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He then left the room

Dr Halsey watched until he rounded the corridor and was gone She hoped she saw John again before she did what she had to do, but she ht she had planted within hi she could do to atone for what she'd done to hihts were luxuries when there were only three hours before Ascendant Justice exited Slipspace There was too much to do before then

She turned all the monitors to face her and typed in the com- mand to unsquelch Cortana

"Lock the door," Dr Halsey ordered Cortana "Boost counter-intrusion measures to level seven"

"Done," Cortana said The irritation at having been silenced for the last five minutes was like barbed wire in her voice "What precisely was all that about? Teach the Master Chief a lesson?

Giving hinored her and rapidly typed in commands on her keyboard "Give me access to your core coordinates four-four-seven"

"Block reoing to answer reater good,' " Dr

Halsey replied "It never stops, Cortanaand we're running out of people to sacrifice" She tapped in a final co worm function and punched the ENTER key

"What--"

"I' your files on this matter I'm sorry, Cortana, but with this, I cannot trust even you"

Cortana was silenced as the worh herto Ser- geant Avery Johnson

"Cortana, giveof routines has resulted in afootprint reduction of sixteen percent, Doctor Thank you That gives me a little more room to think"

"I'm afraid that's all we dare risk," Dr Halsey said "The Halo and Covenant AI data could becoh to store that information"

Dr Halsey loaded mission reports from Admiral Whitcomb's, John's, and Fred's teams She frowned at the official UNSC inci- dent forhted time, date, and location stamps scrolled across her screens

"Are you done with the tes?"

"Yes, Doctor You were correct: There is a discrepancy be- tween the Halo teae of three weeks I hypothesize that this was caused by ravity-influenced Slipspace transition"

The corners of Dr Halsey's mouth flickered into a suessand an incorrect one at that"

"Really?" Cortana replied with a hint of challenge in her tone

"Do you have any data froravity-influenced translation to correlate?"

There was a two-second pause, and then Cortana finally an- swered, "Yes, Doctor There are no temporal displacements on those later juer on her lower lip as she thought "Plot the teularities on a space-tienerated by the alien artifact"

On the displays appeared two sets of nearly identical curved membranes that stretched about a central location and tie artifact

"That thing not only bends space," Dr Halsey whispered to herself, "but bends time as well"

"That's not possible," Cortana said "How could the artifact on Reach affect us on Halo--light-years away?"

"Don't think of it as physical distance," Dr Halsey replied ab-sent at thethe crystal" She moved the curves over one another; the time and space surfaces were a perfect match "You had to be there at that place and time to recover us and remove the crystal--tiave a derisive laugh "That's circular logic, Doctor

It directly contravenes several well-established theories--"

"And it fits the known data" Dr Halsey shut down the files containing her analysis "I see nohy the Covenant are so interested in this object They et their hands on it Not them, and certainly not Section Three, either"

"Doctor?"

Dr Halsey turned to the screen with herworm and moved it to a new pointer in Cortana's core She exe- cuted the progra the AI's memory of this conver- sation, too

"Give me an update on SPARTAN-058's condition, Cortana"

"Core terees Celsius per rees in ten ood Prep and e and ready surgical bay three"

"Aye, Doctor"

Linda'swith the entire Spartan roster: a long list of every Spartan's current operational status Only a handful was left, almost every one of them listed as WOUNDED IN ACTION or MISSING IN ACTION

"No KIAs?" Dr Halsey murmured She touched SPARTAN-034's entry "Sa in action Why would that be? He died in 2525"

"ONI Section Two Directive Nine-Three-Zero," Cortana re- plied "When ONI went public with the SPARTAN-II program, it was decided that the reports of Spartan losses could cause a crip- pling loss of morale Consequently, any Spartan casualties are listed as MIA or WIA, in order to maintain the illusion that Spar- tans do not die"

"Spartans never die?" she whispered Dr Halsey swiveled out of the contoured chair and pushed the monitors out of her ith a sudden violence "If only that were true"

There was so much to do and so little time left for her, the Spar- tans, and the huh She'd save the with Linda, then Kelly, and then a handful of very important others