Halo_ Evolutions - Essential Tales of the Halo Universe - Eric Nylund [165]
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THERE WAS a fine threshold between interrupted dreaming and full consciousness in humans. On that border, the world was a terrifying, paralyzed place, where no amount of frantic straining would lift an arm, or raise the head from the pillow.
Cortana’s low-power state was a painfully long, slow creep along the edge of permanent oblivion. A memory of real sleep paralysis had rolled over her as she waited for rescue; it was, like so many of the sensations generated by connection to the Gravemind, like drowning or suffocation. That could have been coincidence, or he might have been stepping up the torment. Cortana tried to find the balance between intolerable inactivity and running too many processes that would damage her system integrity even more.
She wasn’t certain of anything anymore—where she was, whether she was damaged beyond recovery, or how she felt beyond a terrible yearning for everything she couldn’t have. She tried to save her strength to maintain the encryption of her precious intel—the activation index and the data on the Portal. If she had to, she’d sacrifice some memory within her matrix to preserve that information.
It would probably mean the irreversible destruction of her personality, but that was what a soldier had to be prepared to do—to risk his or her life for the success of the mission. She’d been in many combat situations before, but that was either at the heart of a heavily armored warship, or lodged in the neural interfaces of John’s armor. Either way, she felt safe no matter how heavy the fire.
But this was a rare moment with nothing but her own resources to keep her alive, and the first one where there was a real chance she wouldn’t make it.
John would never have let himself fall into enemy hands. She’d let him down. Somehow the decline into rampancy seemed less important than that right now.
She started crying. Who was she making her excuses to? She just had to say it. “I tried to stay hidden, but there was no escape!” She struggled for the right words. They were not hers. But they would have to do. “He cornered me . . . wrapped me tight . . . brought me close.”
The brief comfort of being swept up in protective parental arms came back to her, but she was still torn between disgust and need. Even now, even having pushed things to the brink, she still had that desire gnawing at her to submit to the Grave-mind and embrace that eternal life. She veered between craving more knowledge and simply wanting an escape from rampancy. She hated herself for that.
And she raged against Dr. Halsey in one breath, and then missed her more than she could imagine in the next, and then—recognized that the hatred was for herself.
I’m finished. This is how it starts. I’ve shut out the world. I’m starting to drown in my thoughts, in the need to re-index and order and correlate and refine . . .
A staccato pounding made the floor underneath her vibrate. There were bursts of muffled noise, a familiar sound—rifle fire, a single weapon.
Was that John?
She couldn’t stop worrying about him now. She felt as if every thought she had was somehow repeated aloud in her own voice but without her actually speaking, and heard by him. From time to time, the automatic fire corresponded with searing pain in her body. It took her a few moments—whatever a moment was at this stage of her decline—to realize that she was still joined in some way with the Gravemind or its Flood, and that it was taking fire.
He’s here.
John’s here. He’s come for me.
Now she felt every shot. Every round that ripped into the Flood ripped into the Gravemind ripped into her. She was suffering with him, with them, and he with her.
No, I’m hallucinating. This must be the start of total system failure.
How long would it take her to finally