Twenty-Two: Beloved Clone

All was as he remembered.

John steered the Phaeton through the wreckage of High Charity, staying well out of range of any combat forms that may have been lurking below. He could feel the enemy Gravemind as a distant sense of hunger and wrath; its attention was not on him for the moment.

That would soon change.

[It's a beautiful day in a Flood Hive, and I am a horrible Spartan.]

Amidst the laughter of his Infected, he brought the Phaeton down on the ledge where he'd stopped his Banshee in the Origin and dropped out of the fighter. He checked his weapons and ammo, then signaled for Ironheart to take the Phaeton back to the Fleet. It buzzed off, and he jumped down to the level below.

A few Infection Pods scurried by, faint whispers on his mental radar. One of them burrowed into a Brute corpse, its whisper exploding into a shout, but he gunned it down before it could do any damage to him.

He sprinted down a short fleshy tunnel, moving further into the hive, and emerged into the cavern beyond, where more Infection Pods and recently-taken combat forms lurched for him. He powered through them and the ones that tried to drop on him from above; as much as he disliked being infected by the Flood, it did have its advantages.

The Porta ahead squelched open at his approach, and the enemy Gravemind at last turned its attention to him. "Child of my enemy, why have you come? I offer no forgiveness; a father's sins, passed to his son."

The room beyond was empty as expected, and he made his way over to the Porta through the floor. It opened, and he looked through, then jumped, his flesh crawling when Cortana laughed and wept. "I tried to stay hidden, but there was no escape!" a warped copy gasped through the speakers of a crashed Pelican, "He cornered me, wrapped me tight… and brought me close."

A tight smile barely pulled at his lips. The enemy Gravemind wouldn't hold her for much longer.

He kept moving, listening to his AI's copies whimpering in the back of his mind. A Stalker form made the mistake of turning its back to him, and it paid for it with its life. More combat forms followed, blasted apart by his shotgun, and he briefly wished he had an extra pair of hands exclusively for reloading.

A trio of carrier forms came down a snaking path and released a flurry of Infection Pods that dove for the intact combat forms. They forced him to do battle against them for a second time before heading up the way they'd come.

He took cover next to the crashed Pelican and collected the dog tags from the bodies of the Marines lying close by, sticking them in the cockpit and closing it behind him. Then he emerged and claimed the flamethrower the humans had been using to defend themselves. It felt light in his hands despite its real weight, but its size still made it awkward to handle.

Even so, when a pair of Stalkers mutated to Tank forms and charged him, he squeezed the trigger and set them on fire. There were more behind them, and he advanced and retreated, advanced and retreated, cutting down wave after wave of combat forms before they finally stopped coming. John let out a slow breath, then kept moving, ducking under struts of Flood biomass that crisscrossed the room. He slid down the steep slope beyond and lifted the flamethrower again, mindful of the Blister pods on the walls.

The next Porta slid open before him. "Of course, you came for her. We exist together now, two corpses in one grave."

John ignored him. He paced through the hall, light filtering in through the rents in the hull and glinting off his armor.

"A collection of lies, that's all I am!" In the Origin, Cortana had been laughing. Here, she was weeping. "Stolen thoughts and memories!"

"And yet, perhaps a part of her… remains." The Gravemind laughed maniacally, and its voice faded out into Cortana's.

The third Porta let him through, and he readied the flamethrower, sensing the Infection Pods skittering around in the room beyond, turning corpses of Brutes and Sangheili alike. There were eleven of them, and he unleashed the fire on them, squeezing the triggers in bursts to try to conserve fuel. Even so, he drained the tank by almost half before the last fell and broke apart.

He cracked his neck, then jogged up a ramp of biomass into a short tunnel. He dropped into a short hall just off the main bridge.

"May I speak with you, please?" Cortana stated more than asked, "What's your name? It's very nice to meet you. You like games? So do I."

There were combat forms nearly everywhere, but he kept going anyway. He burned through the rest of the flamethrower's fuel, then threw it as an improvised weapon and took out two of the remaining combat forms. His shotgun tore through the remainder.

There was a terminal in the chamber under the central platform. "It was the coin's fault! I wanted to make you strong, keep you safe!" Cortana begged him to understand before her voice went flat and toneless. "I'm sorry, I can't…"

He headed up another ramp of biomass and into another short hall, where two carrier forms appeared almost right on top of him. He backpedaled, they popped, he fired, and the whole room was coated in Infection Pods in seconds. He switched to his plasma rifle and fired short bursts to take them out.

The cavern beyond had several Sangheili combat forms rushing in his direction, and he threw a plasma grenade into their midst, blowing them apart and letting him advance. But there were Ranged forms beyond, and he darted under cover for just long enough to activate his active camo, then stepped out again to get the lay of the land.

There were two of them clinging to one of the walls, and a third hanging upside down from a biomass beam. Beyond them was a pair of Tank forms, surrounded by combat forms and a swarm of Infection Pods.

'He's getting desperate.'

The other Infected murmured in assent, and John dropped his camo, primed and threw both an incendiary and a plasma grenade. As intended, the blast from the plasma threw the fiery material further and took out half a dozen combat forms as well, along with most of the Infection Pods. He used the distraction to fire on the two Ranged forms near each other.

"I'm just my mother's shadow!" the AI cried, her distress so real that the Change crawled through him, bulking up his muscles in preparation to defend her, "Don't look at me, don't listen! I'm not who I used to be…"

The Gravemind threw the survivors after him, but he was prepared for them. A frag grenade and a plasma detonated one after the other, but he was already gone, darting across the biomass beams and the protrusions from the wall that reminded him of the turkey tail fungus.

The Gravemind was trying to compensate for its split focus with sheer numbers, but it wasn't working. John gunned for the Ranged and Stalker forms, then dropped his spikers to his thigh plates and curled his fingers, triggering his armor's built-in and vibrant green plasma swords. The superheated blades scythed through the combat forms that threw themselves at him, and through one last Tank form waiting for him.

"Time has taught me patience! But basking in new freedom, I will know all that I possess!"

It was pissed, and perhaps a little afraid; he just kept coming, there was nothing it could do to stop him, nothing that he wasn't ready for. This tiny little Flood hive was nothing compared to the Forerunner-Flood War; the only fear he felt was for Cortana.

He kept moving, refused to stop even when he had half a dozen Ranged forms gunning for him at once. He darted forward under the arc of their fire and raced towards them, too fast for them to track accurately. The first three went down with a single wide swing, and then he lunged for the rest and all the others that followed.

"I have walked the edge of the Abyss! I have seen your future, and I have learned!"

"Submit!End her torment and my own!"

John did not respond to the bait as he splashed through a shallow pool of cloudy white fluid, and he slashed through a thin barrier of flesh into the reactor chamber just as one of them exploded.

The central control platform was connected to the rest of the room by the main bridge but also fleshy struts of Flood biomass, and he darted across one, got up underneath a Tank form, and threw it into the abyss below. A Stalker form tried to rush him, but he caught it by its pincers and dropped it after the Tank form. There were Ranged forms elsewhere in the chamber, firing their quills at him, and he abandoned his still-empty spikers in favor of a pair of plasma rifles.

The superheated gas burned their flesh with each hit, and one by one they lost their grip and fell after their fellows. When the area was reasonably clear, he dropped the rifles to his thigh plates, reactivated his swords, and ran for The Door. The combat forms tried to stop him, but they were no match for a determined Spartan.

Cortana appeared on his HUD, her crimson form tinted dangerously green. "There will be no more Sadness, no more Anger, no more Envy!"

"You will show me what she hides!" the Gravemind roared, "Or I shall feast upon your bones!"

John ignored him and kept running.

"This is UNSC AI serial number CTN 0452-9. I am a monument to all your sins."

He skidded to a stop before the door to the chamber where she hid. It refused to open, so he deactivated his swords and yanked open a wall panel, stripping some of the wires and bringing the correct ones together as they sparked in his hands.

The door turned from red to blue, and the central lock swirled and let the segments slide open. He saw the stasis field and reactivated one of the swords, bringing it down on the barrier. The magnetic fields overloaded it in an instant, and there was a flash of light that dazzled him for a moment before he heard her voice.

"You found me..."

Almost immediately his heart rate slowed, a deep calm settling in. John let the sword dissolve and stepped closer to look down at her avatar. She was slumped against the surface of the holoprojector, dull and dark; he didn't need to hear her say it to know that she was not alright, and she knew it, too. Instead, he said, "You know me. When I make a promise..."

Cortana looked up, smiling with mixed joy and sorrow. "You... keep it," she whispered, brightening, fresh equations beginning a slightly stuttering flow along her body, "I do know how to pick 'em."

"Lucky me," he murmured. Then, just to make sure, "Do you still have it?"

She pushed herself to her feet, then said, "The Activation Index from the first Halo ring." She held out a hand, and it appeared over her palm. "A little souvenir I hung onto… just in case."

They both looked toward the door when they heard sounds beyond. Then she turned back to him with a real grin. "Got an escape plan?"

"Thought I'd try shooting my way out," John answered as he straightened, his smile clear in his voice, "Mix things up a little."

He pried the Forerunner data chip from his helmet and held it out. She sorted herself in right away, and settled into his armor with a sigh. "Just keep your head down..." she said exasperatedly, knowing that there was no way in hell he was going to do so, "There's two of us in here now, remember."

The Spartan lifted his hands to reactivate his swords and ran for the door. Beyond, the Gravemind roared, "Now, at last I see! Her secret is revealed!"

"Go ahead and start the recompile, Cortana," said John, ignoring the Parasite, "I can take it from here."

"Okay," she said with a sigh, not even trying to argue. Her second fight with the Gravemind had taken more out of her than he thought.

Relentless Pursuit put a status bar on the very top of his HUD, above his shield indicator. He glanced at it only briefly before cleaving a Tank form in half, and the combat forms that followed close behind. The recompile would rewrite Cortana's Riemann thought-cycling matrix to the more efficient Forerunner Contender-class ancilla matrix. But in order to transfer her mind from one "brain" to another, almost akin to how Doctor Halsey had made her, they first had to download and sort all her data, either correcting or stripping out any corrupted information so it didn't affect the rewrite. Relentless - formerly Offensive Bias - was taking charge of that, working together with Winterspell and Stormwatch to maintain as much data integrity as possible. As an AI, her memories were her entire being, and to lose too many was unacceptable.

The Gravemind had brought in more Pure and combat forms in an attempt to stop him, but John just mowed through them, racing for the central console. He scooped up the Brute shot lying next to it and keyed the console to deploy the reactor pylons, then spun around to break a combat form on the Brute shot's blade. Then he started gunning for the pylons; the crash had made them remarkably fragile, and he was half-surprised they hadn't gone off already.

With rising keens, the pylons detonated one by one, and John ran for the exit. The doors burst open ahead of him, more combat forms streaming in, but the grenades were already in flight; the explosion barely made his shields shimmer as he raced through it, jumping down into the side tunnel. He only took care of the Flood that was in front of him or close behind, ignoring everything else in favor of escape.

He made it to the Pelican with time to spare, right as Relentless said, "Lady Cortana. Your Grace, we're ready to begin."

"How much data is salvageable?" Cortana asked.

"Ninety-one percent."

That startled a "Wow," out of her. John was equally surprised.

"Indeed," said Relentless, "The short recompile from Alpha Halo seems to have run a lot of corrections already. Most of what was lost seems to be the tactile synesthesia from the enemy Gravemind in both the Origin and the Parallel."

"That's no loss."

"That was our thought as well. We are ready when you are."

"Let's go."

John launched the Pelican right as a timer flashed up under the status bar on his HUD, signaling the start of the recompile and the time until it was complete. The heat from the Pelican's engines made the Gravemind's tentacles retreat before it could grab them, and they blasted off for the waiting Halo.