Twelve: Darkness' Strongest Soldier

A/N: GORE/BODY HORROR WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER! Skip the paragraph immediately after "And then the undersuit came off, and the thin clothing and bandages beneath it. No amount of discipline could have stopped the horrified gasps that tore through the room." And maybe the paragraph after "The S-IIs were pale, yes - they above all rarely spent time out of armor, rarely got sun - but the Chief looked ghastly." as well, depending on your tolerance level.

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They were somewhere mostly dark, lit only by a brilliant moon. It was enough to let them see the warped, scorched, almost oily ruins around them, all that remained of once-magnificent structures. They gleamed rainbow-black like obsidian in the silvery light.

"Where are we?" Buck asked quietly.

"The Domain," John answered, "A hundred thousand years, and it's still in pretty bad shape. Domain?"

:Confirmation. Haste!:

A hazy shape appeared in their midst, about the size and shape of a human child, and it scrambled up onto the Chief's back, then pointed into the ruins. John raced off in the direction it indicated without hesitation, and the other Spartans followed.

The landscape seemed to rush away under their feet with unnatural speed, and soon they came upon a building that seemed more intact than the rest, though it too would have been condemned on Earth.

:Haste, haste!:, said the Domain, urging them on even as it fought to hang onto the Chief as he ran, :Affection imprisoned, killing intent!:.

"'Affection imprisoned'?" Vale repeated, "What's-"

"The Didact's got Cortana," John growled, voice strangely distorted, "I told her to try to keep him in the Domain for as long as possible after we entered the Cryptum, to give us time to get in and ready to fight." He put on a burst of speed and vanished inside the building. The Spartans followed just in time to see him rip the Didact away from Cortana, who was held spread-eagle by a squad of Prometheans, and launch the Forerunner through the remnants of a wall.

The Warden and the Prometheans shrieked and charged him, but a second later his armor matched that of the Fleet's Spartans, and he had two poison-green plasma swords in hand. "Call the others!" he shouted, now back to back with Cortana, who had similar blue swords in hand, "Bring them in! Domain, if I give you a terrain skin, can you hold it?!"

:Confirmation!:.

John nodded sharply, then said to Cortana, "Cover me for a sec!"

"You got it!" She lashed out at the Prometheans encircling them, moved so smoothly that she looked like she'd been born with the blades in her hand. Four of the insectoid machines dissolved with a single swing, and more followed.

The Chief went to one knee even as the others started engaging the Forerunner and his servants - his armor wouldn't adapt to their weapons here; he had to actually work at defending himself. The Spartan held his hands apart, and energy built between them, an intense data burst. Then, when the construction was complete, he shoved it into the ground and released it, a ripple of light rolling through the ruins - and then their surroundings changed into something more comfortable, more familiar.

A Flood Hive.

More of the Fleet's Spartans started appearing not long after, connecting to their siblings and using that to pull themselves into the Domain. They threw themselves into engaging the Prometheans, luring them into the halls they knew so very well; they all knew that the Commander had claimed the Didact. One of the squads fell in with Fireteam Osiris, the Parallel Blue Team joining with the Origin, and together they targeted the Warden.

Joyeuse and Durandal stepped up next to their parents, weapons in hand, and started targeting the Warrior-Servant, tag-teaming him the same way John and Cortana were - with the ease of familiarity and long experience working together in combat situations.

But no matter how hard they hit him, ranged or melee or a purely mental attack, the Didact was still tough, and they just couldn't seem to get through his shields. "Dad!" Durandal yelled, "We need to force him to lower his defenses! You know him best!"

That made the Didact laugh. "You? Know me?" He seemed to find that immensely amusing. "You know me as the boot about to crush you, no more!"

John dodged out of the way as the Forerunner struck out at them. Durandal was right. He knew the Didact of the Parallel, and that one was similar enough to this one for the Spartan to read him. What could he use-?

And then he remembered. "Cortana!"

She appeared at his side. He gripped her forearm and passed the data, the knowledge of what he needed and what she needed to pull it off, to buy him time. When she had processed it - in the blink of an eye - she nodded and grinned sharply, then disappeared into the chaos around them.

John grinned too, then got in position and charged the Warrior-Servant. As expected, the Didact seized him by the throat and lifted him off his feet. "You truly thought you could defeat me with such flagrant tactics, human?!" the Promethean roared, fist going tight, but John's armor - his firewalls - didn't yield.

Then the human gasped. "Librarian?!"

Even though he suspected a trap, the Didact still turned, and saw.

The Librarian threw herself at him, clawing at his armor. "That's all you ever do!" she cried, tears of rage and grief pouring down her face, "Kill my children! Why?! WHY?!"

The Didact was caught off guard for only an instant - but it was enough.

A second later, he was slammed to the growth-covered deck below, and a soft, sinister laugh rolled through the Hive. It made everything else stop, made everyone turn to look.

A horror held the Didact pinned in one great hand, its bulk leaning over the Warrior-Servant. "Did you think me defeated, Didact?" the Primordial said, and laughed again, softer, more sinister, echoing in the sudden silence. "Do you have a moment? Just a moment. That's all it will take."

The segmented tail extending from its head lengthened, curved around over its shoulder, the wicked barb at the tip preparing to plunge down into the Forerunner.

The Didact howled - in fear, in fury - and threw all of his power at the thing above him. He managed to knock it away - and the Master Chief lost its shape, returned to his own, hurled back some distance from the Forerunner.

The Spartan flipped back to his feet, saw the Promethean charging him with insane rage in his eyes, his face twisted into an ugly snarl, and turned to run, even as the wall behind him rippled, a Flood Porta appearing there. There was enough space between them that it closed before the Didact reached it, but it opened again into a round hall covered in Flood growths. There was a Porta a short way in one direction, but the Spartan had run the other way, was even now gaining distance on him.

The Forerunner roared and threw out a constraint field, catching the Spartan and yanking him back. "You think to strip me of my defenses?! It will take more than that, human! Let's see how well yours hold up!"

He tore away the shields and armor - they came away so easy that he almost laughed - but then his eyes widened in horror.

Cortana laughed in his grip. "Wrong one, asshole!"

Then the Forerunner choked and staggered. He swayed for a moment, grip loosening and letting the AI fall, then he sank to his knees. John pulled the sword back out of his stomach and, in one smooth swing, decapitated what was left of the once-great Promethean.

His body fell to the ground, head rolling away, then dissolved into flakes like the Knights - but these were not bright gold, but green-black sludge. John banished his remains from the Domain, purging all his data before it could take hold and respawn, then gestured to Cortana. They stepped back through the first Porta to the main chamber, where the Spartans kept the Warden at bay. Yet it seemed he was even harder to kill than the Didact; whenever they took down one body, another appeared in a blink of an eye to reengage them.

John looked back to Cortana, but she was already calling up a nasty-looking spear, a virus, red-edged and wicked. The Spartan dropped to one knee and planted his hands in the Flood growths below, shouting, "Clear a path!"

The Spartans parted at once, and some of the Flood growths at the Warden's feet bloomed into tentacles and seized the ancilla. He writhed and tore at the flesh, but it still held. Cortana threw the spear with every bit of power she could muster, and it flew true, shattering his defenses and sinking into the Warden's core, releasing its viral code.

The ancilla shrieked and started to dissolve into nothing - but then Flood flesh - enemy Flood flesh – burst to life between his segments.

"Logic plague!" John shouted, "Get back!"

The Spartans all threw themselves away, scrambling back over each other to put distance between them and the Warden. But the ancilla didn't do anything to them; instead its eyes, now vivid acid green, found John's. "We are coming!" it snarled even as it continued to fall apart, "We are coming for you! And this time there will be no mercy - only judgement!"

And then it was gone. The Domain went still and silent, but only for a moment. John dispelled the Flood Hive skin, the ruins folding back in around them, and said, "Cortana."

At once she called up something like a holotable and started pulling up data screens, running scans through the Domain and the Forerunner networks. A hologram of the Milky Way appeared in the center of the ruined hall, even as all the Spartans gathered there once more. Then the galaxy seemed to release a pulse that rippled outward in a wave in all directions. Its size remained constant, the Milky Way shrinking inside - and then red started appearing, a great mass of red, still well outside the galaxy but making its inexorable way towards them.

Someone cursed softly.

John buried his face in his hands for a second and let out a long, heavy breath. "Why does this bullshit always happen to us?"

"Excuse me?" said Cortana, "What's with this us? Why does this bullshit always happen to you? You're the one who started this mess by getting taken to the Parallel."

"And you were the one who took the Autumn to Alpha Halo, so do we really want to start pointing fingers? But it doesn't matter how it all got going; the Flood's still coming. We need to beat it to the punch, intercept it before it reaches us and disappears into the stars; we are not fighting another Forerunner-Flood War, not on my watch."

"Slipspace travel is too slow, in either direction," said Parallel Serin-019, "If we jumped out to meet them, we'd be sitting ducks. Not to mention the Slipspace debt from moving an armada big enough to stop that would mean halting all non-essential traffic throughout the entire galaxy, maybe for years."

"So we need something different, something faster, that doesn't use Slipspace."

"Even we don't have that kind of technology. That's like Precursor-level stuff."

John opened his mouth, then seemed to have several realizations at once. "Domain!"

The blurry child-shape reappeared, perched on his back once again. :Query?:.

"How much Precursor information do you still carry? Do you know if neural physics uses or can be used to generate and manipulate exotic matter?"

:Investigating:.

But his question made Cortana perk up, the brilliant AI already following his train of thought. "You think we can use the star road to make a wormhole?"

"It's one of the few options we have," John answered, "Silver-Moon theorized it was possible, but there was so much we didn't know about neural physics and no real way of testing it, and as far as I know, the Gravemind never tried it during the Forerunner-Flood War. If we can do it, that's transport down, which is the biggest problem. Everything else is mostly battlefield tactics."

"We don't have a big enough gun to take out an entire Flood armada."

"Don't we?" He held out a hand, and the image of a Halo ring appeared above it.

Cortana frowned at it for a second - and then she realized. "Like the Battle of the Ark - if we move it out beyond the bounds of the galaxy-"

"-we can fire it without fear. But we need an isolated system to rally at," said the Spartan, "preferably one with a Wolf-Rayet or another high-temperature star. Once it's done, we can't just leave the Flood out there, drifting; we have to bring it in and destroy it. I'd suggest dropping it in a black hole, but I want confirmation."

"So flinging a Flood fleet into a star to burn up is our next best option, since we'll never actually see it cross the event horizon of a singularity." She was already pulling up the info, highlighting possible systems in the hologram of the Milky Way.

:Success! Confirmation, affirmation!:.

"Star roads can do exotic matter? Negative energy density?"

:Confirmation, affirmation!:.

"Good enough for me. Cortana?"

"Our best bet is probably WR102." The hologram zoomed in on the star in question. "It's one of the hottest stars in the galaxy, and there's no one around for almost a thousand light years."

"Then that's our rally point. We can work out the specifics once we're all there. Joyeuse!"

"Here!" She pushed her way through to stand across the holotable from her parents.

"Cortana's going to take over on the Nighthawk - I want you to get all the Guardians at Genesis to the rally point. They're small and quick, and their attenuation pulses might be able to knock out the power on the Flood ships. Anything gives us an advantage. And give your mother what she needs for her recompile so she can survive outside of the Domain."

"Consider it done." She shimmered and vanished, departing the Domain.

"The rest of you, get the Fleet there ASAP, and alert the Ecumene, have them move to Threat Alert Alpha."

"Understood." Most of the Spartans vanished as well.

John looked to Cortana. "Can you get us out of the Cryptum?"

"Easily. See you on the other side." Then she was gone, too.

Finally, Locke took the chance to say, "What about the UNSC?"

"In what respect?"

"Do you need our help?"

"Personally I think the UNSC has enough to worry about without dispatching half the fleet to fight the Flood - not to mention we don't really know what level of technology they're coming with. Everything except the Infinity probably won't be much more than cannon fodder. Come fight with us, or don't. It's up to HIGHCOM."

He looked down. The Domain's little avatar had jumped down from his shoulders and was now tugging at his fingers. :Departing?:.

"Yeah." He went to one knee in front of it. "We have to go defend ourselves from your bastard creators."

:Returning?:.

"Of course we'll come back to see you. We've got a lot of information for you, too."

:Happiness!:. The avatar-child danced a little circle, clapping its hands, then hugged the Spartan, which he returned. :Haste!:.

"We'll go as fast as we can, I promise."

He straightened, and then the world started swimming around them once again.

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All the Spartans (plus Durandal) emerged from the Cryptum to find Cortana standing in front of them. She smiled in relief at the sight of them, and the Chief most of all. "So apparently we have three children now," he said to her.

She snorted, and grinned. "Never thought I'd see the day when there was a Spartan involved in an accidental baby acquisition."

But then the Chief winced and curled both arms over his stomach, and she was there to support him a second later, already running a scan, amusement replaced by severe concern. "John, what's-"

Open horror flashed across her face at whatever her scan found, and Locke stiffened.

The Chief intercepted her, or tried to. "I'm gonna be alright."

"Your body is rotting away around you," she hissed, "That's not 'going to be alright'!"

"WHAT?!"

No one knew if they had been one of the ones who shouted because there had been so many voices on the COMs at once. Even Linda, who'd been the first to know he was wounded, was visibly stunned.

The Nighthawk decloaked in front of them, landing swiftly, and a relatively small figure in Forerunner armor nearly punted open the boarding ramp a second later, running a scan of their own. Then they - he? - shouted, "You have a lot of nerve being alive!"

"If you're quoting memes at me, it's obviously not that bad, Ambi."

"Fuck you!"

"Ambi" nearly picked the Chief up and hauled him into the ship. Cortana and the other Spartans followed close behind, ending up crowded in the Nighthawk's small infirmary.

Small Constructors were already zipping around, removing MJOLNIR armor plates at a speed that nearly made the S-IVs envious; theirs came off quick, but not this quick. Then the helmet came off.

The S-IIs were pale, yes - they above all rarely spent time out of armor, rarely got sun - but the Chief looked ghastly.

His skin was almost chalk white - where it wasn't discolored red and purple and sickly yellow, mostly around his jawline. He looked like he'd also had a nosebleed recently - long enough for it to dry but not long enough to start flaking. They also took note of what looked like bruising on John's cheeks; one of them seemed more like a friction burn, just deep enough for blood to appear on the surface. Now that his helmet was off, he was breathing quicker and deeper than any Spartan should have.

"John?" said one of the Forerunner-MJOLNIR Spartans - with Kelly's voice.

He looked up; one of his eyes had a burst blood vessel. "You might want to leave if you don't have a strong stomach," he said, lifting a hand to make the Constructors pause before they could start peeling away the MJOLNIR techsuit and the undersuit beneath it. "Speaking from experience, 'filling the vase' isn't pleasant."

No one moved. "Ambi" yanked a diagnostic bed out of storage in one of the infirmary's bulkheads, and lowered one of the sides so the Chief would be able to climb on.

John sighed and lowered his hand, letting the Constructors remove the techsuit. The undersuit was still on under it, but Locke could see that the skin discoloration extended down his neck and got worse - where the skin wasn't gone, leaving bare muscle behind.

And then the undersuit came off, and the thin clothing and bandages beneath it. No amount of discipline could have stopped the horrified gasps that tore through the room.

His body was rotting around him, blood vessels ruptured under his skin, the skin itself patchy where it wasn't already mostly gone. The decay seemed to have radiated outward from his abdomen; muscle and nerve lay bare and oozing from his neck to his elbows and knees, blood and pus and fluid welling up as he pulled back the gauze covering the damage. Some thick bands of muscle hung loose from the bone, barely attached. Several arteries were almost completely bare of skin and muscle; they could see every slow, agonizing beat of his heart. Some of his bones were exposed as well, the ribs and spinal nubs most of all, and in more than a few places on his abdomen, they glimpsed his internal organs, themselves bruised and decaying, through gaps where the muscle protecting them had already rotted away.

"Dad!" Joyeuse cried. Durandal said nothing, but his armor glowed with sharp distress. Cortana was silent as well, but she clutched one of his hands, the Spartan holding just as tight, equations and pulses of light racing over her form.

"I'll be alright, Joy." The thickening rasp in his voice was at last explained; his vocal cords were starting to tear.

He let Ambi help him up onto the bed, and laid down with a sigh but stayed propped up on his elbows. "You have a lot of nerve being alive," the Forerunner hissed again.

"I'm the most spiteful person in this galaxy," the Spartan returned, "I refuse to die until things are better." Then he turned to Osiris. "Where did you all come in from?"

"Sunaion," Locke managed, strangled, "Sanghelios."

"You still got people back there?"

"Affirmative."

"Then we'll drop you with them, and alert Infinity that everything's taken care of and you need extraction," the Chief said as Ambi moved around him, "You should report to HIGHCOM, tell them what's happening. We need to link up with the Fleet; the Nighthawk doesn't have the equipment to treat this." He gestured to his everything with one half-decayed arm.

Ambi growled, "I told the Builders we need a full-service medbay and containment and decontamination suite on every ship, but did they listen? No!" He descended into what must have been cursing, foul enough that it made the Chief's eyebrows climb almost to his hairline.

"Did you know he knew those words?" Cortana asked.

"Nope."

"All right, enough chatter," the Forerunner nearly snapped, "Lie back, Commander. Putting you under now."

The Chief lay back with another sigh, and Ambi pulled the lowered bed wall back up into place. A holopanel popped up, and he keyed something in. Then an energy field - soft violet, faintly transparent - extended from the bed walls and shimmered into place over the Spartan. Ambi monitored the display for a minute, then breathed a sigh of relief before turning to them. "Stay field," he explained, "Suspended animation, and a lot kinder than your cryosleep. He will be all right once we get him to the Fleet."

One of the Forerunner-MJOLNIR Spartans asked - with Fred's voice, "You'll keep an eye on him?"

"Won't even leave the room."

He nodded and turned to Cortana. "Your Grace, you should probably jump into the Nighthawk and do your recompile now so Joyeuse and Durandal can monitor you before we depart."

"Fair enough," the AI said, and vanished.

The Forerunner Spartan turned to the rest. "Come on. Let's get ready to go."

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Exuberant pulled all the data and video on their fight in the Domain for them, and bade them all a cheerful goodbye, wishing them luck against the Flood. The Domain itself also conveyed a :farewell for now, fortune for always:, before the Guardians left Genesis in one massive group. The Nighthawk gave Slipspace a moment to settle, then departed right after them. "It'll take us a few hours to reach Sanghelios, if you want to get some rest," Cortana told Osiris, "If your debriefing is anything like ours was after the Battle of Zero-Four, it's going to be awhile before you get another chance."

"I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep after seeing that," Buck grunted, "but I could use to lie down, that's for damned sure."

"Fair enough." She directed them to another chamber, where the ship manifested surprisingly comfortable hard light bunks for them.

Buck sat down on one and pulled off his helmet. Locke caught a glimpse of his face - ashen, badly shaken - before he buried his face in his hands. After a moment he muffled out, "Jesus. I know there are people who say the UNSC doesn't make Spartans like it used to, but until now I never thought that was a bad thing."

"Agreed," Vale said quietly, "I'm amazed he's still combat-ready, given the state he's in - and fighting through Genesis like that!"

"He must have been using the MJOLNIR as life support," said Tanaka, "It looked like he was missing some important bits of 'equipment', and I can't imagine his digestive system was pulling too many nutrients in that state. Still, it's almost enough to make me believe there's something to that old ONI propaganda - 'Spartans never die.'"

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The Nighthawk only took six hours to reach Sanghelios. Despite Buck's words, once he lay down he slept the whole way there, and the other three caught a few winks of shuteye as well.

Linda came and woke them. "We're in orbit now," she told them, "Infinity's been alerted; she'll be here to extract you in one local day."

"You're not coming?" Locke only half-asked as he sat up.

She shook her head. "Blue Team's going with the Chief - we'll be more useful there."

The S-IV thought to argue for a second, then sighed. "The briefing never mentioned how - tight you all are."

"John's wounded," she answered, as if that explained everything.

In a way it did. The S-IIs had trained together as children, so of course they were close, especially since there were only a few of them left. And officially Fred outranked him now, but the Chief was still Blue Leader - and, if the stories were true, the de facto leader of all the S-IIs. Having seen how badly hurt he was, the S-IIs would want to see him healed with their own eyes to make sure he was all right.

(Locke kind of felt the same. What did these Forerunners have that could fix all that damage? And what even caused it?)

And, if the S-IIs returned to the UNSC, HIGHCOM might decide to hold them in reserve and defend something or someone from an attack that might not come (wouldn't, if the Chief had his way), rather than deploying them to fight it head on the way they'd been trained to do.

Locke sighed again. "HIGHCOM isn't going to be happy."

"If we can stop a Flood invasion before it starts, I think they can deal."

She left, and by the time the S-IVs joined the others on the bridge, Cortana was starting their descent.

Tanaka whistled softly over TEAMCOM. "Check out our entry. We've gotta be going at least five, maybe six klicks a second, but we're not feeling a damned thing. The gravity dampeners on this ship are incredible."

The AI brought them in for a gentle landing about an hour's walk from the Arbiter's camp, where Palmer and Halsey were waiting. The Forerunners(?) and other aliens(!) made sure that they had plenty of supplies and ammo to carry them through until Infinity arrived.

Then the Nighthawk shimmered and disappeared so thoroughly that their armor couldn't pick up anything aside from the faintest hum from the ship's engines, before that too was gone.

"Let's go," said Locke, "We've got work to do."

**********

And time is not on our side,

Another day won't stem the tide.

And I can't wait 'til you decide…

As we face down the end,

Rise and start again.

As we face down the end…

-"Start Again", Seven Lions feat. Fiora (Ophelia Volume 1)