I
I sat at the desk that was once owned by the previous captain of Forward Unto Dawn.
The desk was made of redwood.
I wondered what kind of person the previous captain was to be able to smuggle something like that in here.
It had to be the previous captain’s desk. There was no luxury that Humanity could afford on the brink of our species’ collapse. I knew that Lord Hood favored me, but even he could not swing the weight of his command to provide this type of extravagance to me.
Besides, my father didn’t raise me to indulge in that way. Neither did my mother.
I wonder how he died.
Perhaps his family was a part of a smuggling operation on a distant planet, where redwood was farmed illegally to provide us with such useless commodities. Maybe some place far away from the Covenant and the UNSC. Where they knew nothing about our genocide and the pain of the Flood.
I used to envy that type of thing.
I traced my hand over the desk, admiring all the ways the wood twisted and turned.
I could still remember its smell.
I stood in front of the tree. My mother stood even closer. She touched the bark and smiled up at the great ancient beast.
It was Summer in Reach, but still frightfully cold. Catherine had told me that this was the best place to grow the tree on Reach. The climate was close to its natural Earthen climate where it would normally grow.
Beside the tree was a uniformed man holding a gun. Besides Catherine was a man always smoking cigars.
“Come here, Miranda.” Catherine waved me closer.
I approached the spot next to her, but I looked on in boredom.
“What’s so special about a tree?” I asked.
“It isn’t just the tree.” Catherine gave me a small smile. “It’s for what we protect back home.”
I kept staring at the large trunk, then upward towards the canopy of leaves. I did not understand.
“I wasn’t born there.”
Catherine only smiled. “You will understand when you get older.”
I pulled back from the desk, leaning into the overly-cushy chair. Pain and anger flared across my face, but I let it wash over me. I tried not to let the memories of her consume my mind, but sometimes they would take me by surprise.
What else did the previous captain smuggle in here?
I leaned down and opened one of the drawers to gander at what else the previous captain had smuggled inside. It was no surprise to me when I found alcohol and cigars. Sweet Willaims, to be precise. I never was a smoker, nor a drinker. But I brought the contents onto the table and laid them out methodically as if taking stock of what was imparted to me.
When I opened the box of cigars, I couldn’t stop myself from scrunching my nose at the poor aroma. Not rotten, but not quite my taste.
“Sir?” I held a cigar up to the man sitting across from me. He told me his name was Ackerson, and I knew he was a man of importance. But he did not divulge any other information besides his rank.
He tented his hands on the desk and smiled. “To commiserate your bravery at Gamma Pavonis VII.” His mouth twisted in a way that hid more beneath what he was willing to show.
It made me suspicious that such a high-ranking officer was personally congratulating me on the ‘victory’ against the Covenant. I was always wary of my superiors. But I didn’t imagine the scope of sin within the UNSC. Within ONI. Within Humanity. Within my mother’s line of work.
I lit the cigar. Took a deep breath. Blanched at the taste. The smoke that filled my lungs made me violently cough and it burned my chest. Ackerson leaned back into his seat with a knowing smile. A smile that made me sick.
“My apologies, sir.” I spoke between wheezes and placed the cigar down on the ash tray. “I don’t think I can finish it.” It took all my willpower to not draw out the theatrics of it and resume my hardened stare. “I think I still prefer coffee.”
“Not like your father?”
His grin only widened as he took his own cigar out. It was a vile smile. A sinful smile. A smile that drove daggers into my soul. Meant for someone else. But it was close enough to his target.
“More like your mother?”
I slammed the box of cigars shut. Rage and fury overtook me again. I grit my teeth and shoved the box away from me as if it were poison.
“I’m nothing like her.”
II
“How did my father die?”
I stared at Cortana’s hologram.
I tried not to think about how similar we looked.
I knew the truth.
The response took a second too long to reply. An eternity for a Smart A.I. Enough time to fabricate an intoxicating lie. I would never put it past her to create an A.I. that could lie.
Halsey was full of them.
“He died enacting the Cole Protocol on the Pillar of Autumn.” Cortana carefully replied.
The canned response. The response that Halsey had most likely told her to give. I couldn’t help but wonder how much of the Halo report she had touched, she had altered, she had classified, so that her daughter would remain an innocent child.
“I understand.” I nodded my head.
But I understood it in another way.
Understood it in the way that I could not trust the A.I. that Halsey had birthed. That Cortana was too much like her mother, in more ways than one, and that I would have to find the truth myself.
It was a shame that Cortana couldn’t escape her mother’s grasp like I could.
III
Time bled away in slip space. Within the Shadow of Intent, nestled safely within her hull, Forward Unto Dawn rested. With it, the crew that I would command our final fight against the Covenant, and, perhaps, the Flood.
R&R was a luxury. A luxury that was afforded only because there was nothing else to do within the confines of slip space. Guilty Spark had given us an estimate of when we would arrive at the Ark, and only so much time could be spent communing with the other officers, ONI, and our new found allies.
The other officers and UNSC invited me out to spend time with one another. But even I preferred the confines of my office space. My coffin.
I did not want to hear what they would say about me. Did not want to hear what they would say about my father. Did not want to hear about what they would presume about my mother.
I fiddled with my pen in the same way my father would fiddle with his pipe.
Maybe if I had that, I would smoke like my father.
But it was gone. Destroyed on Halo. Like everything else.
I still preferred coffee.
It’s hard not to think about how my father died. The obvious answer is the Covenant. But knowing the Flood was on Halo, I have to know if he died turning into one of those things.
I fiddled with the pen again, staring down at the journal I kept. Just like my mother.
It wouldn’t change anything. Maybe it would. Maybe I would hate the Covenant a little less. Maybe I would despise the Shipmaster and Arbiter less. Maybe I’d hate ONI more for taking away my mom and the truth about my father.
No. ONI didn’t take anything away from me. My mother did.
I wanted to hate coffee.
IV
My face was pale as I stared at the half-glassed continent of Africa.
I had felt fear before.
Every Covenant ship I fought against I knew there was the possibility of death. It was inevitable. Statistically speaking, my chances of survival were slim. Those that survived for so long were outliers. I was an outlier.
I had made my peace when I joined the UNSC. I had come to terms with my own mortality and made sure to resign myself to the inevitable.
But here, in the confines of the Shadow of Intent, relatively safe from the Flood, I felt a different fear.
A new fear.
This was not the fear of death. This was not the fear of risk. A different tingling sensation in the back of my head. Something primordial and hungry. I could hear it from even here.
An instinct.
I was a little girl, standing petrified at the feline that had suddenly pounced at the glass. Catherine clasped my shoulder, the tiny thing that I was. She pushed me towards the glass, forcing me closer to the thing that I feared.
“It won’t hurt you,” Catherine coaxed me forward towards the large feline. “The glass protects you.”
Its paws were as big as my head. With one swipe I would die. I did not understand death as an adult did. But I knew I something bad would happen to me if I got closer.
It was in my DNA.
Something told me to run.
“I’m scared.” I could not take my eyes off the beast behind the glass.
Halsey kept a firm hand on my shoulder. She forced me to face this fear. “Don’t worry, I’m here.” She soothed. “It will not hurt you. Not while I’m here.”
“This is your first time seeing it?” the Shipmaster, Rtas, stood beside me. He inspected me closely, gauging me.
I felt as though my worth was being weighed.
“I saw it on Halo and High Charity,” I murmured.
I wished my mom was here. She made a promise to me that nothing would hurt me so long as she was there. I wanted to hear those words again.
“You understand then,” Rtas mused. “Why we do this.”
Lord Hood stood on my opposite side. He would not show it; I saw my same fear in him. He stood still and watched as they glassed the surface of Earth.
All those that would die. All those that would have died.
Hood had a face of shame.
We wondered the same question: Was this a mercy?
Rtas extended his arm out to the display of Earth. A red line cut through Africa, where the Arbiter had pledged to Humanity where they would stall their assault before sending a ground operation to assess the Flood within the vicinity.
I did not reply. Lord Hood did not reply. We only watched.
The Shipmaster continued. He pressed: “Have you seen a Flood spore infect someone?”
I nodded my head.
ONI classified that information to me.
My mother classified that information to me.
They tried to keep me innocent. Tried to keep me a child. But I saw it on Halo. Watched as Humans and Covenant turn into hungry creatures. That whispered in my mind dissent and sin.
Would my father classify that to me?
I thought I heard his voice in their cries.
“I know it has to be done.”
V
My steps stopped as I stared out a viewing hall of the Shadow of Intent. My eyes glimmered as I watched slip space spin and turn in ways that were both logical and illogical.
The beautiful blues and whites. Time and matter were both one in the same, and not at all. I felt so relaxed and for a moment my mind was taken to a place where nothing existed, like slip space. The memory of the ocean of Reach. The memory of the stark light of Luna. Home and home.
I relaxed in a way I hadn’t in years.
“Is something the matter?” one of the Sangheili turned his head to stare at me.
My gaze lingered on the view for a moment before I turned away from the viewing port. “No.” I half-walked half-ran to catch up to the massive alien and tried to keep my pace beside him. We were silent for a moment longer. “Do you have any other viewing ports like that?”
The Sangheili thought for a moment, before nodding his head. “Yes. Some public. Some more private.”
“Take me there.”
VI
I feel like the aliens have more respect for me than my fellow humans. They don’t know who my father is and treat me like any ‘warrior human’. They give me the label Shipmistress, and treat me equal to the Shipmaster of the Shadow of Intent.
Sometimes I feel like I have to fill the shoes of my father just to show them that I’m not Jacob Keyes’s daughter but simply Miranda Keyes.
Maybe both of them would treat me different if they knew who my mother was.
Sometimes they call 117 a ‘Demon’, but I know it’s my mother whose one.
I sat cross legged on the floor of Shadow of Intent, staring at the view into slip space.
I fiddled with the pen like my father fiddled with his pipe. In my lap laid my journal from my mother.
I wondered if I would smoke like my father.
The hum of slip space calmed me. Even with all the alien around me, I felt at peace.
I thought of the Flood. I thought of home. And I could only wonder what could be found on the Ark.
A way to stop the Flood. That was what Cortana had said.
Before, I couldn’t have imagined trusting her. Because she was like her mother. Like Hasley. Untrustworthy. A snake. But seeing the message that Cortana sent, seeing her eyes, I knew that she was no longer the pawn that her mother had created. Something changed in her.
Once upon a time, I would have been happy for Cortana. But seeing her tortured in that way, I could only feel pity.
VII
I felt them grasping around in my mind.
The stench of rot permeated into my skin.
This was the Flood.
I was not afraid.
I wondered if I would smoke if I had my father’s pipe.
I stopped breathing for a moment. The gun in my hand growing heavy. I didn’t understand why that thought wandered into my mind. As if something else knew me. Knew me better than me.
My eyes darted around the musky hallway only illuminated by the flashlights attached to the marine’s helmets. I didn’t realize how suffocating this place was, and I felt as though I was drowning suddenly.
I tried to put on a brave face for them all, but with every shadow that moved I could barely contain my fear.
I felt something breath down my neck. Something grasped around my mind. Whispering things to me. But even as I knew there was nothing surrounding me, I felt every hair on my body stand up.
It made me wonder if I would smoke if I had my father’s pipe.
My hands felt clammy. I tried to keep my mind focused on the mission. I wiped sweat from my brow, and readied myself for another onslaught of Flood. But nothing came. Only flesh.
The Father’s Sinner steps into the palace of pain. Does she see what the unblind do not?
“Did you say something?” I stopped walking. I trembled in fear. I felt no fear.
Johnson turned to stare at me, his face confused. “Nothing but squirming.” He motioned to the walls.
It felt as though beneath the metal frames was the flesh pulsating. As if this place was alive. Breathing. Thinking. Speaking to me.
Would you smoke if you had your father’s pipe?
I whipped my head around, looking behind me. I stared at the dead and malformed creatures we had killed. One human laid there. Half transformed. His face was contorted after we had brutally pulled his body apart after he had been infected. We brutalized the body to honor the dead.
But the man I saw was not the person under my command. It was another.
I stared at it. It stared at me. He stared at me.
My father.
What is you, I see in me. A pallbearer that carries her cross. A pipe in hand. But I see you are another.
The voice spoke through me. Into me. My father’s voice and a voice unrecognizable.
I bent over and puked. I shut my eyes, shaking my head, steeled myself to its onslaught. But the lie was uncovered. A lie I knew always was one.
“Ma’am!” Johnson rushed to my side as well as the other marines. “What happened?”
I pushed him away. I rubbed the spit from my mouth and managed to swallow the rest down my throat. “Nothing.”
He looked at me. Forced me to show him my hands and neck. He did not fear that I was wounded, but feared I had turned.
Once his inspection was satisfactory, he turned back down the hall and we marched back into the maws of the beast.
You hate coffee.
I loved coffee.
VIII
I was sitting on the floor of the Shadow of Intent when its alien doors slid open to welcome another inside. I knew it was not human judging by the steps, and that it had to be Sangheili. Slowly, I turned to see who it might be, as if I could recognize who it was. But I was surprised to see that it was the Shipmaster who joined me.
“I see you have found my perch,” Rtas managed in a playful tone.
“Shipmaster—" I began to stand, but Rtas waved his hand over the room. I stilled myself, and remained seated on the floor.
Rtas approached my side and took a seat next to me. I was surprised that he could manage to sit on the floor given their strange anatomy. I made no comment of it. Instead, I looked back to the viewing port. Watched the glitter of slip space. I thought of home.
“I asked one of your officers to show me one.” I tried to offer a relaxed shrug. “I didn’t realize it was taken.”
Rtas shook his head, “None are. But I prefer this one to others.” He motioned his hand to the viewing glass. “Many do not come here, so it is more private than most. It is a good place to meditate.” He glanced towards me, and made note of the journal settled on my lap. “More battle plans?”
For a moment, I looked at Rtas curiously. “This?” I lifted it up from my lap for a moment. “No. Sometimes I come here to write. I guess you can call it a diary.” I looked embarrassed for a moment, forgetting that the Sangheili do not have the same cultural and gender regard for these things.
“It is a good thing to keep,” he nodded his head in approval. “Mediating the thoughts of the past can help clear the fog of the future.” Rtas opened his hand to me. “May I see?”
I was taken aback for a moment, surprised that Rtas would so openly ask to receive such private thoughts from me. Perhaps it was a culture I was not aware of. I was unsure what to say. These were private thoughts. Things that I would never show my mother. Things that I would never show my father.
Because he always knew how I felt.
“She didn’t come.”
I stared out the window of the hotel. Stared at the city of Reach, my home, and watched the children hug their mothers and spend cheerfully the days of their school break. Unbeknownst to the cruelty of the human genocide at hand.
I envied that.
In the reflection of the window, Jacob watched me. He saw the tears that I would never shed. I always tried to be like him, strong and filled with resolve. Absent from anger. Absent from pain.
But Halsey always made me break that façade.
“Why didn’t she come?” I asked the reflection.
This night was meant to be for me. It was a ceremony meant for me. The award meant for me. Only me. But it was overshadowed by Halsey’s absence.
She had no excuse. So why didn’t she come?
Jacob was silent.
“Why doesn’t she love me as much as her stupid toys?”
I knew what she did.
But I didn’t know how much my father was complicit in it too.
Jacob said nothing. Only held me tight that night as I cried.
I wasn’t sure what made me hand the book over.
“Be careful. It’s old.”
Rtas nodded his head, and carefully took the book from my hand. It was small in comparison to his oversized body, and I thought he might tear it to pieces. Much in the same way I had seen so many Humans be torn apart by other Sangheili.
Much to my surprise, he took great care in handling the book. His hands flitted through pages barely touching the ends of the notebook. It didn’t seem as though he was reading it, and for a moment I wondered if he could read it.
We sat in comfortable silence as I stared down at the journal. He noted my drawings of documented maneuvers I had created against the Covenant. So many of them saved people. So many of them killed people. And between it all, my private musings of the world around me.
"I can see you take great care in documenting your thoughts.” Rtas spoke as he stared down at one particular photo. It was a photo of my mother. I wondered if they had ever met.
“It helps clear my mind.” I could barely contain a scowl on my face when I saw the picture of Halsey. It practically looked like Cortana. Was that why Rtas was perplexed?
“Who gave this to you?” he continued through the pages.
I drew silent for a moment. My gaze taking me back to the glass. To the unknown of slip space.
“What’s this?”
Jacob held out an inconspicuous package to me.
“It’s from your mother.” Jacob replied. The joy on my face fled as a scowl replaced it.
“What does she want?” I turned away from my father, arms crossed over my chest.
Jacob sighed, still holding out the package for me to take. I always tried to me a good child for my father. But whenever my mother came up in conversation, I became wildly difficult. Maybe I should have been nicer to him.
“It’s your birthday gift—”
“Oh, she remembered this time?”
Jacob was silent. His face tired, almost sad. But he still held the package out for me.
Sometimes I wondered if I took after Halsey more than my father.
It was after a minute or two that I finally turned back to him and took the gift from my father. I tried not to snatch it from him.
I really did try.
Out of respect for my father, I opened the package carefully.
It was a notebook. Thick and well made.
Inside the binding was a note written into the book.
It read:
To my Daughter.
One day you will learn that not everyone will listen to you as Jacob and I do. I hope this can give you an outlet to speak your mind. A journal will always listen.
With Love, Catherine Halsey.
Below it was an illustration of me from Halsey. As an embryo. As a baby. As a child. And now, as an adult.
The message enraged me.
“You really know how to pick them.” I seethed.
And my father was silent.
“My mother.”
“She is smart.”
I could barely contain the smirk. Ironic. “More than you know.”
He flipped through more pages. Landing on a more recent picture of my father. I glanced down and a mirthful smile filled my face.
“That’s my father.” I reached over to the journal and plucked the photo out the page. I leaned forward to stare at it closely for a time. My heart felt heavy and my eyes suddenly felt the exhaustion of sleep. But warmth still radiated from me.
Lord Hood had given it to me.
I stood within Shadow of Intent. Lord Hood stood beside me.
“Are you sure about this?” Hood looked at me. He already knew the answer.
“It’s the only lead we have, sir.”
“And if it doesn’t work? If on the other side of that portal is a trap?” Hood watched me closely.
“Then at least we will have died taking a leap of faith for Earth and all Her colonies.” My will was unwavering. My resolve was true.
And Hood could only sigh. He slumped his shoulders, shaking his head. He took his cap off and ran a hand over his bald head. “You’ve always been like your father.”
He reached for one of his pockets and pulled out a photo and held it out for me to take.
When I took the photo, I could barely contain my surprise. Tears brimmed the corner of my eyes and I looked from the photo to Hood, then back to the image. Grief held me close for a moment before I made myself let go.
A testament to ONI’s lies. To Halsey’s lies.
“I’m sorry for what happened to your father.”
Jacob stood with one hand behind his back and the other holding the pipe. A small grin reached his face. Several ODST were crowded around him. Behind them all a towering 117. They were on Halo. Classified. Extremely so.
They looked ragged. Dirty. Tired. I could tell that he hadn’t slept for days. He had the marks of being tortured.
I took comfort knowing he wasn’t tortured to death.
But I knew he did not die on the Pillar of Autumn enacting Cole Protocol. And they still refused to tell me the truth. All of them.
Just an innocent child.
Rtas stared. I was not one to really understand Sangheili body language. But he had a certain look that seemed discomforted. As though he knew my father. That they had met before.
Rtas stared at me curiously now. “What is his name?”
“Jacob Keyes.” I handed the photo back to him. “He died on Halo. The first one that we found.” My face darkened, disquieted. “They told me he died on the Pillar of Autumn, the ship he captained. But I know it’s a lie.” I grew silent for a moment. “I know that knowing what happened to him won’t bring him back, but at least I can put his memory to rest.”
It felt strange to speak so freely to someone who used to be my enemy. But I found it easier because Halsey had not tainted him.
I always hated playing Halsey’s games. Maybe that was why I felt better talking to an alien than my fellow Humans. It was difficult to trust them all when they had become so entrenched in it.
“I have seen him before on the same Sacred Ring.”
My eyes shot up to Rtas. My stare was intense as he looked to the viewing port.
“Did you kill him?” It was an accusation. It came quickly, without even a second thought. For a moment, I thought that Rtas would kill me for speaking such foul thing.
“Steady your fury, Shipmistress.” His words were firm, but he took no offense. “I was not the one that captured him. Those in charge of his capture tortured him for a time. It was reported he escaped from Truth and Reconciliation.”
I was silent. The flickering rage inside me subsided slightly.
“I have seen that pipe.” Rtas continued. “I think I may know how your sire was killed.”
I couldn’t help but begin to tremble. “How?” I turned to face him fully.
I stared into his eyes searching for any lie. But he would not lie to me. He had nothing to gain from it. Not like everyone else who saw me with pity. Who knew what happened to him and refused to tell him. All because of the wishes of my mother who could hardly care for me as I was now.
“You’re the only person I can trust.”
Rtas stared at me perplexed once more. “Do your people not give this information to you?”
“Not my people.” I admitted. “My mother.”
Rtas was silent. He needn’t know the details of it but it was clear he understood the power of Halsey.
I knew that Halsey had not tainted him. So, I knew the words he would speak would be the truth. He did not understand the intricate lies of ONI, of Halsey. Did not understand the politics that entrenched my own people in rebellion.
I stared at him in anticipation, but clear on my face was the mark of fear. The same fear I felt when I watched Africa burn. The same fear I felt when my hand was forced to fire the Halo Array. The same fear I felt when the thing that was both my father and not my father whispered to me.
It was the fear of not knowing, and to know. The fear of what was to come from beyond what I knew now.
“Reports from Truth and Reconciliation provided us imagery of the parasite’s infection to us. We had demanded this from them before we attempted aid of reinforcements to their distress signal. What it showed was the parasite had grown far beyond what we ever could imagine. It was a mass of flesh of some sort. Trying to take command of the ship to escape from the Ring.” He paused. His eyes filled with pity. “Your sire’s pipe had been attached to that parasite.”
I leaned forward. I clasped my hands together.
There was only the hum of slip space.
There was only the emptiness in my heart.
“You’re… sure?” I was barely able to speak. I felt pathetic besides him.
I searched for the truth for so long. I heard its whispers in my mind as it confirmed what I tried to deny. That my father had become one of them. That he had joined their chorus. But more than that, Hasley tried to hide my grief from me.
She wanted me innocent. Her innocent little daughter.
“He died with honor.”
That’s what they all said.
He died a hero. He died with honor. It was all the same. But at the end of it all, he was dead. Or alive? What was I to say?
Was my mother even alive? Did she perish at Reach as well?
Through it all, I did not hate the Flood for what it did to my father. It was a beast. It was an animal that acted on instinct. The feline behind the glass that hungered for food.
Most of all, I hated my mother for what she kept from me.
I regret never knowing what that message from Reach was before it fell.
“Thank you, Rtas.” I opened my eyes, and I looked back into the slip space. “You don’t know how much this means to me.”
IX
The pain crawled up my back. And soon, sleep.
I felt someone hold me. And when I opened my eyes, my father stood beside me, standing in front of the giant redwood.
He held a pipe in his hand, smoking it. In his other, it lingered over my shoulder. He was young. As I remember him being.
“Dad?” I stared up at him.
For a moment, he looked surprised. As if he hadn’t been prepared to see me so soon. When he turned to look at me, there was a smile. Welcoming. Warm.
“You’re here.”
I looked around, staring at the both familiar and unfamiliar.
“Where is here?” I asked. But I knew that answer. It felt as though every second ‘here’ that I was slipping away. I was not being consumed. I was not being tortured. But I felt as though I was being freed.
Free from pain. Free from sin. Free from everything and everyone.
He did not answer me. I looked up towards the sky, towards the tree’s canopy.
I understood what my mother was trying to tell me.
He offered me his pipe. But I shook my head.
“I think I’ll stick to coffee.”
0343 HOURS, MARCH 4, 2553 (MILITARY CALENDAR) \ UNSC ORBITAL RESEARCH FACILITY IVANOFF STATION, KHAPHRAE SYSTEM NEAR INSTALLATION 03.
\\ ……….. Interrogation Recording Session 194.
\\\ …………
\\\\\ ……………
\\\\\\\ ……………..
Catherine Halsey sat at the metal table. Her expression bored. Eyes tired. Her body aged and frail. But her stare intense.
The lights of the interrogation room were almost too bright for her. Always shadowing her interrogator to protect their identity. But Halsey always thought it was from cowardice. Not that she particularly cared for the identity of her interrogator. They were following orders, the orders of Margaret Parangosky. Whom she would always come to personally interrogate her with guilt and the threat of sabotage to her remaining SPARTAN-IIs.
Bait she never took.
Halsey knew from personal experience that Parangosky was not a woman to be crossed. Much like herself.
She heard the door open before she saw it. The featureless walls opened to reveal another faceless interrogator. Another nameless Human. A man. Not Parangosky. Thankfully.
In both his hands he held a box, and on top of it some type of book.
The harsh light kept Halsey from seeing the contents that her interrogator held. The harsh light still shadowed it all.
“Have you brought my coffee?” Halsey chirped.
The interrogator ignored her. He began to lay out the items onto the table. Still shrouded in mystery. Still shadowed.
Once these items had been laid out, the interrogator folded his hands onto the table. He leaned in. Even shrouded, Halsey could see the body language that foretold doom. But she did not show the anticipation of such news on her face. Merely waited.
She waited patiently. She kept her stare hard onto him, even in the faceless appearance she knew it made him uncomfortable.
He entered the cat’s den. Perhaps it was instinct that made him feel this way.
“We have been directed to debrief you on what has transpired during your time within Onyx.”
It was unexpected. But welcomed. There was a shift of her shoulders. She relaxed her gaze and her body. And she could tell the interrogator did as well. In this, an olive branch. If only momentarily.
From the top of the book, he took a folder. From this, he opened the plastic and began to show her pictures. There, he began to speak of the events of all that had happened trapped in Onyx.
Halsey listened closely. She sat quietly as the interrogator explained everything that happened over the several months she had been MIA.
In detail he described to her the invasion of Earth from the Prophet of Regret. How Miranda Keyes delved after the ship with John in tow. He spoke of the alliance forged between the Sangheili and Humanity thanks to the efforts of both Miranda and Johnson.
Her eyes lingered on a picture of Miranda standing beside the Arbiter. She had grown older. She had amassed scars on her face. She had the look of having been tortured. But she was safe.
And Halsey sighed with some relief.
But this integrator continued. He regaled to Halsey the Portal at Voi. Spoke to her about the Flood that reached Earth. Here, another image. The glassing of Africa. And her heart was heavy with sadness. But it was for the greater good. There was no way to save those touched by those creatures.
Another picture of Miranda. She stood beside a few other Sangheili with John beside her. She was giving orders. And in this photo, she saw Jacob.
She wondered if she smoked like her father.
He prattled on about the Ark. About how the Covenant were planning on detonating all the Halo Arrays at once. Then, he spoke of Johnson’s capture. How he was forced to activate all the Halo Arrays to kill all living creature on the galaxy. And then…
“Your daughter, Miranda Keyes, was killed in action.”
She stopped breathing.
“What?”
She turned her head to stare at her interrogator. Transfixed on what was said.
All at once, every emotion consumed her. Pain. Despair. Loneliness. Grief. Anger. Everything came swirling within the depth of her soul, sweeping her into a palace of pain.
She knew what was said. But she had to hear it again.
“The Prophet of Truth killed Miranda Keyes.”
He opened the box that was set on the table. And slid across to her was a medal. The Colonial Cross.
This was Miranda’s ceremony.
“The Flood—Did she?” Halsey stood up. Her hands pressed against the metal table as if she were to try to escape this very room to save her daughter.
The interrogator shook his head. He held a hand up as if to dispel those thoughts. “Her body was recovered.”
It barely comforted Halsey to hear those words.
“She was interred on Luna.”
Hasley slowly returned to her seat looking as if she had seen a ghost. Her eyes kept to the Colonial Cross on the table.
Once she had been seated, the interrogator slid another object across the table. A notebook. Halsey glanced the other object, her agony even more apparent as her eyes laid on the book.
“The Shipmaster of Shadow of Intent, Rtas Vadum, gave this to us.” He motioned towards the notebook. “He told us that Miranda Keyes had given him the book before her last stand against the Covenant. We have already documented—”
But there was a pause as he quieted his words. Watched as suddenly the beast within this cage had been brought down by the news of its daughter.
Had they thought she would react with the same attitude she always would have when hearing her Spartans had perished in combat? They assumed she was cold hearted. It was far beyond the truth. But it was this truth that broke her down to her core. Made all the lies she told herself bare to see. For herself to see.
There was a short pause. Then: “I will give you a moment.”
He stood and exited.
And Halsey was left alone.
She stared at the objects on the metal table. Her pride diminished with every second. Her ego faded away into the walls of this coffin. Her coffin. Miranda’s coffin. Jacob’s coffin.
There was silence. Quiet.
There was pain. Agony.
There was fear. Denial.
ONI were cruel creatures. But even in their cruelty none would lie to her about this undeniable truth. A truth that she hid from Miranda of her own father.
There was regret. A spear sunk deep into her heart that always bled for the lie she made for her daughter. Given freely to Halsey from ONI.
Because her daughter could not lie to her.
Miranda never would.
Halsey’s hands crawled across the table. Frail fingers found the notebook. Back into her arms. From the very place it had come from. Her daughter’s book she had gotten her on her 17th birthday. Not a replica of Halsey’s own book, but a book she found on Reach. At home.
It was held close to her. Cradled in her arms as she once had cradled Miranda as a baby.
In this moment, silence.
The same silence Halsey had become accustomed to deep within her laboratory when she missed Miranda’s cries. Deep within the silence of the underground after she had given Miranda up to Jacob.
Because she knew she could never provide her a normal life.
Or was that the guilt she felt for the SPARTAN-IIs?
“Miranda…” she whispered.
She clutched the book close to her. Maybe pretending that this thing would turn into the child she could not protect.
Soon, sobs.
Her shoulders shuddered as she curled into her body. Clutching the object tight. Soothing the baby once held years ago.
Then, nothing.
It washed away.
Her grief was not a short pain, but a chronic disease. A haunt that loomed over her head as all the others she killed joined it.
Her sobs were loud. Then soft. Then quieted.
Eventually, she unfurled herself and laid the book on the table. Her hands trembled as she opened the cover of the book. Within it, the writing on the binding. Below it, the drawings of her daughter.
She never thought she would pick up the pencil and begin to draw a grave below it.
Once that deed was done, she stared down at the book. Too scared to read what her daughter had written about her. Too scared to read what her daughter had thought of her. Too scared of all the things that Halsey had missed in her life.
Even with an invitation, she was still too scared to do so.
An atheist she may be. But even the spirit remembers. And her hands trembled at Miranda’s spirit that seemed to now haunt her.
She stood and paced the room.
Occasionally, she would clutch her head in despair. Occasionally, she would hold herself and sob. Occasionally, she would try to remember the last time she had seen her daughter’s face in front of her. Occasionally, she would sit and stare at the book.
This was the ultimate torture. The ultimate agony. Parangosky had promised her she would not torture her. And Halsey wanted to curse that woman for giving her this truth, for this was a torture in of itself. Not a torture created by Parangosky. But a torture created by Halsey’s own actions.
This was Dante’s Inferno.
Had hours passed since this moment? She could not tell. There was no time in this metal cage. She could only sit and stare at Miranda’s journal. Her gaze kept to the embryo. To the baby. The child. The adult. And now, the grave.
Miranda’s grave. She wished it would have been her instead.
She was hollow. A husk. All at once, time pressed against her skin and she felt thousands of years older.
She never did reach enlightenment.
But she was able to left her hand to the book once more. She flipped the pages. Her eyes glossing over everything that was written and said. Every picture. Every diagram. Everything faded away into the ocean of stars.
Finally, she glanced upon the last entry.
She hoped for peace. But nothing could be said now for the guilt that would follow her forever.
Forever.
And ever.
Rtas told me the truth.
I want to hate Halsey for keeping the truth from me. But I can’t bring myself to.
In a few hours we will be exiting slip space and see what lies on the other side of the portal.
I do not know what will arrive in the coming days. Maybe I will die from the Covenant or be turned by the Flood. Maybe we will save Humanity and every living being in the Galaxy.
Whatever tomorrow may bring, I know I am ready to face it.
When this is all over, I want to go home to Reach.
I only wish mom and dad were here with me. Not as a happy family, but for them all to see who I have become without them.
Wherever they are, I hope they’re proud of me.
I love and miss them.
I wish I could hold them both and tell them that.