Thirteen: The Black Hero's Rebirth
The Nighthawk raced at top speed for WR102. The rest of the Fleet had been horrified at the state of their Commander, almost as horrified as Cortana herself. They had known that there would be degradation - the Composers had shown that so long ago, trying to return infected minds to uninfected bodies - but they hadn't known it had gotten so bad.
Perfect Storm, Foreshadow, and their escorts had already arrived, Guardians flitting around them. The ships had been on standby but too late to reach Genesis, since John's quantum COMlink had been disabled and the Nighthawk had only arrived at the end of the battle. The Storm's primary Infection Chamber was already prepared, and awaited the Spartan's arrival.
(And potentially Spartans'.)
Ambience-of-Night sat quietly in the Nighthawk's infirmary, reviewing the data his ancilla was reading from the Commander's diagnostic bed. Technically speaking, he could have arranged for the human to be reinfected and healed right now, but the lack of containment and decontamination facilities meant the corvette would have to be quarantined and scrubbed to prevent accidental infections for any non-Infected who came onboard.
Rtas 'Vadum hadn't been exaggerating when he said, "One single Flood spore can destroy a species." Even their own permutation could propagate dangerously quickly if they weren't careful when spreading their infection; thousands of spores were always released into the air, which could be breathed in by anyone present, slowly infecting them as well. Passive wandering around unarmored wasn't nearly as high-risk, but still. Nothing quite like the Human-Flood War had happened yet because they had spent literally a thousand years hashing out the most stringent containment protocol in the galaxy, but even so they still had to be continuously vigilant.
His ancilla reported that the stay field was doing its work, keeping the Commander in suspended animation until they linked up with the rest of the Fleet.
It also reported that his body's degradation was indeed as ghastly as it looked, and that the MJOLNIR's systems reported that the active combat on Genesis and everything leading up to it had done quite a bit of damage. Before it all, the Commander had estimated that he had three weeks before he absolutely had to leave the UNSC. Now, Ambience would have given him three days.
The door to the infirmary opened with the quietest hiss, and Kelly stepped in. Not the Parallel Kelly - the one from the Origin, the Commander's sister in all but blood. She looked in his direction briefly, then turned her gaze on the Commander. "How is he?"
"The same," Ambience answered honestly, "which is the point. He'll come out in the same state that he went in, no matter how much time passes."
She nodded at that and approached the bed to stare down at the other Spartan through the stay field. "Can he hear us?"
"That I don't know." He briefly consulted with his ancilla and the other Lifeworkers and members of the Fleet. "Consensus seems to be that it varies. Some are at least partially aware of things happening beyond the field, but others know nothing between going in and coming out."
Another nod, but she stayed silent after that.
Ambience told his ancilla to alert him if anything happened or there were any interruptions in the power to the stay field, and let himself slip into a meditative state. There were no adherents to the Creed of the Mantle among the Fleet, not anymore, but he still found meditating on its precepts - on what it was meant to be, rather than what it had been used for - to be a comfort, calming in distressing times. He wasn't alone in that.
"I don't really know him anymore."
He came out of his meditation and looked at Kelly, surprised that she had spoken. He remembered what it had been like for her Parallel self had finally joined up - for all the S-IIs, really, including the Commander. It had taken them a long time to become "functional human beings", as they put it, and there were still times they fell back on their training and clammed up, stayed silent rather than let others know what they were thinking or feeling, even with how intimately they were joined with the rest of the Fleet.
"It's no fault of your own," Ambience said softly, "It was less than the blink of an eye, but in the space of a tenth of a second, he endured a hundred thousand years away. In an entirely different universe, no less. I'm not surprised he seems a stranger to you."
"Not completely - he's still John - but… Linda saw that he was injured before I did. I knew he was pulling away from us and the UNSC, but Fred saw that something wasn't right - that he was grieving Cortana - before I did. I don't understand how I missed so much."
"It happens to all of us. We knew him for a hundred thousand years, but still we underestimated him. We were too close - couldn't see the forest for the trees. We knew the degradation was taking place; we have seen it before - a different cause, to be sure - but we knew. Yet he still hid how bad it was from all of us, even Her Grace, Lady Cortana."
Kelly looked back at him again. "He really married her?"
Her tone said that she wasn't asking why he'd married Cortana of all people, just that they'd actually gotten married. "They did. It was quite the event. There were sword fights involved."
He didn't need to see her face through her visor to know that her eyebrows had nearly reached her hairline. "Sword fights?"
"Indeed. They used the Saavaasi wedding style, which involves the prospective spouses fighting back to back to prove they can defend each other. I can pull up the video if you want to see."
"Yes, please."
-------------------------------------------
The diagnostic bed holding the Commander was taken straight from the Nighthawk to the Perfect Storm's Infection Chamber. Ambience walked alongside it, even when Moons-of-Evening-Star joined them with a few Lifeworker Huragoks. Her probes and their tentacles tapped over the stay field, then she said, 'You've done well.'
He smiled at her, and followed as she took over the lead, both Blue Teams formed up around them. The rest of the Fleet's Spartan Corps were scattered through the other ships - save for the special transfers brought aboard by the Mercy in Darkness, another stealth corvette and one of the dozen ships they'd built after following the Commander back to his home universe.
No one said it, but they were all quite eager to see how he reacted to this particular - unexpected development. Some had even taken bets.
Evening-Star and Ambience connected the bed to the Storm's network, and made sure everything was prepared before deactivating the stay field. The Commander came awake at once, blinking in the light; this infirmary was more brightly lit than the soft blue glow of the Nighthawk's.
Cortana appeared on the holopanel next to the bed, and he tilted his head up to smile softly at her, which she returned.
Then Evening-Star leaned over him. "You're a dumbass." There was no real heat to it.
"So you've said, many times."
It was then that the strange Flood split personality spoke for the first time in what seemed like thousands of years - and aloud, too, through the infirmary's speakers so that the Commander could hear it. "There you are. We were beginning to wonder."
Ambience looked up in time to see the Commander's team jolt and lift their weapons at the sound of the Flood-distorted voice so very like the Commander's own. But the Spartan himself just smiled slightly - not quite a smirk, but not a pure smile either. "You can't get rid of me that easily. Was there ever any doubt I'd be back?"
"Perhaps not. But you certainly took your sweet time about it."
"Aw, did you miss me?"
"Absolutely not."
The Commander's smile blossomed into a full crinkle-eyed grin at that, and Cortana grinned as well. "I missed you too, you bastard."
The Flood hissed and withdrew, but Ambi could tell it was pleased in its own way. It had never had anyone miss it before, let alone say as much aloud, even jokingly.
Evening-Star eyed the other Spartans, then said, "If you're going to be here for this, we're going to need to decontaminate your armor afterwards."
"Just give them a whole new set," Cortana suggested, folding her arms.
John grunted in agreement, stretching with a thoroughly unpleasant squelch. "I know Linda at least liked the look of the M38."
"How much better is that than this?" Fred asked, gesturing to his own MJOLNIR.
Ambience consulted the full Builder team and Doctor Halsey, then said, "Your current armor set is equivalent to an M3."
"Sold."
"Once we're done with this, we'll get you outfitted," said Evening-Star, "We have an armor station here, if you want the Constructors to start removing yours now."
The Spartans set their weapons down in the racks the Storm opened for them, then let the Constructors start detaching plates. But all of them kept their eyes on John as Ambience and Evening-Star gave him several nutrient injections, mostly vitamins and proteins. The Flood infection would heal him, but it still needed something to build off of.
Then Ambience collected one of their many supercell injections and said, "Lady Cortana, containment level alpha, please."
"You got it." The atmospheric filters kicked on, and the Lifeworker knew that once they went through the decontamination exit procedure, then everything hard light in the room (which was everything not metal, and even some that was) would vanish, and the infirmary would be flash-heated to more than five hundred degrees Celsius kill off any remaining Flood supercells.
When Ambi approached with the injection, John held out his arm, and the Forerunner shuddered a little at the sight of his half-rotted flesh. As he'd said before, the Commander had a lot of nerve being alive in that state.
The needle slid in smooth and easy, and the supercells drained into his body. They started spreading through him at once, working the Change into his flesh once more. They could see the infection as it moved, veins turning dark green as it passed, muscles quivering and flexing, looking like there was something alive moving under the surface. But it also healed him; muscles and veins and nerves knitted back together before their very eyes, before being covered by new skin, smooth and unmarked.
He was infected again - and also whole. He sighed in relief, the briefest cloud of Flood spores escaping him, and rolled his shoulders. Then he sat up.
"You shouldn't have left it so long, Dad," Joyeuse said over the COM, "You should have called for the Fleet sooner - you know we would have come in a heartbeat."
"I should have called for a Forerunner armada, after what the Ur-Didact did to Earth?"
"You know what I mean! You've been running around on missions for months; we could have met you somewhere to let you shoot up."
"Don't you compare this to drugs; this is so much worse than drugs. And I didn't want ONI to get a hold of the Flood DNA, because you know they'd try to weaponize that shit; you know what happened on the Mona Lisa, probably better than I do now."
John stopped, and stared. Ambi sensed the whole Spartan Corps – and indeed the entire Fleet – grinning at him. Then he said, "What. The shitting fuck."
'I told you! Pay up, bitches!'
"I am gonna have a fucking stroke, what the hell. Where are you all?! Get in here!"
"Don't go running around with your dick out, John," Cortana laughed, "They'll be here in a second."
They'd actually been waiting right outside. It took only a minute to go through the airlock and decon, and the Spartans entered, still grinning.
"Samuel-034, I saw you die with my own two eyes," John barked, "How the fuck are you here?"
The Spartan in question laughed quietly, even as Kelly's head whipped back and forth between the two different versions of him. "We don't really have an answer for that," he said, helmet turning transparent so his sister could see his face, could know he was real, "One second, we were dead. I don't know how to describe it to someone who hasn't experienced it, but then we all heard your Mysterious Voices™. They said you still needed us - and then we woke up here, on your Fleet."
The Commander pushed the heels of his palms into his eyes and said, fiercely, "What the fuck."
"Sam?" Kelly said shakily.
He turned to her. "Hey, Kelly. Long time, no see." He swiped a Spartan smile across his faceplate, even though his actual face was still visible.
Dispensing with even the S-IIs' infamous reserve, she threw herself at him and pulled him into such a fierce hug that their armor audibly creaked and groaned. "I've missed you, brother," she whispered.
Another Spartan emerged from the knot of formerly-deceased Origin Spartan-IIs and approached, his own helm also going transparent.
"Kurt!" Fred cried, already stepping forward to embrace their once-dead brother, a gesture the other man returned. Even Linda abandoned her own reserve and stepped in to circulate with the other S-IIs.
And there were many - even those who'd died during the augmentation procedures were here, whole and combat-ready, with no real explanation for how they'd died - sometimes, like Sam, before their siblings' very eyes - and then woken up on the Fleet.
"Even we freaked out when they started showing up," Ambience told the Commander as he hopped down from the diagnostic bed and headed for the armor station, "After the first few, we knew roughly when they'd be coming, and from and to where. The science team took every reading they possibly could, got some weird signals, but still."
"No explanation."
"Not a one. Well, aside from divine intervention."
John's expression went complicated. "Why does this always happen?"
Ambience felt the same. If there was a god - or God, or gods - why? Why did so many horrible things happen? Why the deaths, why the wars, why all the anger and hate and pain - why the Flood? Why only now was there intervention - and why only these people? It's not that they weren't grateful - they were; they knew how much his shield-siblings meant to the Commander - but what made them different from everyone else who'd been lost, and not just in the Human-Covenant War? Was there simply not enough power or not enough room to maneuver and so they had to choose who would be saved, and chosen the Spartans?
There were no answers.
The Spartan stepped up onto the platform, and Cortana started it running. Segments of the floor around his feet folded away, and what looked like liquid tar flowed up and out of a reservoir there. After a second the fluid reached out and started to climb him. It rolled over his skin, rippling, covering the bottoms of his feet as well when he lifted them one at a time. When it was complete, covering the Gravemind up to his jaw, it changed - and became the techsuit for the armor, connecting to all of his UNSC-issued cybernetic implants and starting to alter them on a subatomic level to the more advanced Last Fleet-issue.
What looked like a metal pod emerged from the floor. Lights flickered on the pod, and it split into segments, which flew up and assembled themselves around the Spartan, fitting back together without flaw and connecting to the techsuit, booting up. In under two minutes, the M38 combat skin had assembled itself around him and adjusted its configuration to mimic the MJOLNIR Mark VI as much as possible, the plates gleaming in the light.
The Origin Kelly let the Constructors finish stripping off her armor and paused for only a moment before stepping forward, a hand outstretched.
John met her gaze. "You know there's no coming back from this."
"I told you before. You know what they wrote in my file."
Though mission-oriented and competitive, several Spartan-II trainers suspected Kelly-087 harbored no overt loyalty to the UNSC, and was only prevented from leaving the program due to strong bonds with her companions in Blue Team.
John let out a soft huff, gentle with affection. Then he too extended a hand, armor retracting and techsuit pulling back. His veins darkened again as they gripped one another's forearms, fingers turning to Flood talons, which he sank into the soft flesh of her inner arm.
She shivered as the infection rippled through her as it had through her brother, but it left her otherwise unchanged. She blinked for a moment as John released her, then nodded and stepped up onto the armor station.
Fred and Linda looked at each other. Then, when the last of their armor came off, they too stepped forward, hands outstretched.
**********
Outtake from this chapter, talking about the Enterprise:
"WHY did you build a ship this large?!"
"You and Mom are like 98% of our collective impulse control-"
"Bold of you to assume your mother is included in that; she told me to blow up several ships and a Halo ring. Twice."
"-and you were gone, and your Flood alternate self was kind of egging us on, so… we built a ship! Several ships. Not all this big, though."
**********
Light it up, light it up, now I'm burning,
Feel the rush, feel the rush of adrenaline,
We are young, we are strong, we will rise,
'Cause I'm back, back, back from the dead tonight!
To the floor, to the floor, hit the red line,
Flying high, flying high at the speed of light,
Full of love, full of light, full of fight,
'Cause I'm back, back, back from the dead tonight!
Back, back, back from the dead tonight!
-"Back From the Dead", Skillet (Unleashed)