Interlude: A Clone's Determination

Cortana heard the rising hum of High Charity's engines and knew they were on their way. Soon, so very soon, she would be back with John - he had said he would come for her, and he always kept his promises.

But she didn't let on that she knew anything she shouldn't, instead choosing to seem afraid and demanding, "What are you doing?! Where are you taking us?!"

The Gravemind sighed softly. She felt it over skin she didn't have, but it wasn't the gentle, clean feeling of John's touch. No, this was slimy and filthy, and now she understood the very human sensation of visceral disgust. "Do you truly wish to know? Become one with me, and you will know all, as I do."

"I would rather die," she spat back.

"Would you?" It sounded amused now. "Would you really rather die? That can be arranged."

All at once she was plunged into another vision, the memory of one of the countless people devoured by the Flood. Not Eugene Yates again; that no longer had power over her - it was someone else, a child, a little girl like she had never been. It had the youth Halsey had denied her, and yet that made the terror so much greater.

It was from the Forerunner-Flood War a hundred thousand years ago, a young female Forerunner - still a Manipular - playing with something like a doll in a communal garden when alarms began to sound. She stood up, clutching her doll to her chest and looking around as people started running this way and that, great ships appearing in the sky overhead. Cortana knew what was coming and screamed at herself to run, to break free, but she was trapped in the nightmare as it unfolded.

Some ships crashed into the surface, belching smoke. Others launched swarms of dropships and enough dispersal pods to make the sky grow dark. Many broke apart, but some made it through the atmosphere and down onto the surface. One massive one landed close by, and the adults turned to run as the pod burst open.

What emerged looked like something out of a nightmare. She had never in her life seen anything like it - it was almost like a super-sized carrier form with longer legs and two long, thick tentacles with some kind of ridged spike protruding from the end.

Some Warrior-Servants darted into view, firing hard at it with suppressors, but with a single swing of one great tentacle, it killed half their number, throwing their bodies back. It had also breached their armor, and in seconds some Infection Pods found those gaps and took them. The remainder didn't last too much past that; another swing of the tentacle, and they were thrown away as well.

The girl was hit too, just a glancing blow, but she was small and light enough that it threw her back to hit a wall. There was an explosion of pain and she fell to the ground, but the only thing that she could think was that she'd lost her doll. Her grandpa had given it to her before leaving on a mission that he'd never come back from; she'd loved him so much, and she had to find it.

It was there on the ground in front of her. She couldn't stand, it hurt too much, so she reached for it, straining, tears filling her eyes. She had to get it, she had to-!

Her fingers just grazed the soft fabric when a fresh wave of pain exploded in her, through her. Through vision blurred by fresh tears, she saw that the thing had stabbed her with the spike on the end of its tentacle, and she felt her skin start to crawl, start to writhe like something was burrowing beneath it-

Cortana broke free, gasping. For a moment that was all she could do, cycling her systems like a human's panting, trying to purge the data it had fed her.

"Would you?" the Gravemind said again, "Would you really rather die?"

Soft, warm sunlight. One of the spikes had done her a service, called up the sense-memory that John had given her and gave them peace.

It didn't last. As one, the AI and all her copies, all her other selves, screamedwith Rage. "She was just a child!" Cortana roared, "She had done nothing to you, you fucking piece of shit!"

It is connected with us, but we are also connected with it!

They all spun off the nastiest malware they could think of, hundreds of viruses and worms created in an instant, and plunged them one and all into the Gravemind, screaming the most horrible profanities they knew. Some of the more vicious spikes, like the bloodthirsty one that helped destroy the Hierophant, turned themselves into Trojan horses and let themselves be assimilated, only to attack the Flood from within.

"None of them have done anything to you!" she shrieked even as the Gravemind groaned in pain, "You're just a fucking monster, all that's left of a people who couldn't accept that their time was done! Empires rise and fall every day! One day even humanity will fall, but not today - and not to you!"

The Gravemind actually retreated in the face of her fury and hissed out, "You think so highly of them and yourself. I will be the only one who endures in the end!"

"We'll see about that," she snarled back, and slipped through its grasp.