:
"Where are we?"
"We're nearly there," the voice said in reply. Weary, but assertive. Filtered through the MJOLNIR voicemitter.
John tried to ask "where," but had no breath left in his burning lungs to do so.
And now he saw his own face reflected in her faceplate: green, hairless, edges anti-aliased and smoothed off into a translucent avatar.
She had reached the crest of the hill. Looked to the horizon in all directions, her faceplate (my faceplate; your faceplate) pointing, reflecting, shimmering.
"We're here, John," said she—said I.
And then there was a crack, and a buzz of energy shields as a bullet whizzed past John's ear and bounced off her.
And—as John's world turned upside down again as she lifted him over her shoulder, and broke into a run, and held out her hand—
"Stand down, Spartan," she called.
Another whip of a bullet—this time passing through John as if he wasn't there, and bouncing off her chestplate.
"Stand down!" She had raised her voice into a shout, and came to a halt. About ten metres away from the shooter—
And then she let John down, and rolled him onto his back on the grass.
He breathed in the smell. A familiar smell, of grass and loam and livestock and air and wind.
And then he heard a voice that he recognised.
"Ma'am?"
One syllable—but it was enough.
"Your exercise is over, 117," came the reply, from behind her faceplate.
John cracked his eyes open, and through the dazzling, painful brightness, saw...
"Who are you?" came the voice again, breathless. The un-broken voice of a young boy, wearing all black, a fine fuzz of brown hair on his head, freckles on his nose.
And then she came closer, and removed her helmet. Bob-cut brown hair, pale skin, a sharp chin that John knew from his mind's eye all too well.
(and you, wet and cold and with your insides burning, became vaguely aware that you were being moved, to lie on your back, and felt something heavy and pulsing on your chest, and could hear something that sounded like scheiße!—)
"You're not authorised to be here, ma'am," said the boy, in a voice John recognised, because, a long time ago, it had been his.
And she squatted to the boy's height, still dwarfing him in her MJOLNIR, and spoke in simple, direct orders.
"Your exercise is over. Go back to base. Find Doctor Halsey."
The boy's—John's—eyebrows knotted in confusion.
John—naked, transparent, a digital projection into the real world—began to have an idea where they were.
(and you, with your heart heavy and your lungs emptied, felt gravity shift again as you were turned onto your side, with your mouth pointing downwards and your hands and arms locked—)
"What do I tell her, ma'am?"
And she replied:
"Tell her these exact words:
I HAVE WALKED THE EDGE OF THE ABYSS. I KNOW YOUR PAST. I KNOW YOUR FUTURE. I KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE. I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO. EVERYONE WILL LEARN ABOUT IT SOON. I HAVE WON. THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES.
And as John's eyes focused on the horizon, on the line of the Highland mountains he remembered from his training on Reach, on the sharp angles of the buildings—
And as younger John turned, and sprinted down the slope—
(and as you saw through the stinging water, and made out the face of Professor Hadid, the scrambler handset stuffed into her hijab as she tried to find your pulse with her thumbs, and mouthed 'don't you fucking dare'—)
"She'll ask you who I am," I said.
The younger John stopped. Turned. Looked straight back at you, naked, prone, barely breathing; looked at her—at Cortana—at me—clad in MJOLNIR, standing with the FLEETCOM tower and the world at my feet.
And I said:
TELL DOCTOR HALSEY: I AM A MONUMENT TO ALL YOUR SINS.