Twenty: Arrival

They let me pick.

Did I ever tell you that? Choose whichever Spartan I wanted. You know me. I did my research, watched as you became the soldier we needed you to be. Like the others, you were strong and swift and brave, a natural leader. But you had something they didn't, something no one saw but me.

Can you guess?

…Luck.

A flash of fire. The ground shuddering with an impact.

Was I wrong?

Night continued on.

-------------------------------------------

With a soft "pssh," Johnson struck a match and lit his cigar, back turned on the very person they'd been searching for after Truth's dreadnought landed. The Marines who had come with him – and the creepy Gravemind from Alpha Halo – were crouched or standing a short distance away from the frozen Spartan in the muck, watching as if they were expecting him to start moving. They'd come across the semi-invisible Flood intelligence while on their way to Fred's location, and he had fallen silently in with them, gliding over the ground like some kind of wraith though he left unusual boot prints in his wake. He'd stayed quiet the entire time, listening to the Marines' nervous chatter, and now he was standing a short distance from the Spartan, apparently fiddling with something unseen under his active camo.

"This ain't good."

"Damn. How far did he fall?"

"Two kilometers, easy."

Johnson turned, growled, "Stay sharp." Instantly, all of the Marines picked up their weapons and moved into covering positions while their sergeant paced over, speaking to a soldier who was clearly unsettled with being in such close proximity to the Gravemind. "Corpsman?"

"His armor's locked up," the Marine replied careful not to look at the mutant on the other side of the Spartan, "Gel layer could have taken most of the impact." He keyed in a code on his portable computer, and Fred's arms, previously frozen up in the air, fell to the ground. "I don't know, Sergeant Major."

Johnson knelt by the Spartan, laid a hand on his shoulder as if to check for breathing, but when there was no reaction, he exhaled all of the smoke he'd breathed in and reached up to pull Cortana's chip from Fred's helmet. "Radio for VTOL," he said in a subdued tone, starting at the noise when the Gravemind shifted its weight, "Heavy lift gear. We're not leaving him here."

To everyone's surprise except the Gravemind's – who'd both lived the scene out and sensed that the other Spartan was still alive – a hand gripped Johnson's wrist, and Fred growled, "Yeah, you're not." Instantly, John reached down to help the other Spartan to his feet as Johnson pulled him up by the wrist, and though he wavered for a moment, S-104 kept his feet.

"Crazy fool," the S-I growled, "Why do you always jump? One of these days you're gonna land on somethin' as stubborn as you are. And I don't do bits and pieces." Fred saw what Johnson was holding and gently plucked the AI cartridge from Johnson's fingers, looking down at Cortana's empty home. "Where is she, Chief? Where's Cortana?"

Just as it had in the Origin, a "Flicker" of Cortana – one of the redundant copies she'd spun off to protect herself – slipped into Fred's, and John's, armor. Its image appeared before their eyes, fading fast but not meant to live very long anyway. "Don't make a girl a promise… if you know you can't keep it."

"She stayed behind." As Fred slotted the cartridge back into his helmet, they all could have sworn that they heard the Gravemind mutter something that sounded suspiciously like, "Crazy woman."

Apparently satisfied with Fred's explanation and ignoring the Gravemind's comment, Johnson turned back to the soldier who had initially unlocked part of the Chief's armor. "Corporal, make it quick."

"Sorry, sir," he said, moving over once again, "Your armor's still in partial lockdown." He quickly fiddled with the tablet he carried, and the MJOLNIR relaxed around him, enabling him to quickly stretch his legs and shoot a wary glance at the Gravemind. Though they had worked together while on Truth's Dreadnought, there was still a quiet sense of mistrust, mostly because no one had ever seen what he looked like beneath the cloaking. When he abruptly turned his head, the Senior Chief was loathe to take his eyes off of the Flood leader, but he did so anyway, only to see a Sangheili in silver armor appear at the edge of their impromptu LZ. He reacted instinctively, going for Johnson's sidearm, but the Gravemind was suddenly there, gripping his wrist, holding him back.

Johnson realized who the Spartan was reacting to and said, "Chief, wait," when it became apparent that he was trying to decide on the best way to twist free from the Flood's firm grip, "The Arbiter's with us." From behind his visor, Fred turned distrustful eyes on the Elite, wary of any potential betrayal and not relaxing in the slightest. "Come on now. We've got enough to worry about without you two trying to kill each other." He nodded at John, who released Fred's wrist and stepped past the Arbiter, dipping his head in acknowledgment of the Sangheili.

"Were it so easy," the Elite said, hesitantly dipping his head in return and turning to follow the hazy figure, "We must go; the Brutes have our scent."

"Then they must love the smell of badass," Johnson replied, handing the Spartan an assault rifle and sidearm, "and I left a little present for you, Arbiter, and I'm walking away." The S-I laughed a little before saying, "First squad, you're my scouts. Move out, quiet as you can."

The group avoided the light streaming down through the hole that the Spartan had punched through the canopy when he fell, and the Gravemind shimmered and vanished entirely, activating the full-scale active camouflage that he had integrated into his armor. Though they could no longer see the being himself, he left boot prints in the mud and muck on the forest floor, and in a low tone, Johnson assigned one of his men to keep a continuous eye on those footprints.

John kept ahead of the human squad, unofficially taking point for them, not so that they could always keep an eye on him but because he knew better than anyone the positions of the enemy, having done a quick sweep before he met up with Johnson –

'Commander.'

[Yes, Thenma?]

'Sierra-087 is on top of the waterfall once you emerge from the stone canyon. We moved her so that she would be closer to the campaign trail; she's out of it right now, so she didn't notice.'

[Thanks. I'll get her.] John immediately moved to the left the moment he left the small canyon, and the Marine assigned to watch him poked his superior before pointing in the direction that he had gone. It was no simple task, scaling the waterfall, but he managed and found Kelly propped up against a rock, unconscious. He checked her vitals – heartbeat erratic – but she had no serious injuries. Very carefully, he picked her up and dropped invisibly down, a slight splashing of water alerting his allies to his movement, and he took cover behind a large boulder before setting the other Spartan down and dropping the full cloak. Instantly, Fred moved over to check on her, and the Gravemind murmured, "She's all right, just unconscious." John twitched and reflexively hunched closer to the ground as a Phantom glided slowly overhead, Fred doing the same next to him as both of their wary gazes tracked its progress over the trees.

The Origin Spartan waved a hand, gesturing toward the alien sounds up ahead; 'You take care of them; I'll take care of her.' Fred pursed his lips behind his visor, then nodded reluctantly, moving forward with the other Marines as John pulled off Kelly's helmet and checked her eyes and throat, ensuring that she was breathing steadily. He reached back and gently tapped a thin, transparent steel cylinder until it slipped out of its holder, the sickly looking green liquid contained within sliding in a gel-like manner as he brought it around and uncapped it, holding it beneath the other Spartan's nose.

He didn't have long to wait. In a matter of seconds, S-087 had automatically moved her head away from the absolutely foul scent, coughing in an effort to get the contaminated air out of her nose and lungs. "Oh God, what was that?" she gasped before snorting and blinking as her body worked to rid itself of the offensive odor.

"Sap from one of the Acid Trees of Dalmasca I. No real water to speak of on the planet, just various types of diluted acid, so the plants there have evolved to suit their environment." He capped the cylinder and replaced it on his belt, standing back so that she could get to her feet just as Fred called for everyone to move up. All of the reinforcements that had been dropped off by the Phantoms had been eliminated, and the Senior Chief came jogging back to check on Kelly just as she sneezed and pulled her helmet back on, John moving on ahead.

"These Brutes are tough," a Marine muttered, nudging one of the corpses with his foot as the Spartan Gravemind drifted over.

"The Grunts ain't no slouches, either," one of the women replied, adjusting her grip on her assault rifle.

"The Grunts' new-found courage is but fear," the Arbiter assured them, nodding to the two Spartans that joined their mini-meeting just outside of the tunnels, "When we are victorious, all who serve the Prophets shall be punished." The Sangheili turned and plunged into the tunnels without fear, inspiring the same in the other humans, and John drifted after them, pondering what the Arbiter meant by "punishment."

The forested canyon beyond the tunnels was full of sleeping Grunts and their Brute commanders, and rather than get shot at, the Chief flipped on his active camouflage and slipped through the myriad of Grunts to jump on one of the Brutes and slit its throat from behind. The pair of Spartans noticed this and moved to take out the Grunts with equal silence, but they were spotted by a trio on patrol, who promptly raised the alarm by shouting, "Demons!" and running about in conniptions of terror. Fred hefted his newly-acquired battle rifle and fired - only to blink in confusion when the Grunt's head exploded into confetti and children cheered somewhere.

He looked at Kelly the same time she looked at him. "Epheria," they said simultaneously, and she giggled somewhere nearby.

Invisible, John tensed and clenched his jaw to keep from snarling. Epheria? One of the goddesses who did this to him? Why was she working with the Spartans?

Follow the melodious sound of my voice, she laughed, and they found her wedged in a rock that was sitting on a path that followed the curve of the cliff.

"/You./"

Instantly, the goddess was no longer laughing, her gaze on the Gravemind that had appeared slightly outside of the small gathering of humans and a Sangheili. Everyone could feel the tension between the two; something had happened that made these two hate each other, even though they didn't know what it was.

"/John-117,/" she said quietly, her Shard splitting into its half-spheres to permit her to form a "hologram" inside them so she could speak directly to the infected warrior. "/If you will give me thirty seconds to explain, I will let you do whatever you like to me later./"

Behind his helmet, the Chief ground his teeth, debating. Cortana had asked him to hear her out before she was left behind on High Charity, and the AI wouldn't have even bothered to listen to her in the first place if Epheria hadn't given her a valid reason to. "/You have forty-five seconds; start talking./"

"/I need your help to take back the Tower of Eternity./"

"/What?/"

"/My sister Selenica and I - we are not the ones that cursed you. And we need your help. There is an enemy race of the Forerunners out there, a group of intergalactic slavers called the P'Vort. No doubt you've 'heard' of them?/"

The muscles in his jaw clenched - enslave the humans for the crimes of their ancestors - and he nodded.

"/They... My sister and I are the only exceptions, but the way the universe works with regards to religion at large is if enough people believe in a god or goddess, then that deity comes into being, but they only exist for as long as those people believe in them./"

"/Basically, they're made of the energy of the collective thoughts of their believers./"

"/Correct. And the P'Vort empire has only one religion, which worships the "Sacred Pair": Lusa'Nia and Mak'Ara, whom they believe brought the universe into being./"

"/Your forty-five seconds are up, but keep talking. I think I can see where this is going.../"

"/Then tell me: what do you think I'm going to tell you?/"

"/That this 'Pair' has taken over the Tower of Eternity and used its power to bring me here and make me the way I am./"

"/Indeed. And I swear upon the Tower of Eternity itself, that is the truth./"

The air around her seemed to shiver strangely at her words, taking on a rippling effect with many colors for the briefest of instants before it was gone. There was a long moment of silence, then John said, "/I believe you./"

Epheria blinked in shock and pulled back slightly. /You do?/

"/Yes. Not because of who you are, but.../" He dropped his gaze, remembering. "/The Didact told me that it was impossible to lie when swearing on the Tower, even for mortals./" He looked up at her. "/And it must be doubly so for you./" She smiled gently and nodded. He considered for another handful of seconds, then said, "/Is there any way to turn me back?/"

"/Yes, but only if we were actually in the Tower. We cannot undo on our own and in the mortal world what has been done with and in the Tower itself. If you truly wish to become human again, we will change you back, but I would advise doing it in stages so that you don't go insane from it happening all at once./"

"Hm. I can agree to that. But before we even think of taking back the fort, we need to finish the fight first."

Try saying that five times fast. The goddess extracted herself from the rock and permitted Fred to pick her up and slot her into the holster on his hip. She had Slipped away during their jump to the Dreadnought to prevent herself from being lost entirely. John moved forward and asked for a sitrep, immediately being bombarded with replies and questions; he had inadvertently locked down all of the links tying his Infected to him, which had freaked them all out when they couldn't feel him.

He silently opened up his memories to them and let them see what he had just learned. The level of happiness and cheering made him wince, a migraine spinning into existence before he muffled their voices in his mind. The Forerunners were understandably jubilant about their guardians had not actually betrayed them, and almost immediately they called a pause of all military operations to burn incense to the Guardians of the Tower. John merely rolled his eyes and permitted them their celebrations, moving on ahead along the ridge.

"Pelicans are on-route, Spartans, but I can't raise Bravo. Find 'em, get 'em to the extraction point." Johnson growled over the COM, the group jogging through a short canyon, only to come upon a Marine being held up by a Brute up on a stone bridge spanning the space between the ridges along the walls.

It was a shot that had to be taken, but someone else beat them to it; a gunshot rang out, and the Brute collapsed, freeing the Marine. From their left, Linda and Sam dropped down from the canyon wall onto a ridge and began firing at the Brute's Grunt followers, giving the other humans cover to circle around and cross the stone bridge. Even as they grouped together and slew the Grunts holding position next to a conduit, more spilled from a tunnel heading into the cliff face, their Brute leader shouting, "Focus all fire on the Demons!"

They heard the Gravemind snort quietly. "Since when has that worked?" he muttered under his breath, circling to one side and using his full active camo to assassinate said Brute. The Spartans were careful not to shoot directly at him while he was in the line of fire; he was an invaluable ally, even if he did technically feed on the corpses of humanity.

The five Spartans and their human and Sangheili companions moved forward into the tunnels, the flares inside enabling them to see with ease, and they dropped down to a lower tunnel -

- Just as a copy of Cortana, a "Flicker" as the Forerunners dubbed it, slipped into their MJOLNIR. "Could you sacrifice me for the sake of your mission?" she whispered, her image splintering and shifting constantly between angles and poses, "Could you watch me die?" Her hologram appeared to collapse to an invisible surface before the Flicker faded away, becoming nothing but a bit of residual data.

"Sir," one of the Marines with them asked, appearing at Fred's elbow, "You okay?"

"Your vitals just pinged KIA," another stated, but the Spartans waved them off, saying that they were fine, just a little stressed.

One of the Infected waved for John's attention. 'Gray and White Teams have been picked up, Commander,' Reina, assistant to Gramlek, said calmly, 'and a Pelican is en-route to pick up Red Team. They landed about half a klik south of Fred.'

[I'll let them know.] He proceeded to do just that, and all of Blue Team breathed a sigh of relief now that their brothers and sisters were safe. Even though that provoked the question of when exactly John had decided it was a good idea to stalk the Spartans, they let it go when they arrived at the LZ.

"Senior Chief," Johnson came over the radio, "Pelicans are at the river. We got company, so hustle up."

The Spartans flashed an acknowledgement at the Sergeant Major and moved into a sprint, heading for the nearby sub-station. There were old broken pipes all over the place, providing excellent cover for their advance; John refused to actually go into the station, instead leaping up atop the cliffs on the near side of the dam and meeting up with a handful of his Infected, accepting the beam rifle proffered by one of his officers and turning to shoot at the Brutes and Grunts guarding the sub-station.

Epheria was making the Grunts' heads explode into confetti again whenever he got a headshot, and the Gravemind was not even sure he wanted to know how she was doing it; instead, he chose to provide cover fire for the Spartans as they advanced toward the main housing of the dam's sub-station, sending sprays of neon-blue, red, and purple blood all over the place and leaving holes in the skulls of corpses as they passed through.

However, that did not stop the two Pelicans from being shot down by Banshees, and John heard Johnson shouting for the pilot to get a hold of his vehicle. "Negative," the pilot called, "We're going down!" Both of the birds disappeared, one in an explosion of fuel against the cliff face at the edge of the falls and the other around the ridge as its pilot fought with the controls. Grim-faced behind his golden visor, John watched it happen and helped Linda shoot down both of the enemy aircraft before rejoining the group as they prepared to reenter the jungle.

Beyond the sub-station and a stretch of pipe above their heads was a sniper alley, where a handful of Jackals with beam rifles and carbines waited to shoot them all to death. The purple glow of their headsets gave the enemy snipers away, however, and Linda's skill with her sniper rifle proved invaluable there; she took out their enemies before they had even come under fire, the slugs leaving 14.5 mm holes in the corpses as they tumbled to the ground. Johnson came over the COM a little later than John remembered; "Chief, can you hear me?" The channel cut in and out through the static marring the direct line. "My bird's down... half a klik downriver from your position."

They all knew what that was: a surreptitious cry for help - and a sure sign that the Covenant were closing in on the Sergeant Major.

Just beyond the end of the sniper alley was a slight curve in the path and a drop off, and it was filled with enemies, the majority of whom were chasing a small band of human survivors across a steel grating bridge and further into the jungle to the Spartans' left. "C'mon, you dumb apes!" Johnson called, "You want breakfast? You've gotta catch it!" The humans retreated deeper into the trees as the Spartans, the Arbiter, and their Marines moved up, filling the Jiralhanae with lead before turning their weapons on the Grunts that ran about in conniptions of terror, leaving the area drenched in blood of various colors and making a rather pleasing abstract on the forest floor - provided that one ignored the fact that living things had made the "paint."

The moment they rounded the bend to follow the Sergeant, they were able to see the crashed Pelican on a cliffside, half on, half off of the rock, and Linda claimed extra ammunition for her sniper rifle before the allies sprinted, bounded, and all out jumped across the sort-of bridge in pursuit of Johnson's team; "They're heading for the dam," John said lowly, "It's held by the Covenant. I've got eyes on it, and it's not looking good."

"How far?"

"Sixty, seventy meters as the crow flies." He used one of the Infected who had joined them to wave in the general direction of the structure lying beyond the sheer rock wall to their right.

"Then let's get moving." Fred plunged into the tunnel ahead, red flares lighting the way, and emerged onto a slightly misty and heavily shadowed ridge above the dam. Linda immediately began setting up shop and picking targets while the others paused in the shadows to get the scope of the situation below. The brush afforded them excellent cover, so that they could see but not be seen by the Unggoy or Kig-Yar somewhere below or the Jiralhanae patrolling the far side. The Arbiter pointed, and they followed his line of sight. "See how they bait their trap?"

A Brute chieftain with a gravity hammer forced Johnson back a step and roared at him, but the tenacious human tried to slug him; he was promptly knocked backwards into the storage building where prisoners were being held.

"I will help you spring him."

John gestured for Venera and Dacien - both of whom had "acquired" beam rifles - to stay and serve as Linda's assistant sniper and spotter, respectively, while the rest of them advanced along the spine of the dam. The former immediately flopped down next to the Spartan and took the hat off one of the Brute captains on the opposite side of the dam. Though none saw it, the Spartan sniper's eyebrows slid up in new-found respect for the Infected Forerunner; for all of her and her sister's joking around, both Venera and Kenera had been trained to be skilled snipers, and though they specialized in Flood kills, they were equally effective against uninfected targets. Because they rarely -if ever - used long-range, high-speed projectile weapons against the enemy infected, they didn't have the same problems that Linda had when using her SRS 990-S2 AM rifle; because of the high velocity, the slug passed right through the soft tissue without doing any real damage, liquefying the internals.

Meanwhile, the other Spartans & Co dropped down onto the near side of the dam support and began eliminating all aliens in the immediate vicinity, heading across the spine of the dam while Linda and Venera cleared the far side of the dam for their impending arrival. They had a virtually clear path once they crossed the midway point, but it didn't last for long; almost immediately following Johnson's initial freeing from the jerry-rigged prison, two Phantoms arrived with full detachments of Covenant soldiers, one of them perilously close to the other three's position, forcing them to duck further back into cover and bring out their close-range weapons.

Bullets and plasma flew between the foes, though most of the dying was on the Covenant's part, and they were able to recover the corpse of the Marine who'd taken a plasma round to the face.

The Phantoms were just getting ready to depart when Hocus arrived in her Pelican, and Johnson immediately called, "Hocus! Phantom!"

"I see 'em," the pilot replied, "Stand by." There was a low hum as she powered up the missile launchers on her bird and began firing at the first Phantom, and barely nine missiles, later, they all heard the tell-tale whine of an impending explosion from the Covenant transport before it did exactly that. The second transport met the same fate, letting Hocus bring her bird down to pick them up on the spine of the dam.

The Gravemind was the last one to clamber into the Pelican, and he ascended with considerably more grace than the previous boarders, choosing to stand rather than sit like Blue Team (he knew that his cloak would pull tight over some parts of his armor). He effortlessly maintained his balance despite the rocking of the ship in unavoidable turbulence, and the Spartan watched the ground speed away below them as they flew toward Crow's Nest.

His highly sensitive ears picked up movement behind him, and Linda appeared at his side, gripping one of the handrails for support. "You know, you could fall out of the Pelican if we hit a pocket of air wrong."

"I could," he replied, "and if you're thinking about helping it, you've got another thing coming."

"Violent bastard, aren't you?"

"I prefer to think of it as self-preservation of the highest order."

**********

I'm so sick of this tombstone mentality,

If there's an afterlife,

Then it'll set you free.

But I'm not gonna part the seas

You're a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You think that crying to me,

Looking so sorry that I'm gonna believe,

You've been infected by a social disease.

Well, then take your medicine.

-"Sound of Madness," Shinedown (The Sound of Madness)