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Alternate Realities - Blind
Posted By: Guardian<shadwsofarchonia@yahoo.com>
Date: 9 December 2006, 11:32 pm
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Alternate Realities – Blind
Location: Revelations
Date: April 23, 2662
In his guest quarters, the Spartan sat on the bed looking over his battle scarred rifle. To say that it had seen hell was an understatement. The world can be so naive, creating a rag from the bed sheet he wiped the metallic surface trying to get rid of the brackish blood stains that covered the barrel and the two times magnification scope.
He could feel the minute vibrations that peaked through the ship every time it would phase by a gravity well while in transit to Celestia in slip space. For one reason or another he was uneasy, and things didn't turn out well when things were uneasy. It was true that he was probably on board the most powerful ship in the Forerunner fleet, but even the strongest things in existence have weaknesses that can be exploited.
Pressing the green button on the side he activated the micro-computer stored inside the rifle itself which controlled the display counter. This would provide any user, Spartan or Marine with a set number of rounds located in the magazine. This would include the round chambered into the barrel to be fired at a later date. Looking around he saw numerous ornamental objects that decorated the ship quarters and what seemed to be holographic display panels facing the wall.
He got up and heard the creaks in his armor, John with all honesty wondered when exactly he would receive the promised upgrade of his armor. According to the monitor, 343 Guilty Sparks from Halo Installation 004, his armor was only a class two. But the construct had recommended that he upgrade to a class twelve as soon as possible. He had always wondered what a class twelve MJOLNIR suit would look like and what it could be capable of doing.
Walking up the panels he felt once again very familiar with the symbols and keys. Much like when he was on Halo. Be it coincidence or otherwise, trying his never-ending luck. He pressed a sequence of holographic key pads only to create a light that appeared behind him. Turning around he stopped, there laid in front of him Cortana.
He was confused beyond known doubt; he had heard her voice earlier on the bridge but it was faint. But now she was present in front of him. Her size was apparently figured to suit his proportions that the computer probably scanned and then applied to her.
"Cortana?"
"Not quite, Master Chief. I am rather a representation of the AI you call Cortana, to suit your needs in a more systematic fashion. The computer system generated me when you tapped the sequence of keys in the holographic panel behind you."
John waited patiently for a few seconds absorbing the information. After comprehending her words he focused his thought process and asked one of the major questions that had been bugging his mind.
"What's going on?"
"Ahh, I thought you would never ask that question. I'm now glad that you did, you may consider sitting down as this will be fairly long and will cover a lot of complex formats of information.
Complying with her request he moved back to the bed and sat down, placing his rifle next to him, the blue glow of the display counter lighting up the bed sheet.
"Well?" He quipped, emotions hidden from the unknown thanks to the gold visor.
"What you see in front of you, is nothing but a physical manifestation that the ship has created in order for you to interact with in this time frame. The Forerunner, the ship itself and I" she moved herself towards the holographic panels and tapped a few keys activating the window system. As the metal covers pulled back, the room was bathed in a white glow. Stars and planetary bodies residing within the dimensions of slip space zipped by soon becoming blurs in the fading horizon.
"I don't understand" he really didn't, physical representations of his mind created by a ship, was that even possible?
"And now you question yourself to test your sanity, am I correct?" the un-named person said.
"Slow down, I don't understand a word you're saying. None of this stuff should be possible. But it is, so tell me what exactly is going on and who are you. A name would be helpful, to say the least." He felt ever so frustrated, palming his visor to give evidence that he was confused.
"My name? Well, you can call me Katherine or Kate for short. As for what's going on, it's not that hard to comprehend John. I can call you John right?" She replied confidently swaying her out of her eyes and focused on his eyes with a glow of emerald.
"Yes, John's fine. Now please, tell me why you think it shouldn't be too hard for me comprehend all your words."
"Let's begin when you first came to Halo and when you came across your first Forerunner holographic display panel. Why is it that upon seeing it, you felt some sort of connection to it? It can't be just pure coincidence, as the numerous other encounters with other holographic display panels you felt the same connection." She paused to take a deep breath and ran her finger across the windowsill.
"As well as why the monitor of the installation 343 Guilty Sparks called you a 'Reclaimer'. He then noted that your armor qualification is a 'Class two and you should upgrade to at least a Class twelve'. How can a few hundred thousand year old AI construct suddenly make a cross reference and without second thought label you as a being from the past. Doesn't that seem illogical ?"
"I don't understand your logic. Are you to say that I am a survivor of the mass extinction that took place when the Halos' fired? And that is the reason behind my familiarity with the interfaces of Forerunner technology?" A frown settled upon his face, this was a little far-fetched by logical standards. But then again a lot of things he had seen in life were far-fetched.
Kate mused at the skill of adaptation John had displayed at such a sudden and large amount of information intake. Things would finally straighten out, finally. "Precisely, you hold genetic traits that have a direct connection with the Forerunner. Which is why, you are capable of interacting with Forerunner technology without former knowledge."
John clenched his fist and bit his lip, this was impossible. How can he bear genes of a race that was thought to have died a few hundred millennia ago?
"Why do you continue to question yourself John, isn't the first time enough? Will the constant questions make the situations any clearer?"
"Then answer me this, why is it that my body lies in the annals of the control room of Halo Installation 001? Why is it that my mind exists in a time far older than history has ever known, and more importantly how does this weapon that lies on my bed exist?" He could feel himself shake as more and more thoughts of curiosity and a demand of his past racked his mind.
He suddenly tensed and became rigid as solid metal when he felt the soft touch of a woman's hand inside his armor. Turning his head he could see the hand of Katherine extend through his armor, and he could feel it upon his bare skin. "What…"
"Shush, rest now. We have talked a great deal in a short time, and no doubt you need time to recuperate. Tomorrow Alexis will stop by and lead you to the armory where the refit of your suit will begin; there we will continue our conversation." She embraced him in a hug and held on for a few seconds longer before pulling back and moving towards the door.
"I understand" John paused for a few second and looked at the stars and planets that continued to zoom by. Almost like they were caught in an infinity loop, then turning his head he caught the glimpse of Katherine at the door "good night Kate."
"Good night John" she walked out the room and doors closed behind her. Leaning back onto them she voiced her thoughts "we have much to talk about John, and I hope that your memories would return to you. There's something that awaits you in this past that you must collect, in order for you to succeed in the future." She flickered out of existence and the fleet continued to cruise towards their home world through slip space.
The Flood infested corvette attached to the ship's hull detached and was quickly pulled out of slip space and into the outer core of a passing star. In seconds the ship was vaporized and any amount of the Flood that existed within it destroyed with it.
Inside the flagship's hull clung a parasitic sentience that governed a great portion of a flood for its actions of finding food to reproduce as well as carry out other duties. Currently it had one goal and it was the most important item aboard this ship, if not amongst all the Forerunner. "The Reclaimer will be ours…"
"You're telling him too much already!" a flustered voice said from within the darkness.
"It needs to be done in order for his true power to be revived" another voice, this one sounding feminine sweet and sultry, responded to the criticism.
"How can you allow her to do this, you know what will happen don't you?" the flustered voice responded again darkening his tone trying to convey his message and gain some form of support.
"I'm well aware of the consequences if things go wrong, but what choice do we have in this matter? The last one capable of such a feat died four thousand years ago" the voice having the tone of leadership responded.
"We have the Halos, we can use those again. They are fully capable of firing multiple times, not only that. We could modify the pulses to target The Flood specifically and eradicate them!" The flustered voice sounded desperate now more than angered or frustrated.
"And how long do you think it would take to modify the pulses for each Halo in each of the galaxies that the Flood resides in?" The authoritative voice demanded.
"A few centuries at most to modify the Halos residing within the galaxies surrounding the Interverse Gate."
"You very well know that any Halo is capable of acting as an emergency gate that leads directly to the system one slip space jump prior to the Eve system where the gate resides."
"The Reclaimer shouldn't be dismissed so quickly!" The angered voice had returned.
"Enough, this argument is not progressing. I will do what is necessary in order for his latent powers to awaken, and I will also do what is necessary to make sure that if there's a probability of rampancy. That his termination will be the first course of action that I will take" the voice paused with the ultimatum before finishing "that is all there is to say. I will update you of any progress."
John stood at the window and watched more stars and planets whisk by as the ship traveled through slip-space. Tapping the window he reminisced about what Kate had told him. Clearly to him it seemed impossible, he was born about thirty four years old as of now. But with being genetically modified his age would probably extend well beyond a hundred years and his skills would continue to improve as time passed on. But if he was a Forerunner, would he age into the thousands?
He had so many questions to ask, and some how none of them he realized would be the answers that he would look for. What did she mean 'I had to collect something from this past?' What was there to collect? He looked back at the battle rifle that lay on the bed. Thirty-six the L.E.D. display glowed, that's thirty-six potential lives he could take or thirty-six potential lives he could save.
For now sleep was something he did needed, but dismissed it with a higher priority of exploration. He wondered if she was still outside the door waiting for him to do something. If what she had said was true, then he could walk out of that door and walk around an empty ship. They were all physical manifestations generated by his mind after all, right? Then couldn't he dismiss them as well? He walked back to the bed and grabbed the rifle, and then walked towards the door. Just as the door opened a cold feeling of unease crawled down his spine, whipping around he bought the rifle to wear pointing the window.
He swore he felt a presence outside that window, but could things survive in slip-space? Sighing he walked out the door and felt it close behind him. In the silent and dark room, the bluish green glow of slip-space that entered through the window suddenly went dark as numerous amounts of half-decomposed tentacles covered up the window.
Another roar was released from the darkness as the ground shook and the dust scattered with the vibrations. Intricate symbols flashed alive on the reflective floor before they dissipated into nothingness. The shield shimmered in magnificence for a fraction of a second as gold light basked the room and then it too, like the symbols, faded into invisibility. Cortana however still knew it existed and had a feeling that it was stronger than any Covenant shield system she had seen in her existence.
Accessing the holo-display systems she began a search for any key materials that could help her understand the situation John was in. As her subroutines processed code after code of hacking programs to bypass firewalls she focused fifty percent of her processing power on finding unallocated memory to dump her knowledge gathered from the Halo Installation 004. Fortunately and with the grand design of luck, this installation had an abundant amount of it, and so she diverted another twenty-five percent of her processing power to dump all the data into the memory for temporary storage.
When the time came to depart she would reinstitute the information back into her core memory. As the memory transfer completed she felt refreshed as a great deal of her previous lost processing power returned to her. She felt flexible and strong; being able to do the kind of work she was used to before Halo. Pausing momentarily she looked at the apparent comatose form of Spartan – 117. In comicality she wondered if his code name should be changed to God. While scientifically there was no such proof of its existence, it in a way seemed to fit the Spartan.
For he was a guardian and she was his angel, but in the end he did things that no man or Spartan would be capable off. His legacy would define history as they knew it; he was in all sense a "one man army". She was snapped out of her ponder as another roar was reflected through the hollow corridors. A frown dotted her face as her personal reflection from the floor changed from a blue to a bright red. Did they have any form of defence against such a monstrosity?
At times as annoying as she thought a Halo Construct was, she wished it was here. It would know information regarding the anomaly and also be able to direct the sentinels into a defence grid to protect the "Reclaimer". Focusing once again on the task she reallocated sixty-percent of her processing power to search for information regarding John's situation. The remainder forty-percent was then divided into two tasks, first twenty-percent of the power would be then assigned to a high priority task of searching for configuration systems for the sentinel guardian systems. The remainder twenty would once again be divided, where ten percent would be assigned a highest priority task.
Monitor Spartan – 117's vitals and to make sure nothing would go wrong if it was in her power to control that factor. The remainder ten percent served as divertible resources to prevent a system bottleneck.
The corridors of the ship were different, far different than the corridors of Halo or the control room. The height was roughly a meter taller than him; it almost gave him a vibe that the ship was molding to his specifications and or of what he would have fictionally suspected the Forerunner to be like. Though comforting in a sense it was also difficult to accept that such a powerful race existed.
As he walked towards through the ship he felt another awkward feeling that he couldn't put his face to and so clutched his battle rifle tighter than usual. Pausing he bought the rifle to bear and quickly turned around only to find an empty corridor. To compliment his flank he once again quickly turned to check his original direction and found the path in front of him empty as well. The H.U.D. system bought up his vitals and according to the system his heart rate had increased by twenty beats per minute. Cortana?
He continued walking and came across a fork in the corridors, turning to the right the path was dark but it seemed secure. There were no other entrances except front and back, however the path on the left had plenty of light but there were multiple places that could hide enemies waiting to take him out if he wasn't cautious. But regardless both paths gave him a bad feeling and a familiar one at that. A blur of motion caught his eye and his radar blipped a red dot before it disappeared.
The flashlight on his shoulder activated in less than a second and John crept forward down the illuminated path. Shutting down unneeded systems he diverted the power to shields and the holographic display gave a numerical value of one hundred and fifty on the status of the shields. The blip appeared on his radar, several meters ahead of him around the corner that was now becoming visible. He clicked the safety off and held his index finger on the trigger.
His vital status jumped as his blood pressure rose; he felt fear and sweat trickled down the back of his neck as the hairs stood on their ends. His visor scanned the area around the corner and started to pick up foreign particles in the air. The color of the air also was diff- color of air! Maximizing the view he saw a brown haze float through the air in the area surrounding the corridor. Shit!
John back pedaled towards the work of the path and reconsidered his options, there was possible flood infestation. He had limited ammunition and a few fragmentation and plasma grenades. Then there was brute force using melee combat, which would technically allow him to make an escape if things got ugly. But nevertheless there was a large risk involved. Biting his lip, his tongue made contact with a warm liquid that had a coppery-iron taste to it. Blood, his life source and also the pain from his bitten lip helped him in collecting his thoughts.
Pulling out a fragmentation grenade he took a look at it before pulling the pin and throwing it towards the corner and began the countdown to detonation. His biological clock automatically took care of the process and three seconds later the grenade detonated. Sending a gust of wind that cleared up the spore-filled air up momentarily, John bolted for the corner and rounded it a second later only to come across a view that he could not fathom regardless of the limitless potential of a human mind.
In front of him was space or slip space for that matter moving away from him. The latter half of the ship completely missing or from the way it was missing it seemed to be torn away with brute force. Green semi-solid liquid covered the jagged edges of the bulkheads. As he put his hand forward the shield system flickered and dropped from one hundred fifty to three percent in a blink of an eye.
He pulled back his hand and felt a series of blisters appear instantaneously upon his flesh. As he was about turn he around he heard an ear splitting shrill and quickly turned around to come face to face with a disfigured Forerunner. Half the entity's face was rotten away revealing the inner layers of flesh and bone decaying. The blood appeared to be green and very adhesive at contact.
Before he could make contact with a melee he felt a sharp pain in his abdominal area as his eyes picked up the part-decomposed hand phasing completely through his shield and then puncturing his ultra-dense armor. The amount of pain that was inflicted upon him intensified exponentially as the tentacles entered his body and started slithering around him. Tearing through nerves, arteries, and veins and forcing themselves into his non-vital organs. He coughed and blood escaped his mouth and splashed across the inside of his visor. It felt like a million ants were crawling and tearing at the flesh of his nerves, it felt like worms coated in acid were slithering across his blood vessels.
It was a type of pain he had never felt before in his life, and feeling it for the first time was a mind-fuck. The adrenaline coursing through his system was unable to keep up with the sensory overload of pain and it pushed him into shock. John lost consciousness seconds after having his flesh penetrated by the flood-Forerunner.
He screamed loudly and in a great deal of fear and heard the crack of what could only be glass. Opening his eyes he saw his green MJOLNIR fist impacting against the window and a large crack appearing at the impact point, which then slowly impacted outwards. Like a grenade impacting the windshield of the car before detonation. Sweat dripped down his eyebrow and into his eyes causing him to blink. As his eyes closed he felt a tremor move from under him and up the metal bulkhead and window separating him from death. Despite being in MJOLNIR armor he highly doubted it could take the uncountable different laws slip space held stand-alone.
Opening his eyes he saw the glow of slip space begin to grow brighter and he did the only thing he could do at the moment, begin to take steps back slowly. Then quickly as his back neared the door the light brightened to the point where the polarization of his visor became a useless tool. Then suddenly the area in front him exploded in a shower of plasma, fire and the chaos of hyper-decompression. Luckily for him the force of the explosion sent him through the door of his room and through the bulkhead behind into another room.
Light engulfed the corridor and what was left of the room…
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